Snakes and Ladders

Sunday afternoon, was a day when I had nothing to do. The house was a mess as it was getting painted, hence the favourite pastime of watching Sooryavansham on SET Max (if not anything else) was not available. And freshly painted walls of whichever colour aren’t exactly interesting.

My six year old decided not to sleep and hence I ended up playing Snakes and Ladders with him. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. It is divine to play with a child. It completely de–stressed me. The pain of the monster at office, the worry of making ends meet at the end of the month, the stress of my growing paunch, receding hairline, greying hair, concern about where my son will study fifteen years from now, anxiety about whether I will have enough money to fund his education, his marriage and my retirement, the fear of ill health striking any member of the family, everything vanished for those fifteen minutes.

The hunger to get a six to start off, getting an accurate number to get the ladder, avoiding the snake, the joy at getting the ladder, the disappointment at getting a snake and the joy at finishing first were infectious. It brought back the child in me and I was extremely happy.  I should do this more often, I thought. After the game, as I was putting my son to sleep, I pondered over the game. And what it taught me.

First of all, it is a brilliant game. One rarely finishes the game, without encountering a snake and falling down. To me playing this game with the child, teaches him / her how to deal with failure. As a matter of fact, it might be interesting to observe the child’s reaction to a snake. In today’s competitive world, where success is measured by marks and the rank in class, we prepare children for success. But we don’t prepare them for failure. They need to be taught to be resilient to failure or to play on after stepping on a snake.

The first time your child gets a snake, they will be unhappy, because it will push them behind in the game. I know of parents, who will cheat and ask the kid to throw the dice again, so that he / she does not encounter the snake. Some will deliberately miscount and ensure that the kid ends up either before or after the snake. This is a huge disservice we do to the child. We have to teach the kid the rules of the game, to play by the rules even if the outcome is not in their favour. As a parent we have to ignore the child’s tantrum and cajole him / her into playing till the game is over. Most importantly we should not allow the child to quit because he / she is losing.

If anybody remembers the game, there is a snake at 99 which brings you down to 7. I think that snake is a great tool to teach the kid never to give up. Obviously you can’t give this gospel to the six year kid, but you need to inculcate fair behaviour, letting him / her lose sometimes and demonstrating that all is not lost even if someone is miles ahead. We are actually inculcating life skills in the kid.

The more I think of it, I marvel at the genius of the creator of the game. I am equally amazed at the similarity it has with one’s career. We get ladders of education, promotion, job changes in the early stages of the career and rise fast. We dodge snakes. Sometimes we step on some which are like bad bosses, tough projects, bad jobs which make you feel you are pushed back. Sometimes life is boring when we get ones and twos and we simply try to avoid that snake which will push us down further, and try to catch the ladder.

The faster we rise, the chance of stepping on a snake goes up. The chance of climbing a ladder is minimal.  That to me is the simple truth and a Eureka moment.

In the first ten to fifteen years of my career, I am used to scaling ladders. Post that ladders don’t exist. Am I ready for another for the next fifteen years of my career to be boring without scaling ladders? And that’s where a lot of us make decisions. Decision to quit the job, get into consulting or into entrepreneurship. Or we get bitten by a snake. Bad ratings, lay- offs.  At this age, we are no longer a child and hence have a huge ego. It is mentally demeaning to accept this fall.  Whether we stay in the game or leave it depends on how we react to such snake bites.

This game has taught me three lessons:

1.      There are quite a few ladders available at the beginning of the game

2.       The higher I go, the chances of stepping on a snake are high.

3.       Closer to the top, there are no ladders. It is a tough grind

Next time I encounter a snake, I hope I have the childlike tenacity to roll the dice... and look at the ladders available. Again to go up, dodge the snake and reach my destination.

My parents had safe jobs. They played Ludo. Today we are playing Snakes and Ladders.

Technology and Roller Coasters

I am sixteen. Sweet sixteen. But my wife says I am getting old. I just completed the sixteenth anniversary of my 30^th birthday last week. They say a person is as old as he or she feels. I dont think I am a day over thirty.

