Category: Human R

Do you use IM (Instant messengers) at work? I started using MSN towards the starting of my career and then shifted to YIM and AIM. I still use YIM most of the time but Gtalk is also in the list for some of our officials. Most of us learn the IM usage from a different school, the “masti ki patsala (School of fun)“. When asked to use IMs for official talks the old habits stay but here is a chance to learn the basics to stay politically correct.

Here are 10 Unofficial commandments for official IM use:

1. Use “all upper case” fonts sparingly: Upper cases often reflects shouting, anger, extra emphasis and importance. Don’t use all upper case with your seniors, neither on IM nor for emails. Different people have different perception towards all upper case sentences but more often it is taken as a command with shout/anger. “COME HERE” implies your boss is not happy with you and want to point some mistakes, so be prepared 🙂 .
2. Smilies: Different people use different smilies but more often you will end up hitting the wrong definition. So use smilies carefully. Most safest smiley is :). Then comes 🙁 and the list will continue. You can spend some time in understanding what different smiley means and how differently people can interpret it.
3. Abbreviated talks: Don’t try this with corporate heads they are really bad at it. To be safe use proper and complete sentences and if possible with proper punctuations. Be grammatically correct to avoid hitting the wrong button.
4. Type fast: You need to type fast. If you are not good that, practice, practice and practice. This matters a lot. I used to chat using multiple windows to train my fingers and now I am very good at that.
5. Expect unexpected: I have seen many love birds breaking off due to IMs. Girl sent a YIM offline, “I will be there at pulia(this is the where we spent most of our time) at 5:00, see you there” and the poor boy did not get the message. She waited for the day and the boy for rest of his life. They never expected technical problems in love life but it certainly happens in techno world. Office being no exception runs on similar unreliable IMs. So make sure to reconfirm the sentences in case you smell something wrong.
6. Use proper status: A proper status helps. It acts like an answering machine. If you are not at your desk then put the status else a senior may feel denied for delayed messages. If you are going out or going for lunch you can put the time you left and expected time of return. You can be really creative over here.
7. Avoid IMs: If you can avoid IMs with the next door team member, avoid. There is so much positive energy when you talk face to face and communicate eye to eye. IMs CANT REPLACE HUMAN TALKS, they act as gap fillers. Turn around, walk to, run to but avoid IMs whenever you can, it certainly helps.
8. First timers: Be careful when you are talking to someone for the first time, like your client. Don’t tickle your funny bone, sometimes they are not in the same mood as you. Know them and then use the right bone.
9. Don’t talk too much: It hurts your fingers and others time. Also it can hurt your performance and relationships. Talk less and talk sense, be funny with known members. Be witty but not silly.
10. Stealth options: Explore the stealth options, sometimes it is really helpful. Online to few and offline to others. I use it when I am working from home.

Happy IMing! Sorry I don’t use personal IMs for various reasons. If you want to talk to me on Gtalk (add [email protected]), YIM (ajiissac1) and drop me mail at [email protected] with the time you want to talk.

Last week I met two new entrepreneurs, one from my batch(she is doing well with the startup) and one a junior (after leaving Saatchi & Saatchi, he is starting his own venture). I will try to interview them in the coming days. I was always attracted towards entrepreneurs (I don’t know why, ohhh I think I know why). After every conference I try to meet and appreciate new entrepreneurs. I just love them and often end up helping them for free.

I am associated with many startups, from being the first employee of my present company to our own startup Idealog. I am also a board member to some non-profitable startups. Also I have stopped/scared many from starting new companies :), sorry for that.

Its a great challenge to be an entrepreneur and here is a small barometer to measure your progress. Take a piece of paper or create a Google doc and list all your team members. Now mark them as either visionary or missionary and rate them from 5 for respective group. See the % of visionaries you have in your team. Now create another column and mark the missionaries who can be converted to a visionary with a time frame and plan. In most of the cases you will see the missionaries with high ranks can be converted to visionaries. I will also pen down the plan for converting a missionary to a visionary. Do this check every quarter and if you can see a progress then I can assure you that all company stars are in right place.

Table will look something like this:

Member name	Working for (months)	M/V	Rate (1-5) 5 best	Plans	Notes
XYZ	30	V	3	Needs more empowerment.	Irregular at works
ABC	10	M	4	Send him for a outstation conference to learn something new and let him teach it to the rest of the team.	Doesn’t believe in company.

