Mexican Chef

This is what R calls me at times endearingly. This metaphor is due to the crop of facial hair adorning my upper lip. Sure enough. A Google image search with "Mexican Chef" throws up a poster of a chef with thin handlebar moustache in a Sombrero hat. However most other images of Mexican chefs are either of women chefs or clean shaven men. I have never been to Mexico or seen a Mexican chef in real life - in fact the closest I have been to Mexican food is at Taco Bell and Chilli's. A very pertinent question at this point of time would be what is it that connects Latin culinary professionals, facial hair and me. I must come to the rescue of the reader here. The genesis of this allusion had been a weekend stay in a hotel in Hyderabad in 2005. The breakfast lobby in this hotel had a small plaster statuette of a apron clad, pot bellied , moustached chef - complete with a toque and a tray of goodies in his hand. There must be some fair amount of similarity between me and this figurine. The bushy growth on my upper lip, love for food & cooking and a bulging waistline must have contributed towards this. The impression has been further reinforced lately since the proliferation of a chain of cookie stores in Indian shopping malls whose logo sports a chef quite resembling the statuette in Hyderabad.

On a more serious note - I must introspect that if indeed I resemble the mentioned professional - what is the effect of this on my own profession as an IT consultant? Am I starting on a wrong note even before I utter the first word in front of my clients and prospects? Am I conjuring images of black beans instead of Java Beans and rice rather than ROIs? Perhaps I will never have an answer to this question - but I do have some comments from my customers on my moustache. In 1996 I was working for a Japanese customer in Tokyo who was quite amused at seeing me and all my other Indian colleagues sporting moustache. He had commented that no "Salary Man" in Japan keeps a moustache. True enough - right from chairman to janitor - no one had a single strand of hair on their face. Also - the janitor wore specs and was so well dressed that it was easy to mistake him for the chairman.

So how do IT consultants look like? Google image search again comes up with stereotyped images throwing up pictures from various sales collateral of consulting companies. Apparently IT consultants should be wearing ties and jackets, wearing thin rimmed glasses and sitting in boardrooms in a bunch or gazing down on laptop screens. And yes - none of the males have any facial hair.

To Conform or Not to Conform - that is the question. Well - the fact that 12 years of marriage and 17 years of professional life have passed without too much problems - gives me the confidence to carry on as I always have. R has been a great supporter. Though she calls me MC (you know what I mean here) at times, and also calls me a North Indian milkman at other times, she really wants me to keep my whiskers. Just before my marriage - a cousin and her friend had tried convincing me to go clean shaven - saying that my wife would never like a moustache. I am glad things didn't turn out that way.

On team building

Reams have been written and millions have been made by consultants, trainers and their ilk by lecturing on this topic. So it would be quite natural to ask why a few more kilobytes of Blogger storage should be burdened yet again. Well, the motivation of this blog post has been a thought provoking article by Santosh Desai where he argues that credentials and qualifications are just "one of the several legitimate ways of determining capability". He continues to say that often people have "some hidden reservoir of skills" and when given an opportunity they learn on the job and prove themselves capable.

While the article was written on backdrop of the forthcoming elections and the politicians in the fray, it is indeed relevant to folks like me as well who are in no way connected to politics and would like to stay that way. More on that later.

Come to think of it, Desai's viewpoint is in resonance with "The Law of Pure Potentiality" as explained by Deepak Chopra in his gem of a creation- The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. Chopra says that "anything is possible in the field of pure potentiality" and this if I am not mistaken should include success in business, politics, academics, research etc. etc.

So that brings us to the question as to how do you build your team. It is a common experience of people who have interviewed and hired people for their company is that at least few of the hires are absolutely bad hires and it is the most unlikely candidates who sometimes turn out to be the best hires. Recruitment in the corporate world is normally governed by documented recruitment policies and guidelines. Academic background, experience, current position and salary are key criteria for shortlisting and interviewing. Not only candidates, but their colleges and previous employers are graded as well. The resume is all important and has the biggest influence on the recruitment decision.

My take away from Desai's article is to have an open mind and avoid being judgemental based on resume alone when building a team or assigning responsibilities. The Law of Pure Potentiality is a fundamental and immutable law that must be respected for our own progress and development.