All women start developing a new strand of DNA when they get married. And this DNA is so firmly entrenched it is not funny. It is the DNA of showing the mirror to the husband. While she continues to rib me about being old, I consider myself young.

When she points to my being out of shape, I say round is a shape. She can outrun me, outwit me and outsmart me. But I point all of that to genes and not to age. What do I do if she has a manufacturing defect and is better than me in all these areas? After all I am human.

The one area where she is right pertains to roller coasters. While life is a roller coaster, I can’t sit on one. I am afraid. I don’t know of what, but I refuse to sit on one. She then proceeds to turn the screws by saying,  that a big sign of old age, is that I am slow to adapt to new technologies.

There are four kinds of people in this world. There are people who are technologically savvy, technologically friendly, technology agnostic and technologically averse. I believe I am on the cusp of technologically friendly and technologically agnostic. My wife maintains that I am on the cusp of technologically agnostic and technologically averse. It  is time for me to accept reality as mirrors don’t lie.

When I board a roller coaster, I lose control, especially of my life and safety. My survival depends on the safety equipment, and how my intestines react to the ups and down. I get the same feeling with technology. It is moving at a very rapid pace from being helpful to being intrusive Every website I visit, I end up leaving a footprint and I am not comfortable with that.

Last week I wanted to see how the White House looks. So I entered what I thought was the website of the White House. I was shocked at what I saw. It was a porn site. Just imagine, if I had accessed it from my workplace. I would have lost my job for inadvertently stumbling into objectionable content.

I love innovation. I love the comfort it gives me. But it makes me lazy. Makes me a parasite. Once upon a time, I used to remember the telephone numbers of my friends and relatives. Today, I dont know a single number. For survival reasons, I have to state that I remember my wife’s telephone number. But I dread the day, when l leave the cell phone at home. I am completely handicapped.

Last week the latest version of an iconic phone was launched. There were a host of jokes around how one needs to sell a kidney to buy one. The phone came with face recognition features. Apparently it would unlock only if it recognised the face of its user. There were another set of jokes about how women would be unable to open the same without applying makeup. There is an old saying “Jiska Bandar usise naache?” I am more worried about disasters. What if one is caught in one, and the onlookers who want to help and can’t unlock the phone to identify the person?

As mentioned above, I leave an indelible footprint every time I visit the world wide web. If I search for a flight ticket for Chennai, immediately my screen is flooded with hotel options for Chennai. Artificial intelligence is getting intrusive. I hear that companies are hiring psychologists to view facebook photos and fathom the mood of the person, so that an appropriate product advertisement can be pushed. A day will come when I may start getting sucked into the whirlpool of the internet and the internet will start guiding my thinking.

This is exactly happening with the Blue Whale game. Players are getting sucked in resulting in disastrous consequences. I know of exactly fine people who want to try out the game for ‘kicks’. We are at the cusp where technology will slowly take over our brain, and we will not even realise it. Daily we are getting sucked into it.

I use technology, love it but don’t want it to take over my brain.  I love the highs of technology. But am hugely scared of the lows.

That is why I stay away from roller coasters – real as well as virtual. I am not getting old, I am getting wiser. That is what I would like to believe. But mirrors and birthdays don’t lie

Casting the first stone

8^th November 2016. I was in a restaurant in Hyderabad sitting with a bunch of fresh Chartered Accountants.  It was a few minutes past 8 p.m. We were waiting for the juicy succulent kebabs to come in, when suddenly mobile phones started buzzing.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced Demonetisation,. All currency notes of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 were now invalid. Processes for exchanging the hard earned money were announced.  The next hour in the restaurant was an animated conversation. On one side there were people who extolled the virtues of this move, on the other was another bunch who criticised the move completely. 

