irreducible experiences

Ah> we are back from Bangalore, Jispa’s first nationals. The nationals have a heats format wherein the heats are in the morning and the finals are in the evening. You have to make it to the top eight to participate in the evening. Jispa’s heats were in the morning and Jispa with Jasmine had reached a few days before. Acclimatizing to the pool, water and the whole experience is also important. Jispa was telling me that every swimming pool is different. According to her, each pool has its peculiarity as regards the water. Some water is heavy and some is light to push. The feel of the pool, the starting blocks and everything is different. So a few days in advance make a big difference.

Jispa is now at an interesting age. I bought her two swim books that are supposed to help you swim and get your technique right. This is obviously meant for competitive swimmers and iron out some flaws while explain the technique with some science backing it. She read them both, surprising me. And then we had a chat about it as well. She was explaining to me how the book helped her understand stuff as well as help her put words to what she instinctively knew. One interesting thing was, as she told me, she searches for still water to push. While your hand flows through the water, it pushes in an S shape flow, as hand goes through the water. This is essentially searching for still water to push through. Next she explained that the book helped her change the technique a little bit as she now modified her arm to have a higher arm action as she pushes through with larger force. She feels it has improved her stroke.

Wow. It felt nice to have such conversations with her. I have been learning from everyone and everything, it was about time that my daughter taught me stuff.

So, off to Bangalore she went for her first Nationals. I was to reach the place on the morning itself, hopefully in time for the heats. I take an early morning flight to reach Bangalore by around 7:40 am. The plan was to take an Uber and get to the city. Uber and Ola have really made travelling much easier across India and I am sure, across the world.  Cabs, have always been a pain in most cities, with unreliable service, hard to get cabs, bad drivers and shitty vehicles. These guys have solved these problems with having a service that is cheap and reliable. In most of the Indian towns it removed the scourge of the rickshaw which would be notorious for charging whatever they want and being militant about it. The rickshaw fares would invariably be 4 to 5 times the normal fare and he wouldn’t even bother to respond to you if you were going in the wrong direction of his choosing.

Bangalore, Delhi or any city, you had to land at the airport and take a pre paid taxi, which was the only safe way to get anywhere without being fleeced. Even that was an issue with these jokers finding different ways to catch you and extort money from you. The simple non a/c cabs would have their meters doctored and I remember not even bothering to look at the meter every time I had to take a cab to home from Mumbai Airport. I would step out and just place a 100 buck note in his hand. I knew that was the real fare and I would walk out fast, while he screamed abuses at me. All this has been solved with the arrival of the cab aggregators.

Good service, no fleecing, nice cars and reliable bills.

But hell, this is India. For every good thing we have a lot of people, ready at the wings waiting o get in. When you have enough people and lot of them, what you have is a really large sample. When you have a large sample, you have enough to get a mean. And you will have what we know as mean reversion.

Let’s see the math definition:

“Reversion to the mean, also called regression to the mean, is the statistical phenomenon stating that the greater the deviation of a random variate from its mean, the greater the probability that the next measured variate will deviate less far. In other words, an extreme event is likely to be followed by a less extreme event.

Although this phenomenon appears to violate the definition of independent events, it simply reflects the fact that the probability density function  of any random variable , by definition, is nonnegative over every interval and integrates to one over the interval . Thus, as you move away from the mean, the proportion of the distribution that lies closer to the mean than you do increases continuously.”

Or in simpler English:

“The mean reversion is the theory suggesting that prices and returns eventually move back towards the mean or average. This mean or average can be the historical average of the price or return or another relevant average such as the growth in the economy or the average return of an industry.”

Or as I can explain – given enough instances – everything will become average. This is the truth of life. So while I was getting amazing experiences with Uber and yes the app experience is amazing – at some point mean reversion is going to happen and it happened (is happening as we speak).

I got out of Bangalore airport to get an Uber. The guy did not know the Uber designated pickup point, did not know the location, in fact he did not even know anything about the city. His car was not so much in a good shape and then he wanted me to pay for toll (always paid for in bill), and the worst – he wanted to fill diesel on my time.

I was running late and wanted to catch Jispa’s swim but this guy ready to make me reach late. In the end – I had to shot at him, that you are not filling fuel on my time. You will take me to the place I have marked off, NOW. This was the limit, it wasn’t going to work.

Jispa sees this streak in me. Suddenly I will lose it at some random guy for some random reason and take his case. Jispa and I have been talking about this. I try and explain to her that this is not a random fight. This is a very genuine reason to get angry. Don’t do silly things and piss me off and give some bull reason. You have to use anger for a reason and at the time you must use it to get something done.

