Good things I have learnt from my past managers

Change the circumstances and the same people will behave differently.

It is not the people but the circumstances which create the problem.

Separate the people from the problem.

What would I do if I am a chef of a restaurant and I have customers who are waiting eagerly for a meal? I would put some onion and start frying it. The smell would tell the customers that something is cooking and their patience level would rise. This would give me time to prepare what they want.

I can show you the path, but I cannot walk for you.

Why do I reject lots of resumes?

Some time back, I have been assigned the responsiblity to scan resumes for Linux requirements in our BU. The Human Resource team sends me a list of resumes which they believe should suit the profile, I go through them and then give my feedback to them. In the feedback, I am supposed to suggest to them about the candidates with whom we should go in for a telephonic interview. A thing which I had not been noticing and was brought to my notice by an E-Mail was that I was rejecting a lot of resumes at the initial scanning stage itself. Now that makes the job of the HR more tough because it means they need to get even more resumes. I was asked the reason on why I reject so many of the resumes. That made me think about what we are focused on.

I am working for the Wireless BU of a semiconductor company which is responsible for delivering sample network drivers for different BUS interfaces in Linux kernel and also other Embedded Operating Systems.

The above line summarizes the logic on the basis of which I shortlist candidates for telephonic interviews:

1. Wireless
2. Network Drivers
   
3. BUS Interfaces
4. Linux Kernel
5. Embedded Experience
6. Operating Systems

If the resume matches 6 out of 6 criteria, then he / she is my first priority. If the resumes matches 5 out of 6, I still shortlist them. Anything lesser would not do.

I am very much inspired by the following excerpt while shortlisting people (and I would be even more choosy if I had to run my own company):

An important thing to remember about interviewing is this: it is much better to reject a good candidate than to accept a bad candidate. A bad candidate will cost a lot of money and effort and waste other people's time fixing all their bugs. If you have any doubts whatsoever, No Hire.

For more details about the article, refer to The Guerilla Guide To Interviewing

And I Quote :)

How many times have you heard this quote doing the office rounds?

"Please do not tell it to anybody"

The end result of the rumour mills working overtime is that

"Everyone knows everything but no one knows anything"

Someone resigns and no one knows it
Someone does not resign, still everyone believes he / she has
Someone is promoted and no one knows it
Someone gets a new job responsibility and no one knows it

Did the Google Guys listen to me?

In my post "This is not fair" I had raised a question on Googles ability to search my posts properly. I had started adding a Category to each of my posts to make the search of the posts easier, but unfortunately the keyword search wasn't working properly. In the post, I had requested Google team (hmmmm, do they read all these posts or is it just sheer co-incidence) to check why it wasn't working? Now, they have introduced the CATEGORY FEATURE in the Beta version of Blogger. THANKS GOOGLE :)

Lage Raho Munnabhai

Director: Rajkumar Hirani

Theatre: Liberty, New Delhi

Date: 2nd September, 2006

Khosla Ka Ghosla

Director: Dibakar Banerjee

Theatre: PVR Spice, Noida

Date: 7th October, 2006

Dialogue: Jaisi bimaari waisa ilaaj

DOR


Director: Nagesh Kukunoor

Theatre: Shakuntalam

Date: 8th October, 2006

What is required to get a business running?

[Lee Iacocca: Talking Straight]

Start with good people, lay out the rules, communicate with your employees, motivate them and reward them if they perform. If you do all these things effectively, you can't miss.

My thoughts

I think if you get good people, then most of the other things follow because Good People are Good :)

Why are rules important?

They make the game predictable and help you to understand where you are moving as a team.

Why is communication important?

My Ex-Manager used to say: Change the circumstances and the same people will behave differently. Communication is important to keep things in motion, to let the team know where its moving.

Why is motivation required?

Because I have seen N number of times that people refuse to work (directly or indirectly) because there is no motivation for them to do a thing. Motivation is required to make the positives clear to the team. Whats amazing about human nature is that sometimes even a negative thing is motivating if the general belief is that it helps the team? For ex. I have seen many people do a thing very efficiently (even though they may not like it) if they believe that they are doing it for a good cause (which in a team means for the betterment of the team).

Why is reward required?

Have you ever heard about a free lunch :)? I never have.

