process over results

This month is possibly going down as the most confused month i have had since a long bloody time. Ever since i started the blog, one thing remained firm - at least one post a month. I thought that this month is going to be an epic month. I would have just started working in my new firm and there would be plenty of updates and hence plenty to talk about. The truth is that there was plenty to talk about and plenty to update.  A lot of things happened in this month. i think the problem was reverse, so much happened that actually a paralysis happened on what all to talk about.

The new job has been a roller coaster of emotions. Too many emotions to handle. I tried working hard… really hard, i tried giving freedom, i tried letting go, i tried everything. Sometimes things just cant move that easy. 

on the home front - there was another battle of epic proportions! Jispa had her exams and this time she was to prepare for it on her own. Five days before her math paper she asked for help. I sit down with her only to realise that she not only requires help - she requires a complete revision of the entire portion. Everything. She might have understood while the teacher taught but now, its gone for her head. I had to do almost every sum in the text book. So in 5 days i had to cram in a few months of work. the stress and the tension of all this was extremely high and impossible to handle. We were so angry at her. Overtime we used to ask her and she was maintained that she understood and had studied her portion. But when we did math - she was completely off. So everyday i would reach home and get her to study. we would do sums from the notebook. Certain stuff, i could teach her, but certain stuff, she had to teach me before i understood enough to teach it back to her. How was this even possible… I have no clue. On one occasion, we had house the powers of youtube to help us. Finding the squad root of a number using division method. This was something completely alien to me and Jasmine. So we studied on youtube and then explained what Jispa had written in her notebook.

This was a project that Jasmine and me had to do together. In the end - it was so intense that it consumed all our free time. We were so pissed at Jispa. She would have failed for sure if we had not intervened. At the end - her paper went off pretty ok. there was one question which a real googly. something that required me to think quite a bit before i could safely answer. Jasmine too was confused on that one. this was not even something that was taught in class. I don't understand this - I understand asking questions outside the base, but asking questions that aren't tackled in class at some level - i disagree. but still it did really matter. We told Jispa that now onwards - you are not studying only by yourself. You will study on Saturdays with us and you will do a lot of math. Also i told her - give your exam with no worries - now whatever you get in math we wont tell you anything.

Jispa sis not quite understand this. Why would we scold her and make her study and then tell her to forget about the marks. Its simple really. Process matters not results. thats what i have always maintained. If you insist on studying on your own and not want us to interfere then you get good marks. But if you get us involved from the start itself and allow us to help you and push you to do better, then in the end your results are our results and we are in it together. Math we did together. We should have started earlier and done better, but its ok now. you have got enough stress from us on this itself. So now lets focus on the exams which you give without stress.

I have had the stress of exams for a long time. I hated them. For many years afterwards i still got nightmares on giving exams. that i have reached the exam hall and i am not prepared for the papers. i am blank in front of the paper. I did not want to give this stress to Jispa. Invariably there is enough on her. It seems after the math paper - a lot of kids cried.  Around 10-15 girls and a couple of guys cried that either they could not finish or the paper was tough. Jasper didn’t. thank God! After all - it was just a  math paper and nothing much beyond.  there is no point stressing so much. Even the class topper cried. Whats the point in being topper, if you cry after the paper. Seesh.

So now i am dying to see how I fared in the math paper. Or how we all fared in the math paper. The stress of this is too much to bear.

So that came along with my new job and screwed my brains twice over.

It was a great month. Also this new job, i sit outside in the bay and i dont have a keyboard draw and it hurts to type so much on the laptop, plus i have taken a mac for the first time… ohhh… this is going to be painful! But at least - i hit the one post per month minimum program!

belong

Its been three days at the new office for me now. The first day was very tough. I spent the day battling a sense of depression. It come from various sources – a stong missing of my old team and the new office which somehow doent know how to welcome a new person. I remember the last time I was at a new place. It was 11 years ago. My first interaction with my new team was an offsite. Here I remember feeling like shit and alone and not knowing whats going to happen. I did not know if I could belong here.

