My Talk to Emerging Leaders: Learn How to Enjoy Ambiguity

This blog is in continuation to the earlier blog I wrote about my experience in being a mentor to emerging leaders in my organization.

What did you find to be most challenging as you moved from middle management to senior management leadership ?
(I will answer this question in next few blogs, this is the first part)

In one of the sporting events organized by Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ), I got an chance to meet

Geet Sethi (9 time world champion in Billiards/Snooker). Practicing for a sport like Billiards can be quite repetitive in nature where players practice for hours. One of the conversations I recall with him was a story about his formative years that I read in his book- Success vs Joy. He says that in his early years when he was still learning the nuts and bolts of the sport, one of the things that kept him going amidst hours and hours of practicing same short was a sound. Yes, a sound. He says that he loved the sound of a perfect shot when the cue hit at the right spot of the spherical ball from shot made at a perfect angle. He obsessed over hearing that sound and chased it with intensity in several practice sessions. This is something that kept him going.

The point that I extract from this conversation is that every profession (no matter what the stage) have some painful elements. We got to learn how to efficiently deal with those painful moments to be successful in our chosen endeavors. For Geet Sethi, it was to find a way to make his practice sessions meaningful. Similarly, for senior management roles, one thing that's constant is dealing with ambiguity. As we grow up in organizations, one aspect that gets added in abundance in our job description is changes, most of which are unexpected.

One of the interesting incidents that I am reminded of from my tenure at McAfee was interviewing our CEO, George Samenuk. I was a part of our newsletter team and we got this rare chance. In the interview, I asked George "What's your typical day like?'. Part of his response was- "In a day if I meet 100 people, 95 come to me with a bad news that lead me to act and possibly make decisions to change the direction."

Now, with senior management role stakes being so high, it is crucial to figure out a way to deal with changes. The preferred way that I learned after stumbling/getting bogged down with fierce pace of changes is how to enjoy the ambiguity. To be honest, I don't have a formula on how to develop the live for ambiguity but learning from Geet's story I tried a few things that somewhat worked for me:

1. Find out something about ambiguous situations that you chase and expect. If things are around me aren't changing that, for me, is a sign of things not being in order. In a way, I expect change, and when it comes, welcome it.
2. Second is merely an attitude adjustment. Most of the times we fear the change. But what I did learn is 'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger'
(not sure of author of this quote, please let me know if you are aware so that i can pass on the credits)

In summary, for any role change that you approach, just strive to grow your love for ambiguity.

Image source:
https://www.amazon.in/Success-Geet-Sethi-Sunil-Agarwal/dp/B07DCVDXYJ/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=success+vs+joy&qid=1562422257&s=books&sr=1-2

How to come up with creative ideas: Play to your strengths and combine with a concept from a parallel field

[Note: I recently started sharing my scribbles on How to come up with creative ideas. To reiterate, my idea in sharing these is to look back at this list for my own inspiration and for those who are interested.]

I was recently reading Before You Start Up: How to Prepare to Make Your Startup Dream a Reality, and came across this story of how Nike was founded. With due credit to the author (Pankaj

Goyal), I am reproducing a part of the story here:

From Business Insider: "Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman was having breakfast with his wife one morning in 1971 when it dawned on him that the grooves in the waffle iron she was using would be an excellent mould for a running shoe"

Here's what happened: Bowerman spent nearly a decade studying jogging best practices, making improvements to athletic footwear designs, and even co-writing a book on running. This was all years BEFORE he had this idea. He teamed up with abusiness partner who had a Master's in business and knew the running shoe market. The two of them earned $3 million selling shoes before designing even one of their own and starting the business we now know as Nike.

While media chose to celebrate the 'aha' moment of Bowerman getting inspired from grooves in the waffle iron as the genesis of Nike, the real story had far many years of toil and focus behind it. It happens in our real lives too when we judge any news on the surface without really digging deep onto the specifics.

