Career

Why I don’t believe in personal / professional divide?

Throughout my career, I have never believed in keeping separate lives for personal and professional fronts, as people say. One big reason for this might be that I started my career in a startup, and have worked mostly with startups where the work culture and environment was uber-cool and the person sitting next to you was a friend first and colleague later.

There have been times where I have been advised to keep my personal and professional lives separate, and to think and act only professionally while at work. I myself have thought (for a brief duration) that keeping this separation was the way for peak performance, but I have failed miserably whenever I have tried that. In this article I will share my views about why this separation between personal and professional life no longer works. It might have worked a few decades earlier, but in this age of facebook and twitter, I don’t think peak performance is possible if we keep our personal self at home.

1. Sharing our Feelings Bring People Closer
It is no secret that honestly opening up to another person and being authentic about a situation taps to the deepest levels of the listener and helps to forge trustworthy relationships for the future. By sharing something which touches or moves another, we are building bonds of trust which will not only give us a friend but also a colleague who will be fun and easy to work with, and produce greater results.

2. Bring Yourself to Work Fully
Whoever thinks that emotions have no role to play in professional decisions probably has a blind tied over his/her eyes. We can put on a ‘all-work’ mask, but it is only a mask, as our emotions (and the level of comfort and trust) plays a big part in any business decision. We can try to pretend that we will not let our personal lives affect our work and vice versa, but the truth is that they do. People act differently at work depending upon the mood at work, because as human beings, a parent will not stop worrying about their child just because they are in ‘office‘.

3. Leaders are Humans too, and Leadership is not Perfect
Leadership (and leaders) are no longer seen as super humans, who are meant to be admired and respected, and their word followed like a war order. These days, true leaders are seen vulnerable to the same emotions we all are, and they generate more trust and loyalty by being authentic rather than being perfect. If you are late to office because of a personal reason, there is no point in hiding it just for the sake of personal / professional divide.

4. Working with Friends is Always More Fun
Nobody wants to spend 8 hours (the biggest chunk) of our waking lives daily with bozos. Life gets much more interesting when we are doing what we like to do, and with people we like to interact with. Working in a field which excites you in the company of friends makes work so much easier. We all know how difficult passing the eight hours at work becomes when there are just colleagues and no friends. Friends can make time fly by and you won’t even realize you are working. It also raises the productivity level of you as an individual and the team as a whole.

Having said that, this article should not be interpreted as a case for taking your work home or letting personal come in the way of work. What I want to say through the above points is that we can be much more interactive if we see our clients and colleagues as people first, and not stop ourself from understanding or forging a friendship with them just because personal lives must be kept apart (as per popular advice).

Jun 13, 2013
Three More Steps to take as an Entrepreneur for your Employees

Last year I wrote an article about three small steps in treating our employees that can make a big difference as an entrepreneur. Great teams are made up of employees who help each other, know their roles, set aside personal goals, and value team success over everything else. I want to expand those steps and add three more very simple things we can do –

Your first few employees will make or break your company

4. Be the First to Take the Blame
Whenever something goes wrong, as it will many times, it is the boss’s duty and responsibility to be visible and face the music from inside and outside. Otherwise, anger, upsets and blame can set in and make things worse for the future. While taking blame, you also have to be honest about what is happening and efficient in dealing with the repercussions.

5. And the Last to Take Credit
Always give credit to the team first, because any success you have is actually theirs. That doesn’t mean discounting your role which you should always acknowledge. But your success is not only yours, and that’s why you should pass on every credit you get to the people behind, who normally wont get much visibility. Make sure they know their part in the success and importance in the company.

6. Make Sure Your Employees know how much They Mean to You
If someone is working a weekend for you, make sure you are there too. Otherwise, do something to let them know how much that means to you. Nobody wants to work on a weekend, and it is your duty to acknowledge their effort and responsibility to make them feel thanked for their contribution.

Feb 19, 2013
Not Listening to, or Moving Forward Despite the word NO Thrown at You

One side effect of being an entrepreneur is that you stop hearing the word “NO“. In fact, one can say that you still hear the word but you don’t listen to it or it doesn’t stop you anymore. Where it gets interesting is when this start happening even in personal and day-to-day issues apart from just professional matters, as I have observed in the last few months.

Lately I have noticed that how I have annoyed and surprised many people as I have ignored when they said NO to a certain matter, or how I have come up and followed up with them again and again. People are not used to hear back from people after they have uttered the NO word, but it works for me as long as it gets the job done.

