What RamP's Reading: Jan'18

My reading speed is picking up and I have set an ambitious goal of reading 60 books this year - 1 book per week gives 52 and the other 8 need to be squeezed during travel. I'm reading 4 books on different themes. Mindset is a book the Satya Nadella frequently refers to in his book Hit Refresh. The authors of the celebrated Blue Ocean Strategy have come up with a follow on titled Blue Ocean Shift and given the current focus in the company and new growth this sounds like a good book to read. Principles by Ray Dalio, one of the tallest hedge fund managers is being referred everywhere and I added it to the list. Turning to Indian wisdom, I added Teachings of Ramana. 

Autobiography in Five Chapters

Ran into this powerful poem by Portia Nelson. Sometimes life can be too much on auto pilot. As we enter the last few days of 2017, it'd be nice to ponder over what this poem means to us.

Softskills Inventory

Lot of questions to ponder this Monday morning (Courtesy: Seth Godin):

What RamP's reading: Dec-17

Reading has slowed down as I learn Python and write some interesting code. This (programming) is another passion that has been suppressed for long and try to resurrect it. Only two books this time, though I expect more time during Christmas break. 

The first one is Satya Nadella's Hit Refresh. Being brought up in the Unix/Linux world during my IC stint of over 10years, I belonged to a cult that hated Microsoft (M$ as we used to call them then - late 1990s when they were fighting too many anti-monopoly lawsuits) and refrained reading anything about Microsoft/Gates. Things have changed and its a good time to understand how M$ is getting transformed. 

Second one is a book recommended by one of my mentor. The book deals with cognitive bias that clouds our thinking. Couldn't gather courage to ask why he reco'd this book, though I have a good guess, go en what the book is about! 

The book contains 99 short chapters that will help in judging the common mistakes made by the people and they learn how to avoid them.Have you ever:

• Invested time in something that, with hindsight, just wasn't worth it?
• Continued doing something you knew was bad for you?
• Taken credit for success, but blamed failure on external circumstances?

Take Jeff Bezos's Advice for Success

Full article here. Sounds so easy!

Food for thought for the Weekend (11-Nov-17)

Food for thought for the Weekend: My series where I present assorted collection of interesting blog posts, TED talks, podcast and articles I read/listened this week, some quotes that resonated with me, excerpts from my own reading.

What Steve Jobs taught Guy Kawasaki About Intelligence: Many times we feel changing the decisions we made might make us look foolish and tend to perpetuate the mistake. Guy Kawasaki (Apple Evangelist, and now a VC), shares that he learnt from Jobs that it actually is a sign of intelligence. Guy also argues that though it was very tough working with Jobs, it eventually made you better.

2. The Little Black Book of Stunning Success: Robinsharma, the author of the "Monk Who Sold His Ferrari" is giving away this gem of a book free. Grab it. (Registration is needed. Scroll the page one screen and you'd see the registration page to your left).

3. Men, Want to Fight Sexism at Work? Read Sheryll Sandberg's blunt advice: Well-intentioned men are often eager to know how they can be better allies. Sheryl has some advice. 

4. Masters of Scale: In this series of podcasts, Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn) interviews industry giants specifically on how companies grow. Great resource if you want to hear directly from the horse's mouth.

Have a great weekend!

I no longer have patience

Wow!!

Fighting Imposter syndrome

Impostor syndrome is a concept describing individuals who are marked by an inability to internalize their accomplishments and a persistent fear of being exposed as a "fraud". This psychological phenomenon, reflects a belief that you’re an inadequate and incompetent failure, despite evidence that indicates you’re skilled and quite successful.

I came to know only recently that there is a name to that and a lot of high achievers feel so. Deep down they feel like complete frauds and attribute their accomplishments as a result of serendipitous luck. Studies have shown that there is a high percentage of people who think so and most of us would have thought about it once in a while, if not all the time.

I ran into this TED talk playlist that has some very interesting talks on fighting it. Please pass this on to someone you know who might be low on confidence and fighting to over come the phenomenon. Even otherwise there are some good career tips.

Have a great week ahead.

Today

Is there anything worth starting TODAY?

Food for thought for the Weekend (4-Nov-17)

Food for thought for the Weekend: My series where I present assorted collection of interesting blog posts, TED talks, podcast and articles I read/listened this week, some quotes that resonated with me, excerpts from my own reading.

1. Jim Rohn: What basket ball can teach us about Responsibility: Jim Rohn, one of the leading productivity experts says "I’ve always felt that accepting responsibility is one of the highest forms of human maturity. A willingness to be accountable, to put yourself on the line, is really the defining characteristic of adulthood." 

2. Robin Sharma: Three Apps for World Builders (60 sec video series): Robin Sharma, author of The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari says "With better awareness you can own your craft. Use these 3 apps to amp up your game to world-class levels". 

3. Travis Bradberry: Nine types of people who never succeed at work: Check whether you have one or more of these behaviors.