On the way back to the airport – we were getting late and we got the driver to wait while we get the bags from the hotel. When we got the bags down the guy had disappeared. He had locked the car and gone somewhere. It was really really painful and I was really angry. I explained to Jispa that ‘at the time I was really angry but did I raise my voice of show anger?” “NO”. because it was not beneficial. I had no choice, the deed was done, my anger would have helped me reach nowhere. I would only get more late and the driver would just simply not be affected. It does not help. So anger is a weapon that must be used properly and against the right guy.

So getting back to mean reversion. That is the truth of life. You are going to be controlled by the averages. Your performance is going to be controlled by average people around you. You are destined to be average unless you are really really aggressive in pushing the boundaries in terms of actively removing below average people you interact with. When you remove people who drag the average down you automatically get a higher average because you have only the higher ones left. Now your average is better than what it was, but there is a caveat to this… SCALE! If you want scale you cant just start removing all that is below the average.

Most ideas work when the proposition is small to start with. When you have a limited audience and you want to maximize the experience for that. When you think its successful and then you want to take that and spread it around, that’s when the average starts to kick in. the pressure of growth is so large that it becomes near impossible to grow at the speed of the opportunity in front of you, and not be ruined by the law of averages. You have to keep a constant eye on the average and weed out the ones that drag down the mean.

This also comes with a high human cost. No – I am not suggesting that high averages are desirable or the right thing to do. It’s a choice you have to make. Everything comes at a cost. Especially scale. The question you have to ask is what do you want to achieve in life and what is the cost of achieving that. There is human costs on both sides, yours and on the others who happen to be below average. It easy when it comes to the outliers, the complete losers who kill you but as the bell curve property shows, maximum concentration happens around the mean. So these are difficult calls to take.

A higher mean is good for your sanity and you tend to then focus on smarter people who surround you, but then you can’t have scale then. If you want to have scale then you have to have a mechanism that attracts and retains only the top of the totem pole. This would mean a higher concentration of real top average people. When that happens, you will have too many awesome minds trying to fight amongst themselves and you will have your own set of problems with that. Problems of higher politics and higher ambition and everything else.

Nature is a balance… I am reminded of a book written on managing software projects called The Mythical Man Month. One of the points that the author makes is about complex systems have a certain amount of irreducible errors:

The tendency towards irreducible number of errors

The author makes the observation that in a suitably complex system there is a certain irreducible number of errors. Any attempt to fix observed errors tends to result in the introduction of other errors.

I think something similar is - an irreducible number of awesome experiences. Its going to catch up with you. Just wait!

cold, bare and ...

