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:

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:

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