Over past two decades world has changed in a lot of ways and one of the most significant changes is how we think which in turn influences each and every aspect of our lives.
Our buying methodology has changed. We do more research, compare a number of attributes, seek advice from friends and family, accept advice and prefer to buy our trusted brands and products from our trusted place. Interestingly there is no gauge or bench mark for this trust. Neither do we have a well defined list of people, products, brands or companies that we trust. Instead it has got embedded in our subconscious mind and it comes out instantaneously and influences our behavior.
These days, people spend more time online than they do offline. They use internet for communication, collaboration, information, publication, recreation and so many other things. They spend a lot of time on Facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn and a number of similar sites. Your competitors are reaching out to them right where they are and pulling them to their websites. They trust your competitors … Hey! hold on.. you might be wondering why I am presuming you don't have a web presence.. that is because this post is specifically for people who ask, "Do I need a web site?" Sorry for the interruption.. let us continue. Shoppers trust your competitors because they feel that they know them. They have heard about them and they have seen them somewhere on the internet. When they Google for them, they find them. And Google is the biggest advisor that anybody has ever had in the history. (By the way, just try and Google "e-centric" and see what it returns.) Customers trust internet more than they trust themselves. If you don't have an online presence, you do not exist for them. (If you have no passport in Bangkok, you are officially dead!)
People do lot of shopping online and people who make their products available online are either minting money or they are in the incubation phase that precedes the phase where your ecommerce portal becomes your cash cow. Those who say, "Our product is different, it won't sell online," are badly mistaken. The fact is that even those things that could never sell offline find customers online. Right from an aero plane to a safety pin everything is available and everything sells.
Eventually nearly half of the retail market will shift online and rest half will shift to megamalls and retail chains. Half of the commodities and services will sell online and for the rest there will be a fierce competition. By the way do you have any idea how many colleges are offering MBA in Bangalore city alone? Though, every MBA is not going to be a great business man, we have an army of entrepreneurs in the making. At least the retail industry is going to turn into one hell.
Now the bottom line is:
1. Offline you are just not going to have a lot of customers partly because most of them are going to turn online and partly because there are thousands of vendors who are selling exactly what you are. Many of them, very likely, much cheaper than that you are.
2. Online might be too late to start if you do not make a start now. Suppose I can make a website like Facebook and even better than Facebook. Suppose I even have a few million for marketing. Does that guarantee I will even come any close to Facebook. Most likely not, because Facebook has captured the market already and in addition to Facebook there are at least a dozen of sites that are somewhat similar. I am simply too late. I am warning you, "Don't be late." One of my "not so close" friends had the idea of matrimonial sites when there was no Shaadi.com and SimplyMarry.com. But she wasted time thinking "God knows what" and when she finally discovered that the idea was great, she also discovered that the time had gone.
Coming back to the trust part, those who have a strong web presence and online shops are going to see increase in offline sales as well. One of our customers got a lot of wholesale orders from the retail site. Being convinced with their retail site people concluded that they would be equally good in wholesale and bulk orders too. Though they were into distribution too, they had no where mentioned that on the site. It turned out that they did not even need to mention that as they had instead built the trust. Besides wholesale enquiries lot of customers who walked into their retail outlets made it a point to mention that they had found out about then from their website. So, online presence does have a big impact on the offline sales as well.
Today a lot of customers are highly cost conscious. Sometimes they end up wasting dollars attempting to save a penny, but generally they do save money. Though the cost of raw material, labour and everything that goes into manufacturing goods is ever increasing, the retail price of the end products is coming down or at least not increasing proportionally. On one hand we have more efficient and effective processes that save cost an on the other, without any doubts, the margin is shrinking. If a retailer has to make money from his thin margin, he too has to find ways to cut cost. One of the easiest and fastest way is to sell online as the overhead cost goes down, warehouse cost goes down and the human cost goes down.
Your website makes it easier and convenient for you to network. You can link to your principals, suppliers and even customers and get paid for the trust people have in them. If you are selling some leading brand, linking to their site, having their name and logos in your site will go a long way in building your own image. If you can get them to link back to you, nothing like that.
People like to get involved, they like the feeling of being part of something, they like being heard and they love when they see they matter. Your website gives you more chances to make them do that. Besides you can provide a better customer support at much lower cost.
One of the most attractive things about online business is that it a shop that is open 24 hours. 24/7 you are doing sales.
In the end I would warn you against three sets of people:
Set one, the pessimist generalizes, who would give you twenty examples of people who tired online business and failed. Of course if you think you will succeed in the first attempt in everything you do, then online business might be a bit risky. If you are not willing to make another attempt if you fail once, then every business is risky. If you think the only cost is the cost of development and you leave no money for marketing, then too online business is not for you. If you are serious about online business, hire the people who know in and out about the domain.
Set two, the eternal lingers, who would ask you to wait and watch. But.. If you wait, you will never realize when you overstep that threshold that separates those who make it from those who miss it.
Set three, super pessimists. I won't define them, but I will explain with an example. It is a school reunion and Ravi is excited to meet his classmates after a gap of fifteen years. They are discussing what they have achieved or not achieved in their lives. A black Mercedes stops and a gentleman steps out. He is wearing an expensive suit, best known glasses and everything to suggest that he is a very rich man. It takes them more than just a glimpse to realize that it is Sham, their close pal. Later that night Ravi finds an opportunity to ask Sham, "You seem to be doing very well. What is it that you do?" Sham replies, "Are you joking? I am rich because of your brilliant idea. Remember we met three years back on a local train and you told me there was lot of money in Milk business. You told me if I bought one Buffalo and with the money that I earned from selling milk in just one month I could get another. So at the end of one month I would have two, at the end of two months I would have four and so on. That is what I did, I sold my scooter and bought two Buffaloes and after that there was no stopping." Ravi is astonished; he does not utter a word. Sham goes on and asks, "What about you, how many buffaloes did you buy?" Now Ravi was caught between the devil and deep sea, he had to reply. So he said, "I did not but even one. We figured out that the business was too risky and we did not do it." Sham again asked, "But why did you think it was too risky." Ravi replied, "Because my wife asked me a single question. She asked me, what if the first buffalo we buy dies. I had no answer so we concluded it was too risky." Now, online your buffalo won't die, but the super pessimists will find a way to discourage you.
