ThoughtLeadership

26/07/2021

We human beings process at multiple levels, especially the technology-driven changes. There is individual impact to begin with, typically followed by efficiency at a firm level and economic impact at industry level (and even beyond a single industry), and at far end of the spectrum there is the larger social impact. While there are some people who embrace changes quickly, many times out of genuine curiosity or novelty or sometimes even out of no other choice, there are quite a few who oppose its adoption and seem like wanting to preserve the status quo. In many cases, adoption of technology doesn't come with what meets the eyes. Rather, there are secondary and even tertiary effects of those changes. The study of so-called in the rapidly being industrialized early nineteenth century England offers a unique and interesting insight into the far-reaching social phenomena associated with what seems be isolated and rather innocuous change. At one time, over 12,000 troops were fighting the luddites - far more than the troops fighting Napoleon in Spain at the Peninsular War! The luddites have always been demonized for their position. Was it always fair to call them so?

This documentary recreates a fictional account based on historical facts, and offers an interesting point of view. We might argue that there are not too many similarities between early-nineteenth century north England being rapidly industrialized and the world today as it marches into . Perhaps the tools and the trade have changed quite a lot since then, but fundamental human needs and the social context still continues to be rather the same. When people lose years and decades of old jobs to a new technology without much of choice or support, it could create a human and social response, which could sometimes even take an ugly turn. While being termed a luddite might be a pejorative term today (as it was back then), the fact remains that those implications can't be (and should not be) simply ignored. As we head into Industry 4.0 era and wider adoption of technologies such as , we need to consider how best to bring about such changes more inclusively lest there be a potential for similar man-machine conflicts in future.

Thames Television drama-documentary about the West Riding Luddites, from 1988. Please note, although this documentary accords with many of the known facts, t...

10/07/2021

In the reductionist paradigm, macro behavior of a system is simply the linear sum total of the properties of its micro components. So, when we need to understand, diagnose and improve a system, we can simply functionally decompose the problem till we arrive at its atomic components, and then make the necessary interventions. This is also the thought most managers and leaders continue to entertain about . Unfortunately (rather fortunately!), social systems like organizations are a that don't obey reductionist paradigm, and hence attempts to solve problems in classical manner not only not work but can often make the problem worse than before!

I enjoyed Niels Pflaeging's easy-to-read book on how organizations need to recognize complexity and not merely solve the problems in a classical approach. The book is not only probably the most readable, but also maps complexity to organizations for newbies. As Niels rightly reminds - in a complex system, it is the that lead to the complex behavior and not the constituent elements. So, tweaking the elements will not only not yield the desired changed, it can lead to other complex behaviors that can further make the situations worse. All need to learn !

A book about complexity and work - and about how to deal productively with both. A condensed introduction to the theory and practice of organizational high performance. A manifesto for contemporary leadership and profound transformation in organizations of all kinds. This is a business book unlike m...

04/07/2021

Declaration of the Agile Manifesto in 2001 was a landmark event. It not only challenged the monopoly over big-process frameworks of the day such as CMM and ISO9000, but also brought together alternate methodologists who were hitherto divided by their specific and often competing methods into a common vocabulary to describe the essence behind their respective methodologies and methods. Turns out, they did have a lot in common, and they were able to distill those commonalities in a pithy text that described four core values and twelve principles behind the manifesto.

In last twenty years, Agile Manifesto has gone on from being seen as a fringe movement by a bunch of rebel freelancer process gurus to become a mainstream business paradigm that is being embraced by Fortune 500 companies and startups alike. However, in my view, a bigger value created by the manifesto was recognizing a language for describing the antecedents (i.e., what does it need as a pre-condition), moderators (what variables impact the relationships and how) and consequents (what does it eventually lead to) of the agile way of working.

I explored the idea of creating a causal loop diagram (CLD) to visualize the causal relationships between various constructs of the agile paradigm, and to describe the nature of feedback loops they create. In this article, I will start with how I see the words that describe the agile manifesto and its principles when translated, or rather visualized as causal loops. Post this, I will try to make the model parsimonious, thereby hoping to describe just the most core of the relationships without getting lost in other less significant predictors. Let’s see if that makes sense!