How to mark/be visionaries and missionaries?
There are many factors that separates visionaries from missionaries, both are important for company’s progress but visionaries will decide a company’s territories. Earlier I had drawn the thick line between a leader and a manager. A visionary is one who is inline with the vision of the company or inline with a partial vision of the company and a missionary is one who takes up a mission. A visionary is also a respected missionary but not vice-versa. Here when I use the word missionary I mean a pure non-visionary. Here are top 5 marking criteria:

1. Task vs Purpose OR work vs ownership: A missionary will do the task but will hesitate in understanding the real purpose of the task. And thus a missionary will finish a task and a visionary will add a never ending quality check/innovation based on the purpose understood through this task instance. A missionary will take up a task while a visionary will take up the ownership.
2. Attempts or failures: “Can we do this“, “why not this“, “I think we are missing this“, these are some iterative sentences by visionaries. They always try to innovate and add more value to the projects. The reason behind these innovations/attempts is their feel of ownership towards the project. You need to be crazy towards your work to innovate. Check how crazy a person is, by counting the number of attempts/failure.
3. Making others comfortable while working: A visionary will make others feel comfortable while at work as he understands the need of extra pain. He will enjoy the process and will make it easier for you to work with him. On the contrary a missionary will like a defined list of work, won’t prefer a messed up attempts. Rate them on the basis of “how comfortable you feel with them at work“.
4. Defined territories: “I was not good at that so I did not do that“, “Why should I do that? thats not under my list“, “I am a technical guy why should I do this work“, these are frequently thrown valid excuses by a missionary as they are missing the overall goal of existence. We don’t program as we are programmers or we don’t write content as we are content writers but we do so as that will help us achieve the final goal. A visionary will also redefine his territories to help company progress to next level. Check the various areas of contribution for the person to rate him (from Kitchen food to company ad, from bathroom to conf room improvement).
5. Problem Handling: I remember the first sentence by our Princy at Xaviers, “Welcome to The Xavier family. Xaviers is not the best college to be in (we were a bit shocked, we thought the other way round). If we say we are the best then that takes away the scope of further improvement. We are better and better everyday.” Expect the imperfection everywhere, with yourself, with your girl friend, with your friends and with your company. Do they bring problems to the surface or they hide it at surface level and dig/spread inside? A visionary will frustrate you by bring 2 problems-3 solutions everyday while a missionary will need a perfect environment for work.

I couldn’t frame it as per my expectation but I will end this post with a small thought (that I always believed in). “No one is a perfect congress man or a perfect communist, we have a mix of both“. We have a visionary in all of us, it is only a matter of choice whether we want to develop this side or not. There are instances where I have seen a visionary getting converted to a missionary, thats an ALARMING MESSAGE FOR ANY COMPANY. Start loving what you do by understanding why you do to become a visionary. A visionary will enjoy more of his time. If you want to check your current role then rate yourself using the following table:

Criteria	Yes/No	Rate (1-5) 5 best, even for NO rate	Weight	Total Point Weight x Rate	What should be done here?
Do I take the ownership?	__	__	(Y=1/ N=-1)	__	Plan
Do I make attempts for the team?	__	__	(Y=1/ N=-1)	__	Plan
Do others enjoy working with me?	__	__	(Y=1/ N=-1)	__	Plan
Do I redefine strict territories?	__	__	(Y=-1/ N=1)	__	Plan
Do I bring problems to the surface level and try to solve it?	__	__	(Y=1/ N=-1)	__	Plan
Total points				__

If you have a positive count then you can be termed a visionary and a negative count is asking for improvement. Finally ending this long post, please let me know if you encounter a mistake.

I am not getting time for blogging, feeling so bad. I have almost 10 blog post under draft, “I want to be kid again” (A poetic approach), Link title – Quiet but powerful weapon, Company’s success barometer, Do you believe in zodiacs?, A white hat seo course for all, Make the carrot really red, Good Leaders are biased, Right approach can make wrong right?, How to hire best people ….

I will try to complete these posts soon but for the time being enjoy some more pics from 15th Aug Celebrations.

Hmm … Account books	Love is the key to growth. Want to know? Ask me	Bargaining for land, asking too much?
Ohhhhhhhh		Ehhhhhhhh

Enjoy

When he was 2-week-in-days year old he pressed the unusual button. Instead of running after wind, he started collecting it and its power. The motivating factor was the need. To power his family’s home, young William Kamkwamba built an electricity-producing windmill from spare parts and scrap.