My advice is, make a start ASAP. Hire a consultant and together with him make a roadmap for your online portfolio. Do not expect to win a long drawn war in a single battle. It will take a sustained effort to establish yourself and elevate yourself to a level where the money just keeps gushing in from every side. It is the best choice and there is no second best.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Why did we take a cake?
Sometimes what we say is immediately contradicted. Probably the reason is that often what we say is completely out of the box. It takes people more than just a second to understand us.
A decade back I wrote an article supporting child labor in Kashmir and, as one would have expected, I was ridiculed. However, those who read through saw sense in what I was talking about and I soon found hundreds of supporters. This topic might be similar and it would be nice to try and understand my point of view.
Last month we went to greet a friend on starting new business. When we left home, we intended to pick a bouquet of flowers on the way. Though we passed a few florists, I did not stop. Rather I could not stop because somewhere in my subconscious mind I dislike the idea of taking flowers. Finally we ended up buying a cake that easily cost three times more than what flowers would have, but I did get my satisfaction for not having done something that I would consider unethical.
I considered taking flowers unethical because I found it very similar to buying stolen goods. If one is aware that the goods that one is buying are stolen, then one becomes party to the theft. As I am convinced that commercialization of floriculture at a magnitude it is in India is very bad particularly for the poor, I consider consumption unethical.
Who cares for the government statistics and the bench marks? On one hand we have 30,000 top executives in India drawing more than 10 million a year and on the other I think 90% of the population is still poor. Starvation deaths and suicides triggered by problems due to poverty have become so common that such news no more make headlines. They don’t even get a place in the cover page, do they? I doubt if these people are even acknowledged to be below poverty line as per the Indian standards. I would say every such family whose net worth drops to zero any time in a month few times in a row should be considered poor.
In India more than 90% of the population is affected by the rising prices. Even people with decent salaries have to spend rather too wisely. Average monthly household income in India is less than 1500 Rupees. When we look at the cost of commodities, 1500 Rupees can fetch you 6 kg of mutton or 50 kg of rice or 93 liter of milk. If a family of 4 dines at a small average hotel, probably 1500 Rupees will buy 2 meals. You could buy one leg of jeans if that were an option so at the most you can buy an average quality branded shirt. In Bangalore city you can probably find a six feet by six feet room in a slum for that kind of rent. Let us not talk about other stuff but try and stick to Roti, Kapda aur Makan (Food, Clothing and Shelter). Let us assume people never fall sick and never meet with an accident.
Coming back to the food, if one third of household income is spent on food, that would leave us with a small amount of 500 Rupees for an average family size of 4 persons who are not considered to be below poverty line by the government of India. One packet of dog biscuits costs more than 1000.
What has all this got to do with flowers? I am sure you are still wondering that are you might be thinking what is wrong with this guy. Commercial floriculture is definitely not responsible for the poverty of this nation but it is one of factors that make the matter worse. There might be dozens of issues, if we remove one or two we can definitely expect a reduction in the number of suicides and poverty deaths. How?
The agricultural as well as the forest land is shrinking at an alarming rate. It is already a bit smaller than what the mankind needs to survive and conserve flora and fauna. Being a human being a farmer, rather the land owner, wants to derive the maximum out of his land. Some sell their land at exorbitant rates. Such land is mostly converted to non-productive land. Some opt for higher paying crops like flowers and palm for palm oil. This results is drop in the supply of food items thus increasing the price. The high demand in the commercial land for buildings and roads, flowers and oil for fuel have made the food so scarce that people are willing to pay whatever they have just to survive another day.
Nobody is going to even care for such a small issue. After all who cares for human lives? We actually did not need to care if the governments did.
I believe there is a single root cause for problems like inflation, food shortage, depletion of fuel, global warming and disappearing forests. Nature has the power to heal everything up to a certain limit. If we exceed the velocity with which the nature can mend, we will see destruction. We have precisely been doing that for past hundred years or so. The development has been so fast that nature has not been able to keep up the pace. All we need to do is to allow it to catch up. We cannot stop development and neither should we. The only and sufficient thing to do would be to utilize the resources very wisely till the balance returns.
A decade back I wrote an article supporting child labor in Kashmir and, as one would have expected, I was ridiculed. However, those who read through saw sense in what I was talking about and I soon found hundreds of supporters. This topic might be similar and it would be nice to try and understand my point of view.
Last month we went to greet a friend on starting new business. When we left home, we intended to pick a bouquet of flowers on the way. Though we passed a few florists, I did not stop. Rather I could not stop because somewhere in my subconscious mind I dislike the idea of taking flowers. Finally we ended up buying a cake that easily cost three times more than what flowers would have, but I did get my satisfaction for not having done something that I would consider unethical.
I considered taking flowers unethical because I found it very similar to buying stolen goods. If one is aware that the goods that one is buying are stolen, then one becomes party to the theft. As I am convinced that commercialization of floriculture at a magnitude it is in India is very bad particularly for the poor, I consider consumption unethical.
Who cares for the government statistics and the bench marks? On one hand we have 30,000 top executives in India drawing more than 10 million a year and on the other I think 90% of the population is still poor. Starvation deaths and suicides triggered by problems due to poverty have become so common that such news no more make headlines. They don’t even get a place in the cover page, do they? I doubt if these people are even acknowledged to be below poverty line as per the Indian standards. I would say every such family whose net worth drops to zero any time in a month few times in a row should be considered poor.
In India more than 90% of the population is affected by the rising prices. Even people with decent salaries have to spend rather too wisely. Average monthly household income in India is less than 1500 Rupees. When we look at the cost of commodities, 1500 Rupees can fetch you 6 kg of mutton or 50 kg of rice or 93 liter of milk. If a family of 4 dines at a small average hotel, probably 1500 Rupees will buy 2 meals. You could buy one leg of jeans if that were an option so at the most you can buy an average quality branded shirt. In Bangalore city you can probably find a six feet by six feet room in a slum for that kind of rent. Let us not talk about other stuff but try and stick to Roti, Kapda aur Makan (Food, Clothing and Shelter). Let us assume people never fall sick and never meet with an accident.