Follow the link to the full article.

Declaration of the Agile Manifesto in 2001 was a landmark event. It not only challenged the monopoly over big-process frameworks of the day…

30/06/2021

When Shakespeare wrote, "What's in a name?", he was perhaps being a tad too modest and rather ideal. Try calling a rose by another name, say, socks, and try to imagine if that would still smell as sweet? Maybe to some. On the other hand, P.T Barnum (1820-1891) turned it on its head by rightfully reminding that name does matter when he said, "I don’t care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right.", for all publicity is good publicity so long as they get your name right! Does the name of something really matter that much? What about the title, say, of a book or an academic paper?

It is interesting that academic world isn't immune to the emotional appeal we humans attach to a nice and crisp title. Just like a name, it seems, we do care about the title of a research paper too! And given the extreme poverty of time in today's fast-paced world, one can only imagine that a catchy title might do wonders to your fledgling academic reputation, for it alone might have the power to make someone interested in checking out your work before they decide to invest an hour (or more) digging into it! Well, so much for a rational world we live in. Perhaps a might be advised to exercise great care in choosing the right title after all, and not simply assume that "if you build it, they'll come"! A bit of dressing-up your dry paper, like all other good things life, won't hurt either!

Titles are the first, and often the only, part of your paper that others will read. That’s why they matter so much, and here’s some practical advice on how to write them.

09/06/2021

In 2000, I joined a Chinese telecom giant. My boss, the General Manager of engineering group would insist that I sit with all other leaders in a large glass cage meant for all engineering leaders as a bullpen, which I refused as it seemed rather too noisy and distracting to me (and not to mention, a bit invasive as well!), and instead tried to convince him that sitting downstairs on the below floor with my own newly-forming team was far better for the organization (which was true, and thankfully he agreed). But he would then insist on me attending the almost-daily war room sessions on another large project where I had no connection with them whatsoever on any of the underlying technologies, or the product itself. The reason - that project was forever in deep trouble (before it finally had the dubious distinction of literally giving zero output from a 200 person-year development effort - a typical case of "operation successful, but the patient died"!), and in his words, he wanted me to learn from it so that I don't end up repeating those very mistakes. Am I forever grateful to him for making me "aimlessly" sit through those late-evening sessions where me only job was to learn by observation?

In the current arrangement of -led , the sharing and exchange of tacit knowledge by observation and informal and unstructured conversations is a colossal casualty, especially for onboarding new associates in the team. Second only in importance to the limited avenues for building social cohesion and trust formation in a team, the and must ensure they compensate for those opportunities to trigger passive learning by observation - be it asking new associates to join meeting when it appears to serve no real purpose at all, or to "voluntold" them for tasks and projects that appear to be outside the comfort zone. It might not only make one more effective in , but might also make one's jobs more by providing a uniquely human perspective that can come only by assimilation and not by reduction.

New hires are at risk of losing the subtly communicated knowledge shared through in-person work.

06/06/2021

Throughout times, there has never been a dearth of . Just the ways of expressing their disapproval to new tech has varied, often from extremes such as severely violent mass protests to inconsequential rants. Take the humble bicycle. Bicycles represent a key milestone in personal mobility of humans whose secondary and tertiary effects on the society at large are immense, to say the least. Today, even though we have far exceeded the limits then broken by the first bicycle - speed, distance, capacity, etc., it is hard to imagine its introduction was mourned!

From the article https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-salute-to-the-wheel-31805121/ : As reported in the New York Times, an 1896 column in the London Spectator mourned the impact of the bicycle on British society: “The phase of the wheel’s influence that strike …most forcibly is, to put it briefly, the abolition of dinner and the advent of lunch….If people can pedal away ten miles or so in the middle of the day to a lunch for which they need no dress, where the talk is haphazard, varied, light, and only too easy; and then glide back in the cool of the afternoon to dine quietly and get early to bed…conversation of the more serious type will tend to go out.”. Interesting how some people try to curtail the progress by demonizing the very !