To end, here is a quiz question for folks like me in the IT industry. Say you are interviewing for a programmer's position and you get a guy who has studied chemistry, music and linguistics and who has some experience in System Administration. Would you shortlist him? If you did shortlist him and in the interview if he had said that he considers laziness, impatience and hubris as virtues of a programmer , would you still hire him? Many of us would probably not. Even if we are evolved enough and secure enough to hire people smarter than us, it is difficult to spot a Larry Wall.

Our Shame

Two recent news items are a huge reality check for us Indians and should make us hang our heads in shame. While on one hand we have the largest number of under nourished people - especially children - in the world, apparently we are also having a real tough time in storing what are farmers our producing. So we have a situation where not only does our poor farmer not get adequate remuneration for what he produces, the grains that we produce will rot and our children will get seriously malnourished at the same time.
Now that the Oscars and the Filmfares have been won, can we get down to some serious thinking? Our leaders are answerable and this must be addressed seriously by whoever comes to power after the next general elections. Unfortunately we are still hearing about more and more sops and spending for unworthy causes - for e.g. further subsidizing an already subsidized petrol / diesel prices, more pay for govt servants etc. etc.

Jai Ho!

This exultation goes out for Bihar - the state where I spent the first 18 years of my life.
If Jug is a Hon. Bong, then I should be a Hon. Bihari - even though the town I grew up in is now part of Jharkhand. And whenever other fellow Indians have engaged in Bihar bashing - though I kept away from joining in the derision, I could not do much in defense either.
Things appear to be changing though. For quite some time there have been reports of economic progress. Also - we haven't heard of any caste related violence in a long time. Kidnappings in Patna - so common a couple of years back - seems to have reduced. At a recent lecture in Patna , Amartya Sen gave his prescription for the roadmap to progress.
A couple of weeks back , a colleague narrated the good experience he had in doing business with the state government officials. He had gone to Patna to get an office property registered. It seems the whole thing got done in a day. The concerned IAS officer himself calls up the sub registrar office to speed things up. The babus at the registry office ensure that the task is done ASAP with no speed money being asked for. Apparently a similar task in neighbouring WB has taken more than a year to accomplish.

North India Travelogue

I am back after about a 4 week hiatus. Various social and family engagements had kept me out of blogosphere. I am however quite eager to write about my 3 day vacation and travel in and around Delhi during the Republic Day long weekend.

North India has a special place place in our hearts - R having spent her childhood and growing years in Delhi is always eager for a trip to NI and the NCR. As far as I am concerned - having spend almost all my life in the eastern, western and southern part of the country - am almost a tourist and hence a fascination for the same. Indeed - I could claim to have a rather unusual perspective - a Rest-of-Indian tourist's view of North India - one who has just come back to eastern India after working in western India and who has had a vacation in southern India a month back.

It was a 3 day trip that started and ended in Delhi and the circuit included Mathura, Agra and Bharatpur. There were five of us and a driver and we drove through dusty roads stopping at various places to look at temples, forts , bird sanctuaries and of course - the one and only Taj Mahal. I am not going to write about all that - what will now follow is some of the things that I saw as we drove.

Auto Rickshaws - Boy! When I was in Mumbai I used to curse the Bajajs for having ruined Indian cities with these 3 wheeled ugly and pesky creatures. I hadn't seen the larger rural beasts running on North Indian highways then. Can anything be more ugly, noisy and polluting? I saw the name written behind the vehicles - Piaggio! Bajaj - you have been bested.

Buffaloes - They are large , slow and everywhere. Haven't seen bigger ones elsewhere.

Camels - These beasts of burden are pretty common. You hardly see them in R of I though.

Charpoys - There is one of these woven rope cots in front of many houses with turbanned men sitting on them.

Dust - Now I know why they called that movie Heat and Dust.

Engineering Colleges - As like rest of India - there is one every 5 km.

Food - These people know how to cook. Even the humblest Dhaba will satisfy you.

Gajar and Muli - That's Carrots and Radish for the uninitiated. These are sold as snacks on carts in rural NI.

Hindi - The language is natively spoken here and most definitely sounds different ( and to me - better) than what is spoken in the western parts.