However, the point of my interest here was to observe this story and what it teaches us about coming up with creative ideas. As I dissect this story, I really see two parts to it. One is the years of hard-work and precision work that Bowerman put in to gain deep knowledge and insights into the sport of running. The fact that we was a co-author of a book on running wasn't something that I was aware of. He had extraordinary knowledge and ability on the subject and already had been successful in the field.

Now when he looked at the grooves in the waffle iron, it quite naturally activated his running specific neurons and he was able to make the connections between the two. And the rest, as they say, is history.

The learnings from this story is simple. All of us develop a reasonably deep expertise in one or two and if we stay with the expertise long-enough, we end us solving complex problems. If we apply this knowledge tangentially and observe the world around us through the lens of this knowledge, we enhance our chances to make unheard-of connections. Not all connections would be productive, but what would be useful would be to note these down instantly. And possibly discuss with the folks you trust. You never know you may end-up with a big game changing idea.

I would like to phrase this concept as: "Play to your strengths and combine with a concept from a parallel field".

Do you have any more examples ? Please do share in comments.

Image source:
https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/8175994401/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_image_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Of Aspirations, Originality and Hope

This picture may look like an ordinary piece of art but it does have some stories intertwined that I wished to share.

As a part of the Global Day of Impact event TODAY, the API Platform team at @Citrix went to "Namma Mane", the home to under-privileged girl children. One of the collaboratiive activity we did with kids was painting. Before leaving for the place, we selected a thumb painting of a peacock as a theme.

Renuka was one of the kids (in 5th standard) in the group I was a part of. I am assuming she would get excited seeing the theme but instead she said-

"Anna I don't like the peacock, Anna"

After cajoling for a bit, I had to give into her insistence and she went ahead and chose a different drawing.

That moment, I realized I was with an INDEPENDENT THINKER who was crystal clear in what she wanted. We were the only team who were using out of themed drawing, everyone else complied with what was told.

Sometime later, when we started drawing, one part of the new drawing required that we use a pink paint. But only problem was that we didn't have a pink paint, among the 6 we had.

Without blinking an eye-lid, she said "Wait Anna, I will tell you a trick".

After that she simply took the red paint and white paint and mixed it on the color palette. After a few moments, we had a pink looking color.

That moment, I realized I was with an INNOVATIVE THINKER who knew how to make most of her constraints.

After the painting was done, without me telling her anything, she copied the text from our T-Shirts "Making Change Happen" (part of our Corporate Citizenship slogan) and preceded that with "I Love".

One gets inspiration from unexpected sources and today was my day to get inspired by this little girl who not only knew what she wanted but also how to get there when faced with constraints, just by keeping things simple.

On speaking to her later, she said she wanted to become a Doctor. If this small observation was anything to go by, she had all the ingredients in her to reach the goal she had set.

#Citrix is one place I know that has it's priorities right- when it comes to products, customers and making the world a better place.

Thank you #Citrix for letting employees experience such moments that not only inspiring, but also broadens our horizons.

How to come up with creative ideas: Think what can be better in a given user situation

[Note: I recently started sharing my scribbles on How to come up with creative ideas. To reiterate, my idea in sharing these is to look back at this list for my own inspiration and for those who are interested.]

Last week, while running Lean Start-up workshop for our talented team at the Greece office, i shared the story of how Zoom became such a big player in video conferencing software industry. In a span of ~8 years, they achieved the valuation of close to $20B after a successful IPO. There are many parts of Zoom's story that I find fascinating, but I want to focus on one part below.