Coming back to the food, if one third of household income is spent on food, that would leave us with a small amount of 500 Rupees for an average family size of 4 persons who are not considered to be below poverty line by the government of India. One packet of dog biscuits costs more than 1000.
What has all this got to do with flowers? I am sure you are still wondering that are you might be thinking what is wrong with this guy. Commercial floriculture is definitely not responsible for the poverty of this nation but it is one of factors that make the matter worse. There might be dozens of issues, if we remove one or two we can definitely expect a reduction in the number of suicides and poverty deaths. How?
The agricultural as well as the forest land is shrinking at an alarming rate. It is already a bit smaller than what the mankind needs to survive and conserve flora and fauna. Being a human being a farmer, rather the land owner, wants to derive the maximum out of his land. Some sell their land at exorbitant rates. Such land is mostly converted to non-productive land. Some opt for higher paying crops like flowers and palm for palm oil. This results is drop in the supply of food items thus increasing the price. The high demand in the commercial land for buildings and roads, flowers and oil for fuel have made the food so scarce that people are willing to pay whatever they have just to survive another day.
Nobody is going to even care for such a small issue. After all who cares for human lives? We actually did not need to care if the governments did.
I believe there is a single root cause for problems like inflation, food shortage, depletion of fuel, global warming and disappearing forests. Nature has the power to heal everything up to a certain limit. If we exceed the velocity with which the nature can mend, we will see destruction. We have precisely been doing that for past hundred years or so. The development has been so fast that nature has not been able to keep up the pace. All we need to do is to allow it to catch up. We cannot stop development and neither should we. The only and sufficient thing to do would be to utilize the resources very wisely till the balance returns.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
PMPC 2009 was a waste of time.
It has been a week since I attended this PMPC (Project Management Practitioners Conference) 2009 organized by PMI, Bangalore chapter. I would say it needs lot of improvement. Actually it needs much more. It needs a life first. There were several good things that were planned and managed very well. But overall, the event was ……… dead!
Many of the presenters were brilliant. Their knowledge and maturity level was sky high and yet they were so down to earth, humble and sincere. I plan to meet and be in touch with each one of them.
However, calling PMPC 2009 a conference would be something like calling the isolated half a dozen coconut trees on the beach a forest. It was a collection of a few very good presentations and a few bad presentations. Between the presentations, there was a vacuum.
Interaction was probably not welcome. Any questions had to be written down on the chits of paper and passed to the presenter through a moderator. Out of dozens of questions, one or two were answered. Probably the organizers were under an impression that people attend the conferences so that they do not have to read books. They probably saw the relation between the presenters and the audience as that of teachers and students. How badly mistaken they were.
The food was horrible. Some vegetarian stuff was served in a way that looked very similar to high school hostel mess. The worst part was that people had to stand in long queues under the hot sun for that terrible stuff that was served in an undignified way. Oh did I mention that there was a separate arrangement for the organizers and a chosen few. Probably something that is acceptable in Indian culture. After all it is very similar to caste system that still prevails.
There was absolutely no representation from PMI. There were no international figures. In fact for a while I thought the organizer was Prime Minister of India (PMI) and not the Project Management Institute (PMI).
I was looking forward to attend the conference at Hyderabad in November. I saw it an opportunity to meet Fredrick Harren once again. However after the experience from PMPC 2009, I suppose I should not take that risk.
And for PMPC 2010; Thanks but no thanks!
Many of the presenters were brilliant. Their knowledge and maturity level was sky high and yet they were so down to earth, humble and sincere. I plan to meet and be in touch with each one of them.
However, calling PMPC 2009 a conference would be something like calling the isolated half a dozen coconut trees on the beach a forest. It was a collection of a few very good presentations and a few bad presentations. Between the presentations, there was a vacuum.
Interaction was probably not welcome. Any questions had to be written down on the chits of paper and passed to the presenter through a moderator. Out of dozens of questions, one or two were answered. Probably the organizers were under an impression that people attend the conferences so that they do not have to read books. They probably saw the relation between the presenters and the audience as that of teachers and students. How badly mistaken they were.
The food was horrible. Some vegetarian stuff was served in a way that looked very similar to high school hostel mess. The worst part was that people had to stand in long queues under the hot sun for that terrible stuff that was served in an undignified way. Oh did I mention that there was a separate arrangement for the organizers and a chosen few. Probably something that is acceptable in Indian culture. After all it is very similar to caste system that still prevails.
There was absolutely no representation from PMI. There were no international figures. In fact for a while I thought the organizer was Prime Minister of India (PMI) and not the Project Management Institute (PMI).
I was looking forward to attend the conference at Hyderabad in November. I saw it an opportunity to meet Fredrick Harren once again. However after the experience from PMPC 2009, I suppose I should not take that risk.
And for PMPC 2010; Thanks but no thanks!
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Bangalore Metro - A project management disaster.
As a child, I used to accompany my father to market, holding his finger. Few hundred meters from my house there used to be a river known as "Nallah Mar." Nallah Mar was full of silt and the water moved at a snail's pace. As it passed through the heart of the city, there were bridges after every few hundred meters. The nearest bridge to my house was Saraf Kadal and we always used to cross Saraf Kadal on foot and buy bread and cakes from a bakery on the other side.
I must have been four or five, but I clearly remember the day when while walking across the bridge we saw people all along the side watching something with excitement. Though, we did not stop, I did have a glimpse. I saw cranes and dozers at a distance rolling loads of soil into the river, filling it up. For several months we did not pass that way. I was told that the bridge was gone and there was no way to cross over, besides the area had been sealed off. Then one day we went again and not over the bridge called "Saraf Kadal" on the river known as "Nallah Mar" but over the road known as "Nallah Mar Road" at a place known as "Saraf Kadal." The road was still not asphalted and was not open to traffic.
Because of my insistence out of my curiosity, my father walked me almost a kilometer up to the place where they had reached filling up and I could see the giant machines again. It was a painful sight because as a kid I did not give a damn to the roads. Rivers and houseboats in them were much preferred sight. It took many years after that for the full length of the road to complete and get ready for traffic. Entire length of the river from its origin in Dal Lake up to the point where it merged with River Jhelum was filled up and turned into this magnificent road.