This place was also a nightmare on the first day. When my old team celebrated a birthday at office and sent me the photo, I was completely upset. Smashing a cake on everyone at a birthday was my thing. By the time I left it was a ritual for everyone to smash a cake on everyone and then take a selfie with all the constituents. This time I was not in photo and instead there was my replacement. That was not fair.

I returned home in a bad mood and was not sure what I wanted from life. It carried on till the next day morning and then I did not have time to sulk as I had one meeting afetr another. Suddenly after the second meeting – shit changed. Something happened and I got my groove back. I got out of the meeting and started taking charge of the numbers. I got the relevant people in the teama nd started barking orders left right and centre, I started teaching how the numbers must reflect, started attacking the existing way of doing things, called the team one by one and started talking to them. I spoke to each one of them and asked them what they were doing what they wanted to do in life. I started talking to some of founders and asked them what they wanted to do in their streams of business. Then I started cracking the whip on everything I could see.

Now I am in control, now I am back and suddenly nothing is new to me.

Yesterday I was telling Jasmine, All it needed was me to believe in myself and my abilities. The first day was just an abberation. Once I believed in myself and knew that I belong here, everything else just fit into place. I asked the right questions and got the right direction. I pushed for what I wanted and the people all fell in line.

Of course right now, the guys must be wondering what kind of a mad man they have as a boss. This guys comes in at 8 am and then leave a little earlier than 8 pm. Constantly pushing, showing agression and urging them on while laughing, cracking jokes and suddely calling a spade a spade.

Of course I have matured in the 11 years. With more than 17 years of work experience, I know how to push the bar on work to be done. The first day as I said was an aberration, it was an important transition day. The second day was even more important – now I know that I can and that’s easy. Just trust your instincts. Like the first day for a  new batsman on forign soil for the first time in a test match. You prod, you poke, you sulk, you move around. You get a few overs in, you possiblyget out and you don’t know what hit you.

When you come back for the second innings or the next day, you have had time to reflect and to look back at yourself. Then you tell yourself to just chuck it and trust yourself, and enjoy your time. The first ball hits the bat and then things fall in place. When I played cricket I have opened many times. I always liked to go to the non striker first. It allows you to get a feel of the match. I also always liked to listen toteh sound of the first time the ball hits the bat. I hate to get out without even touching the ball with the bat. Once I feel that, I know I can bat and then I know I belong and then its on form there.

I started here by the numbers and the way we looked at them. I got my team to start working on them. To start analysing them in a way that made sense to everyone who needed to analyse them. Things started falling in place from then on. Analysis is something that I have always been good at. Getting numbers in a format that aided decisions is extremely important but a few get it right. I cant understand why it would be so difficult, but now I have had years of training on it.

So yes, the first ball was outside the off stumo which I left. The next ball was on the stump which I defended firmly and the ball raced away between covers to the boundary line. I belong.

long good bye

On the 31st of last month, I closed a huge innings of my life. I resigned finally from the Kotak Group and searched for my passions elsewhere. This was a really difficult decision to make. I knew I had to do what I had to do. The digital industry was booming and I couldn’t stay out of this for a long time. I had to experience and understand digital in its entirety and had to take the plunge.

The difficult thing was the team and the fact that I had to leave a team, which I had so painstakingly built. Everyone barring two, were people that I had hired and trained. The two were from before but I had trained and groomed them as well. It was an emotional thing more than anything else.

There was a three-month notice which I had to serve. This was a really weird period with me not knowing what was really expected of me. It was a tough phase emotionally and mentally. At the end of which my team got really emotional. Towards the end – I was dreading the last day. I think others were as well. Everyone knew it was going to become tough and emotional and people would cry. No one really wanted to cry openly and neither did I want to nor did I want anyone else to. Normally when people leave, we do a speech session where each one gives a short talk on the person leaving and the person leaving gives one talk on every individual. That is the surest way to kill you emotionally. So tactically I think everyone agreed that this was something we were not going to do. So we assembled and had some coffee and then I gave a speech to all. I gave my last words of advice and a brief about what I thought I faced at the firm and the obstacles and the high points. I gave advice that I thought was relevant for them. And I left it at that. And then I let it go. Some were teary eyed and some went to the loo and cried and some just hugged.

