she is my father

My daughter just me a lesson. A lesson that I should have taught her.

A couple of days ago a friend came home to discuss the contours of a game. A treasure hunt. How do you plan a treasure hunt? All the treasure hunts have already been done. There are variations that people have had. Most the time, these are clues all over the city where you have to go to and meet someone and collect the next clue. In the middle to spice things up there are challenges and dares to complete. But in any form, they are all done. So, our friend came home and we were thinking about what to do. Mumbai has an amazing British history and it can be felt in the old parts of Mumbai, within the erstwhile fort area. There were many ideas tossed around. We kept thinking on how to make it simple yet exciting.

Here I learnt to implement something I leant from a friend many years ago. It was something he learnt at a conference. In a group think, learn to say ‘and’. Whenever someone says something, make the idea bigger by adding to it and not by removing flaws in the argument. Keep saying ‘and’ to any idea. This way you are forced to think from a start point and forced to listen intently and hopefully come up with great ideas. So, while brainstorming I kept saying ‘and’ and we ended up with what we think is an awesome idea. We simply take photos of interesting places in a tight interesting area in fort. We also take photos of small quirky things around the place. People have to figure the place, click the photo and come back to base after they are done. In the photos we will also have clues as to where the place is likely to be. So we would have photos of lane names, or monument names or something or the other that would help them decipher the place. The odd ball curious would be in and around some bigger places. So the game is simple. You will probably have 10 places which are easier to find and then you will have around another four odd places in and around the main point. All photos to be released at the start of the game. Hence you have to look around the monument for the other hidden ones and get them.

Too much information is also a weapon of confusion. In a normal treasure hunt, the linearity of thought allows for a focused flow from participants. But this way with an information overload, the confusion should set and thence in a group environment so will atrophy. The hope is that the evil and greed in people will grow as the time limit gets pushed. How much time must you spend on a place to get all the objects. Ah… this should be fun.

You are free to use mobile phones, whatsapp and everything else including Google. Now go and get these mad places.

While we were clicking pictures yesterday at Horniman circle for our game, in one building, while I was clicking the façade, one security lady came to me and said, do not click photos, it’s not allowed. What? You don’t own the image rights to your building to start with. Complete rubbish. I have had run ins with various such security personnel whose job it is to do stupid things. Rich people believe that just because they can own security personnel they can ask them to do anything. A few weeks ago, one security guy came to me to tell me to not park on the opposite side of their gate. I refused to listen. First they try and use authority and then they try and use sympathy. He then said that please listen to him or his bosses will scold him. I am so done with these jokers. I told him to tell his boss not to ask him to do stupid things.  I wasn’t obstructing his gate in any way. It was on the other side.

Now here this lady was telling me not to click photos of their heritage building. I refused. I told her that I will continue to do so and she could do whatever she wanted. I continued to click till I got a nice one. Now a senior guard came in. He confronted me and tried to tell me with authority that I shouldn’t click. I told him, that that is stupid and that I will continue to do so. He told me again and that’s when I lost it (not that I was polite to start with), I screamed at him and said, I will click the photos and he can’t stop as it isn’t legal. I was standing on the road dam it. I was loud and hard. He did not know what to do. He is used to subservient behavior I guess. This was an open challenge to his authority. We took photos and then we left. He couldn’t do anything.

Afterwards, Jispa spoke to me. She told me, that I uselessly shouted at the watchman. I said, that he was being stupid and the rule sucked. She agreed but she said, I could have just silently smiled at him and still kept on clicking. Cracked a joke or a remark or something or the other and managed the situation. Well ok. I admitted to her that she was right. She is right. I should have just handled it better. Yes, I should have broken his stupid rule, did whatever I want and yet still gotten out of it by smiling my way through it and not raising my voice. What good would it do?

Nice one Jispa. She waited till I cooled down, came quietly next to me and very nicely suggested… SUGGESTED, that may be there was a better way. She asked and suggested as opposed to directly attack an angry man. Nice. Real nice. Well done Jispa.

At home later in the day, I got rid of some my shirts. One of them was a slightly tighter red and blue plaid check shirt. Jispa wanted one red plaid shirt for some time now. I had her try it. What is a bit tight for me, was a little loose for her and she could wear it. She kept it and said “cool. That time when you can finally wear your dad’s shirt”, followed by a fake sniffle.

Child has become the father of man.

I am the bridge builder

I was explaining to someone that all my life I have always been the youngest one. The youngest son of the youngest son. From my mother’s side too I was the youngest son with only two female cousins younger than me. Being the youngest one should have been a natural to me, except that I didn’t ever do well at it. I think I was designed to be the eldest. I like to teach, to learn, to observe and to share. I like to protect and to have fun, I like to dominate yet cede. I am not designed to be the youngest but I learnt over a period of time to be one.