Since the topic of filling up of the river was most happening topic of discussion those days, I must have heard dozens of times from my elders the stories of Nallah Mar. I learnt that just a decade before it was filled, that would be a few years before I was born, Nallah Mar used have to have crystal clear water flowing considerably fast. There used to be houseboats on both sides and boats all over. The main mode of transportation, particularly goods, used to be the rivers and Nallah Mar was the second most important after Jhelum. There used to be several varieties of fish in the river and in summer one could see children swimming and playing on the banks. Though all this made it an important river that should have been preserved, the most important is yet to come.
After Nallah Mar was turned into a road, the city had to face something new. Jhelum started flooding every year in rainy season and few areas including some uptown posh localities stayed submerged in water for several weeks, if not months, after floods. The floods were mainly because something that our great grandfathers had created to prevent them was removed. Let me rephrase it, "Some unnecessary and unwanted nonsense that our idiotic grandfathers had created, these geniuses got rid of that."
Jhelum originates almost a hundred kilometers from the city and by the time it enters city, in rainy season, it is swollen after it has collected rain water from thousands of square kilometers. Dal Lake, with its total area of 24 square kilometer and with a mountain range, Zabarwan Range, on one side also has a cashment area of several thousand square kilometers. When the waters of Dal Lake flow into Jhelum, floods are imminent. Nallah Mar was similar to the outer ring road. It used to drain the waters of Dal Lake and pour it into Jhelum after it had left the city. The point where the rivers merged was a big basin that could contain the water, thus saving the city from floods.
When we analyze what was achieved and compare it with the cost, the project seems to be a disaster. It was one of those projects which are designed to fail and due to the magnitude the failure could be catastrophic. The purpose of Nallah Mar Road was to gear the city up to accommodate the traffic growth of then and future. It miserably failed to do that. Since all the bridges on the river, which were there after every few hundred meter, were all main roads, the new road looked like millipede with hundreds of legs. There were intersections after every few hundred meters and there were countless unmanaged and unmanageable traffic signals. It did not ease the traffic, if at all it did not worsen it.
As project managers we learn that projects do not exist in isolation but are parts of larger systems. Just like a project is affected by a number of factors, it affects a number of things in addition to the main purpose of the project. The project has results, secondary results and tertiary results. While for small projects we only consider primary and probably secondary results, for large projects we have to consider several levels. Just as we consider political, economic, geographic, environmental, human, social, cultural and a number of other factors to influence our large projects, we have to consider the effects of the project on all the mentioned factors plus many more. The most challenging but most important aspect of large projects is to foresee the future and be able to figure out how the project would influence the future given that the entire environment too would have changed. A project manager needs to have a clear point of view on how the world is going to change without and with the project. To put it in simple words, let us consider the example of building a flyover that would take five years to build. To consider today's traffic conditions is only important to plan how to build, but whether the flyover is going to serve the purpose is not dependent on today's traffic. What if after five years couple of super highways are also going to come up in parallel and there is no need for this fly over. On the other hand, what if the situation was something like the Richmond road flyover, which looks more like a joke now. Probably it is the only flyover in the world that has a traffic signal on the top. It does not even serve half the purpose that it was intended for.
Richmond road flyover was quite fine when it was commissioned but just within a couple of years Richmond road as well as the Residency road were made one way for traffic. The authorities then overlooked the fact that sooner or later these two roads would have to be made one way. In fact making of the flyover was one of the reasons it had to be done so soon.
Bangalore metro is being built with the intention of providing faster and cheaper public transport that would ease traffic on the roads of Bangalore city. In next few years it will be ready and put to use. The traffic growth on the roads will not slowdown but would continue to grow at the same pace. Traffic jams would be so bad that many people would run away from the city. Even after that traffic would continue to grow. Building of flyovers and tunnels will be impossible on most of the high traffic routes because of the metro. Widening of roads will be difficult and building new roads will be too costly.
Long back I happened to watch an ad spot of "IBM - On Demand Business," which I must have mentioned at least in ten conferences, seminars or workshops. The ad starts with the outside view of an airplane and immediately the next shot is inside view. An old man, depicted as owner of the aircraft is shown in bed and there is chaos in the plane. A person comes to the old man and informs him that the plane was going down. Their subsequent conversation is as follows:
Old man: But why is the plane going down?
Person: Because an engine has failed.
Old man: Is there only one engine?
Person: No there are two.
Old man: Why don't they start another engine?
Person: The other engine is running but the plane is still going down. The plane is too heavy for a single engine.
Old man: Then why don't they make the plane lighter?
Person: How do they do that?
Old man: Perhaps they can throw out things like furniture.
Person: But the furniture is fixed.
Old man: Then throw out what is not fixed.
Person: Everything is fixed.
Similarly ten years from now they will say that nothing new can be built because everything is fixed. Bangalore metro will make Bangalore so rigid that Bangalore will go down.
I am not suggesting that the persons, particularly the project managers working on the project are not competent. Some people at the top of the hierarchy who have the power to override always mess up and that is not going to change.
Bangalore Metro might one day prove to be an engineering marvel but it is a project management disaster.
I must have been four or five, but I clearly remember the day when while walking across the bridge we saw people all along the side watching something with excitement. Though, we did not stop, I did have a glimpse. I saw cranes and dozers at a distance rolling loads of soil into the river, filling it up. For several months we did not pass that way. I was told that the bridge was gone and there was no way to cross over, besides the area had been sealed off. Then one day we went again and not over the bridge called "Saraf Kadal" on the river known as "Nallah Mar" but over the road known as "Nallah Mar Road" at a place known as "Saraf Kadal." The road was still not asphalted and was not open to traffic.
Because of my insistence out of my curiosity, my father walked me almost a kilometer up to the place where they had reached filling up and I could see the giant machines again. It was a painful sight because as a kid I did not give a damn to the roads. Rivers and houseboats in them were much preferred sight. It took many years after that for the full length of the road to complete and get ready for traffic. Entire length of the river from its origin in Dal Lake up to the point where it merged with River Jhelum was filled up and turned into this magnificent road.