Here's an excerpt from Forbes article that I find quite fascinating:

Yuan’s secret for being everywhere: Zoom, of course. His habit of taking the most important meetings virtually started because of basketball. A diehard NBA fan since moving to the U.S., first of the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant for his work ethic and then of his local Golden State Warriors, Yuan made a point of attending every one of his three kids’ basketball games and gymnastics meets. One unique Zoom feature is a virtual background the user can change to show a logo or image, disguising where they really are. Last summer, his eldest son, now a graduating high school senior who set the local league record for three-point shots, had a tournament in Los Angeles. “I set the background as the Santa Barbara beach, and they all thought I’m there. After the meeting, I swipe,” revealing a sweaty high-school gym. “And they all say, ‘What?’ ”

I am a regular user of video conferencing software, like many professionals are. I often tend to use it within the bounds of what the software has to offer. For example, earlier today i was wondering why

do i need to tap click 4-5 times to even change the presenter from me to my colleague. More we use software, the more we get comfortable with the imperfections in the software. The more we get used to the imperfections, the more we find it natural to use. That's how most habits are formed.

But the question I raised today in my mind was: Do I really have to get used to imperfection in the software ? Can't the software vendor proactively do something about it ?

There is something that I learned from the above listed Zoom example. One of the constants in video conferencing world is the background. If I share my video, in addition to my face and upper part of body, the receiver can see the background. My background tells the receiver where I am. If I have to take the call from a place that is not as office-like, then I normally would try and change the surroundings to suit the expectations of the call. Zoom seemed to have questioned this pain user goes through and provided option to the user to change the background and make it look like the place that will suit the call.

Reverse-engineering the thinking behind this actually taught me a vital lesson about generating new ideas. The new ideas emanates not only from the pain user goes through but also by slightly altering our thoughts to focus on 'what can be better for a user'. I feel this is as simple as looking at each feature of the product and asking 'if i can better one thing in this feature that would make the life of the user better, what would that be?'

What do you think ? Will this approach open up new neural pathways in one's brain ?

Images source:

https://www.themodernman.com/blog/what-can-i-do-to-be-a-better-person.html

My Talk to Emerging Leaders: The concept of life-long careers is long gone

This blog is in continuation to the earlier blog I wrote about my experience in being a mentor to emerging leaders in my organization.

What experiences, roles, and opportunities have led you to the role you are in today at Citrix?

In the last blog, I shared my learning around being authentic. One of the other areas that have helped me in my career is to think of careers not as one long multi-decade journey but more as having multiple mini-careers in a long time-span. The era of life-long careers is long gone.

Here is some reasoning as to why I think so:

1. I always find the discussion between being a specialist and a generalist fascinating. I have spent a

good part of my career being a specialist and then moving into a role of generalist. Specialist is someone who specializes in an area and goes deep into it to be called as an expert. Generalist is someone who knows how to quickly master skills, add tremendous value in a short time and then move onto something new. Since specialists tend to stay with a skill or group of similar skill for a long time, they tend to value predictable career paths more. Generalists tend to find their own career paths without relying too much on what is laid out for them.
I have probably over-simplified the distinction but my experience in being a generalist in the last few years in my career has only helped me reaffirm my belief that careers of future are going to be ones in which one need to adapt at solving variety of problems. Once you show the necessary agility needed to solve myriad of problem, it opens up the unknown career paths. This is something I am experiencing now, to an extent.

2. I made the last point keeping myself as a test case. If I look at my father's career as well, I can safely come to the same conclusion that the concept of life-long careers is long gone. He is still working (despite reaching second half of his 70s), which is inspirational to me. Not only this, during his active working days he has experience in working across industries like steel, yarn, pharma and a few more and played myriad of different roles. I can safely conclude that during his time too careers were beginning to lose the long-term status.

Why I think the realization that we don't have long-term career an important insight that helped shape my career ? I feel that's because this thinking led me to make the choices that mattered for me. It helped me get closer to discovering my near-ideal temperament. It helped me focus on the skills that i need to build. It helped me focus on the core of professional development.

What I mentioned here is a risky proposition in some ways and need a holistic consideration before embracing.

Images Source:https://filmanddigitalmedia.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/specialists.jpg?w=300&h=175

How to come up with creative ideas: Listen to what your executives are saying

(draft blog, editing in progress)
[Note: I recently started sharing my scribbles on How to come up with creative ideas. To reiterate, my idea in sharing these is to look back at this list for my own inspiration and for those who are interested.]