4. Dr. Krumer: Women respond better than men to competitive pressure: analyzing more than 8,200 games from Grand Slam tennis matches, Alex Krumer of the University of St. Gallen and his colleagues conclude "Women respond better than men to competitive pressure"

What RamP's reading: Nov-17

Could not complete the books I had planned to read last month. Hence there are only two books. The first one, is about "how to study maths". I've started looking into concepts around AI/ML and it does involve brushing up some math fundamental that I'm out of touch with. This book is not a traditional maths book in that it teaches how to approach maths and not the theorems and concepts themselves (thanks to Prabhat, though he reco'd this book in a very different context). It might take more than few months to read this book. The other one by the legendary football coach of UCLA, John Wooden. Coach Wooden as he is popularly known, has written a lot of books on leadership, but in this particular book he talks about his mentors and his mentees. Hope to learn some tips on both being a good mentor and a mentee.

The Expert Beginner

Ran into the phenomenon of an "expert beginner" in one of the mailing lists that I subscribe to. It immediately stuck a chord as I've run into lot of people in my career (and I myself have been one, though I'd like to believe occasionally). Expert beginner is a dangerous (to the health of the team) person who is neither an expert (therefore we can't trust the person's judgement), nor is a beginner. The big problem is that he/she believes he/she is "indeed an expert". They have stopped learning having maxed-out (at a local maxima), and have beliefs like "I know that I'm doing it right because, as an expert, I'm pretty much doing everything right by definition" and/or "If I don't know something, it must be easy or may not be worth looking at it".

This is how the author Eric Dietrich describes them:

Expert Beginners are developers who do not understand enough of the big picture to understand that they aren’t actually experts. What I mean by this is that they have a narrow enough perspective to think that whatever they have been exposed to is the best and only way to do things; examples would include a C# developer who pooh-poohs Java without ever having tried it

Found it interesting? You may want to read the two complete posts on this topic:

1. How Developers Stop Learning: The Rise of the Expert Beginner

2. How Software Groups Rot: The Legacy of the Expert Beginner

Incompetence behind authority

How Well Are You Handling Intimidators In Your Life?

As a part of my reading list for Oct'17, I just completed reading "Winning Through Intimidation: How to be the victor and not the victim, in business and life". The title is misleading, in the sense that the book doesn't teach you how to intimidate someone, but teaches how to defend against intimidators of the world. The book is full of nuggets of wisdom, written with wit and in an easy to understand language. Over the next few posts, I'll write some of the theories the author propose and I'm sure you'd be able to relate to.

For starters, here's a quick test on how you are currently handling the intimidators you might come across (some explanation by me giving little more context for better understanding)

1. Do you often get invited to dinner, only to discover that you're the first course on the menu?
2. Do you ask your manager/spouse/neighbour/lawyer/accountant's permission before going to the rest room?
3. Are you working longer and harder hours, but just getting older?
4. Are you in awe of people who wear white hats? (Note: White hat denote a symbol of goodness; one who is admirable and honourable)
5. Do you find yourself panting whenever a Court Holder enters the room? (Note: A court holder is someone that is very charming, interested in seeking attention, makes a great first impression, sounds and acts like an expert, but in the end turns out to be an "all talk; no dough" type person)
6. Do you walk around feeling secure because so many people have told you, "Don't worry, I'll take care of you?"  
7. When your house went up in flames and the firemen came crashing through to save you, were you sitting in your favorite armchair calmly playing the fiddle?
8. Do you become easily infatuated when someone tells you what a great job you're doing?
9. Do you often wake up in reception rooms only to find that you've been sucking your thumb and playing with your yo-yo? (Note: This means whether people are making you wait endlessly to listen to you, despite their promise that they'd talk to you)
10. Do you find yourself bluffing more but walking away with less? (Note: This means whether you are issuing too many empty threats, without having the guts to see thru the same and compromising for less)

What RamP's is reading? Oct'17

I've chosen interesting topics for this month, trying to make best use of a lot of holidays:

• The first one was recommended by Prof. Cal Newport of Deep Work and So Good They Can't Ignore You fame.
• Second was recommended by Jon Bellin.
• Third book is about india's first e-commerce portal IndiaPlaza that shut shop due to the onslaught of well funded companies like Flipkart. In this book the founder CEO Vaithee explains his journey and what led to its downfall and argues why the crazy funding enjoyed by companies under perpetual loss is not sustainable.
• The author of the fourth book was a colleague of mine in one of the start-ups I worked and he now mentors start-ups and has shared his experience (and sent this book as a gift).

Find Your Zone of Genius

In this short interview excerpt, Meg Whitman, President and CEO at HP, shares how she learnt early on that building your personal brand meant doubling down on your own strengths, and doing it really, really well.

Making it to the top

Found this very interesting story on LinkedIn:

How Loyal are You?

Very early in my career a mentor drilled into my head, a few  non-negotiable virtues to follow in my professional life. One amongst them was to be loyal to oneself (and not to any organisation or a manager or a technology etc.,). It took me a while to understand and I've always strived building my career that way. I recently ran into a beautiful articulation of the concept of loyalty.