Since the topic of filling up of the river was most happening topic of discussion those days, I must have heard dozens of times from my elders the stories of Nallah Mar. I learnt that just a decade before it was filled, that would be a few years before I was born, Nallah Mar used have to have crystal clear water flowing considerably fast. There used to be houseboats on both sides and boats all over. The main mode of transportation, particularly goods, used to be the rivers and Nallah Mar was the second most important after Jhelum. There used to be several varieties of fish in the river and in summer one could see children swimming and playing on the banks. Though all this made it an important river that should have been preserved, the most important is yet to come.
After Nallah Mar was turned into a road, the city had to face something new. Jhelum started flooding every year in rainy season and few areas including some uptown posh localities stayed submerged in water for several weeks, if not months, after floods. The floods were mainly because something that our great grandfathers had created to prevent them was removed. Let me rephrase it, "Some unnecessary and unwanted nonsense that our idiotic grandfathers had created, these geniuses got rid of that."
Jhelum originates almost a hundred kilometers from the city and by the time it enters city, in rainy season, it is swollen after it has collected rain water from thousands of square kilometers. Dal Lake, with its total area of 24 square kilometer and with a mountain range, Zabarwan Range, on one side also has a cashment area of several thousand square kilometers. When the waters of Dal Lake flow into Jhelum, floods are imminent. Nallah Mar was similar to the outer ring road. It used to drain the waters of Dal Lake and pour it into Jhelum after it had left the city. The point where the rivers merged was a big basin that could contain the water, thus saving the city from floods.
When we analyze what was achieved and compare it with the cost, the project seems to be a disaster. It was one of those projects which are designed to fail and due to the magnitude the failure could be catastrophic. The purpose of Nallah Mar Road was to gear the city up to accommodate the traffic growth of then and future. It miserably failed to do that. Since all the bridges on the river, which were there after every few hundred meter, were all main roads, the new road looked like millipede with hundreds of legs. There were intersections after every few hundred meters and there were countless unmanaged and unmanageable traffic signals. It did not ease the traffic, if at all it did not worsen it.
As project managers we learn that projects do not exist in isolation but are parts of larger systems. Just like a project is affected by a number of factors, it affects a number of things in addition to the main purpose of the project. The project has results, secondary results and tertiary results. While for small projects we only consider primary and probably secondary results, for large projects we have to consider several levels. Just as we consider political, economic, geographic, environmental, human, social, cultural and a number of other factors to influence our large projects, we have to consider the effects of the project on all the mentioned factors plus many more. The most challenging but most important aspect of large projects is to foresee the future and be able to figure out how the project would influence the future given that the entire environment too would have changed. A project manager needs to have a clear point of view on how the world is going to change without and with the project. To put it in simple words, let us consider the example of building a flyover that would take five years to build. To consider today's traffic conditions is only important to plan how to build, but whether the flyover is going to serve the purpose is not dependent on today's traffic. What if after five years couple of super highways are also going to come up in parallel and there is no need for this fly over. On the other hand, what if the situation was something like the Richmond road flyover, which looks more like a joke now. Probably it is the only flyover in the world that has a traffic signal on the top. It does not even serve half the purpose that it was intended for.
Richmond road flyover was quite fine when it was commissioned but just within a couple of years Richmond road as well as the Residency road were made one way for traffic. The authorities then overlooked the fact that sooner or later these two roads would have to be made one way. In fact making of the flyover was one of the reasons it had to be done so soon.
Bangalore metro is being built with the intention of providing faster and cheaper public transport that would ease traffic on the roads of Bangalore city. In next few years it will be ready and put to use. The traffic growth on the roads will not slowdown but would continue to grow at the same pace. Traffic jams would be so bad that many people would run away from the city. Even after that traffic would continue to grow. Building of flyovers and tunnels will be impossible on most of the high traffic routes because of the metro. Widening of roads will be difficult and building new roads will be too costly.
Long back I happened to watch an ad spot of "IBM - On Demand Business," which I must have mentioned at least in ten conferences, seminars or workshops. The ad starts with the outside view of an airplane and immediately the next shot is inside view. An old man, depicted as owner of the aircraft is shown in bed and there is chaos in the plane. A person comes to the old man and informs him that the plane was going down. Their subsequent conversation is as follows:
Old man: But why is the plane going down?
Person: Because an engine has failed.
Old man: Is there only one engine?
Person: No there are two.
Old man: Why don't they start another engine?
Person: The other engine is running but the plane is still going down. The plane is too heavy for a single engine.
Old man: Then why don't they make the plane lighter?
Person: How do they do that?
Old man: Perhaps they can throw out things like furniture.
Person: But the furniture is fixed.
Old man: Then throw out what is not fixed.
Person: Everything is fixed.
Similarly ten years from now they will say that nothing new can be built because everything is fixed. Bangalore metro will make Bangalore so rigid that Bangalore will go down.
I am not suggesting that the persons, particularly the project managers working on the project are not competent. Some people at the top of the hierarchy who have the power to override always mess up and that is not going to change.
Bangalore Metro might one day prove to be an engineering marvel but it is a project management disaster.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Extra pair of eyes
"If you were given an extra pair of eyes, where would you like them to be?" This was the question Fredrik Haren, author of the idea book asked the audience. Almost all replied instantaneously, "At the back of my head!" This sounded like the best answer, as then one could look in all directions without having to turn around. "This is probably the worst answer," said the author.
By the way this was on Feb 9, 2009 at Kuala Lumpur where Fredrik was the keynote speaker at PMI Asia-Pacific Global Congress. I would not go into details of what else he said as I have already discussed that in an earlier blog. However, if I was given a choice to choose where I would like this extra pair of eyes, I would say "on the person next to me." I do not see much use of this extra pair of eyes when my brain is not capable of processing two different views at the same time. I do not mind turning my head for another view, as I do not want to mess my brains up.