Now that I am 41, I am in many ways an elder. In this start up, I am the eldest in the office. The senior who must lead and manage the young. He who must nurture the young and initiate them into the ways of life. Ok – now that got way too dramatic. But as the years have piled on, I have moved to apposition of being the elder and I think I probably do a better job of being the elder than being the younger. Of being the teacher than at being the student.

Being the youngest helped me become a better elder. All I did was look very deeply at people who were older to me and see how they behaved. How they treated their younger ones, and more importantly how they did not treat their younger ones. This formed the basis of how I should treat others. In way that I would have expected to have been treated. That today is how I am what I am, as a boss, as a father, as a friend and as a teacher. You don’t always need role models to shape your behavior. You can do it just as well with the absence of role models. You simply ask yourself what you would have liked and you then listen to your own voice very clearly. That’s that simple.

Last week we were on vacation. I was very keen to have a camping experience with Jispa and Jasmine. Just about a month before the vacation, both of them pulled out. It was way too expensive they said and that they weren’t so keen. Oh Damn it. They broke my heart. I always wanted to go camping with family. Sleeping in the tents, walking all day, moving in the mountains, the bitter cold, the warm sleeping bags, the really silly places to go to the loo, everything. Discomfort is an important part of process. Only when you put men through real discomfort you realize what you are made of. And as a group of people, when you face hardship together, it binds you, it releases you. Camping together is one way to get to the same. Of course this was a luxury camp. We would have paid around 10k per night all-inclusive (including transport) for this experience. But at the last my family developed chicken feet. So we moved our vacation to Rishikesh where we stayed at a home stay, roamed the streets of Rishikesh and sipped on honey ginger lemon tea while having freshly baked butter biscuits. Some discomfort.

After which we went to Hathipaon where my sis runs a lovely small home stay.

It was a fun vacation, but it was marginally ruined or heightened depending on your perspective by the fact that I had an exam to give in the middle of it. This was an Insurance exam for which I had to leave the vacation mid-way and run to Delhi and back. The pressure was tremendous and I had to really learn the innards of the insurance business before I could have passed. The pressure was two-fold. On the business there was definitely some pressure as we needed a senior guy to pass the exam and be the principal officer for the firm and then as the elder in the office, I couldn’t have failed. It was too much of a loss of face. I put dramatic pressure on myself and pushed myself to study. I studied three books, marked a lot on them, read them again and again, and was generally prepared for what’s going to come. In the end of the multiple choice question paper, I scored 65 of 80 marks. 40 was passing. Wow – I had done it with flying colors. Serious respect. When you grow old, you lose something – something very raw, you lose your sense of fun, innocence and gay abandon. You lose the ability to chance a few things. You push yourself and your system to what you think is the most important thing and achieve it. This part is no fun. I have never studied this way as I studied for this exam. On the trip, I studied in the plane, on the train, in the hotel, on the bed and one full day in Rishikesh on the table studying for my exam. After the paper, I had a celebratory lunch in Delhi. I had my favorite Delhi lunch of chole and dal with naan at the road side thella (stall). That was yum. So much yum, that I took Jasmine and Jispa there when we were in Delhi switching trains. When in Delhi – do the Delhi!

So when we were back, my sis asked me for feedback. I knew that was coming and I had discussed a lot with Jispa and Jasmine about the place. We seemed to have cracked the travel thing. We go for cheaper home stay options at distinct places that seem to have captured the heart and soul of the place. We know the service and we know the way the thing works now. We know how to look at the reviews and how to manage and plan the trip. So far, it has hardly let us down. Trip Advisor has been so helpful in all of this. My nephew was wondering why would anyone put up a review on trip advisor. A rational human wouldn’t want to waste his time once he was already there. What could he possibly get. I told him two things – from a selfless perspective – it really helped me and hence it is my job to help others. From a selfish perspective – the more reviews I give the better the site gets and that leads to a positive cycle where hotels and home stays know that if they screw up you get bad reviews. This was the whole ecosystem is forced to improve if they have to thrive. My review about Rishikesh will in some way help my travels in Pondicherry, because of the general uplift in service standards.

I am reminded of this poem about which I think I have blogged before.

The Bridge Builder

- Will Allen Dromgoole

An old man going a lone highway,
Came at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast, and deep and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned, when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim, near,
"You are wasting strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again will pass this way;
You've crossed the chasm, deep and wide-
Why build you this bridge at the evening tide?"