All of us converted into armchair critics in a few minutes. It did not matter whether you understood the move, criticising and having an opinion were extremely important.The entire nation got converted into a bunch of instant economists and critics, each having acquired their expertise instantaneously. The nation got divided along political lines. and the political tamasha had begun.

Over the next few days, the media fed us with visuals of people suffering and dying while standing in queues. On the other side, there were visuals of police having found money flowing in rivers, in garbage dumps etc. Experience has told me that both sets of reporting can either be factually true or manipulated.

Over the next few months, everybody who has an opinion and more were discussing the benefits or otherwise of demonetization. It was predicted to be Prime Minister Modi’s waterloo. But the forth coming election results surprised everybody. The BJP made a clean sweep of most elections. The opposition could not believe it. They now started contesting the validity of the Electronic Voting Machines.

Anyways 10 months later RBI has finally released data. More than 99% of the invalidated currency notes have come back into the system. Most economists and armchair critics are out to fry the Government for what it calls as an unsuccessful experiment or a colossal failure.

And the Government on its part is trying to give a different spin to the episode, by insisting that the success of the Demonetisation move has to be measured differently.

As for as I am concerned, demonetisation is a thing of the past. Today by looking at the number of notes returned, we are only conducting a post mortem. The organ has been removed. Was it cancerous? Or was the surgery unnecessary?  This post facto analysis tells us whether the Prime Minister was right or wrong.

I wish the prime minister had the benefit of clairvoyance at the time of taking the decision. Or there was a crystal ball which he could have looked into and decided about taking this decision,.

Let us look at the decision making process. First, is there or was there black money in the domestic market? The answer is yes. Anyone who denies the same, is either blind or naive or motivated. Would part of it be held in currency of a higher denomination? Would these people holding this black money have difficulty in converting money into cash? The answer to both the questions is yes. With this evidence, was demonetisation a correct decision? Maybe. 

Now let us look at what foiled the plans.One there were a host of accountants indulging in a colour change operation. Secondly, there are stories of corrupt bankers, who helped these people exchange their old notes into new notes for a commission. These were the two factors which ensured that most of the notes came back into the fold. Wonder whether the Prime Minister had bargained for  the ‘support’ of these so called professionals who made a fast buck themselves in this process.

On 1^st July, 2017, addressing a bunch of Chartered Accountants, he chastised them for these activities. I don't think the Prime Minister has failed. If we look deep, we as a  society have failed.

I remember a story where a liar was going to be lynched. Along came a wise man and said, “Let the first person to  throw the stone be someone who hasn’t lied ever.” No one came forward. Similarly, for those who are expert at throwing stones at failure, let me say, “Let the first stone be cast by someone who has taken a risk and never failed.”

Grip of the Patriarch

Once upon a time Hindi movies came with a social message. It was about good winning over the evil. There was a moral to the story. The protagonist would be allowed to stray, but would suffer and would always come back to the righteous path. Since 1990s plots have changed. Most of them are now shades of grey.

However things seem to be changing. ‘Toilet – A Prem Katha’ is a movie with a strong social message. I am sure it will do a lot for the Swach Bharat Mission. Movies have a magnifying impact on society. While the movie emphasises the importance of building toilets for women, the protagonist is unable to build a toilet in his house or village due to objections from the village head and his father.

Indian culture lays an emphasis on respect for elders. I have seen families where the father figure’s writ runs large. Nobody dares protest or speak anything against him. Let us call him the controller. Deviations from his script are practised in private outside the house, only to have a mask of compliance and respect in front of him.

The controller does all this for the good of the family. He is the one who has raised the family through tough times. The children were young and the family was struggling for two square meals. The controller worked hard, put in long hours, skipped meals only to ensure a strong future for the family. And today when the family is strong and independent, he does not want to let go. He wants the next generation to carry on his legacy, not on their ideas, but as per his wishes. He still continues to wield an iron fist. Any attempts to break free are chastised.