ARZ Kiya Hai

Din mein chein nahin
Raat ko neend nahin
Ji na lage kahin
Khuda, kya yahi pyaar hai?

Khuda: Nahin beta, private job walon ka yahi haal hai.......

A logical followup question: Am I tired today?

How dates were in the earlier days?

When is my mausis marriage anniversary?
It was at some date of September when it was neither too hot nor too cold.

What is my grandmothers age?
She is around 16 years (hmmmm, maybe 15 on the days she is feeling younger :)) bigger to her eldest daughter.

What is my grandmothers date of birth?
The worlds best kept secret

How do my relatives remember moments when I was born?
There was a song being sung on the radio in the background: Yashomati mayia se pooche nand lala..... (For a change, this date is well remembered :))

Even more amazing

My grandmother, around 76, knows English and she does not even know that :) The penetration which English words have made into the Hindi language is really amazing and my grandmother is an example of it. She knows that if a landlord asks his servant to do something, its an order. Two generations elder to her, one of our relatives was a Civil Surgeon (She knows who is a Civil Surgeon and the hindi for it is Bade Wala Doctor). She knows that if she eats something really oily, her whole digestive system becomes heavy (she understands what heavy feels like but doesn't know heavy is a gift from the English world to Hindi). The hottest discussion (and we had to involve my mother also in it, which hasn't been concluded yet even after her involvement) that came up was whether Ice Cream is a Hindi or English word. Now my grandmother and mother are pretty much convinced that its Hindi, but somehow I tend to disagree. The final conclusion of the debate was that we all agree to disagree :)

Its Amazing

I am reading "The Monk who sold his Ferrari" these days. The book is all about positive thinking and the changes you can bring in your life if you want to. One of the things mentioned in the book is that for a change to become a habit, it takes 30 days. Now the amazing thing which I felt going through by blog today was that in the piece I wrote some time back on Change, my attempt at inducing a change in some of my habits also took around 30 days. I had not read the book when I attemped to make changes in some of my habits, but the fact that the numbers of days it took me to change the habit comes out to be the same as those mentioned in the book is simply amazing.

Brand Value

In the all-hands meeting, there was a discussion on how to develop the brand value of a company in India. My thoughts on it:

When I joined my first company in 2000, I did not have an idea about the professional world. I knew all the tid-bits like C, Networking, OS fundamentals and stuff you can think off, but I did not know how to apply it. I still remember the first assignment I was given in Wipro was to find out the changes in code that would be required if we make a variable from 16 bit to 32 bit. I spent days to figure that out, but the days I spent figuring that out, I had mentors beside me who spent minutes everyday to help me figure that out. Those minutes were PRECIOUS for them on that day and for me today. But the reason they had those minutes for me was that Wipro culture was built that way. You help young people out and mentor them towards the right path. It was what I wanted as a fresher and it was what they gave me. That was the BRAND VALUE any fresher willing to learn should be looking out for.

When I joined my current company in 2002, I wanted to break the boundaries I had started to feel in my first company. My first company, being a big company, had a little buerocratic culture built in. Moreover, being a services company, it had the dis-advantages of not focusing on innovation and products. I had always wanted to get the system perspective and see products taking shape. It was something that would have been difficult to materialize there, and so I came to my current company. A small company focused on product development was the BRAND VALUE a two year experience guy was looking at.

When I had five years experience, I suddenly started thinking about my long term goals. A great amount of debate focused on what I wanted to be – An architect or a manager. A parallel ladder (with equal opportunities to grow in both ladders) was the BRAND VALUE a five year experience guy was looking at.

When I will have eight years experience, I think forming a world class team would be my prime goal. A team which works like a team, is devoid of politics, is ready to be there for others, does not think about boundaries (definitely not the yeh tera kaam tha kinds). A company which gives me the liberty to do this is the BRAND VALUE I would be looking at.

Beyond that, I think its too early to talk. But if we come back to the topic of the debate, I think a single company can very well provide the BRAND VALUES which people look for at different point of their careers. Mentoring the freshers was something that was missing in my current organization till now. I would not have recommended it to a fresher when I joined here in 2002, but with the effort being spent on the topic (freshers training) over the last year, it is one of the better companies to be at this moment of time. It is a product company and if you are the kind of person who wants to learn everything, it is encouraged here. With the All-Hands, I think there would (should) be focus on getting equality between the two ladders. It is certainly the BRAND VALUE all techies want in their company and I hope we get it in my current organization.