The builder lifted his old gray head:
"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,
"There followeth after me today,
A youth, whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm, that has been naught to me,
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him."

This poem was especially significant for me for in the 6^th standard, I tried to take part in the poetry recital competition in school. There was no one to help at home but I knew I was good to take part in the competition. I told my teacher that I was interested and she gave me this poem. By the time the trials came in, I was hopelessly underprepared and I was not selected. What a total loss it was. I laughed at the end. There none but me to crown myself!

Recently I understood the bride builder and its metaphorical significance. I am in many ways a Bridge Builder. Yes, good friend, I am building this bridge for him.

So yesterday I went over to my sister’s house and discussed what all you can do to improve the service. Small things that cost very little but can make a dramatic impact on your stay experience. In the end, today she puts on the whatsapp group something akin to ‘when did you get so smart?’. Oh well. Now the fun starts. The dichotomy of being an elder elsewhere nad being the young one at home. Sometimes I wonder how I manage it in my brain and in my behavior. I wonder.

keep trying!

When I first came to this job 5 years ago, this was an established broking outfit. It had a marketing team and it believed that things worked. They did not believe that they really needed anyone like me. They would be fine doing their job and that what could one other guy who came in really help. On the other hand as I saw it, it was a boring place with no real marketing activity happening and anyone who would come in would be able to add substantial value to the beast and thereby improve the lot. So when I came here as a transfer from the wealth management business to the retail broking business, I saw no big challenge. Of course I could add value here. How difficult would it be? The marketing function over the last couple of years was run by sales guys who generally lacked marketing direction and had taken marketing to a place where the senior most guy felt that he was the most highly paid courier boy in the country. All they did was emailers and posters. A few brochures and leaflets thrown in for good measure. Anything else was a question.

I came in not really knowing what to do. I tried to destroy some stuff, invent some stuff and I came in from my wealth hangover where we would spend inordinately large amount of time for trivial stuff. Beinga marketing manager in the wealth management business is a complete waste of time and resources. You do very little through the year, so people like me who would like to be busy would spend a large amount of time and effort for the little that we did. So we would spend so much time planning and organizing an event that the kids under me would go crazy trying to make sense of it all. They called me Raavan, with ten heads. I would come and think of what could go wrong and then try and mitigate it. It was a really pain in the ass. But that was me. Try and do the best of what was possible. So I came with a  similar mindset to run eth marketing function for a much larger base of customers that securities business seeks to provide. I think I was a disaster to start with. I did not think that giving leads through digital marketing was anything that cool to do. I generally ignored the lead side of the business. The leads was a black hole. We take leads and put it into the system and then wonder what happened. Whenever the top management woke up, hastily one presentation would be arranged in which some statistics would be twisted to show the efficacy of the system. It made no sense.

One of the first things I worked on, I remember was to design a brochure; I took team meetings and what not to try to design the perfect brochure. That was complete rubbish as well. This was retail business. No one really looked at the brochure and most of our customers did not care too bit for the English we put in to it. I spend a long time trying to design a few thank you emailer. I over designed them and then no one really used them. Simple shit was complicated. In all this there was only one thing going for me. No one really expected anything of me. I had to just keep doing what was happening and not ruffle feathers and all would be well. The sales head was an ass who only played political games and tried to keep all the key things to himself. So while I was promised the product role by the MD, he played games to ensure that product stayed within his control. But one thing he did not understand – was the power if digital. That was one thing I did not understand as well, but atleast I was well placed to understand that one thing.

Anything new requires a strong sense of curiosity and ability to tinker, experiment and trust. And of course measure what you are seeking to achieve. Digital is tough business. Stuff changes every day. Google will change its algorithm and Facebook will introduce a new set of measures. What will you do then? You have to learn every day. I was no stranger to digital. I was part of the first dotcom boom, but that was completely different. In the year 2000, there was a boom but there was no Google to consider. Now Google was a behemoth and Facebook was taking root into the minds of people. What was happening? I knew one thing from my earlier job. I had read a book called “the Search” by John Battelle. It opened my mind to the potential of Google as a medium to get free leads. If you optimize your pages correctly and put the relevant content traffic would come and if you put your lead form or a way for someone to contact you on every page then invariably people would contact you. You would have lead flow. As a gujju guy, this was free money coming in.