What’s your definition of NO?

I think what entrepreneurship has done is forced me to change the definition of NO to “not right now”, “not this way” or something else depending on the situation. If I look back, I can remember very clearly a few instances when I have followed up on a NO response with – “How about tomorrow?”, “How about if I do it this way?”, or “Is there another way we can work it out?” and similar such questions until I get at least a part of what I wanted in the first place.

When we are working on something we really care about, it is very easy to get discouraged. It is very normal to even assume NO as the answer if the opposite party doesn’t reply or get back to us for a few days. But the truth is that there is probably a reason unknown to us for the No or No Reply. And in most of the cases, there is an alternate to that reason which, if explored, could lead to a Yes eventually.

I guess this is almost second nature to entrepreneurs, but we must always keep persevering if we “really” want to get what we desire. And if it is meant to be, it will happen eventually. We just have to keep on it, day after day, week after week, and month after month.

And even if you get a final NO (like somebody threatening to hit you the next time you bring a certain issue up) or you decide to move on (which is always a fine line), I have also realized that setbacks are often the starting points of something else, and not an end in itself. The only question is how we approach them, and where we draw that thin line between “giving up” and “going after what you really care about“.

Nov 14, 2012
In Business – Don’t Take Care, Take a Chance

As I have written in some of my previous articles, what distinguishes great people and organizations is not how they succeed, but how they fail. Great organizations (especially dealing with innovation) are about taking risks to do things that haven’t been done before. And like with any experiment – you know there are going to be more failures than successes. That is the definition of innovation. If the odds were higher and success was almost certain in every one of two cases or so, every Tom, Dick and Harry would be doing it.

Take Intelligent Risks
We live in a world of risks, and we live in a world of failure. Entire industries like venture capital, portfolio management and insurance work on the model of taking intelligent bets and risks, and making the few big wins count more than the numerous failures. So rather than eliminating risks, we should take intelligent risks and learn to eliminate the uncertainties. Because without risks, there is no moving ahead.

Look Far Ahead – The Bigger Perspective
When you look at the big picture you will realize that when you fail you are not finished. Failure doesn’t mean a full stop, it just means a temporary barrier on your way to wherever your vision is going to take you. Failures build our character amid immense challenges, and that is an incredible muscle to build for tough times. Over the period of a long journey, the definition of failure changes for most people, and we start becoming much less scared of it.

Be Ok with the Fear of Failure
What is lacking in the current environment is the concept of constructive failure, by which I mean the ability of doing things and failing, then learning from the mistakes and iterating until you reach the milestone of success. Failures can by compared to the lighting lamps on the way to every success story. Being able to take failure as an asset is a unique trait. When you really learn is when you are confronted with failure.

Dont Live Life, Be Alive
Many people say you can learn from the failure of others, but there is only limited knowledge and experience you can gain from reading books and listening to others. You can’t relive the experience of falling from a bike by reading about it. So in terms of failure, if we ‘really’ want to learn the lessons and want our time and money’s worth from failure, they better be our own. There are some experiences which must be felt if you have to learn the lessons with them, and there are no short cuts.
Infact, most of the success stories we know today are also stories of many more failures which are never highlighted by the media. To give a few examples, Henry Ford failed in five businesses before starting the Ford Motor Company and Soichiro Honda was turned down by Toyota for a job and was jobless for some time before he started making his own scooters at home. Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper for a “lack of imagination” before he started Disney. To stress the point that innovation in business is similar to experiments by scientists, we have the examples of Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers. We will have examples in art, politics and sports too of such people, and some names that come to mind are Winston Churchill, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, JK Rowling, Elvis Presley and Michael Jordan.

Jul 24, 2012
How to Treat your Employees – Three Small Steps That can make a Big Difference

Employees are your first customers. If you want to make your customers happy, the first step is to delight your employees. However, this is a double edged sword and easier said than done. Being flexible to listen to and find the best fit for an employee in your company and still being able to take decisive actions is a tough skill to master. Here are three simple steps every entrepreneur should take to ensure the right working relationship with his / her employees.

1. Share Everything
I believe that honesty is the best policy, so celebrating the good news together and breaking the bad news first is very important. Keep everything transparent with your employees and other stakeholders (unless something is legally confidential) to build trust and ensure their co-operation. It is important to learn the lessons of entrepreneurship together with your employees, and make sure they understand everything and grow with you.

Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience? Thomas John Watson, Sr.

2. Do Everything
Never ask your employees to do something which you don’t want to do. Always tell them that you are ready to do whatever it takes for making the business successful. Do tasks from time to time to build emotional bank deposits and build trust. Make sure they understand why everybody is doing what their roles demand, and how it all fits into the bigger picture.

3. Get Connected
Make friends with your employees. Get to know them personally, their families, problems in life and what they want to do and achieve in life. See if you can make a difference. Respect their private space, but always recognize that they are human beings first, and employees second. And health and family will always take preference, as it does for us. So if they are not able to give their best at work because of some other issues, as an entrepreneur, it is our problem to make sure they have whatever support they need.

Now that I have written 3 points, I think I can write another three. But I will save that for a later post and time.

Jun 15, 2012
Want to start your own company? Welcome to the Jungle

If I were to compare a startup to hunting, then the idea of hunting that bear is akin to the new business idea you are pursuing. But the hunting doesn’t start unless we get our lazy asses out in the jungle. Similarly, entrepreneurship only happens when we enter the jungle (execution), with all its uncertainty and dangers which we all miss in the city (idea). Below are some rules of the jungle, if you have forgotten –

1. No Reasons and Excuses
Once you have stepped in the jungle, you can’t blame the wild bushes and animals and the lack of roads. You can’t demand a hospital and a restaurant in a jungle. So if you think you need funding to execute an idea, or a quiet time to write that book, or that degree to be successful, then shut the **** up and stop giving excuses. Outside in the civilized world you can give these reasons, but in the jungle these become just excuses. Nobody wants your MBA degree in the jungle, and neither can it make any difference.

Life is a zoo in a jungle. – Peter De Vries

2. No Blame, Only Responsibility
In the jungle, you can either blame the thorns and the leeches for you not being able to hunt, or you can take responsibility for stepping into the jungle and dealing with whatever it has to offer. Taking responsibility will ignite the inner fire in you, to take charge of your life and improve/change and do whatever is required to reach your goal, inspite of all the challenges that the jungle presents to you. And yes, it takes strength.

3. Calmness amid Change
In a jungle, you can’t blame that the ecosystem changes every inch. If fact, it is utter stupidity if you expect anything other than change in a jungle. Similarly, in the startup world, you must learn to accept that life is filled with change. The only thing that matters is how accepting or rejecting you can get of that change, discomfort and hardship? The more you accept that as normal and stop resisting it, the more easily you can find the hidden treasures of entrepreneurship. As one wise man once said – “It is much easier to ride the horse in the direction that it is running.”

4. One Difference
If there is one difference between a startup and hunting, it is that in hunting you know which tools to carry and what animal you are going to hunt. But in a startup, most often you don’t even know your target (customers) so there is no question of having the right tools like a gun or a knife with you. So, you will not have the programmer, the sales guy, the money when you need it the most. Face it. Using whatever tools, you have to do get the job done. Using rocks as knifes and stones as guns can look funny to others, but that is the best you can do in your situation. And so you do it.

Taking it a notch ahead, I would say LIFE itself is a jungle. Think about it? For me, that is what makes it so exciting. For you, only you can answer this question?

Jun 4, 2012
Fun as a way of doing Business, and why the “Cricky says Thanks” Campaign?

As I (CricketRadius) launch the Cricky says Thanks to Dravid and Ganguly campaign on twitter today, I want to take you into a brief journey of how I came up with the idea and how I see fun as an integral part of life, whether it is doing business or watching a game of cricket, or anything else for that matter.

If you Obey all the Rules, You miss all the Fun
If there is one mantra I live my life by, it would be this. The focus is not on breaking rules, but on having fun. We learn by doing, and by failing we learn how not to fail the next time. But that failing had all the fun. Remember the childhood days when you fell off the bicycle, or while playing football, and how much fun it was. And with every fall, we became better at not falling. For me, doing something the way I want do it is the greatest thrill in the world.

Cricky The Fan

Work = Fun = Play = Business
I have always been in the business of cricket. Irrespective of where I have worked, I have always followed every single cricket match played by India in the last 20 years. I have devoted hours every day reading articles, watching videos and discussing about cricket with my friends and colleagues. The point I am making is what you ‘care‘ about is your business anyway, in whichever form it is. And throwing yourself into a job you love and enjoy is one of life’s greatest pleasures.