Most of the times, the progenies of the patriarch are weak. They can’t, don’t want to take or are not allowed to take independent decisions. Initial attempts at breaking free are snubbed and chastised. The patriarch takes pride in ensuring his writ runs large across the family. The patriarch’s decisions are not to be questioned. The problem with these families, is that it becomes very difficult for the patriarch to walk into the sunset. The progenies aren’t strong enough to handle crises and the patriarch is always relied on for advice. When the patriarch is no longer available, the families struggle to thrive.

The behaviour of the patriarch is part ego, part concern, part resilience to change. And in this environment, the younger generation feels suffocated. Outsiders who get married into the family feel the suffocation even more. They come from a different environment, a different culture, sometimes even an open culture. They are raised as independent individuals in an environment where creativity is encouraged, issues are debated and people are allowed to make mistakes and learn from them. These outsiders find it very difficult to adjust within the family. They either rebel against the patriarch or leave the family. They are then accused of splitting or driving a wedge within the family.

What then is the solution? The patriarch needs to start loosening his grip. The patriarch needs to decide which battles to fight. The smaller battles need to be left to the progenies to fight. Failure needs to be tolerated. It is not about being victorious all the time. Discuss the repercussions of various decisions and leave the progenies to make mistakes. Let the progenies learn from their mistakes.

In case of a failure, criticism should not be “I told you so.” It should be, “How can we now retrieve the situation or minimise the damage?” The next generation should be hand held into succession and the reins should be handed over. The handover process should be initiated well before retirement and the transition has to be smooth and lengthy. Most importantly standards of success need to be altered. 

One cannot expect perfection all the time.

Most of the times, the routes may be different. There are multiple ways to success and the patriarch has to realise the same. Different routes need to be tried out, to identify what will work and what will not. There has to be a tolerance for different thoughts, failure and different measures of success.

At some point of time, even though the patriarch has a stake in the family, he needs to disengage from the proceedings  and focus his attention on something else and let go. The child has now grown up and needs to find its own feet.

Do you see similarities in your lives?  I thought I was writing about the Infosys and Tata episodes. 

Kumble-ing Lessons

Recently, Anil Kumble, one of the pillars of Indian cricket, resigned (or was forced to resign?) from the position of coach of the Indian Cricket Team. The team had a very good run under his leadership. The resignation, was due to reports in the media, that there was a rift between the Captain of the cricket team, Virat Kohli and Anil Kumble. There are also reports that the players felt suffocated b y 

Kumble’s approach to practice sessions and his leadership.

The media is gaga about how it is a sad day for Indian cricket, or how Indian cricket will be at a loss due to Kumble’s departure. There are also narratives about how Virat Kohli (a superstar in his own right) is growing too big for his boots. I would like to present two perspectives here.

Firstly, India as a society is very patriarchal. Our culture talks about respecting elders, and the word of elders is final. There is no appeal, no reasoning. However, there is a difference between listening to elders and respecting elders. People can chart their own paths, deviating from elders’ advice, without disrespecting them. The narrative can be “Fine, I heard you, but I beg to differ. Let us agree to disagree.” There is no feeling of disrespect to the elders. For eg. I love my father, respect him, but don’t agree with his perspectives.

The elders have good intentions in their heart. They don’t want the juniors to make the mistakes that they have made. But what they don’t realise, is that their strength has only been obtained by learning through these mistakes. Our society frowns upon disobedience confusing it with disrespect.

This is exactly the narrative that is being played out. I don’t think Virat Kohli disrespects Anil Kumble. He may not be agreeing to his methods and hence wants someone with whom he can be more comfortable.

The other perspective is from the corporate world. Many times when two strong personalities, clash, something has to give. Let’s take this case of a very strong Leader who is extremely hands on, bright, brilliant and very talented. And then there is another person who is recruited as a second in command, let us say the Deputy, who is equally bright and equally aggressive. Something has to give. There have to be times, when one of them takes the back seat and allows the other to prevail. Leaders tend to get blinded. I am differentiating blindness from arrogance. They get blinded by their own success and confidence in their own abilities. This confidence leads them to want to have their own way, always.