If the two eyes came with the brain too, that would change the situation. If the two eyes and brain came with rest of the body parts and everything that makes a person, that would be perfect. Yes, there was an easy way to say all this, I need another person, but the story says something more than that. It says that the two persons would still be working on the same task. Contrary to the hypothetical scenario where we expect two pairs of eyes to look at two different views, here the situation is realistic and needs two pairs of eyes and the two brains behind them look at the same view from two perspectives. That would give us something closely resembling a 3d view.
Much earlier in my career I worked for a company for fifteen days when I was between jobs. On the first day the company was faced with a situation where we had to decide in a minute whether we would take up the job of digitizing a few thousand key-value pairs from handwritten hard copies. We could refuse the job but if we accepted we had to deliver the soft copy in six hours with absolutely no mistakes. My bosses were not even discussing it as they were pretty sure the target was out of reach. They were particularly scared of errors that would have landed us into trouble. However, on my insistence they decided to give me a chance.
It was 4 pm in India and we were required to deliver by 10 pm Indian time, an hour before our counterparts in US were supposed to demonstrate a particular solution. It was a simple, clear cut, well defined and a pretty critical job. I, first of all, assembled the whole team and explained to them how important the task was for us and how it could shape their careers. In just a few minutes I got 20 volunteers who were willing to stay back till 10pm and were well motivated and energized. Instead of splitting the data into twenty I paired up the team and distributed the sheets among 10 teams. The target given to them was 9 pm but I received all 10 files before 9. Then I interchanged the files between teams and they once again verified each other's work. It took me hardly 10 minutes in the end to combine the 10 excel worksheets into one and the file was sent by email before 9:45.
Next morning we had a friendly chat session with the management and it was acknowledged by all that the best thing that we had done was working in pairs. In a way we used only 10 people with an extra pair of eyes for each and the value we got in return was much more than just 20 pairs of eyes. Probably this is what happens in extreme programming.
Basically when we do a code review or even otherwise analyze the root cause of bugs going into the code, we realize that most of the bugs are not due to inability but due to oversight. My experience as programmer has also taught me that it is more time consuming to detect and fix an issue if it is small and difficult to reproduce. Generally such issues are detected much later and cost an arm and a leg in terms of money and somewhat similar in terms of time. Sometimes it is just a typing mistake, where a programmer thinks something but his fingers have typed something else and sometimes a programmer just overlooks a reasonably evident potential issue. Even in the unit testing most of the defects that a programmer detects are very simple mistakes. Most of the times when we write a piece of code, it does not even compile for the first time. We discover that we have missed a semicolon somewhere, we have also missed to import some class and we have missed to declare some method correctly. Very small and simple mistakes that we fix in less than a minute. We compile again and it works. But what about other such small mistakes that the compiler does not tell us about?
Before I move on I would like to sincerely apologize to the non technical people as there was no way I could have explained my next point with simpler language.
Suppose we are required to code a java method that updates the last name of a member. The programmer writes the query in two lines appending the second to the first and both are inside a try-catch block.
String query = null;
Try
{
query = "UPDATE ACCOUNT_TABLE SET LASTNAME = " + newName;
....... some code .........
query += " WHERE MEMBERID LIKE " + memberID;
}
Catch (exception exp)
{
//do nothing
}
updateQuery(query);
I suppose most of you already know what is wrong with the above code, but for those who do not, let me tell you what it is. This is a perfect recipe for disaster. This method will be called hundreds of times every day if the website has millions of users and there are good chances that due to whatever reason on some value of memberID an exception will be thrown or there might be an exception thrown due to a bug in the code between line one and two. With the result the second part will not be appended and the query that is executed will change the last name of all the users, probably millions of users to the new name. What are the chances that a programmer will write the code as above without realizing what's wrong? It will be a small and simple mistake with catastrophic impact. The recovery will be somewhere between very difficult and next to impossible if not detected within a few hours, unless there is a backup.
An extra pair of eyes makes it almost impossible for a programmer to make such mistakes.
An extra pair of eyes can also be a savior in management. Often the c-Suite executives face the challenge of being lone decision makers. They find lot of people who nod their heads in affirmation of whatever they do or say but very few to show them the reality. This is not just done by the reports to get themselves in good books but also by the friends and family. The impact is again often catastrophic. Few years back one of my friends who was the CEO of a well established company came up with some weird idea. He wanted to build a product that did not seem to have a good revenue model. The problem was that, even though being an MBA from a reputed university in US, he thought less about the risks and was more interested in listening to his friends who told him:
"What a wonderful idea!"
"Nobody has done this before, you will be the first."
"People are going to love it."
"That is so innovative."
Nobody told him that since he was making a loss per piece, the more he sold more he would loose. It was just not an idea worth considering but he was able to see it from a single perspective and from that perspective it looked wonderful. Had somebody shown him the reality, he would still be the CEO and more important the company would still be functioning. This is precisely the reason many management gurus advocate employing a mentor, an advisor, a coach or a consultant (whatever the name). It is definitely not because the extra help is better in any way but only to show the reality as and when required.
The extra pair of eyes can do wonders.
By the way this was on Feb 9, 2009 at Kuala Lumpur where Fredrik was the keynote speaker at PMI Asia-Pacific Global Congress. I would not go into details of what else he said as I have already discussed that in an earlier blog. However, if I was given a choice to choose where I would like this extra pair of eyes, I would say "on the person next to me." I do not see much use of this extra pair of eyes when my brain is not capable of processing two different views at the same time. I do not mind turning my head for another view, as I do not want to mess my brains up.
If the two eyes came with the brain too, that would change the situation. If the two eyes and brain came with rest of the body parts and everything that makes a person, that would be perfect. Yes, there was an easy way to say all this, I need another person, but the story says something more than that. It says that the two persons would still be working on the same task. Contrary to the hypothetical scenario where we expect two pairs of eyes to look at two different views, here the situation is realistic and needs two pairs of eyes and the two brains behind them look at the same view from two perspectives. That would give us something closely resembling a 3d view.
Much earlier in my career I worked for a company for fifteen days when I was between jobs. On the first day the company was faced with a situation where we had to decide in a minute whether we would take up the job of digitizing a few thousand key-value pairs from handwritten hard copies. We could refuse the job but if we accepted we had to deliver the soft copy in six hours with absolutely no mistakes. My bosses were not even discussing it as they were pretty sure the target was out of reach. They were particularly scared of errors that would have landed us into trouble. However, on my insistence they decided to give me a chance.