Quote: Iski smile meri smile se badi kaisi

Question: Who in the below picture is saying this to whom?
Is it Didi to bhabhi or bhabhi to Didi?

Kitne Mahine / Saal

Thats me when I was around 2 years old. There is a custom in our family to cut the new borns hair only after the second Dusshera (Yup, I came to know about it couple of days back). I was born on 7th November and the family custom gave my hair two years security before anyone could touch them.

Now coming to the heading of the blog: Kitne Mahine / Saal. I came upon this whacky thought of re-doing the past once again. Earlier, the family custom made me look like that and 27 years down, I would like to do it for my pleasure. But, I have absolutely no idea on how much time it would take to do it. Following are the estimates I got till now:

Papa: 4 months
Saurabh: 6 months
Mine: 5 months (Chose the average till now, thats called BEING SMART)

Get the brains working overtime and tell me how much time you think it would take to get there!

The final plan is to TAKE A SNAP when I reach there in the same pose as above, thats what I call a perfect PLAN :)

Category: Personality

Birthday Card from Mamu on my 9th birthday

This is not FAIR

http://search.blogger.com is not returning proper results. I might be jumping the gun (maybe I might be missing something), but the search I have been doing for the past 10 minutes has led me to shoot the gun.

For ex.

Typing VaibhavMadan in http://search.blogger.com results all the posts I have made till date, which is FAIR.

BUT

Typing VaibhavMadan Category in http://search.blogger.com does not return all the posts which have those two keywords in them, which should be almost the same result as the previous one because I have added the Category Keyword to all my blogs just now.

I DO NOT LIKE THIS because this is NOT FAIR :(

Google guys, help me out on this one!

Category: Official

My 50th BLOG

This one happens to be my 50th Blog.

Three cheers for it

Hip Hip Hurray
Hip Hip Hurray
Hip Hip Hurray

15th November: My first Blog

50 blogs in around 85 days

This means that there haven't been lots of writing and some of them even have been the Happy Republic Day, Movie review kinds (have nothing special about them but are just blog fillers :))

There are still lots of experiences everyday that I miss everyday to write, intentionally skip to write. Some of them have been written but are not in a position to be posted and are still in draft stage.

The next step is to try and group the blogs into some categories that can be linked together logically. For ex.

1. Entertainment
2. Wishes
3. Philosophy
4. Official
5. Personality
6. Creativity
7. Sports
8. Humour

The reason I am trying to do this is that this will enable me / others to do the following:

1. Go to http://search.blogger.com/
2. Type "vaibhavmadan Humour"
3. Voila. The results will show me the things I have been writing in those categories.
4. You may call it Getting Organized or The Curses Of Being An Engineer
   
5. Depending on the mood you are in the day, you can get the blogs from the corresponding category
6. Maybe it will help you in getting cheered up, take quizzes on your personality, check out how creative I am.

Category: Creativity

The reason why I am putting this blog under the Creativity category is that I think the idea of organizing the blogs in different categories is itself creative :)

Purse, Papers, Handkerchief, Keys, Mobile, Watch

Guess what! Very soon, coming only on Shahji De Puttar Da Blog

Fundooooo attempt to raise the hits of my blog site :) Atlease, Shahjis khaandaan would hit the blog sometimes in the coming weeks and anyways they are the only members who know of this site right now.

CHANGE

Some famous Churchill quotes on change:

• To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
• There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.
  

My small efforts on changing myself. Must admit that even these two small changes in my habits took me around a month to break (almost consistently). I do not think it was important on what I tried to change in myself, but the involved process was much more interesting. For ex. I managed to get the G-Mail change done by writing this note on G-Mail. I think my memory is related to my writing skills :). I managed to get the second change done by placing the Deodrant just next to the mirror in front of which I comb everyday. Now combing is one thing which I do not think I will forget every morning till the time I become a ganja / hippi (which I bet isn't going to happen soon) and by that time the habit would be inculcated in me.

a) Atlast I have managed to get used to the "Two Tick Delete" interface provided by G-Mail with consistency. Now the annoyance feeling is gone.
b) Put lots of Deodrant in the morning. For a person used to take baths on every Holi and Diwali, Deodrant is a gift sent straight from the GOD.

Category: Personality