Also I tried to write something that they would read at rest and get a sense of what I thought and what my philosophy was. It was my feeble attempt at a legacy!

Here it is

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Hi Guys

I have spent the last 5 years trying to build the marketing function in the middle of the digital landscape. The truth as I saw it was very apparent. Mass media as we understood it as marketers is dying. The new digital landscape is allowing for a large range of options that we were not available for the marketer. The times have changed. While it is easy to deride the old ad ring in the new, not everything we learnt in the past is to thrown out. The fundamental principals of marketing remain steadfast.

Understanding customers, gaining insight and solving unfulfilled needs uniquely is still very much in fashion and I think it will remain in fashion for a long time to come. Yes Kotler and all the gurus will be even more relevant. The digital landscape allows the marketer to micro target and follow a customer through many of his life stages and the brand can stay relevant and push for an appropriate call to action at each of the stages. Brands with deep understanding and intellect will be able to build even stronger bridges with their customers. Digital allows for this – it encourages it. the success you see around you is from those companies who have managed to keep this connect very sharp and alive across the life cycle.

More math and more tech will surely come in. Does that mean that creative will die?  On the contrary creative will see a reinissance like never before. With a spectrum of moods and million ways to reach, what will break the clutter? Mere relevance is not going to be enough. Creative will come in. And the best part – creative will get instant validation of whether it works or not.

The good old days of planning your year with one big campaign will go. If tech development can get Agile, marketing will as well. Marketing will release in versions. There will be wave of marketing campaigns. These will run parallel and sequential to each other.  There will be chaos – organized and unorganized. The marketing manager will have to live with ambiguity. In fact the fuzziness of campaigns will have to be built in and accounted for.

It’s not that wastage will stop. Waste will always be there but this will be in the form of exhaust that can be analysed. This will lead to further efficiencies to be built in. Campaigns will be designed for testing and collection of feedback and data will decide which one will run its course.

These are what I see playing out in marketing. These are forces that I have learnt will shape marketing for time to come. But the greatest mystery I have tried my best to solve is the mystery of motivation of man! This has taken me most of my adult years and I don’t think have come too close to cracking it. Many different incidents and experiences have shaped my thinking. When I first started my work life my limited interaction with leading people was the stuff I did in college – I was the secretary of a few societies. But clearly I wasn’t that good at it. Later on when I started work, I was a disaster as I took a lot of time to understand that people have various different motivations and many different things that make them tick or not… Understanding this has taken up most of my time.

The challenge here is also not the people per se. The challenge I felt at start was simple – where does the person end and where does the firm start. Who is more important? The firm or the person. What if they are at cross purposes to each other? Whom should I develop first? Whose interest is paramount in daily interactions or even at a strategic view point?

It then dawned upon me that the answer was simple – it’s the people. I got upon this in a simple way – people were in front of me all the time. The firm was still two steps away. Firms are more complex and very weird. They designed for profit maximization. People aren’t generally built that way. They respond to stimuli and they tend to reciprocate. You get feedback over a period of time.

People are what make an organization and people are what take it forward. People are capable of going beyond what you thought was possible. People are ones executing things for you. And people need to be trained or pushed at best. They need to go beyond what they think is possible by them. All they need is someone to trust them and believe in them. Surely some funny characters come along. These don’t believe you or are skeptical of everything they see or hear that doesn’t fit their world view. My aim was to simply take people who were positive, wanted to do good and helped them do good. And people grow, invariably they grow by doing good things for the firm and then the organization grows along. The organisation growth is the byproduct of people pushing the paradigms of growth and not the other way around.

Hence this philosophy shaped my work life. Bet on people, train people, push people. This is reality as I see it. Push them hard. Those who don’t want to be pushed will move aside. Those want to be pushed will do good things for themselves and others. They take the team forward as well because at the end… everyone wants to do well.

This has been deeply enriching and rewarding for me – and of course deeply frustrating as well. But in the end as you stack up all the pros and cons – I realized this is the way I like to lead my life. By putting faith in people. Always having time for them and always being there to guide them. It works weirdly within the organization as the rest find the camaraderie developed uneasy. They throw stones, call names and express disbelief. They laugh at the times it fails – which invariably it will in isolated instances. But on the whole, it creates something that many aspire to but few actually do.