Initially the Deputy soaks in everything that the Leader says. He is also in awe of the Leader and wants to learn from him. However this continues for not more than 6 months. Being bright and talented himself, the Deputy has his own mind. And slowly starts getting stifled. He believes (rightly or wrongly is not relevant here) that some decisions of the Leader may not be right. He wants to try things in a different manner. But the Deputy does not get the independence. The longer that happens, chances are that this relationship will break.

It is not who is right or who is wrong. This is a reason, a lot of children fight with their parents. The stubbornness is transferred genetically, which leads to clashes. This is exactly what happened in the Kohli –Kumble saga.

In Corporate Life, employees leave their bosses. In sport, players sack their managers. Ravi Shastri was more successful in managing the boys than Anil Kumble. Who was the better player? No doubt Anil Kumble. But maybe Shastri was the better coach.

I personally think this divorce is very good for Indian cricket. The victor is not always the villain as is being painted in this picture. 

The Trust App

Today, you have apps for everything. Apps for movie tickets, fitness, flight tickets, banks, payment, religion, spirituality etc. Name the service and you have an app. Kar lo duniya apni mutthi me..is actually a reality. I am waiting for the day, when I click something on a phone and it goes and burns my bulging fat.

The other day, I met someone who came to me with a tech solution. She runs multiple training centres and uses technology to keep tab on the trainers, the quality of teaching etc. She has an army of trainers conducting training sessions simultaneously across multiple locations. She has a tracker which tracks where every trainer is and whether he / she is going to reach in time for the session.

The need for this feature, is based on the inherent premise that normal trainer behavior is to be late. But why would a trainer be deliberately late? His / Her bread and butter depends on the training, so they will always try to be on time.

I wonder if I am one of her trainers, and 10 minutes before the start of the session, she comes to know I am not going to reach in time. Say there is a traffic jam, or the local train electricity grid snaps, or I have an accident, or I have just started late. What can she do? Sitting some hundred miles away, can she fire a command and have a jet or drone, or time machine sent to me, which will lift me from my current place and transport me to the training centre? The answer is no. The only benefit is that the app will automatically shoot an email or a message to the training co-ordinator at the location that the trainer will be late. But then this can even be done by the trainer himself or herself.

What if the trainer is a habitual late comer? Three sessions and he / she will be found out by customer complaints. You don’t need to build a sophisticated tracker. As a customer this feature is good, but like a lot of such features is just a mirage. Just simple trust in the trainer, saves me the cost of building this tracking feature. However, trust isn’t sexy, apps and technology are.

Another feature tells you how much time the trainer has spent on which slide. The whole focus is on following the process, the assumption is that if you follow the process the results will be fruitful.

Unfortunately training is different from manufacturing. In manufacturing, multiple raw materials need to be subjected to different processes in specific environments to get desired outputs. Training is more of an art. By focusing too much on the process, you will kill the art and slowly robots will take over training. Then you will find that training is not effective, and you will go back to the trainers.

Every trainer is different, brings with them their own flair, style, creativity, anecdotes. Being a trainer for 20 years, I can see into a participant’s eyes and decipher whether they have understood the subject or not. There have been instances, when I have seen into somebody’s eyes, and asked the query what they wanted to ask. This my dear friends, is the art. There are so many other trainers I know, who have superb flair and are great trainers and story tellers and are also effective. The best trainer is one who runs the session without slides.

I am personally uncomfortable with such tracking features and later being appraised by ‘analysts’ who rely on ‘data’ to tell me where I am going wrong. If you employ me, trust my abilities, else I don’t want to work with you.

Remember, freedom comes with responsibility. The sign of effective law and order is minimum policing. What the world needs today is a Trust App.

Internal Controls at a Dosa Stall

I like to begin my day early on Mondays, for primarily two reasons. I beat the traffic and get a decent parking space and I also like to get a head start to the week. The result is that most Mondays I end up not carrying my lunch and end up eating outside.