03/06/2021

When we think of product , we often equate it with one or more among new , better or higher , among others. And almost always, higher :). Each passing year, when we see new models - be it smartphones, cars or software - we expect newer and newer features, never mind if the product is already bursting at the seams! Often that's not as bad, as there is enough head room for additional features, but sometimes that can have totally unintended effects, and while there is a nice goldplating on the product that makes the product appear , the product under the hood isn't quite what one bargained for! And don't even get me started on how many of those features we actually end up using :)

I have been a long-time fan of products, and have been looking at buying the bladeless fan for sometime now - after all, they look so cool. But are they really that cool, literally? This video changes my perspective (and is surely going to make my wife a lot happier!). While there are boatloads of features that the ultramodern Dyson fans offer, if the basic reason why we buy a fan in the first place is not even met, then perhaps the product isn't quite what one needs, right? No amount of can perhaps replace the that is needed from a product!

And yeah...it is such a cool ad for the $15 fan is clearly an added bonus :)

When I was young, I was a little obsessed with how cool Dyson fans were. But are they actually worth that amount of money? In this relatively silly video, I'...

05/10/2020

Are you "satisfactorily underperforming"​?

The idea of "satisfactory underperformance" from Prof Sumantra Ghoshal is so deceptively simple and profoundly impactful. We often get stuck in the self-construction of reality and naively believe that we are clearly the "best" that is on offer! I applied this lens to how we as individuals behave - often build a false moat of inflated egos around ourselves, and naively and rather pompously believe that rest of the world is at fault. We have an "obvious" and a "reasonable" explanation why we couldn't be better than what we already are - in fact, those sins that others point out in us are more like the battle scars and despite all those flaws, we are clearly doing so well!

Such beliefs stem from initial success - quite often from serendipity or plain luck (and yes, many a times from sheer talent and hard work too - which could lead to yet another problem of arrogance of already knowing it all!) that soon are mistaken for competency, but the subsequent behaviors could then lead a company into a vicious cycle of that eventually declines in before irreversibly deteriorating into a full-blown crisis. The picture below describes the process well:

From Sumantra Ghoshal on Management: A Force for Good by Julian Birkinshaw, Gita Piramal
(Pic: From Sumantra Ghoshal on Management: A Force for Good by Julian Birkinshaw, Gita Piramal)

Ghoshal describes some ideas on how a company could reverse the process. I felt it was interesting to take the same principles and apply them to people - same lens but view people instead of companies. It made a lot of sense. Here's my take on how we could interpret for ourselves what Ghoshal said for organizations:

1. High performance companies exist in “unattractive” industries - similarly, doesn't matter if one is in customer service, or sales or support, or any other function that people often consider as unattractive or boring. There's always a high performance in every role and function! And those best performers don't either consider those roles as unsexy, or even if they do, they allow their opinions to get in the way of their performance. They simply take the task at hand and deliver the best they can - and then push themselves some more!

2. A company can achieve outstanding performance even when its industry is shrinking - while it might sound like a tail trying to wag the old dog to keep up the dog and pony show, but lackadaisical performance by an individual can't be an acceptable substitute for a company that might otherwise is doing down the drain! The company is only as good as the people who work for it, and the real talent, skill and capabilities come to fore only when the chips are down! Anyone can claim to be successful high-performer when there are fair winds, however the real sailors sail in tough storms!

3. Outstanding performance can be achieved even when competitors are much bigger and stronger - top companies often have very high-performing talent pool. This is often seen as a limiting factor, for there can only be one goalkeeper on a team! However, top performers don't allow that "zero sum" mentality to curtail their ambitions and limit their performance. One doesn't need to come from a celebrated Ivy League background, nor have the perfect charmer personality. In fact, being an underrated (even better - being "invisible) pony could be a significant advantage for one to gradually chip away and build something of true value while the world is busy not paying attention to them!