These are my big take aways or leave behinds.

Things around you will change – at a pace slower than what you predict but will come and hit you faster than you realize it. So keep learning all the time.

You are nothing without people around you. Keep them as your priority all the time. Push them forward, propel them but don’t hang on to them. So keep teaching all the time.

This is my distillation of my life. All of you have contributed in many ways to this. Some by your mistakes and some by your advice and some by your behavior or attitude. But the one I treasure the most is what you taught me by your love. You show it different ways and I treasure it so much. this is what I carry on as confidence when I move on. That  - I may piss off people, some may hate me, but some – some I think genuinely love me.

All I hope is not that we keep in touch. Life is fast and busy and many forces push us away. If we are in touch then great and if not then great. But if you catch me at a mall, or at a movie or anywhere just loitering about – I hope you will shout out to me or at the very least look at your friend or kid or anyone with you and point out to me and say – you know that guy – he is Jaimit – I worked with him and I learnt a lot.

Because honestly with all of you – I learnt a lot!

keep renning

Teaching Jispa is to go on a journey yourself. Now more and more I am the guy in charge of the studies. In many ways I am the fall guy if anything happens to Jispa academic pursuits. Haha! I think this has come about thanks to two things – first Jasmine just doesn’t seem to have the patience to deal with the all the extra science and history and everything else. She would really need to up the ante and keep researching if she needs to be relevant. And second – more importantly – Jispa drives her up the wall. I think these two aren’t really designed to coexist and learn from each other. They are designed to be happy if they decide to let each other be.

So I am the guy. Buts interesting and its helping me in more ways than I can imagine. It’s a enriching experience. What Jispa learns in school is completely different from what I have been taught or in the way that I have been taught.  Her geography text book is with every penny and her history teacher forces her to think and research. They push the child into thinking and having an opinion beyond the syllabus or what’s written. While I was growing up, the rules were simple – textbook wrote – you memorized and you puked on the exam whatever you retained. Independent thought and inquiry was not really encouraged except for the personal beliefs of certain professors who naturally brought it into their teaching styles.

So I like it when we do geography its important to understand the history of the place and some other associated facts. Like right now we are doing China in Geography. If I have to teach her I better learn a lot more than what I know, as it helps in the discussions. Here of course learning channels like youtube have helped a lot, where some seriously talented people are putting their talent to good use. The Crash Course channel on youtube is especially useful for understanding history. So while learning about China I heard a few terms on Confucianism which I then further researched and its quite interesting that these principals are pretty universal in nature and that at the core of it, they can be applied to various situations that we face today.

Here in Confucianism, the Sage archetype is the ideal but it hard to achieve and hence there is another one for us mortals to get –  Junzi. I like this guy. ‘A superior person’. This man can stay in poverty, does more, speaks less, loyal obedient and knowledgeable. He disciplines himself. This man stands in contrast to the Xiaoren. The xiaoren is the ‘petty person’, someone who doesn’t grasp the values of virtue and goes only for immediate gains. These two archetypes are the types you get in offices. The text says that a ruler must be surrounded by junzi and not xiaoren. Which is true. I have seen it many times that good nice leaders quickly get surrounded by xiaoren and this starts clouding their judgment and affects how they behave. I have seen them in all orders and magnitude. The typical xiaoren is the insecure idiot who butters up his boss, surrounds himself by stooges, keeps his stooges insecure all the time and pumps bad blood in the system. These xiaoren have to be exterminated if the organization has to function. You have to keep these away from you, as far away as possible if you don’t want to turn into one yourself. I have seen it here where a leader whom I trusted and respected was clouded by the xiaoren in his coterie. He ate up the system form inside and left a lasting legacy of distrust and infighting. The leader, who is a good guy, had only one fault – he let the Xiaoren in. When you let one come in – you not only allow him to come in but in effect you also keep the junzi out. The two cannot co exist. The Junzi slowly stayed out of the leadership and were marginalized.