In my career time when i was leading large teams, i often cited the story of Brian Fitzpatrick (Google) to my teams. This case appeared in HBR a few years ago but the nuances of it are still relevant. Gist of his story- Brian joined Google as a Senior Software Engineer. Based on his interests and inclination, he became the champion for various end-user focused on initiatives. In his quest to better the end-user needs, he identified strategic gap in the organization. Precisely that gap was- Google wasn't doing good enough job in giving users better control of their personal data. He teamed-up with amicable and aligned individuals and led the project that took shape as Google Takeout that allowed users to export the captured user data from various Google Services (like Gmail, Blogger, Calendar, Chrome, Photos etc.). So much was the impact of this project that the then CEO Eric Schmidt started highlighting Takeout to regulators and customers to build a strong case for Google's non-monopolistic practices and focus on user's privacy.

Image Source and Credits: https://www.etpowerofideas.com/

One of the things Brian Fitzpatrick did constantly was that he kept himself updated about organization's priorities and prevailing problems from the lens of CEO or high-flying execs. He apparently made note of what is being said in different public and internal forums and this helped shape his thinking around which "gaps" matter more. Every organizations have myriad of problems and we have limited time. It's only in our best interests that we use that time to solve the problems that matter to people who matter.

Being in touch with what CEO and the executive staff share in internal and external can be a great source for ideas. Like in case of Brian Fitzpatrick, one may not get the ideas on platter after hearing these conversations and it may require some processing and relating the words to your context and strengths to come up with something unique.

Most of the employees tend to give events like employee all-hands a pass but what they are really doing is depriving them of a chance to gain crucial insights that can lead to career defining ideas.

Be like Brian, be a better listener and change the world!!

How to come up with creative ideas: Think about your own pain-points first

(draft blog, editing in progress)
I recently started sharing my scribbles on How to come up with creative ideas. To reiterate, my idea in sharing these is to look back at this list for my own inspiration and for those who are interested.

On my drive back from today, i listened to this podcast between Pankaj Mishra and BrowserStack co-founder, Ritesh Arora. I have been a sort of a fan of Pankaj Mishra's Outliers podcast series as i find it is very authentically presented without much airs. Pankaj's intriguing style of questioning brings out the best responses from the guests.

In the podcast, Ritesh shares his journey- a part of which caught my attention. His first start-up was based on sentiment analysis of customer feedback generated at many sites. For various reasons, he had to move on to his next start-up that was based on consulting. As a part of consulting business, Ritesh and his co-founder had built a website. They took almost 2 days to create the website using wordpress templates. But when it came to testing the website in various browsers, it almost took double the time. Their need to test the website on multiple browsers originated from the fact that they had Mac but were looking to test on Internet Explorer browser. They got curious of this state and dug a bit deeper to understand the prevalence of this problem and this led them to discovery that many people had the same problem. Thus, slowly but surely, this led them to think of starting BrowserStack. Per wikipedia- BrowserStack is a cloud web and mobile testing platform that enables developers to test their websites and mobile applications across on-demand browsers, operating systems and real mobile devices, without requiring users to install or maintain an internal lab of virtual machines, devices or emulators. 

Image Source: https://www.ceralytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/pain-points-vs-solutions.jpg

In the spirit of Lean Start-up, they started small build 2-3 features and released the version for people to test. To their surprise, they saw a great demand for their service and decided to commit to it with full-time attention it needed. BrowserStack has over 25,000 paid customers and 2,000,000 registered developers in more than 135 countries.^[2]

The reason I loved this story was because it gives us a definitive lead to the core question that intrigues me these days: How to come up with creative ideas.

Ritesh Arora and Nakul Aggarwal built a multi-million dollar valuation business by just converting their pain-point to an opportunity. Rather than accepting the fact that browser testing takes double the time, they took it as an opportunity area and built their start-up around this 'pain-point'.

Why look around for ideas, just don't take your pain-points for granted and come up with the next ground-breaking idea.