One such Monday, a friend working nearby convinced me to join her for lunch at a roadside dosa vendor. I had a look at the menu card and was flabbergasted. There were thirty five types of dosas on the menu card. I am sure, that even Udipi restaurants don’t have more than 10 to 15 varieties. One name on the menu intrigued me – it said Gini dosa. I was wondering what it was and mentioned it to my friend, who recommended it very highly.

The place was crowded. There were at least 20 people waiting for their orders. There were only two people manning the stall. One was taking orders, serving people and taking money, the other was preparing dosas on three hot plates simultaneously. The person taking orders was a genius. The piece of computer six inches between the ears, would memorise every order in sequence and remember who placed it. There was no advance payment of money, people would finish their food and pay the money.  The biggest challenge was when a group of 5 or more youngsters came it and placed the orders. They would change the orders thrice in a span of 45 seconds, and this guy would always get the order right. When it came to collecting money, he would do the calculation in his brain and had no time for a calculator. And if anybody disputed the amount, he would verbally roll out his calculation and he would be right.

The person preparing the dosas was simultaneously working on three dosas, knowing exactly what ingredients to put in which dosa, and the order in which it was to be prepared so that no customer was made to wait for a long time.

I was amazed at their capabilities and processing speeds and retention power. A stray thought entered my mind, how would these people function in corporate? After all they were competent, had a great processing speed, great calculations and a great memory.  I mentioned this to my friend, and she had an interesting reply. She said, you will destroy their skills by corporatizing them. The reason these guys are good, is they are constantly using their brain, which is getting sharpened every minute. While I agreed with what she said, I was slightly insulted by her answer. Not wanting to accept her argument, I asked her, “Do you mean to say we in Corporate don’t use our brain every minute?” She smiled and said “I didn’t say that.” 

While we were waiting for a dosa, she asked me whether the dosa maker lacked internal controls and what could be the risks for the business. I said, yes, it lacked internal controls big time. I mean, the guy could take wrong orders, he could miscalculate the bill and importantly customers could go away without paying, resulting in substantial loss of revenue.

“So what is the purpose of internal controls?”, she asked. I said “prevention of fraud, accuracy of data, correct repoting.” I had left accountancy practice 20 years ago, but not forgotten the basics. She once again smiled. Now her smiles were starting to get on my nerves. Are you saying, I am wrong?

“Which of these two guys is going to create a fraud, what data are they reporting and to whom? Do you realize that lack of internal controls also indicates presence of trust.” And then suddenly it hit me. Internal control systems are designed mostly by accountants. Their basic motto is “Trust but verify.” As a matter of fact, they want documentation and documentary evidence for everything. Their basic functioning is based on ‘mistrust’.

My friend then made a suggestion. Lets come back again at 4 and speak to this fellow about his lack of internal controls. Instinct told me, I was going to learn something.

At 4 pm, both of us returned. She was a regular customer and hence knew the dosa vendor. She started, “How many times do you prepare incorrect orders?”

“Rarely. Maybe 5 wrong dosas in a day if it is a bad day”

“And how many dosas do you make in a day?

“Close to 1000”

I was impressed. An error rate of around 0.5% on a bad day, is setting very high quality standards

“Does it happen that people go away without paying the bill? Are you not worried of that? “

“Saab.. nobody in this world steals food.”

My jaw dropped… what was he saying?

“Sometimes people forget to pay in a hurry, but they come back the next day and pay. A poor guy who is hungry will beg, ask for food and not steal it. There is only one category of persons who steals food and that is college kids who are out for a cheap thrill. We get one such bunch, once in a month, and we allow them this thrill. They are not thieves, they just want to beat the system.”

I got one of the greatest insights of my life with the answer

In the evening, driving back home, a thought struck me, “His business revolved around trust, while internal controls revolve on mistrust. I looked at the people around me and realized that most of the people at junior levels are honest. Is it time to dismantle internal controls? Maybe it is time to hand them over to a non-accountant, who will design them from a perspective of trust.