As a marketing head – I have had the experience of leading teams. I see the insecure people everywhere. Some of them in the team try and become my friends – close friends. Sure – I am all for friendship but then they quickly realize that just by being close to me doesn’t really mean that they get any preferential treatment as regards special coaching or perks or salary. They get equally jammed when make mistakes or have issues. Typically I have learnt that they like to hog time like pac man and let anyone else come in. The more time the xiaoren spend the less time the junzi have. By definition the junzi is a superior man – he doesn’t stoop so low as to fight. So you have to allow the junzi in. call him or her inside the circle, take an effort to listen to him and to understand his point of view. Often it’s not the junzi who is eating away your time – it’s the xiaoren.

So the leader must fight and fight hard to push these characters into their respective places. Bring the good guy in and push the bad guy out. Slowly of course as you do this – I have seen the insecure form a clique of their own and then branch out to other trees where they can fertilize seeds from their own toxic poop. Hehehe… I like that metaphor. It seems so apt. so these negative guys will slowly go away and you will be better off. Ofcourse you will miss the attention that these jokers gave you, but will live to be a stronger and wiser person. To become the Sage, you will have to wean yourself off from the licking that the xiaoren will give you.

So what’s the hope for people to more to the junzi archetype? Here also Confucius has given us an answer. To become the Junzi the core is Ren. So WTF is Ren? “Ren is the  virtue denoting the good feeling a virtuous human experiences when being altruistic.”  If that sounds impossible to achieve – our friend has given us simpler solutions as well - "Ren is not far off; he who seeks it has already found it." Ren is close to man and never leaves him.

 Also –

Ren relies heavily on the relationships between two people, but at the same time encompasses much more than that. It represents an inner development towards an altruistic goal, while simultaneously realizing that one is never alone, and that everyone has these relationships to fall back on, being a member of a family, the state, and the world.

Ren is not a concept that is learned; it is innate, that is to say, everyone is born with the sense of ren. Confucius believed that the key to long-lasting integrity was to constantly think, since the world is continually changing at a rapid pace.

The more I read about all this , the more I realize that all of this is open to interpretation and the answer is in many ways for each one of us to seek for ourselves. I think the essence of both Indian and Chinese thought is to look inside and seek for truth. This truth I think, is different for each one of us. The truth that lets humanity survive and thrive and progress is the truth that takes into consideration the truth of others. The duality of truth or the acceptance that various different truths can co-exist at the same time is the essence to being Humane, or experiencing ren. That’s why I think he says that Ren means to constantly think. I think it means to constantly evaluate our ideals and beliefs in relation to various different things. What the society now is thinking and what it means today to live or the force of technology or cultural change or whatever. Constantly think and relook at your self and see if you are indeed humane. Thast why he says – anyone can ren. Its inbuilt, one only has to search. The act of searching itself is to find ren. That itself is ren.

From here on there are two other interesting words – li and yi. “Li is the action which has been deemed appropriate by society, yi is the action that is indeed correct”. This is also very deep. Many times we do ‘li’ because that’s the path of least resistance. Change in society happens when ‘yi’ is done by the unreasonable man, even when it contradicts ‘li’. Many times we see ‘yi’ in action and we condemn it. Only when you have ren, will you reflect and figure if there is li in the action and then think twice when you pronounce judgment.

 These are such amazing references from philosophy or history. I loved reading about it and thinking about it. The internet is a lovely thing of course but it also requires you to have some ren on your own. It can give you a lot of information, but what you make out of it and refer back to your life is yours alone. I am glad that I had a daughter as early as I did. Thanks to Jispa, I am physically fitter than what I would have been and my diet is much better, as I am forced to follow her swimming life style. But also thanks to her questions and her education, I dare say, I am smarter than what I would have been. It is finally what you make out of it. There are sponges filled with water everywhere you look, how much you squeeze out of it is your problem.

Some days I aimless surf the net and see videos, but here, one led to another and the reason to surf was pointed. It was a geography class topic. China. Who knew how it would pan out? and definitely philosophy was not I was aiming for… but the mind – it’s such a lovely thing, isn’t it? keep ‘renning’

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Here is a video on our hero. I don’t necessarily agree blindly with all his ideas but – its an interesting point on the never ending , ever expansive map of philosophy.