19-year-old William Kamkwamba, from Malawi, is a born inventor. When he was 14, he built an electricity-producing windmill from spare parts and scrap, working from rough plans he found in a library book called “Using Energy” and modifying them to fit his needs. The windmill he built powers four lights and two radios in his family home.

Don’t forget to drop a comment on his blog.

I like the way fashion designers shop. They will not pick the best ready-made cloths (like most of us do), they sometimes shop from streets, they sometimes have very odd selections, sometimes they will buy the costly pearls. It is the variety that is admired but it is the clear vision of a creator that makes them so special.

A fashion designer

• Right team members instead of great individuals. Fashion designers shops the most fitting cloths that can be stitched with other collection for the final product. They look for different qualities of cloth unlike a consumer, who looks at the final rigid product.
• Source is chosen carefully – Fashion designers will travel miles to get the right cloth. White cotton from one vendor (may be from rural areas) and silk from a branded vendor. They know where they can find the specialized vendors. They will not rely on naukri.com for all of its recruitment.
• Constructive destruction (Mentoring): Fashion designers will redefine the individuality to make it a part of the product. Some part of the cloth will be cut short or recolored to fit in better. When they select a cloth they know what part of it is needed and what need a cut. During recruitment the candidate is made aware of such possible cuts and during mentorship it is done in detail.
• Flexibility – Fashion designers know which cloth will react badly to some alterations. They choose it accordingly, the flexibility is highly checked. A candidate who can’t be mentored or changed may not work out as a good team member.
• They see before they choose – Fashion designers can see the overall product (team) before choosing different cloths. When you accompany them you will not understand their moves as you can’t see what they can. They ensure the diversification in a team.
• Specialization is valued – Gold can’t replace diamonds but Gold has its own place in designing. HR managers will always choose the missing specialization for a team with some other compromise to complete the team for an optimal output.
• Taking risks – Fashion designers job is all about creativity and thus experimentations and thus taking risks. I had selected some team members completely under this scheme and today they are pillars to the team.
• Ownership – They take ownership in what they do and are highly passionate about the work. I like people when they say my team was great, my company taught me many things. I sometimes ask them, “What all will you miss if you leave your current company?“.
• Take pride in what they do – They take pride in what they do. Their explanation will reflect the pride.

Summary of the post: As a HR manager, do not look at ready made talents, they are less flexible and sometimes too rigid to be a good team member. Look at following attributes above others:-

• Learning ability over already learned. (You can give them sometime to read and explain it back)
• Passion over achievements. (Look at the way they explain things)
• Flexibility over perceptions. (Debate with them over their strongest areas.)
• Job/Profile matching over individuality (For some posts you need low ambitious people and for some high, for some posts money is the only motivation so recruit money centric people.).
• Character over personality. (Let the receptionist take a basic round of surprise interview at entrance, see the reactions. Allow her ask some stupid questions, attitude change is helpful in understanding character. Give them different situations and let them react to it.)

Overall what matters is the team, no one can be better than team. A diversified, self motivated, empowered and independent team can be the best asset a company can have.

Recently I came to know of an incident where a candidate who, made to the final round after technical interviews and other HR rounds but, lost the opportunity as he did not bother to pay attention to the basic guidelines for mobile phones, “Switch it off before it switches someone off“.

The final round of the interview was with the Director of the company. The interview started off well but when the candidate got a call and he decided to attend it, using his unlimited talk time, caused him the job. The basics are more important and should be kept. I had few team members who did this 2 or 3 times before they learned it the harder way. Keep your mobiles in silent mode at important places like Churches, Interviews, meetings (with seniors specially) etc. As I sometimes say, “It may be difficult to impress someone with 100 goodies but easy to get you wrong with one basic baddy“. Similar are the SMS format emails written to professionals. I get job applications through emails in SMS format (sir, can i get a job in ur company i am really cool plz give me a chnce). My first impression is, “when you even don’t know how to send emails to a senior official for your own need (job) then how can I expect you to be good with my company products“.

It is not that people who write SMS format emails or who picks up a call during interview are not worth but it is the doubt that is created. In some circumstances, if you have a doubt then you do not have a doubt (esp for jobs), reject. Always keep the basics strong as it is not a matter of one mistake but an attitude to life. Good night, hope to write atleast a blog post next week. I am enjoying the marketing classes with new recruits. I myself is doing (learning) a lot of comparison with web business and the Kotler rules which can be redefined.