I am my own Customer
The one thing that wakes me up in the morning these days is the idea of giving a great experience to my customer. I have myself followed cricket by way of keeping a track of records in notebooks and cutting pictures from newspapers to form huge albums of collages. Later on I have maintained excel sheets containing all kinds of cricket related data and kept them updated regularly. What I am trying to do with CricketRadius is to deliver a product for myself and people like me. I have still not figured out what the end product would be, but I am sure I know it somewhere deep inside and just have to bring it out in the right form.

Get Started. Make Impact. Small is not Bad
If I have an idea that can save the planet, I will act on it. But if I have a small idea which will just make watching cricket more fun, I will work on that too. For me, the real joy is of ‘creating‘ something new, not in how big or small, and the journey in itself rather than the destination. So the point is – Just make a difference where you can. Some solutions can be scaled up, some can’t, but I like to realize that after taking action, rather than in classrooms and meetings.

Relive 5 historic matches of Ganguly and Dravid on Twitter from 23-27 May

How the campaign came about?
It is not a co-incidence that the campaign is about expressing gratitude to Dravid and Ganguly for their contribution to Indian Cricket. I have spent my childhood watching their entire careers and I believe these two players have had the biggest impact on Indian Cricket in the last 20 years, along with Anil Kumble, VVS Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar. And in todays inter-connected world, the question I am asking with this campaign is – “What if twitter had been there on these 5 historic matches which I am re-creating and reliving?” Every fan has the option to relive those moments of pure joy by following the commentary, reading articles and watching videos about the same online for 5 days starting today.

And what better way to show that we acknowledge Dravid’s and Ganguly’s contribution to Indian Cricket than getting all fans together in the form of a huge collage made out of our Twitter profile pictures – The Twit-Bat. So follow the matches live on our twitter account, and invite other fans to take part in the campaign all details of which can be found here.

May 23, 2012
Building the Right Product versus Building the Product Right

In my 7 years in the industry, I have seen that the relationship between the product and engineering teams can make or break the product, and the whole business around it. Product management is about building the ‘right‘ product while Engineering is all about building the product ‘right‘. However, in a business both are equally important and myopic views about any one of them will end up hurting the business in the long term. This hold more true for startups and internet based companies than for established and growth companies where the ‘right‘ product is already identified.

Part of the Same Team

Product management and Engineering need to work together as they are part of the same team, while having very different roles. It is critical that the two see themselves as peers, and on the same side of the table. In most companies these two teams sit far away from each other, limiting interaction, which is critical especially in the beginning stages of any product. It is important to understand that out of PM and Engineering, none is subordinate to another, and steps must be taken to introduce a cohesive working environment between the two to enable better understanding and co-operation.

Make Engineers Understand the Customer

Most of the times engineers are unaware of why they are building what they are building. Their focus is on getting the requirement spec from product management, and then working on implementing that. But without an intricate knowledge of why they are building that product, and for whom, they can never get a complete understanding of their place in the whole company and fully contribute to it. In my view, making each and every developer in the engineering team aware of why they are doing what they are doing is critical to discovering problems in time and preventing frustration and despair later on.

Is this the story in your company?

Encourage Engineers to Come Up with Ideas

Your engineers are the ones who are the closest to the product, and they know the technology best. They have the best idea of what can be done and what not, and the relative complexities of implementing any two different solutions. Involving them in idea generation and encouraging them to come up with ideas can prove vital in reducing the PM-Engineering mail clutter to come up with better solutions sooner. At the same time, it also gives engineering a sense of ownership about what they are going to implement.

Product Manager should focus on Minimal Product, then regular Increments

It is often considered fancy to come up with a product plan which will take 2-3 months for engineering to build. The product team think they have done a great job detailing every feature and detail in the spec, while the engineering team devotes their best resources to doing it right. But after the product ships (or sometimes even before), the product team (together with sales and marketing) gets valuable feedback from the customer and wants to drop some features, change a few, and add a couple of new ones. This becomes the Product Spec v2. All the while engineering has no idea why their efforts of the last 3 months have gone down the drain, which leads to frustration and reduced productivity. And the cycle continues.

Another way to approach this situation could be to come up with a minimal set of features to build in the first version of the product. It is critical that both PM and Engineering sit together and decide this based on each other’s inputs. If the two work cohesively together on a minimal product, and then add small increments as customer inputs start coming in, the kind of productivity that can be generated could be awesome for both teams, and for the company as a whole.