SO while I was a part of the wealth business, I was also made responsible for the marketing of the international business. That time I pushed the idea of search engine optimization (fresh from eth book) and got it done. This was in around 2005/6. It was pioneering in India around the time and I think I was the first in my company to implement these ‘radical’ ideas. I did not think they were radical, I only thought of it as things to do with little money. I think if I was a marketing manager with tons of money to spend then I too would have gotten busy trying to spend that money. The best argument for this is simple – I did that for the international business and did no such thing for the wealth business as in the wealth business there was enough stuff to do. So it’s not like I saw it early. It’s just that I had the energy and drive to do new things and a strong curiosity to back it.

So here in the broking business, I implemented the search optimization thing (SEO). Actually its not that I implemented it; it was there, I gave it a lot of focus and teeth. I pushed it hard. We did simple things like increase the content, rearrange the content and then put the lead form on every page on the site. Every page. I did not want to see a page without the lead form. What’s the point of a page without a lead form upfront staring at you. The result is that the leads went up 10 times from eth time I joined the place to now.

I then started other digital marketing stuff – like buying clicks from search terms. Here I think the genius lie in a simple thing – measurement. The way we measured the efficacy from the start was clear to me – how much brokerage did all this result in? I fought as hard as ever to get eth MIS and reporting right. The simple thing was that there is enough metrics available – the simplest would be the metric that we would like to intuitively think. I put x money in month 1. How many months would it take me to get this money back in terms of brokerage. This figure was the holy grail. The term we coined was cost per rupee of brokerage. The aim of a presentation would be to show how long it takes to get a figure of 1. 1 Is the breakeven point. This was the corner stone of all we did. Of course we then did a lot of work in a lot of areas but this was the greatest achievement ever. No one was tracking digital spends but we were. No one was going into the granularity of the stuff like we were in the banking and especially the broking space. We pushed hard and we were buoyed by the success we got. It made me what I am today. I plunged myself head long into this space. It excited me like no other. We put in a culture of trying everything. I could try everything as I could measure the efficacy of all my investments. Everyuthing was possible as long as it could be measured.

 Itw as one hell of a ride. Until it was small and no one really bothered about it, I could do everything I wanted. Now it was a big beast and everyone has gotten involved. Everyone wants to regulate the thing and wants a pie of it. Further improvements in digital to incorporate every small portion of the pie require a larger investment and more so require people to get out of the way. This was getting too tough to do. Everyone started having valuable input to put it and generally mess things up. Too many people were involved in it and believed that it was in their career interest to be a part of this. It was designed to stop.

And hence the change – now I as am gearing up for my new innings in my new firm, I am a little scared. Here there are expectations. People expect me to do stuff. I know that I know stuff, but is it adequate. I came here and I was burned a bit by the politics, but in the new firm would I survive. There would be a different level of politics, insecurity and willingness to change (or not). I am confident. I would be able to solve most of it, but I have to put systems in place, I have to put processes in place and all this will have to be done at warp speed. Agile development as they call it. The fundamental thing here in agile processes is that you keep releasing features into the market by means of ‘releases’. You can’t have a perfect product but you test as you go and keep building on what you have. Marketing, my suspicion will need to follow this agile development. You keep putting things out and you manage as you go along. the internet throws up this definition “Agile programming is an approach to project management, typically used in software development. It helps teams react to the instability of building software through incremental, iterative work cycles, known as sprints”. This is new and interesting. Its exciting.

As Rehan who coached my kid for swimming for a brief period (a former Olympian from India), there is good nervous and bad nervous. You like good nervous, it gives you that tingling feeling when you move out to conquer the world, and there is bad nervous that stops you, puts self-doubt and seeks to paralyze. This is good nervous. I am thinking, I am all senses open, I am keen not to take anything for granted, I am ready to work hard. I am on! Completely ON! I cant make the same mistakes, I have to build support and build rapports with all. I have to take on board suggestions and opinions. I have to inspire and to trust. And I have to trust myself as well. I know my stuff. I have been trained to think, I have trained myself to think. It has to work. The place I am joining is start up. The pressure is larger. If I get things right, I can change the face and the orbit of the startup. 100 of millions of dollars are potentially at stake with my success in marketing the product and making it work. As one of my bisses explained to me once – you have to be able to constantly move between two three things and give adequate focus to all that you have at the moment. Can you focus on multiple things one after the other. That is going to determine your success. Prakash Dalal – your words ring true. That is going to be the key to success as one moves up the corporate ladder.

Focus, refocus, repeat!

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end note

Here is another entry on agile

Agile software development is a group of software development methods in which solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, continuous improvement, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change

I see no reason why marketing can’t be like this. You have to keep the focus of the customer and hold a few things like core insights dear. But the rest has to be evolutionary. If your market is not static and is evolving, your targeting methods are evolving, your product is evolving – how can marketing be static. It has to be agile!

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