Another weekend just comes and goes. Sometimes life moves on so fast, one is unaware of what hits where. Jasmine and me just look at each other as one weekend after the other passes us by. But I look at it with rose tinted glasses. One more weekend gone means one more week of pay in the bank. Wow.
I have always had this notion that I was overpaid. Sure I bring in tons of value to the firm and I ensure that enough value is always there on the table, but to be grounded and live life on a floor and not in the air, I keep this as a mental attitude. One month at a time. One week at a time and one day at a time.
I have never really had an issue with my salary. I have always taken salaries as a byproduct of the work that I have put in. of course I have changed job thanks to a better salary but more importantly the factor for me was always the role. A chance to do better, a chance to prove what I am capable of and a chance to learn more. Over the years salary has surely kept pace. Could I have earned more? Ya sure. But the answer remains the same to the question, could I have earned less? I also have never failed to admit this in public. The game is pretty simple. You are not going to pay me basis what I feel. You are going to pay me at only the minimum level that you think that if I don’t get, I would be tempted to move on. Market forces decide my pay, not my sentiment.
Hence I find it very funny when people crib about their salary. If you so smart then why aren’t you moving to something that pays you more. Something that pays you better. Don’t crib; just get on with the grind and work. Go for good work. Work that possibly gives you greater learning.
I have in life consistently though not consciously taken such calls. When I came back from Gujarat, working in Balasara, I joined Thakral at a lower pay. Then I rejected a few offers to join C tech at an even lower pay but to work on web technology. This helped me immensely. Then I refused offers somewhere else to work with something I liked. Then I took another pay cut to work at Momentum consulting. Then I moved to the broking division within the firm at same costs. All these calls have been from a growth and work perspective. I might be one of hard bargainers for cash and I constantly tell my friends to pitch higher. But the real reason to switch can’t be cash. It must be work and role. Cash follows work and role. All privileges follow work and role.
So when someone asks me for a recommendation on how much salary to ask for. Ask for the moon. The guy on the other side is only going to pay you what bets he can. No harm in asking for anything you want. That makes me sound cold and heartless. But I dint say join the place due the salary. Join for other things in life. Like my colleague once put it very nicely – we work for money but we turn up to work every day for something else.
Money can’t push me to do things that I do. I am not a rabbit that a carrot must be dangled in front of. We somehow have lost the art of respecting individuals. In sales to we think that carrot or stick would only work. Consistently people believe that their subordinates work only for money. But when asked about themselves they have loftier reasons to work. I hate bonus season. Managers tend to give bonus as a big reward and then expect employees to be grateful. He is not going to be grateful. Why should he be? It is a cold transaction. It’s not that the firm is giving out of goodwill. It only gives to those it deems suitable thanks to the effort and time put in by the employee. Employee sees it as money earned for effort spent.
I always turn these things around. Here is the money you made, but forget it. Let’s talk about the work you want to do. That’s important. Let’s get ground rules, work and culture right. Rest – jump around. If you like it, thank the MD - if you don’t like it, walk around. I am ok.
I like the example of zappos.com. The famous online show retailer. It famously offers a reward for all trainees if they want to quit at the end of a definite period. I thought that was cool. If you don’t like the culture – walk out fast. In fact all efforts must be made to ease the release of a player who wants out. Recently I closed a card with American Express. I thought it was the best experience possible. They were polite courteous and persuasive, but only to the right level. No extra pushing, no begging. They even refused to reverse a fee but were ok to close the account. They threw in a sweetener in terms of points but – no – sorry there is no reversal of fees. That’s a spine. I respect having a spine. I too refused on principal grounds – I don’t pay for cards – charge cards or credit cards. My usage and spending potential itself should warrant a free card. So we agreed to disagree and the parting was sweet. I hope someday I will use an American Express card again. And this time I plan to use it regularly. I have great faith in the service.
Coming back to zappos. Exiting must be easy and pain free. One of my old broking franchisees once told me that he always tells his customers – that many people give you service to open an account, but he will give you the same service and commitment when you want to close an account. Closing an account is not personal and when you close a relationship, the true value of the company comes to fore. But it also seems that the zappos offer is also an interesting psychological ploy. In one freakonomics podcast (highly recommended) that talks about quitting, they talk about the zappos example. Dan Ariely, a social scientist says that since the offer is a limited period offer, post the offer lapsing, cognitive dissonance kicks in and people justify their reason to stay on. They have just paid a premium (in effect by refusing the cash deal) and hence will look for justification in terms of culture etc. ok – now I not sure if that was the necessary objective when zappos started the offer, but I think it works well. By publically stating within my team that I would be more than happy to let people leave and will not hold them back, especially when it comes to salary, I end up having conversations that really matter. Work, growth, learnings, enrichment etc. What’s the point of having conversations that you can’t really do much about? And that will always remain cold and heartless. We have that as a cold and heartless conversation, wherein I am not expecting gratitude and the employee isn’t expecting benevolence.

experiences CCD

I think the blog can be a great place to share some consumer experiences. Today let stalk about a really bad one at Café Coffee day. I started lecturing again at Jai Hind, so I was exiting VT station at 8.08 am and was running towards Churchgate for Jai Hind. I was pretty sleepy so I decided to get a coffee at the CCD at VT. I was glad to see it open. I enter to see one of the employees sleeping on the couch. Thank you to the inventor of the cell phone camera. See the photo below. Bloody hell, he was sleeping without his shirt on.

Someone has to tell CCD that you get the bloody café up but it requires some effort to keep the ambience going. After all people are not paying 35 bucks for a 5 ruppee coffee. They are paying for the whole experience. But the ordeal does not stop there. I ask for a take away. The hero makes it and gives it to me, but with one crucial element missing. ‘Sir there is no lid’. What the fuck. No lid for a take away. And you tell me after the coffee is made and after I am made to wait for 5 minutes. 5 minutes are an eternity on the morning where the world is rushing to everywhere. He then figures and says ‘ but I can put foil on it’. huh… ok just give it with the foil then. He puts the foil and a rubber band. Really crude. And I rush off. I make a small hole for the coffee. I have to drink it right? The foil tears more than required. While walking I spill a little on the lovely formal pin stripped shirt and really get pissed in the morning. Bloody pain. I should be suing them for like a million bucks. But I guess these service chains will get to their own demise very soon. I don’t need to bother with what will eventually die out. Yes it’s a prediction. CCD will die a death very soon. Its ok to start a chain but it tuff to keep the level of service and quality day after day across all outlets. Obviously they do not really invest in training, upkeep and maintenance. I don’t think they figured this out yet. Good luck to them.