May 15, 2012
Why CricketRadius? The problem and the market

As you know, I launched CricketRadius.com on April 2nd. It is my second stint at entrepreneurship after SaleRaja earlier. In this article I will try to answer what idea I had so as to convince me to leave Yahoo and jump full time into this. Being very frank, I got the idea (and it is still refining) after leaving Yahoo. I had a very basic vision of doing something to connect fans when I left Yahoo, but the idea of a social network and what all features it will have have only come in the last three months. See below paragraphs to know more about the problem, the market and the solution.

The Problem
As a cricket fan, right now there are websites where you can check scores, read articles and stories written by former players and experts. Cricinfo, CricBuzz, CricketNext, Yahoo Cricket are some of the popular names. There are also a lot of fan blogs where bloggers share their views about the game. But there is no platform which gives you a cricket profile, where you can express your love for your favorite teams, players, stadiums and matches. There is no platform where all the fans can come together and share the experience which comes when our team wins, or our favourite player gets a century or a hat-trick. We watch cricket and enjoy it with our friends and family, and that is where the real love and joy for the game comes out.

We can obviously share about cricket on social networks like facebook and twitter. But it is annoying when you share about your favorite team on social networks, and every other non-cricket update gets in the way? Like someone’s birthday wishes, or what dish has one cooked, or some funny pic about a guy getting hit by a car. Wouldn’t it be great if you could talk just about Cricket?

CricketRadius – Because Fans Deserve Better

The Product?
CricketRadius is a social network for cricket fans by cricket fans. Interact with others who have cricket in their blood, and discuss about your favorite players, teams and ongoing matches. Check in to the players and teams you are watching, score runs and let the world know your cricket acumen. Also, score runs and get rewarded on the way.

The Market
Currently there are more than 100 million Indian internet users, of which 45 million are on facebook. There is no need to quantify in numbers the popularity of cricket and how many of these users visit various cricket websites or share about cricket on facebook and twitter. This number is expected to rise to 300 million by 2014, according to Google India. A large young population (more than 50% of Indians will be under 30 by 2015) with better incomes and a growing economy are all reasons for this impending growth.

Online advertising in India is only worth $200 million, of which $100 million is of Google alone. Online ads and engagement models have yet to catch on in India, considering the global online ad market is $ 80 billion while global revenue for Google is $29 billion. This despite the fact that India is the third largest internet populace, only behind US and China. Some more figures can be found at http://thenextweb.com/in/2011/09/16/internet-users-to-triple-in-india-by-2014-google/

This presents to me a huge gap and a product missing for an ardent cricket fan like me. Cricket is something about which I am really passionate about, and it has been a dream come true creating a product which more than anyone else, I want to use and share with my cricket lover friends.

Apr 17, 2012
Idea or Execution, What is more Important?

It is a very difficult question to answer, and I can take any side and debate endlessly for its merits. One important point from a business point of view is that both are critical, and there can be no successful business without either idea or execution. In a way, both are inseparable. What will you execute if you don’t have an idea to start with? And there is no such thing as the perfect idea. As you get out in the world and start executing, your idea will obviously change and refine itself based on market feedback and knowledge of realities which you were not present to earlier.

For Idea
Start up is the art of executing an idea, so obviously the idea is critical. If you are hell bent upon executing a stupid idea, no matter what your execution is, it just doesn’t add up. The idea in turn is the key to attract good investment and people, which are critical for the execution. A bad idea will simply not get enough traction to survive in the market place. A great idea is a way to attract other resources who will do the execution. Obviously execution is important, but it is zilch without the idea first. In short, the idea must be executable for the execution to matter.

For Execution
An idea is just an initial vision for a product, or a solution by the founder. To develop it as a business, the whole business model has to be considered. Who are your customers, how will you reach them, what is your USP, what will be the key resources for you, and most importantly, what all will you incur expense for and what all will fetch you money. An idea without answering these questions is well, just an idea. Sometimes no matter how great your product or service is, you simply can’t make the economics work and you end up in the dead pool.

The choice of market, the team, its persistence, timing, and how good you are at adapting the business along the way based on what you learn all comes in the execution sphere. And it is very important to be mature enough to realize that no idea is the ‘final’ idea. You need to pivot your idea and product, and try out different products, marketing strategies, revenue models before you find a product market fit. For example – We all know solar is a good idea, but it has not been successful because there are huge upfront costs which customers are unwilling to pay. But there are many companies like Simpa who have changed their business model by partnering with banks and offer their solutions to the customers at the same expense they are incurring now. The idea is the same, but the execution is the differentiator here.

