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My death by IT professional, who once was a Siberian Wolf

(this is again a group mail for one of the company I am associated with)
What happened to aji? Why is he giving such wolf stories now? Don’t worry this is as inline as it can be with our professional life esp with startup companies. Have a little patience and read it, don’t forget to add your opinion to it.

Wolves are professionals like us doing their work for their satisfaction. This is a story about a professional wolf who was very motivated and hard working inline with the dream of his team members. His career looked very promising; everybody believed that he will go on to become a big millionaire wolf with all hunting expertise. He was comparing himself to a professional who dreams of a BMW when others of his age laugh at such dreams. This Wolf was happy and focused.

But one day, he saw a blood Popsicle, a ball of ice dipped in his favorite seal blood. He was very intelligent and knew that such things can be risky and dangerous for his life but he went on and started licking it. “What a taste! I am enjoying it!”. Time was just passing by and he kept licking. He felt as if he is so involved it in and enjoying it thoroughly. But he was feeling a little weak as if his energy was going away but he kept licking. His vision was dimming a bit but he kept licking as it was giving him some pleasure. Now he couldn’t see much and he knew something went wrong and before he could decide to take a step back he fell and saw his tongue bleeding, he wanted to help himself but could not get up. He started recapping about his career that how good it was towards the staring, how motivated he was, how energetic he was but now even with so much of experience he was not able to help himself. With one drop of a tear and few unmeasured quality of wasted blood he ended his career and life. He died a death which he never thought of. He asked the God to give him one chance to do one work. He wanted to know that why he died like this and what was that he licked. God allowed him and he came back and found the following recipe for the blood Popsicle:



Recipe for blood Popsicle
First a knife is sharpened to razor sharp. Then it is dipped in the blood of a seal.
After dipping the knife in blood it is set outside in the cold so the blood freezes on the knife. After it freezes (a matter of minutes) it is dipped again into the seal blood and again with a delay to let the blood freeze. Layer after layer makes a blood Popsicle. When it is done, the knife’s blade is hidden inside the snow just like a popsicle stick.

He understood the story
The handle of the knife was buried in the snow leaving the blood Popsicle standing up and I was attracted by its smell and found it as a “bloodsicle“. I started licking it and enjoying every taste. Over and over I licked and without understanding that my tongue was becoming numb because of the cold layer. Finally the bloodsicle got over and I was licking the razor sharp edge of the knife. It cut into my tongue again and again but I did not even notice for my tongue was no longer able to feel anything. My own blood was flowing from my cut tongue. I was thrilled as the blood was now more plentiful and continued to lick more and more not knowing that it was my own blood. Instead of getting stronger I was going weak. I drunk my own blood and killed myself.

God gave him another chance to live and now he is a professional working in an Indian IT industry. He is asking every professional to read this very carefully. “I thought the life is different from the Siberia and esp being a human with IT company but I was wrong. I still see popsicles at different places. I see some people taking negative about India, about company and about my own team. I am very tempted to join them. I see that some of the best people join the discussion just for the sake of fun but slowly they go numb and without realizing that they are hurting themselves. They start killing their passion, their ability to think great and positive dims; they end up being less innovative and energetic. Even after understanding that such negative discussion is not helping anyone (and in reality is hurting everyone including themselves) they still do it as they are carried away by the numbness of it. After few weeks and months I see a very average person who once was a promising one dreaming about BMWs. I have only one thing to tell all such people, don’t die like me, I died my own death. Such negative talks only help none. For the sake of yourself stay positive and do good. If you see a team as bad, IMPROVE IT OR leave it. If you find negative things in a company, IMPROVE IT OR leave it. If you see India to be bad, IMPROVE IT OR leave it.”

Don’t ever die like a Siberian wolf. Do well for yourself and your team/company/India.

————-

Regards,
Aji Issac.

If you want to talk to the Siberian wolf, try this http://www.idealwebtools.com/blog/ ¦ you are free to pass on this story to your friends 🙂 ..

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Fail more often at decision level

This is a copy of the mail I sent to all company members. Since I am not blogging enough and don’t have the time to draft better posts so here we go with a slightly modified version of the company group email. As a company and as a person this is a culture we/I want to develop and promote. Decision making/responsibilities should flow to the roots of a company. Enjoy the copy of the email.

Don’t get me wrong when I say “Lets fail more often” as this is a muddy and not so clear mixture of two phrases “attempt more for more success” and “99 attempts out of 100 will fail”. So “Lets fail more often”.