Loyalty is "about showing up, being on time, being reliable, doing what you say you’re going to do, being trustworthy, putting in a fair day’s work, respecting the work, respecting the customer, respecting the organization, respecting co-workers, not wasting time, not making work hard for other people, not creating unnecessary work for other people, not being a bottleneck, not faking work." Jason Fried, CEO of Basecamp

So this morning's question is simply this "How loyal are you?"

Have a great week!

Facilitating PDS and MDS at NID

Last week I had a great opportunity to facilitate a PDS2 and MDS2 class for our colleagues at NID. This was very different from the other classes I've facilitated. First, I knew almost all of them; Second, them being very senior professionals, there already was a lot of experience and wisdom in the room and Third, it was a four day non-stop (2-day each) which I had never done. 

It was very hectic and tiring. When facilitating, my day usually begins at 5AM, with 1.5hrs of final preparation followed by 15mins of visualising the flow. We'd meet with our co-facilitator over breakfast to exchange final notes of the day b/w 7:15-7:45AM and then leave to office/venue and plan to be there atleast 15mins before the class starts (usually 8:30AM). The classes go on till 5:15/5:30PM. We'd come back to hotel, do some emails and get ready for dinner and would be back to hotel by 9:30PM or so, then another 30mins of prep for next day, by when I'd not have any energy left.

I was little apprehensive given the reasons mentioned above, but I'm happy to note that it went very well, indeed one of my best classes (both based on my own observation and also on the formal feedback I got). Some people have asked me why I do this. There are several reasons - since I start preparing about a month before the classes, it refreshes things we ought to be doing as managers and therefore help me become a better manager (which is a long journey). Further, I learn from the lively interactions and since each time I meet different learners, my network across the company expands. Facilitators do not get special recognition, nor their work would be reduced and do it for their own reasons. It also helps that my boss take active interest and is very supportive. He always asks how things went, whom did I meet and what did I learn and would offer some suggestions/tips for the next program. The icing on the cake this time was that I facilitated with Jason White one of the most experienced facilitators, a natural presenter and comes with a lot of experience. I'm glad I took the opportunity.

Here are some pics.

PDS2 (for Individual Contributors)

MDS2 (for managers)

What is holding you back?

This Monday Morning Question:

Mindset matters .... Your agreement with reality defines your life. (@SteveMaraboli).

And a bonus from Stephen Covey:

Rejection (and the four paths)

All of us face rejection for various reasons. What we learn from them would separate the great from also rans. Seth Godin beautifully explains the four paths we have and its consequences. Are you choosing the right one?

If you seek to make change or do something important, your work will be rejected along the way. This is not in dispute.

What will you do after that?

1. Determine that what actually happened was that you were rejected, not your proposal, and that you have no right, no standing and no hope. Decide to back off, keep your head low and do what you're told from now on.
2. Realize that what might have happened is that you asked the wrong person, who wants something other than what you want. Resolve to do a better job of seeing where your work will be needed and recognized.
3. Understand that you didn't tell a story that resonated, that your homework, your details, your promise--something didn't resonate. Figure out what it was, and learn to do better next time.
4. Assume that whoever turns you down, ignores you or disagrees with you is a dolt. Learn nothing and persist.

In my experience, paths two and three are the most likely to get you where you're going. It takes grit and resilience to avoid the first path, and the fourth path is reserved for megalomaniacs, bullies and the terminally frustrated.

Source here.

Food for thought for the Weekend (19-Aug-17)

Food for thought for the Weekend: My series where I present assorted collection of interesting blog posts, TED talks, podcast and articles I read/listened this week, some quotes that resonated with me, excerpts from my own reading.

1. Gregg Kaplan: I Wish I Had Known These Things Before My First Job - Redbox founder sent this email to his son before the start of internship. Some great advice and I promptly forwarded it to my son who aspires to start his internship next year. I also realised that even seasoned professionals might get a tip or two.

2. Prasad Kaipa: Making Effective Decisions - How can we make effective decisions? Using instincts? Emotions? Data and logic? Intuition? I've been fortunate enough to attend a few training classes from Dr. Kaipa and follow his work (including his engaging book Smart and Wise: Acting and Leading with Wisdom). This essay is his reflection on how folks make effective decisions.

3. Ryan Holiday: Everything You Need To Know About Confidence, Ego, And Humility Explained In One 3,000 Year Old Story - How about a bit of stoicism this week? Ryan Holiday writes exclusively about Stoic Philosophy and author of two wonderful books Ego is the Enemy: The Fight to Master our Greatest Opponent and The Obstacle is The Way: The Ancient Art of Turning Adversity into Advantage. In this absorbing post, Ryan analyses some questions like:

• Is humility a great source of strength or makes us irrelevant?
• Where does confidence end and ego start?
• Where does confidence come from? What does it mean to be humble? How can we avoid the dangers of ego and hubris?

Enjoy the weekend. Happy Gowri and Ganesha in advance.