The bottom line – execution is required for any enterprise to succeed, either with a good idea or a mediocre idea. Of course, nobody can help you if you have a bad idea.

Idea or Execution

Derek Siver’s Explanation
He believes an idea is just a multiplier, and formulates its relation to execution as follows:

Awful idea = -1
Weak idea = 1
So-so idea = 5
Good idea = 10
Great idea = 15
Brilliant idea = 20

No execution = $1
Weak execution = $1000
So-so execution = $10,000
Good execution = $100,000
Great execution = $1,000,000
Brilliant execution = $10,000,000

To make a business, you need to multiply the two.
The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000.

( My) Conclusion
Seth Godin says that just about every successful venture is based on an unoriginal idea, beautifully executed. Nearly every startup morphs their idea, often in very significant ways, once they enter the market. I would say that both are inseparable, you have to continuously refine your idea while you execute, and that is the key. So I would probably put the split at 40/60 in favor of execution. But there is hardly any business success story without both.

Apr 4, 2012
What does ‘Work is Worship’ means and what our work can be?

Work is where we spend most of our lives, especially in these super competitive times and in a tough economy. Most of us work for around 50-60 hours per week (at a minimum), which makes it around 108 to 130 days every year. The only other activity we do as much as work is sleeping. Thus work and sleep each takes around 33% or one-third of all our days in a year. In many surveys (here and here and here) organized by universities and other institutions around the world, it is known that most people (more than 50% of them) are not happy in their work and seek life outside of it, ie, in the 33% or one-third of the remaining time they have.

If time is our most important resource, think about it this way – We are giving two-thirds of our time away daily, and spend the rest one-third left thinking why we have so little time left. It is like giving a tax of 66% on our time. Now imagine giving back two-thirds of every salary away, and keeping only the one-third for ourselves. If we imagine this situation, we will feel anger, frustration and all other kinds of emotions. It is the same with time, but we don’t realize it because in our perspective money is something more real and substantive (which we can hold, see in our bank account) but time looks like a never-ending resource. But time does have a limit, and every minute you are not spending living your life, it is akin to giving away money. Imagine yourself giving away money physically every time you feel you spent any time which can be termed as ‘not living your life‘.

A popular and old proverb says that “Work is Worship“. It looks good only as a proverb and something very unreal in the times we live in. The common (and agreed about) perspective about work looks at it only as a tool to earn some money or achievement or reward so as to live your life in the spare time you have left. In this article, I am presenting another perspective on work according to which our work is a vehicle, a chance, an opportunity for each one of us to express ourselves and shine like a light and set an example for the whole world.

Karmanye Vadhikaraste Ma Phaleshu Kadachana – The sanskrit phrase in Gita which translates to "You have a right to perform your prescribed action, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your action." is also on the same lines

Have you watched Sachin Tendulkar walk into a stadium to play (which is his work)? How does the audience respond to that? Every time he walks in to bat, he gets a standing ovation from the audience and they stand and applaud. I guess this is what the adage – Work is Worship means, which is beautifully expressed in the way a Sachin Tendulkar or a Rahul Dravid bats. Before I divert to cricket, let me get back to the topic here. Now imagine every time you walk into your office, everybody notices and gives a standing ovation to you. Everybody recognizes the champion in you that has come to work for producing some amazing results which others will only dream about and watch from the stands.

Just changing the perspective can change everything about how we see our work, and what and how much it can contribute to our life. It is not something where we spend one-third of our time to get some money to spend in the remaining one-third. Instead, work is a platform where we can unveil the very best in ourselves. Work itself is our life, it is our chance to grow and become all we ever wanted to be. It is the most important, and the best thing in our lives, we shouldn’t miss or waste even a single second of it. It is a vehicle to become all that we ever wanted to become, and to have the life we always wanted to have. Life happens inside of work, not outside it.

I will end with a very powerful quote by James A. Michener –
“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both. ”

Mar 31, 2012
The Biggest Addiction in this World – Our Paycheck

We all talk about addictions in our daily lives and how they are bad for our health and social well being. Alcohol, gambling, smoking, drugs and sometimes even Apple products and internet find a mention in the list of addictions. But there is one addiction we miss, and once which can keep us enslaved all our lives. We will do things we don’t want to do, and not do things we so much love to do. What is worse is that we will find reasons to prove to ourselves (and to others) that why what we are doing is the right thing to do? It is like we are trapped in an illusion. Sounds familiar? Yes, it is the case with every addiction. But this time I am not talking about drugs or alcohol, but your paycheck.