What are mistakes? Can small mistakes be ignored? Are bigger mistakes real mistakes? What is a tolerable limit for mistakes? These are questions you deal while mentoring/monitoring/evaluating people. Here are some of my experiences with (real) mistakes.

Before proceeding further, lets try to define mistake. Wordweb says, “A wrong action attributable to bad judgment or ignorance or inattention is a mistake“. Wow, what a perfect but still wrong definition to mistake from practical perspective. With the complete post it will become clearer why I agreed to disagree with the above definition of mistake. IMO, mistake is :-

• Repeating the action even after recognizing it as a wrong action.
• Wrong action committed with self permission for self gain. (All shortcuts to fame and name can come under it)
• Being ignorant or inattentive with self permission resulting in a wrong action.
• not accepting/not recognizing the right cause of wrong action.
• unwillingness to learn the bigger lesson taught by previous similar actions resulting in another related wrong action.

Guide for Mentors/Project Managers/Leaders/Management/..

I have seen people creating list of mistakes by their juniors, staffs, team members for evaluation, mentoring etc. Sometimes we list/count mistakes that are not mistakes from practical perspective. Before I start putting more words under this title, here are few thoughts that I strongly believe in:-

1. No Sincere person (who is committed for work and aims at the same mission if not vision) likes to commit mistakes but mistakes are inevitable for independent people. “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” says Albert Einstein.
2. Mistakes often carries different dimensions to it, one dimension can make it look very ugly while other dimension can define beauty. Our junior programmer deleting the whole code while trying different commands is an example, he just wanted to learn and never wanted to delete.
3. Often the gaps (knowledge gap, vision gap, power gap, communication gap) are responsible for mistakes. May be we call it mistakes due to system.
4. Every senior is responsible for mistakes done by the junior/colleague. The learning/correction has to be recursive (deeper in system).

So as a mentor it is very important to understand the reason behind the mistake. Also such mistakes can help us in designing a better system (We shifted to SVN when we encountered code deletion by a dedicated junior programmer). Discouraging mistakes can discourage attempts and thus the chances of success too. I often make stupid mistakes but never regret for being stupid as I learn wiser things from my own stupidity. If I am often defeated by myself than I am surely on the right path of success.

Right course of action for Wrongs

I promised my parents and myself to give atleast 6 hrs of sleep everyday, so I will conclude my post here. There is no stone-written rule that can help us define the right course for mistakes. Following thoughts can help us take a better course of action:-

• Take a course of action aiming at a result. (For repeated mistakes by a team member: When you know you can’t fire that person define your course of action accordingly. When you know that anyway you will be needing a new person then define your course of action accordingly.)
• There will be bad apples everywhere but don’t leave your ethics/character for them.
• Tolerate mistakes but never tolerate bad attitude. Bad attitude is like a rotten root, you can’t expect a fruitful tree out of a rotten root.
• Communicate as often and as quick. 90% mistakes happens due to communication gaps, so communicate to transfer knowledge, to transfer vision.
• If a person is committed and is with the same vision then he/she can be molded rightly.

Good night, I still some have 7 posts under draft so keep watching.

I have some 5 post in drafts as they are connected and should be released with details. Just got back after a long 12 hrs work (interviews and CV short-listings). Preparing technical papers (we call it Tech Tryouts) is a big ask esp when people pass on the papers.

This time I decided not to waste a complete paper unless the person is suited for the post. I have divided the question sets into 3 parts – 3 marks, 5 marks and 10 marks sections. Obviously, level of difficulty is proportional to its weight. Then I made 3 paper bags for each section and put the resp questions (each question on a piece of paper) in it. Now people can take it one by one, some who starts with 10, generally ends up exchanging it with a 3 marker. One who is not able to solve 2 consecutive problems is not selected. I generally have a lot of fun during this phase making few friends as well. One of the candidate (who was not selected) asked me few questions related to web architecture (may be to test me :)), we ended up with another typical AjiNIMC short lecture (but it was fun, hope he was helped).

Some (not all, may be 30%) interviews remind me of the post entitled “199 out of 200 programmers can’t program“. Generally the first bag (3 marker) contains very basic questions with switches, recursions and basic logical problems. Sometimes it surprises me when experienced people are not able to solve FizzBizz problems. With experienced lot I generally ask about basic web architecture, DNS systems etc.

I will be having few more interviews tomorrow and then I will get back to server auditing and ofcourse blogging, till then you can visit my daily recommended posts.