Jugaad - A vehicle type- designed and manufactured in rural NI. Operated by a diesel engine that ususally runs a water pump - fitted with steering wheel, tractor tyres and lugging a wagon cart. I saw several of these on the roads.

Liquour Shops - These are called "English Wine & Beer" shops. I had heard of Australian, Chilean, Peruvian etc. but I had never heard of an English wine. A Google search for English Wine throws up lot of stuff - though I am pretty sure it has nothing to do with what is sold in NI.

Peacocks - Our National Bird - these are there all over the place. Whats wrong with R of I ?

Quacks - There is no wall in NI that does not have the name persons and clinics with cure for impotency , infertility and other related disorders written on them.

Tractors - They have a pride of place in rural NI. You see them all the time - large & small, old and new - on the road, parked in front of houses, ploughing the field. You have tractors carrying people , grain and buffaloes and you have trucks carrying tractors and you have turbaned men driving these tractors etc. etc. etc.

Tandoori Chicken - NI ( Delhi to be more precise) invented it and it is good !!

Looking through the global economy crystal ball

Forecasting the global economy is very very tricky. About a month back we heard that things would start looking better by end of 2009. But recently there were reports that things may not be so good after all. Every year in January India's National Council of Applied Economic Research ( NCAER) and the National Bureau of Economic Research ( NBER) of US arrange a conference on Indian and world economy in tourist resort called Neemrana. NCAER is staffed by some of the finest economists of India and some of the best brains from India and US attend this conference. However predicting the economy is difficult and fraught with risks even for them. The economists had no idea of the impending economic and financial crisis in the January 2007 conference - although there was some mention of concern in the US housing sector. Even in the January 2008 conference - Economists did not believe that US would get into recession and the contagion would spread to rest of world including India - although by that time the sub prime crisis was full blown.

Apparently , one of the reasons why things will not improve despite economic stimulus packages is because corporations are not spending. Here in India I see "cost cutting" all around me in all sectors.

I am just hoping gurus are wrong this time as well.

Just a Bunch of People

As the Satyam saga unfolds, the Satyam stock price is tumbling by the day and is trading at less than 90% of what it was before the fateful decision on the Maytas acquisition was announced. Broking firms are advising investors to exit at any price. Many fund houses are offloading Satyam stocks at price much lower than the current market price. That brings us to the question - what is really the net worth of the company? This question is difficult to answer - it will take experts several weeks to come out with the real state of affairs and finances. But is it really possible that even we take out all liabilities - the net worth is still close to zero?

In all probability, Satyam - even at its peak - was Just of Bunch of People ( JBOP). The concept JBOP needs to be explained. JBOP is a IT service organization with a bunch of people with certain technical skills - skills like programming, knowledge of various packaged applications, tools, platforms, operating systems, hardware etc. JBOPs aslo have a sales and business development staff - who nurture relationships with customers and sell technical services - mostly by leveraging the labor cost arbitrage provided by India and other low cost geographies. JBOPs typically focus more on horizontal skill sets and less on vertical domain knowledge. Knowledge management is typically weak and execution capability is dependant on the availability and skill levels of the current set of people present in the JBOP. A JBOP is always at risk of losing out key people to competitors - but on the other hand it is equally capable of poaching others. A customer can replace a JBOP with a competitor - since the capabilities and offerings of the JBOP are undifferentiated and commoditized. Most importantly a JBOP has no focus on products, asset based offerings, technology platforms, proprietary tools etc. - capabilities that can possibly lock in a customer. The JBOP hardly has any Intellectual Property assets worth mentioning. The revived/ resurrected Satyam needs to do some serious introspection and ask itself it was a JBOP and what its vision for the future is.

An indicator of IP assets of a company is the number of patents granted. A Google Patent search of issued US Patents assigned to Satyam Computer today threw up only 3 results. The same search for global IT service companies like Accenture and Computer Science Corporation gave 201 and 193 respectively. This only shows the pathetic level of IP assets and gives credence to wisdom of the stock market. Other Indian IT service companies don't fare well either - most have less than 10 as per this search criteria. Key customers and partners of Satyam like Microsoft, SAP and Oracle have an impressive patent portfolio though. The search throws 571, 369 and 600 respectively for these companies.