My own quote !!

Good thing about recession is the happiness that comes with the recovery !!

My own quote

"Calling client out for dinner is like calling your girl friend out for a date the first time. Both need courage."

Personal Metrics

It is that time of the year for many companies where they will be closing the books and starting a new financial year. Yes, It is a new year and every new year has to come with resolution(s). Wanted to share some thoughts on creating what is called “Personal Metrics” or “Personalized Metrics”. I am sure most of you dwell on metrics day-in & day-out would hate to hear one more. Have you ever thought about setting yourself a comprehensive metric plan that you can track year over year? Nothing improves without a plan, execute, monitor, corrective action life cycle. Your professional life is no exception. Keep in mind you are answerable for your own growth. What goes into your resume is more important than what goes into your bank account. How about this tracking plan? Create a table and compare this with last year. Set a target for next year.

# No Personal Metric
1 Help your customer (could be internal customer also)
with one extra thing
2 Help your boss with one extra thing
3 Introduce friends to HR
4 Be a reference to your friends
5 Learn one new skill
6 Work on one extra initiative
7 Comment on a blog
8 Provide your thoughts on facebook, twitter or your own
9 improve one thing in your existing hobby (one extra book, exercise, cricket, art, music)
10 Friends relationship – increase by one
11 Family relationship take one goal
12 Charity - one extra - teach a kid, sponsor event, donate cloth, food
13 Convert one person who is in trouble (smoker, drink, job, studies)
14 Exercise routine – Improve one cycle
15 Include a mentor in your life
16 Change one eating habit
17 One certification
18 Increase income by x %
19 Decrease expense by y %
20 One extra vacation
21 One long term investment for a small amount

Happy New Year to your company !!

Productivity measure & KRA

During our professional career many times one would be challenged with productivity questions. If you are a manager or a supervisor you are responsible for your team's productivity as well. People are not born equal and hence this measure can not be the same for all resources working in a team. However you can't differentiate them openly when you set your KRA's. The way you can solve this problem is by keeping productivity targets at the team level rather than keeping them at individual level. If the team wins the organization wins !!

Meeting with Narayana Murthy - Infosys

I am very excited to publish this post.
This is once in a life time opportunity that just happened to me last weekend. I attended one of the fund raiser events for Akshaya Patra a non-profit organization that feeds more than one million kids in India where Mr. Narayana Murthy - Chairman of the board of Infosys was a key note speaker. BV Jagadeesh a family friend and a well wisher to my 2 children invited me to this event. The way I would introduce BV to anyone, "BV is a great human being who treats every one (Narayana Murthy to my 13 year old daughter) the same way". In my opinion this quality of his has turned him to be a successful serial entrepreneur & venture capitalist in the bay area. I see him involved in charity events through out the year. He & his wife Anu share similar thoughts when it comes to charity. I have seen many rich people rich through the wealth they acquired, there are a few who are rich at heart more than the richness through wealth. BV is one of them. I wish them a long meaningful charity filled life !!

When BV invited my family to this dinner event I was not sure and didn't really understand the purpose of the event. Since we were busy the whole day with many other weekend classes and activities we didn't really plan on attending this event. On our way back we stopped at India Community Center (ICC) where this event was held to hand over some things to my daughter who was performing a cultural program for the attendees. BV and his wife Anu insisted that we stay back and watch the show. As mentioned earlier this was a charity show attended by 250 business delegates from the bay area. This show generated few hundred thousands of dollars in this economy leading to $ 1 Million mark set by the Akshaya Patra foundation (visit http://www.foodforeducation.org/ for more details and contribute to this noble cause if you can)
At the end of the show I stayed back to greet a few business folks I know through my business connection. We were about to sign off from BV who introduced me to Mr. Narayana Murthy a simple man who still leads a simple life. I have no words to explain how I cherish this moment in my life. NM as you know is one of the architects of the Indian IT industry and a great man when it comes to charity. I am yet to come out of this excitement. An unplanned visit brought this great moment to me in my life.

My sincere thanks to BV & his family.

Professional Relationship - Opinion !!

We all build relationship with individuals (Customers, Boss, Peers) during our professional career. These relationships make us successful. Referrals from these relationship is the stepping stone on the ladder that takes us to the next level. How we build these relationship is the most important aspect of this exercise. If our relationships are built based on a value foundation then it is repeatable when there is change in the power house. For eg. you may be very close to a customer because of the relationship you have built with an individual in that company or you work very well with your boss as your boss likes your style of functioning. As you know that in this dynamic world the dependency on these relationships are so temporary. It only takes a small re-organization in that company to bring an end to your success. However, if your relationship is based on some fundamentals or value that you delivered to build this relationship it is only question of time that you would repeat the same with the new team that has taken over this organization.

I suggest you validate your relationships at regular intervals and come up with a risk mitigation for weak relationships that is making you successful today but will be a threat to your future development.

Professional Success !!