How many of us are in this situation?

Work = Money is NOT the only way
Right from our childhood we have been taught that work equals money. You do some work, and you get paid for it. And that is a fair deal. If that would be the case, why would 99% of the wealth in this world would reside with 1% of the population? It is the same reason why 99% of the population work for 1% of the people. The work = money philosophy says that as long as you work, you get paid but nothing in the future. What if there is a crises, or you just simply don’t want to work? Or what if we want to do something where our income is independent of the daily labor we put in? If I am not in the mood to work for a few days or weeks or months, it should not affect my income if I have done a good work before the break, and am ready to do good work after it. Don’t we all deserve this freedom?

Capital Gains is the Alternative
If you start thinking, you will find enough reasons to disprove of the above paragraph I wrote. After all, 99% of the people are working to prove that. We have invented schemes like pension and insurance to give us a safety net, but only after we spend our best years working so that we can relax and enjoy our freedom when we are sixty. Do you REALLY want to do that? An alternative is to do something today which is not only work but also an investment which can be reaped in the future. Entrepreneurs and artists (or the people in 1% of the positions) do that, they put in their work and get rewarded for life, in the form of stocks, royalties or any other form of capital gains. It is the same when you spend money in schools and colleges for education, for returns which will come in the future. But why do we stop doing that once we finish school and start working?

Creativity > Work
Some five or six years ago, I attended a conference at the FMS Delhi, which is one of the leading business schools of India. There were corporate honchos and some of the best leaders India has produced at the conference, and I very distinctly remember what one of them said. He said, “These so called success stories of India like Wipro, Infosys, TCS are destroying the talent and creativity of our young population by hiring them in big numbers and paying them good salaries. By giving them a comfortable life, they are killing their creativity and spirit. India has traditionally been a self-employed and entrepreneurial society, and such an attitude is discouraged when you have a stable job with limited growth and learning.”

Every time money is injected into our account (like drugs in our body), we feel high and confident which eventually fades away by the end of the month. Stress makes a comeback and we start counting the days to our next salary, which once again creates euphoria and the cycle continues. Nothing can be worse when you show up for work which you don’t like just for the sake of getting the salary on the 1st of next month. Or ask yourself – Would you still work here if you don’t get the regular salary every month?

Can we break this addiction, and own our salary rather than ending up being owned by it?

Mar 19, 2012
Four Reasons why we should Treat our Customers as Friends

One of the best definitions of business that I have read or heard is “Business is a process by which an organization creates, delivers and captures value.” Short and simple. Create, Deliver and Capture. The three main roles of any business, and all of them revolve around the customer. In a way, we all say that we are doing business for money, or to be our own boss, or it is a way of life, but the fact is that a business cannot succeed or survive if it doesn’t have the customer at its focus all the time. Here are my four reasons why we (employees or founders) should treat our customers as friends :-

1. Customers are our biggest teachers
In my previous stint at entrepreneurship, ignoring the customer was the biggest mistake we did. Of course we didn’t realize that we were ignoring the customer till after two years we started SaleRaja, we always thought that we knew what the customer want. Even when we started interacting with customers, we were trying to sell them a product which we built according to their needs (which we guessed) rather than really taking the time to listen to them and understanding their real needs.

2. Most important relationship
If there is one relationship in business which should be friendly, it should be your relationship with your customer, even ahead of your investors and shareholders, but maybe at par with your employees. To thrive in any business, you need to know the pulse of what is happening in the lives of your business. You have to care for them at a level bigger than just your company and your product or service. Treating customers is not just about selling, but about forming long term and mutually benefiting friendships.

Customer service is not a department, it's an attitude!