It was 4 pm in India and we were required to deliver by 10 pm Indian time, an hour before our counterparts in US were supposed to demonstrate a particular solution. It was a simple, clear cut, well defined and a pretty critical job. I, first of all, assembled the whole team and explained to them how important the task was for us and how it could shape their careers. In just a few minutes I got 20 volunteers who were willing to stay back till 10pm and were well motivated and energized. Instead of splitting the data into twenty I paired up the team and distributed the sheets among 10 teams. The target given to them was 9 pm but I received all 10 files before 9. Then I interchanged the files between teams and they once again verified each other's work. It took me hardly 10 minutes in the end to combine the 10 excel worksheets into one and the file was sent by email before 9:45.
Next morning we had a friendly chat session with the management and it was acknowledged by all that the best thing that we had done was working in pairs. In a way we used only 10 people with an extra pair of eyes for each and the value we got in return was much more than just 20 pairs of eyes. Probably this is what happens in extreme programming.
Basically when we do a code review or even otherwise analyze the root cause of bugs going into the code, we realize that most of the bugs are not due to inability but due to oversight. My experience as programmer has also taught me that it is more time consuming to detect and fix an issue if it is small and difficult to reproduce. Generally such issues are detected much later and cost an arm and a leg in terms of money and somewhat similar in terms of time. Sometimes it is just a typing mistake, where a programmer thinks something but his fingers have typed something else and sometimes a programmer just overlooks a reasonably evident potential issue. Even in the unit testing most of the defects that a programmer detects are very simple mistakes. Most of the times when we write a piece of code, it does not even compile for the first time. We discover that we have missed a semicolon somewhere, we have also missed to import some class and we have missed to declare some method correctly. Very small and simple mistakes that we fix in less than a minute. We compile again and it works. But what about other such small mistakes that the compiler does not tell us about?
Before I move on I would like to sincerely apologize to the non technical people as there was no way I could have explained my next point with simpler language.
Suppose we are required to code a java method that updates the last name of a member. The programmer writes the query in two lines appending the second to the first and both are inside a try-catch block.
String query = null;
Try
{
query = "UPDATE ACCOUNT_TABLE SET LASTNAME = " + newName;
....... some code .........
query += " WHERE MEMBERID LIKE " + memberID;
}
Catch (exception exp)
{
//do nothing
}
updateQuery(query);
I suppose most of you already know what is wrong with the above code, but for those who do not, let me tell you what it is. This is a perfect recipe for disaster. This method will be called hundreds of times every day if the website has millions of users and there are good chances that due to whatever reason on some value of memberID an exception will be thrown or there might be an exception thrown due to a bug in the code between line one and two. With the result the second part will not be appended and the query that is executed will change the last name of all the users, probably millions of users to the new name. What are the chances that a programmer will write the code as above without realizing what's wrong? It will be a small and simple mistake with catastrophic impact. The recovery will be somewhere between very difficult and next to impossible if not detected within a few hours, unless there is a backup.
An extra pair of eyes makes it almost impossible for a programmer to make such mistakes.
An extra pair of eyes can also be a savior in management. Often the c-Suite executives face the challenge of being lone decision makers. They find lot of people who nod their heads in affirmation of whatever they do or say but very few to show them the reality. This is not just done by the reports to get themselves in good books but also by the friends and family. The impact is again often catastrophic. Few years back one of my friends who was the CEO of a well established company came up with some weird idea. He wanted to build a product that did not seem to have a good revenue model. The problem was that, even though being an MBA from a reputed university in US, he thought less about the risks and was more interested in listening to his friends who told him:
"What a wonderful idea!"
"Nobody has done this before, you will be the first."
"People are going to love it."
"That is so innovative."
Nobody told him that since he was making a loss per piece, the more he sold more he would loose. It was just not an idea worth considering but he was able to see it from a single perspective and from that perspective it looked wonderful. Had somebody shown him the reality, he would still be the CEO and more important the company would still be functioning. This is precisely the reason many management gurus advocate employing a mentor, an advisor, a coach or a consultant (whatever the name). It is definitely not because the extra help is better in any way but only to show the reality as and when required.
The extra pair of eyes can do wonders.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
A leader without followers
Technically speaking, a person is a leader if and only if he has followers. However, there is nothing technical about leadership. The definition of leadership neither needs to be logically correct as it is not purely science nor does it need to be centuries old definition found in dictionaries as it is not an art that somebody created and it stays as it is till eternity. In fact these definitions are misleading.
According to wikipedia.org, "A leader is someone who has the authority to tell a group of people what do to. A leader can also represent a group of people." I disagree. Mahatma Gandhi was a leader and when he became a leader, he had absolutely no authority. He proved to be even greater a leader by choosing not to accept the position of authority but continuing as a leader. Leadership and authority are two different things. They have a small area of intersection but the bottom line is one can be a leader without any authority and one can have all the authority and no leadership.
Another definition that I have come across is, "Leader is a person who has followers." I disagree. Firstly, a person can be a self leader. Leading self is the first rung on the leadership ladder, followed by one on one leadership, group leadership and finally organizational leadership. A person who can lead himself well is a leader without followers. It is possible that a leader has no followers because people around him either fail to see the leader within them or they are just not the follower type. Sometimes the leaders are so great that they lead without making other realize and without making others their followers.
A child who consoles another child and comforts him when he is hurt is a leader. A child who offers to lend his notebook to another child who has missed a lesson or two is also a leader. A driver who stops by to offer help to a person standing besides his car with a flat tyre waiting for help is a leader too. I am not saying doing other persons work is leadership.
Some other definitions define leader as the top guy in the organization. I again disagree. For being a leader you neither need to be a CEO nor you need to have that prime corner office. Leadership can be done from anywhere in an organization and a real leader is a 360 degree leader. He leads his bosses, his peers and his reports. He even leads the people who are not his direct reports. He does not need a leadership tag or a position. He does not even need any followers or recognition.