How do you validate your success?
Go back to your old company that you worked for and ask the following questions.
1. Do they miss your services?
2. Ask them to name one thing that you created there that they still use and remember you for that
3. Ask them to name one thing that was working is broken after you left

Opinion - Success - 1:1 !!

If you are not having a 1:1 with your higher-up on a regular basis (atleast once in 6 months) means you are not interested in your own growth. You need to drive this 1:1 with your boss. Do not expect your boss to call you to have this discussion. Boss will reach out to you only when he has a problem with you (well most of the times) !!

Sales Strategy - Prospect List !!

Acquiring new customers or building sales pipeline is an universal problem for companies. Here is a suggestion to build a prospect list.
If you are doing significant business with a customer who's really big (fortune 500 or billion dollar or more) consider their customers & vendors part of your prospect list. It is easier to reach out and play your success storey with these prospects than reaching out to completely new prospects. I am sure approaching the competitors of your customers is a very natural choice for most sales teams.

Success means here !!!

My daughter Prithvi left home and moved into the dorm at UC Berkeley this weekend (08/22/09). Congratulations to her !! I dedicate this post to her future growth & success.

What does "success" mean to an individual? How do you define "success" in an individuals life? This is an important question every one should be thinking of. To answer this question better, this topic has to be looked at from
a) Individuals point of view
b) Family's point of view
c) Outsiders or public point of view
Reason I say this is that India's former president Dr. Abdul Kalam or Michael Jackson may be very successful people from public view point but may not be so from family side though. I am sure Dr. Kalam's family would have liked him to marry and settle down in life ? I am sure his intellectual genes were not passed to the next generation which is a huge miss to the world. Same is true with MJ who lived a life I am sure he didn't relish. He is a good example of money is not equal to success or money is not equal to peaceful life.
Back to my point that success should be defined and measured based on all 3 above I guess in the same order. You need to set goals and measure against your success. You as an individual should enjoy the success. Second comes your family who is all behind you should enjoy and support your path and be part of that growth. Third comes the public. You don't live for the public but they are equally important to trumpet your glory.

Let us break down a person's life into following age grouping if you will for this analysis.
Age 0 to 18
Age 18 to 24
Age 24 to 40
Age 40 to 60
Age 60 & above
Success in each age category means different things to a person. Every phase is as important as the other. To elaborate further
Age 0 to 18: You are measured based on how well you performed in school. How well you excelled in your extra curricular activities. Did you get into your college of choice and how that college is recognized in the outside world. Going back to my other theory this has to be analyzed based on how much are you satisfied with your performance, how much your close family is happy about your logical end at 18. How the public looked at you at the end of this phase. This phase your family is responsible for 90% of your success and 10% is yours.
Age 18 to 24: This is the bracket where you pursue your college life UG, Graduation, PG, Doctorate etc. This is the stage that lays foundation for you to launch a career. If you don't focus and take wrong decisions you will end up with wrong results. Lots of money(your parents ofcourse), your time goes into this phase of life which is very important as you are responsible for 90% of your success or failure and your parents may be 10% or less. Identification of the right life partner is part of this life.
Age 24 to 40: Success here means choosing the right career, partner & children. You are 100% responsible here. Very small or negligible percentage is from your family.
Age 40 to 60: How well you bring up your children or how well you pass on your tradition & culture to the next generation. You are measured by what your children do & what you contribute to the society. This phase you create a name for yourself or for your family. What you do during this phase will be the legacy you leave for the next generation.
Age 60 & Above: Phase where you plan for your next birth. Phase to enjoy the fruits of 60 years life. Slow down and think about how you can contribute to the society. How useful you can be to the world instead of living like a vegetable or a body passing time awaiting death. Important phase to think of what you want to hear from the next generation standing near your coffin !! How do you want your legacy to be remembered.
After Death: You are remembered not for your academic excellence but for the knowledge you passed to the next generations through your association with the community and the effort you spent in teaching your learning. You are not remembered for the wealth that you accumulated but for the wealth that you shared with others through community services activities.

Note: A person is successful when he or she has taken good care of health, education, finance, relationship with kith & kin & created the next generation.
What legacy are you leaving behind will sum it all?

Fish Plural ... What the heck ?

Some times you wonder why people would have created things that complicate life. I am sure there must be reasons when it happened. But looking back you may not be able to comprehend why we follow such a thing today. One such that came to my mind is the use of singular and plural. Most of the things we add "s" or "es" to convert singular to plural but there are exceptions right. Why was that required in the first place and why can't that be changed today.
You know what I mean ? Why can't the plural for Fish be Fishes ? This will make teaching easy and will make it easy for people to remember right?

Get more than 24 hours in a day !!

If you think of it 24 hours is only an elapse time in a day. I don't have time ... Time flies ... It feels like ages ... are some of the comments you would hear from individuals when you meet them to talk about different subjects.
What really matters is not the total elapse time i.e. 24 hours in a day but how you use it. If you sit back and look at how you spent your time that day before you go to bed you can always find chunks of time that you could have used better. What this means is that if you were given 25 or 30 hours in a day you would have done the same thing (not made effective use of it).
My point here is that with your daily analysis of how you spent your time if you find ways to make effective use of 15 minutes or 30 minutes (improve the way you use it today) that will make a huge difference to your life !!