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!

free bonus inspirational video!

priceless? better than priceless

Kids these days. They like to listen to their iPods or cell phones with music in them and shut them selves to the world. I once won an iPad mini in a contest. The moment they announced a contest in one of the jaunts, I knew that iPad was mine. I went home and Jasmine did not want the mini and Jispa preferred a portable iPod. So we went to our neighborhood shop and exchanged the same for an iPod.

Jispa hardly ever gets her iPod to play with. We don’t let her play too much on it and we don’t let her listen too much music on it. We are really bad ass parents. Seriously I think we are irritating but I think with only one kid we want all the time we get with the kid to be great and hence we are scared of losing her to the device. But still I think she gets some time with it. Especially vacations. Plus we have another issue. We don’t have too much music. At least not the music that a teenager would want to listen to, to load onto the iPod. So after a point of time, there was not much use for the iPod as such.

Jispa kept wondering how to get her music. I told her to get it loaded in by her cousin brother. That’s where you get all your vice in life from – cousins. Also Jispa said she wanted new headphones. I for one, couldn’t understand why would she want headphones. She has the great ones that come with the iPod from Apple. These are phenomenal in ear ones with superior design and engineering. She gave some answer which I refused to even listen – but yes I understood – the kid wants new headphones – the ones that all kids end up wearing. I think it’s fashionable to have these big ones on your head. You see them at all the swim meets. That’s the new cool. Of course Jispa believes that she wants them as the in-ear ones hurt her ears and that fashion has nothing to do with it. Who was I to judge.

So I promised her that once she gets her songs, I will buy her a head set. After she got her songs loaded, I started scouting around for decent headsets. I had weird problems to content with. These headsets can get really expensive. I don’t mind getting her one but then managing them and ensuring you don’t forget them anywhere and then taking care of them etc would have been a huge issue.  So expensive ones area  problem, especially if you have anal parents. I prefer giving her something that I don’t mind her losing so that I don’t lose my mind. Second – the big bulky ones with cover her ear completely and will block out all noise. That’s another problem. Remember what I said – we don’t want to lose her completely. So if we give her something that will block out all noise, it would create another set of issues from a parents point of view. Now for Jispa’s point of view – I can’t give her something that’s not cool. No shitty brands would help. Kids look at each other and are hugely influenced by the brands. I am quite sure that a 13 year old can make out the differences between different headsets if not for the brands. Also the headsets with the right brands look cool on the head! So now we have the variables – over the head earphones, nice brand, cool design, relatively cheap, not completely covering the ear. And voila – here you are the amazing JBL headphones costing two thousand bucks available at flipkart for 700 bucks. Light weight, decent brand and not too big. They look cool as well.

When I gave Jispa the surprise…. When she saw the ear phones – she smiled. Wow getting your teenage to smile after you get her stuff – that was priceless. Feeling happy and not broke after your teenage daughter smiles – better than priceless! 

I cant tell you what to do

Jispa is turning 13 and with that she is also turning into a monster that I have no clue on how to control. But the hell… why should a parent even be controlling anything about a child. It’s just not right. I don’t think as parents we really know what is in the best interest of the child. Of course we know some stuff from experience that we know is dangerous – like smoking kills or that liquor is something that’s not really advisable or weed is bad. But most of the other stuff – we have no clue. We think we do… we believe we do but really – we don’t. Hell we don’t even know what the hell we want from our lives – yet we try and control a lot for our children – I don’t understand why we do it. Today I fight…. Almost every day I fight myself. There are certain dos and don’ts that I would try and implement. Besides that I try and fight the need to bear over her and try my best to let her be. Of course mommy is right. The more you let her be the more she will get into trouble that she herself doesn’t want to. But then isn’t the role of parents to stop her from getting into trouble versus the role of growing up is to get into trouble all the time and then figuring out two things. How not to get into trouble in the first place then figuring out how to get out of it, once you have gotten into it. This is the weird dichotomy of parenting. We don’t know. I think we naturally think we are good at stopping trouble and we don’t realize that stopping trouble now is inviting trouble later on. So what’s the right answer? In parenting there is possibly no right answer. You invent things as you get along. Especially if you have one child…. There are no mistakes to learn from.  Just simple stuff that you think you would have loved to have as a child and the stuff you don’t want or want to have for your children. In many ways that is simple parenting.