Here are few things that you can start with at decision level (And I SERIOUSLY want you to do that)

  1. Take a decision and implement it if you feel confident about it. Once it is implemented or once you have taken the decision throw a mail to the concerned group. I really want the decision making to flow to the roots of the company.
  2. Mistakes are often mistaken: Know what a real mistake is, it will give you more confidence in decision making.
  3. Grow good in decision-making: I debate with myself more often that I can eliminate obvious errors with decision making (for cumulative respect point). So while making the decision do debate it with yourself and if you feel it as correct, GO AHEAD. Either the decision will be correct or the learning will help you grow OR BOTH :). We just need to attempt honestly.
  4. Your decision has a cumulative respect: Don’t expect people to respect your first/second/….. decision, they will be more calculative but once you start making better decision more often your cumulative respect count will grow up. There will be a time when you will ask a person to jump out of window and they will do that before asking “WHY?” but it will take time :), so have patience.
  5. Start with small decisions: Don’t jump into bigger decisions until and unless it is to be done urgently. Start with small decisions and grow. A person who is good at decision making at any level, be it home, group of friends, office parties, .. will be good at company level decision making as well. All you need is to start slow and start as smart as possible.
  6. Multi-dimension knowledge: Years will only add up physical weakness but proper observation will help you gain experience. A 2 month old team member can sometimes do better decision making than a 2 year old based on a better observational power/attitude. Get multi
    dimension knowledge (Knowledge from all related field). A person who is able to think from various dimensions to the problem can do better at decision making, so get involved with different team works.
  7. Ask for more opportunities: Your mouth is an open door to your thinking, talk wise. People give you more responsibilities based on your performance and talks reflects a lot of it. So talk wisely.
  8. Make others comfortable: This will help others teach you. Learn from mistakes not necessarily only from yours, you can learn more from others mistakes as well. Keep your eyes wide open, dreams as high as possible and attitude down to earth for a better learning. Let others teach you more often.

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AjiNIMC suggests Chidambaram for above 9% Growth

I am a big fan of PC, our FM, our FinMin. I missed his speech at NDTV Profit Business Leadership Awards but managed to get a copy of it recently. (I am a fan of NDTV and Pranab’s leadership but their websites really sucks, can’t open 50% of the time. Plz do something about it.)


I also liked Sunil Mittal’s interview but PC’s speech was far more impressive.
Some points from PC’s speech that impressed me:

  • The Rule of Three – He said that becoming top 10 is not sufficient, we need to be #1 or atleast be in top 3 (as per the rule of three). He asked Dr Reddy’s, Tatas, Mahindras and other companies to strive for it. At business level we are also trying to be #1 and proudly at #1 for few global communities. Its not only about the achievement but about your vision to be there. Dream big, Dream different.
  • Accountability – Are politicians accountable? His speech was soft but honest. He said, he is not only accountable to media but also to the village girl who asks, “where is my school“, to the old lady asking, “where is water and electricity for my village“. He said, “I am accountable to all the voters“. I appreciate it very much. As a leader you are accountable to everyone who works with you and also accountable to their families.
  • $12.1 billion Tata-Corus deal making Indians proud in spite of extra debt on Tata. I wanted to write about this for some time. I saw a billboard “No Indian can ever set up a steel plan“, this was a statement by British steel, Corus’s predecessor company, to Jamsetji Tata. (After some years)Today Jamestji’s company Tata owns Corus, WOW. Indians are rocking.
  • What is after 9% growth rate? I liked his vision/daring to achieve a growth rate of above 9% when most of us are trying to sustain the existing growth. He wants to dream and challenge the growth to a higher level.
  • Then he talked about need of inorganic expansion for a growth rate of above 9%. He also offered all possible help for such global acquisitions.

I agree with Finmin about inorganic expansion but here are some simpler steps to make above 9% a possibility:

AjiNIMC advices Finance minister P Chidambaram finance minister

AjiNIMC suggests P.Chidambaram
  • Govt should encourage investment in web entrepreneurship: Web business is a pure brain business (India is rich with brain power) and investment is comparatively very low. Encourage web entrepreneurship at different levels. Even a small kid can make some cool stuffs with web. I suggest offering some free hosting and domain names through some preliminary filtering. This will give exposure to this growing sector which can generate enough revenue for more experimentations.
  • School level training for entrepreneurship: Now I often collide with young entrepreneurs at malls, parties, churches and other places, some of them are in early twenties. Paul Graham says, “The three big powers on the Internet now are Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft. Average age of their founders: 24. So it is pretty well established now that grad students can start successful companies. “. One of my dreams with SOCH was to introduce this thought to school kids.
  • Small companies will kill bigger ones: Even Sunil Mittal mentioned this point in his speech. You will see more smaller teams coming and challenging bigger companies. An idea with 2 people created a rich Google, which is now investing everywhere. Support smaller companies (esp web related) that they can grow and challenge bigger companies at global level. In web an idea can change a smaller company to successful one. There are many examples, be it digg.com, del.icio.us, ….
  • Web has a global reach: You don’t need an inorganic growth with web (most of the time) as Internet in itself is with global reach. Internet is converting the world to a local village, India should get its share.
  • Research oriented people are required: For innovation you need more research oriented approach but our universities (except some like IITs, IIMs and some more) are not well equipped with this attitude. In my journey as a student I was more appreciated for redoing the wind mill than for the attempt to create a hatching machine (which destroyed a dozen of eggs). Web allows you to do more experiments with a very low cost of failure. Creating more research oriented environment for further entrepreneurs is must for our growth.

In simpler words, to sustain the growth rate and to get a higher growth, the roots of Indian business needs to be strengthen. Research oriented education, risk taking attitude and entrepreneurial opportunity should flow to the roots of India. Also PLEASE ALLOW SMALLER COMPANIES To GROW, WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT (with special tax benefits). In order to grow (esp in IT sector) we need to hire the best talents and need to pay much higher than the bigger branded companies to retain such talents. Tax benefits will allow us grow a little faster and to create the infrastructure to retain the talent. We need more web companies working at product level else Indian web estate will be sold out cheaply to other nations. Help us in this Gold Rush, there is much to gain here.

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My 7th 21st Bday was the busiest so far

I have all reasons to push myself for this post at 1 am though I am feeling a little sleeping (but I am feeling much better now). Keeping it short with some images:

aji bday
Scene #4 of Bday: Why am I feeling so successful … I managed to undo scene 3 here.

Scene 3 of bday
Scene #3: Meine sab ko kitne pyar se lagya tha (sorry light problem, all are mobi pics).. Prabhat ne puri gardhan me laga di .. ears, eyes kuch nahi choda … still I can smell the cake .. it took me some good minutes to clean this up but was fun except the color … what color .. see scene 1

Scene 2 of Bday
Scene #2: Sab kitne chup chap hai .. so nice … they were not so nice in scene # 3 …. Oh the color… see scene #1 for colorful view

Bday cake
Scene #1 Who bought this cake ???? with such hard colors … the red color cream was put on my head … some green color here and there … red color was really really really hard .. had to wash many times … now you know why I was feeling so successful at scene #4

Overall it was such a great great day ……………

Thanks to every one

Slept late at 1:30 after some calls. There was no one present for Bday bumps but I felt as if it was outsourced to Behala mosquitoes and they were doing there work wonderfully when I was on phone. Slept really deep (don’t even remember a single dream or mosquito bumps), got up when I got a call at 7:30 (I got to know her through this blog only, blogging is good I guess), this was a surprise call, heard her voice for the first time (Thanks, it was so nice of you). Mom, dad were happy as I got a good sleep. Some calls/mails/smses/scraps kept me smiling … Driver ji also gifted some flowers and cards (so nice of him) … and reached office very late … Got permission to use orkut at office … calls/mails/smses/scraps went on through out the day … then office party … and while coming back dropped at Sheere -Punjab for some diet-tandoori chicken .. at home dad bought some special fruit cake .. calls from cousins/relatives … India winning in style (uttapa/sachin kya khela hai) … End of the day I am burping and smiling .. thanks for making this day so wonderful … God bless all. Good night!

Thank You God

Aji Childhood
(pic separated by 21 years and 80 months 🙂 )

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I m Not well at all

8 days and 3 sleepless nights, not good at all. Its not because of time problem, it may be because of extra thinking or unwanted tension. I need to take care of myself. Need to go for a medical checkup soon. So avoiding regular blogging for few days.


I do eat a lot of fruits in the morning. Almost 30 mins – 1 hr of workout in early morning and an hr of ping-pong at eve. I need to drink a lot of water as well. After consulting my medical friends here are some advices for health:

  • Before sleep don’t think too much, relax, watch TV or do something where you don’t have to think.
  • Put some perfume on your bed. It helps in a sound sleep.
  • Eat healthy, drink a lot of water too.
  • Don’t worry such things happens to everyone just take care of yourself and keep the smile.
  • Go for a medical checkup, BP check for sure. Keep working out.

I can’t afford to lose the ability to sleep 24 hrs a day. I want to be lazy again and sleep like one who have sold everything. So please don’t expect many post in the coming days 🙁 .