The best definition of leadership that I have known so far is, "A leader is a person who with his deliberate effort unleashes the capabilities and inner strengths of himself and that of others for a greater good."
This definition neither talks about followers nor any authority because both are irrelevant. It does not talk about accomplishment because leadership is not about results. Leadership is an open ended journey and a choice that people make, sometimes deliberately and sometimes without realizing when they do it.
According to wikipedia.org, "A leader is someone who has the authority to tell a group of people what do to. A leader can also represent a group of people." I disagree. Mahatma Gandhi was a leader and when he became a leader, he had absolutely no authority. He proved to be even greater a leader by choosing not to accept the position of authority but continuing as a leader. Leadership and authority are two different things. They have a small area of intersection but the bottom line is one can be a leader without any authority and one can have all the authority and no leadership.
Another definition that I have come across is, "Leader is a person who has followers." I disagree. Firstly, a person can be a self leader. Leading self is the first rung on the leadership ladder, followed by one on one leadership, group leadership and finally organizational leadership. A person who can lead himself well is a leader without followers. It is possible that a leader has no followers because people around him either fail to see the leader within them or they are just not the follower type. Sometimes the leaders are so great that they lead without making other realize and without making others their followers.
A child who consoles another child and comforts him when he is hurt is a leader. A child who offers to lend his notebook to another child who has missed a lesson or two is also a leader. A driver who stops by to offer help to a person standing besides his car with a flat tyre waiting for help is a leader too. I am not saying doing other persons work is leadership.
Some other definitions define leader as the top guy in the organization. I again disagree. For being a leader you neither need to be a CEO nor you need to have that prime corner office. Leadership can be done from anywhere in an organization and a real leader is a 360 degree leader. He leads his bosses, his peers and his reports. He even leads the people who are not his direct reports. He does not need a leadership tag or a position. He does not even need any followers or recognition.
The best definition of leadership that I have known so far is, "A leader is a person who with his deliberate effort unleashes the capabilities and inner strengths of himself and that of others for a greater good."
This definition neither talks about followers nor any authority because both are irrelevant. It does not talk about accomplishment because leadership is not about results. Leadership is an open ended journey and a choice that people make, sometimes deliberately and sometimes without realizing when they do it.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Are most of the bosses idiots?
Speak to any middle level manager and the changes are good that he will tell you how his wonderful ideas are always turned down by his boss. Probability of this is far greater if you are speaking to technical person like a project manager or an accounting person. He will also give you a pretty good (apparently) explanation why the latest plan of his boss that they are already working on is going to be a disaster. He will convince you that it is he who is the genius with very little authority and his boss is an idiot with all the authority.
I am sure since you do not know the boss you will not try and contradict this self styled genius. That is what happens most of the times. Suppose you did, the conversation could be something like this:
Him: xxx xxxx Blah Blah Blah
You: It sounds like your boss is an absolute idiot.
Him: Absolutely. He is.
You: I wonder who made him boss then.
Him: I know …
You: What do you know? I am asking you, who made him the boss.
Him: Probably himself. He made himself the boss.
You: You mean not his ability, talent, knowledge or experience, but just he himself made himself a boss?
Him: Looks like.
(By now the guy is pissed off with you already. But he is pretending to be a good guy by still continuing the conversation.)
You: With what authority did he make himself a boss and who gave him this authority?
Him: How should I know all this?
(There is a small pause. You are probably giving him some breathing time)
You: So it looks like you are saying the only different thing that he did was appointing you?
Him: Different?
You: Yes since you are saying everything he does is wrong and I am sure you would say appointing you was a right thing that he did for himself.
Him: I am not saying thaaaaat …. But….. yes somehow.
You: No be clear about what you say. You are saying that everything he does is wrong and only appointing you was right.
(Half of his steam is already out. Do not give up now.)
Him: No I am not saying everything he does is wrong, but many of the things he does are wrong.
You: You are retracting.
Him: No I am not. I never said everything he does was wrong.
You: Now you are making it sound so normal. It is just human to do a few things wrong. Why did you say you boss was an idiot then? I am sure even you don't do everything right. You would be an angel then.
Him: No I am not claiming everything I do was right, I make mistakes sometimes.
You: Five minutes back you were telling me that your boss was an idiot and everything he did was wrong and now you are telling me that you are very much like him. What do you want me conclude?
Him: I don't want to talk about this.
The above was a purely a hypothetical situation and we won't normally be in such a situation in real life. The reason is when others are portraying their bosses as idiots we would derive pleasure out of it without realizing that we would be in their position too. The funniest part is that these employees are themselves on the path of becoming idiots and are striving hard to get there as soon as they can.
I agree that not all bosses are alike, however in most of the cases it is the employees who are not even capable of understanding the bosses. I have never heard a boss saying his all his employees are idiots and he runs the show all alone. Have you?
Why this difference? Why do employees feel that their boss who is in a better position, with more experience and often with more skills and knowledge is an idiot while the boss would seldom feel the same for his employees?
In my opinion there are a few reasons. Employees do not think they need the boss, they just need the job. To acknowledge a leader one needs to have some leadership qualities himself. Since these employees are not mature leaders (yet) they do not understand the importance of the leader. On the other hand the boss knows very well that he needs to delegate the authority and well as the work to get it done. He knows he needs his people and his existing employees are more valuable to him that anybody else.
In the above hypothetical conversation I have also attempted to depict that the employee is confused when confronted. This is also very normal. If we put a leader in such a situation, there are very little chances that he will react that way. The reason is that leaders have clear "Teachable Point Of View" (TPOV). If a leader says his employee is an idiot he most likely have a pretty good explanation for that that he would be able to present as a convincing story. On the other hand generally employees in lower position lack the clarity and do not have a well defined point of view. They have a blurred idea. They think there boss is somewhere near 5 on a scale of ten, when they like they will portray him as idiot and when they like they will portray him as a genius.
Being somewhere near 5 does not apply to judging their boss alone. It applies to every second opinion that they have. Hand them a survey form and they will tick the option in the middle for every question. On the other hand, hand over the same form to your boss, he will choose the extremes. His assessment is very clear.
I have made an attempt to write this post in a different way as you must have realized above. Please leave a comment on the writing style.
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