I want Jispa to be free… I want her to say that in someday that she is what is … thanks to herself and not thanks to anyone – not her dad, not her mom not anyone else…and definitely not God. She has to be like the apocryphal story of Napolean who on coronation – lifted the crown from the hand of the Pope and crowned himself – saying that none me is fit to crown myself. In many showing that he owed his entire rise to himself and to no one else. I have had many mentors in my life. I have a learnt a lot from so many people. Not all tried to teach me, but the simple act of observation has helped me more than anything else. I am so happy that my dad never could pick up the phone and get me going on anything. He also passed away way before I could really use his help. My college my girlfriend (now wife) my job and I dug my own mentors from those around me.

So all that I have or don’t - is thanks to me. At my death bed I have myself to blame or thank. Of course Jasmine has helped me achieve whatever I could have or couldn’t have (you have to take both). But at the end – I have realized – you are alone. You stand alone – you die alone. The faster you realize that the better you are. It’s like the story of Valmiki who wrote the Ramayana – he takes to being a ascetic when he realizes that his family refuses to take his share of sins as your sins are yours and you have to bear the consequences of them. In many ways sins are the metaphors for your decisions. You have to bear them yourself. Others have their own to bear.

In the years that I have worked or taught – I see that many times – in fact I feel most of the time – parents are wrong. After a point of time they can’t really tell you what to do in life. I think all advice is stupid. People have to decide what they want to do for their own. Your children, my child has to decide for herself on what to do. What can I do? I can advise, I can guide, I can push, I can convince – but do I really know what’s right… no I don’t. Experience will tell me something – something that tells me that the process of decision making may not be right – but it doesn’t tell me if the decision is right or wrong. To add to this – we don’t believe that quitting is the right option.

Right now Jispa is swimming. Realistically – she is not a great swimmer. She is a good swimmer, but I don’t think she would be counted as amongst the great swimmers. She finds it tough to break in to the state team. She does well to represent Mumbai. Now what’s the right thing for her? One of her seniors from another club was applying to American Universities. The university looked at all the certificates of the national champion and kept them aside and asked for her timings. Her timings were nowhere the ones desired by the University… so now what? Apply of academic merit. That’s all. Jasmine and I were thinking about this since some time. What the hell should Jispa be doing? He swimming regime is tough and her school regime is now going to get really tough. Academic excellence is something that will give her choice on what to follow in her years to come – not swimming. Indian Swimmers are nowhere on any stage. They have no careers and they can barely earn enough to make ends meet from swimming. It’s not an independent profession. In any case that’s hardly a choice to be made for now. Sure she can always be a sports led profession here she can use her swimming knowledge to great advantage but it still require s a decent academic grounding. So we thought that we let her swim this year and then the next year she focusses on studies while swimming just enough to enjoy and not really to break through. In any case she has to now trust her coach and really improve in this year.

Jasmine and I are tired parents. It has been really tough. Thanks to Jispa’s swimming we have made some crazy number of sacrifices. Waking up is the least of them. The Sundays spent at swim meet, the nutrition, the holidays foregone etc. we have had some great returns but physically / mentally we are done. Right now I am concentrating on something simpler – what does Jispa do next year, in three years and then in five years from now. I am glad that Jispa has no clue what she wants to do. Right now she says that she doesn’t want to be a doctor or an engineer. Her subject she likes are Geography and History. I love that. I would imagine having a child who wants to be an engineer… yuck! So we have to figure a lot of things for her. Actually see – that’s exactly what a dad says but shouldn’t. Why “we” figure what to do. She has to figure what to do. I should be only a sounding board… an absorbent as well as a reflective material at the same time. Hopefully she will figure.

On this here are two videos that I came across – very interesting ones. Believe me – they are right. see them!