Winning a Raffle - Tip !!

I am sure most of you attend conferences & professional events. During those events you would have seen companies having booths to advertise their products. To attract visitors to their booth they will have raffle draw with attractive prizes. The way it normally works is that you drop your name card or staple your card to a small slip where you answer some questions.

Here is a tip to win the prize. If you just drop your card the probability of you winning the prize is 1 out of x cards thrown into the box. To increase your chance of winning what you can do is to bend or fold your card little bit before you drop it into the box. By doing so your card will stand out among all the ones thrown into the box. When the organizer shuffles the cards to pick one from the box there is very high probability of your card sticking out to win the prize. I have used this technique many times and has helped me to win prizes.

I hear you !! That's not cheating !!!!

How to say "No" to a Customer !!

If you are in the services business and your success depends on servicing customer needs I am sure your day to day life is pleasing customer demands. In today's recession hit economy you are dumped with requests for service that you don't own or not paid for as part of your contract. You might be servicing these request that are border line cases as there is no option for you to push back or say "No" to such requests.

It is important to learn the art of saying "No" to a customer in a manner that the customer can accept. It is hard but you need to think of ways you can convey the message based on your situation. I can think of few a here
1. Show them how the future would look if this precedence is set
2. You as an individual might have the competence today but may not be so if other individuals in your organization take over to do the same job. Since this is not part of your contract the new person may not be skilled to do this additional work
3. Extra time that will be spent on this new activity how it will affect the deliverable committed as part of your contract
4. Tell the customer that you may need to get approval from your supervisor
5. You may put it across in such a way that you are bending to accommodate this request one time but not every time it happens
6. Project it in such a way that you are working outside of your boundary to meet this request and get some extra credit from the customer for the work you are doing

My own quote !!

"Birthday is not an achievement why celebrate it ?"

Business Idea !! Taste meter !!

I am just thinking of a taste meter that can measure the salt levels or spice levels or sweet levels or sour levels in a scale of 1 to 10. Every individual can carry this meter (let us say same like a thermometer ) one can use it to measure the meal they eat every time. If I can dip the meter into the food and measure before I eat that would be fantastic. This can be used by every individual not necessarily the deceased ones. If my taste buds are tuned to say salt level of 4 and spice level of 6 and sweet level of 5 etc I can use this meter to measure the food I eat. Not sure if this can be tried on a snack or a dry food item.

Imagine exchanging these taste levels to a friend who plans to invite you home !!

Business Idea !! Hot pack for Pizza

I am not sure if this exists today. When you buy a pizza to take away and eat or order one home it is not fresh even if your home is 10 mts away. I think this opens up a business opportunity for an entrepreneur to come up with a hot pack for such food items that doesn't add too much cost to the product !! I am thinking for a thin paper wrapper with heat resistant capability to keep it warm and fresh !! Same problem exists when you start eating the pieces. Freshness of the last piece that you eat is not the same as the first one you ate.

Recession Cartoon !!

Here is the lighter side of me !! Enjoy !!





"We ran out of budget to have someone issue your layoff letter. I suggest you type one for yourself and terminate your employment from today !! "

If I am Obama ...

If I am Obama what will I do now ?

Economic crisis, Job loss, Foreclosure are the headlines in every day news.


What are the easy picks to solve this problem.


Job loss: Focus on citizens and immigrants who are in the country for a long period of time. Send the temporary workers out of the country. There are many with H1, L1, B1 visas who are in the US for less than 3 to 5 years. If you include the illegal immigrants we are looking at half a million to one million jobs that will just open up when you terminate these visas. When the visa was issued to these immigrants the situation was different. I am sure you can pick 5 people in America to replace that skill set now. My friends would hate this post. But let us be practical you need to take care of the citizens first.

Tax differently: Tax percentage and incentives should be different for citizens and others. Give more incentive to citizens.

Outside money: There are people who have deposits and assets overseas. When they are brought into the country it may increase their tax cap. Allow them tax benefits this time so that they can bring that money into the country. This will boost the economy.

Incentive to companies: Govt should give 2 to 3K per employee to companies to train an American who can replace an immigrant to perform the same job.

Govt Bond: There are some rich people who have huge amount of deposits in the bank. These deposits may earn very little interest. Bring this money back into the economy by issuing a short term bond that can be repaid in 3-5 years with higher interest rate. Use this money to fund stimulus plan.


Tax Increase & Tax cut: Increase the tax for those who earn more than $x per Annam. $x could be 200K or 500K etc. Reduce the tax for those who earn less. Bring this money back into the economy by giving it back to those who earn less so that they spend this money to survive. That will boost the economy.

TV program to go - Idea !!

Most homes these days have DVR that records the TV programs. It would be nice if we have the facility to download these favourite programs to a handheld device (phone or mp3 player) so that we can watch the same while we are away from home !!