4. Radical performance improvement is possible even when you are already very successful - the hare lost the race because he overtook the tortoise and decided that good was good enough! There is something very deceptively seducing about "early success" that makes the best of us succumb to the mindset of "I am the best" and stop trying hard(er). We forget that the reason we succeeded was not simply because because we were awesome but most likely we were awesome because we worked so very hard at it! The correlation is often confused with causation!

5. Charismatic leadership is not a prerequisite for radical performance improvement - one clearly doesn't need to have very flashy and extrovert party-type personality in order to perform! Diamonds are always found rough, and even though they are among the hardest substances found on earth, they respond gracefully to feedback in the form of cutting and polishing, and gradually emerges a solitaire! Similarly, we are all equally raw - just that some are a bit further ahead on the racetrack. But then, this is not a race with podium finish...this is a race where each one of us needs to win our own race without necessarily competing with one another.

Conclusion
The authors very rightly call it is as a "corporate disease... It is a pervasive disease – we have confronted it in companies all over the world. It is a disease that is very easy to catch – indeed, finding a way to avoid it is the unnatural act." I found it so tempting - and rather easy - to apply it to look at ourselves - at myself - and see how I have so easily fallen into my own self-made trapping pits. Hopefully it helps you too!

29/08/2020

When people talk of , they are mostly referring to changing the tech stack. In some cases, they are now realizing that just upgrading the tech alone is hardly enough unless there is a commensurate change in that locksteps in with the new tech. And only now do we start seeing the inevitable realization that all that might be ultimately rendered rather ineffective if we didn't equip people - whether frontline or backstage - into the new . However, what about their and ? How could we ensure that people coming from disparate functions - which might have even seen each other as insignificant, or competitors or worse, enemies - are able to come together?

I liked the idea of for it provides a framework and a vocabulary to something that we as software developers - especially those in managerial roles - have long seen but haven't had a structured way to put it all together. Like I have always maintained - industrial software development is too important to be left to engineers alone - we need more education in social sciences, and this article presents some very interesting ideas.

Exploring what leaders can do to improve and sustain social alignment over time.

22/08/2020

As companies grapple with large, dynamic and complex problems, no company can perhaps claim to have a crystal ball for every single business it wants to play and win. It is inevitable that large organizations, especially, need to have a very thoughtful corporate innovation strategy that allows them to focus on key priority areas.

I especially liked 2-3 key insights in this book. It is a good resource for anyone running or interested in any corporate innovation program. Secondly, some perspectives on vs innovation are very insightful. We often think people start out on one of these, a priori. What is interesting that in real-life, that seldom happens. Even the most innovative companies look at a problem and work towards eliminating the customer pain points. To that end, it is rather serendipitous if and when any of these endeavors turns out to be one or the other. Another interesting data point was based on their research that everything else equal, close to 80% reasons why companies fail to innovate is due to strategic reasons as compared to other three operational reasons. So, it might not be the right ROI to overindex on those operations factors to build a strategic innovation muscle.

Understanding of how the most innovative companies are building enormous economic value by tapping into these innovations

20/08/2020

For last several years, continues to be a top skill required. However, we don't seem to have right frameworks for understanding or fully comprehending the "complex" part in it. Most methods presume, rather naively, that we are solving problems in vacuum, and the world stands frozen in time while we figure that out! Well, nothing could really be further from it. The aspect of has been beaten to death, and while there is some sense of an way to develop solutions strategy (and not merely a single solution), the aspect of concurrent themes isn't very obvious. And then, of course, the very idea of considering as not just a larger number of static components but rather interrelated and autonomous that are continuously learning and adapting on their own, with macro behaviors.

I delivered a talk at Fidelity International (thanks Debasish Mahanta for the invite), and spoke on how we could apply thinking to solve complex problems. In the talk, I also discussed how framework could help in a better categorization and . However, more than anything else, I think is the key.

My invited talk at Fidelity on 20-Aug.