Both are amazing characters who do really well on youtube

End game - One of our friends is an amazing gentleman form Denmark. He was telling me that his son was a really good tennis player and he took him to London to train at the Wimbledon. His son played a few matches there and just wanted to give up Tennis and then just did not want to play anymore and wanted to come back home. His mom said – fine – come over and you need to study there or train there if you don’t want to. Today after many years – his son says – you should have pushed me then.

learn all the time

I was explaining to some guys from my team that as a child my unhappiest memories are when we shifted from Dubai to Mumbai when I was in the fourth grade. We went from a land of everything to a land of nothing. It was just so trying on us kids.

It was made even worse as we as kids saw a side of our cousins which was different. In any case we weren’t so dam close. We stayed far away and came to India once a year for two months. At the time, coming to India from Dubai, you were royalty. You were the guys with all the foreign stuff that you gifted or stuff you brought on request. The bags would open and that would be a lovely thing as everyone would crowd around. When I grew up I made it a point not be around when bags open. When Jasmine’s brother or aunt would come in from US, I would be doubly sure not to be in the same room. I don’t want to be that person wanting something from abroad. Of course, India too has changed a lot. We have a lot here that we can get and we too got a bit richer than what we were and hence can afford it without being gifted – but still – no hanging around in anticipation. I don’t like it.

To add to that I think a little bit of political play happened. We would come and stay at our grand mom place – my Mom’s mom. She was extremely rich and my grand dad was a self-made millionaire with two buildings and a factory that printed labels. My granddad passed away many years before I was born. In fact he passed away before my mom and dad were married. The family steadily went into decline from then on. We were still rich, the factory was managed but the brothers couldn’t get along and slowly – nothing was really happening. So by then it was a household that was rich – but the fighting was slowly being brought to center stage. Then my grand mom contracted cancer. That was a bloody blow. That was the final hinge in the family door coming loose.

I think a wave on insecurity passed around the cousins. I was too small but in hindsight and from some of the conversations that I heard later, I realized that it just dint do too good for the family. In that atmosphere, I came in to Mumbai to settle down. Dad took another year and mom shuttled a bit.

Suddenly as I was telling them this story it struck me that in my office and in my own team the same is true. Around a month back I announced to the team that I was leaving. At first it was shock followed a little sadness and soon enough - given time – cracks started surfacing. Insecurity is such a big thing in our heads. People started bitching, back biting, started wondering about their roles, their future – power struggles started and funny things started happening. I am so upset with all this.

In many ways this is no different than the death of my grand mom. Here too a person is going with notice period. Here I can’t even settle the affairs completely as I would have wanted to. I don’t know whom I am handing over the stuff to. This uncertainty is what driving my office kids nuts. I hate how some of them have behaved and how they have easily declared war and how they decided to make space for themselves. The spoils are there for eating and to wait is to end up being late. So make your move.

All insecure people have a standard ploy – they build allies with others. Typically other insecure or weak people. They create trouble by building teams of us versus them.  They feed off each others insecurities or rather feed into each other’s insecurities. They waste their time and effort in trying to plot, plan and gather as much as they can for their own clan. This is a self- killing spiral. Of course it works well in many cases. Especially when the person on top is also insecure. Then he likes all these jokers. In fact many bosses I know like their kids to be insecure. They like it if they fight off each other. In secure people never ever build long term allies. They are busy plotting and scheming all the time that they don’t see anyone as full time allies. Their enemies are other insecure people and funnily – other extremely secure people. They can’t understand why anyone can be really secure. They think these secure people are put on and are not genuine. That makes them even more prone to plotting against them.

It’s a vicious circle. I see this everywhere… even amongst kids and adults alike. Cliques and gangs are built. The only real remedy is to stay away from these. There is no hope for them and there is no hope for you with them. As I have said before – even listening to them is damaging for yourself.

At 40 I learn new lessons. People are like this all the time. I give out a lot of love with my kids at office. But some of them love you back and some of them just create more issues for you. some have not really loved you but have only used your love to get themselves more secure. And as you leave they search for security elsewhere. Bah!

You learn… all the time!