3. Connect them on an emotional level
We need to understand our customers, the businesses they run and the challenges they face on a much deeper level than what is generally the norm. We should be willing to stand by our customers in tough times, and support them in whatever way is possible (by even suffering some temporary losses). We should be interested in meeting and talking to them even when we have nothing to talk on the business front. We should always keep and deliver on our promises. We should respect their opinions and ask them for advice. Nobody can give a more subjective view of our company than our customers. Once a customer told me – “I am ready to pay you ten times what you are asking, but you have to give what I actually need.” Only if I was listening 😉

4. You will be rewarded
Being a good friend demands hard work and commitment but if we can do that, nobody can reward us better than our customers. Our customers will love us and never forget how we made them feel. If we stick by them in their tough times, they will do the same. And that is what makes business life so rewarding apart from the usual cold and transactional meetings which are the norm. An example of such a business is Apple. Every Apple customer buys its products not only because of their superior design and quality, but also because of the relationship Apple has forged with its customers over the years.

However, this doesn’t mean that the customer is always right and we do have to be professional in our dealings. But I will leave that for another post.

Feb 27, 2012
Back to Entrepreneurship – Circa 2012, and what is CricketRadius?

If I have not told you yet or you have not heard yet, let me tell you. Recently, I quit Yahoo and am now working on another entrepreneurial venture of mine (after SaleRaja). Like most things in my life, this happened suddenly and without notice. When I joined Yahoo!, I was very clear that I would jump back into entrepreneurship again, but always thought it was 3 to 5 years away. More than that, I had a certain set of skill-gaps which I wanted to plug in before jumping back again.

Today, as it has already been over a month since I left Yahoo!, I can say with surety that those skill-gaps have not been plugged 🙂 And though I have done and learned a lot in the two years I spent at Yahoo, the gaps I wanted to plug still have a lot of holes left in them. But as I wrote in one of my previous posts (read point 9), maybe it was only a question of WHEN and not IF, that this would happen. And I am thankful to Yahoo to pushing me where I am today.

It started with the idea of a job change a few months ago and perfectly coincided with a separate cricket blog I started in November (cricketradius.com). When the response I got in the next couple of months to mine (and others) articles on CricketRadius surprised me, I actually looked at starting this as a business, even when I had a good and exciting job offer in hand. And so here I am, a little scared, a lot unsure about the future, but certainly confident that this is the right thing to do and I will figure out the maze that awaits me in the year ahead.

CricketRadius – Because Fans Deserve Better

Coming back to cricket, it has always had a very central place in my heart right from my childhood. From watching every ball of Test Matches to cutting pictures from newspapers and creating collages to the many thousands of cricket records and statistics in my head, I always knew cricket is going to take up a lot of my time, no matter what I do and where I work. And when I started writing regularly in 2010, I couldn’t stop myself from writing on a lot of topics related to the gentleman’s game. Eventually it led me to where I am today. Another benefit of my writing and proof that if you have faith in life, the dots will somehow connect in the future.

I am working on developing the first version of the CricketRadius product I have in mind, and it would go live in April first week. The central idea around CricketRadius is that fans like me are at the center of everything that happens in cricket. There would be no meaning to any cricket without fans, and as much as cricketers are sports persons, they are also entertainers performing in front of an audience. This fan base is the glue holding the cricket world together, as they generate the eye-balls, the emotions and the revenue which eventually runs cricket and pays for the salaries of everyone involved with the game.

The aim of CricketRadius is hence to provide a platform on web, mobile and other mediums where fans can express themselves and share their emotions about the game they so much love and adore. Because as fans, we deserve a lot more than just being able to read articles by journalists or hear the commentary by former players or watch the match passively on television or at the stadium. As a fan, I want the ability to express my love for my team and my favorite players in an easy and convenient way. I want to let the world know how big a cricket fan I am, and what this game means to me.

The exact details of how this will shape up as I build the product is still very unclear and evolve in the year ahead, but what I am very sure is the ‘WHY’ of doing this as a business. And the WHY is that ‘BECAUSE FANS DESERVE BETTER‘.. Much better than the options currently in the market to express their love for the game. And more than anybody else, I am the most eager person to start using the CricketRadius website once it is live.

If you are a fan, behold, as the COUNTDOWN begins…

Feb 10, 2012
Startups – The how and why to fighting and winning against stronger opponents?

I was never among the physically stronger kids during my childhood. And since fist-fights among kids are not uncommon, I had to devise other ways to tackle my opponents rather than relying on only my physical strengths. At times you get beaten up, but since you know you can’t overpower someone you start hitting the areas where they might be most vulnerable. Sometime you just wait and pass time while your opponent gets tired before you take your shot.

Starting and running a start-up is also the same, in many ways. Being matched up against competitors many times your size and weight, and that too in a market which is not always ‘fair‘, to put it gently. But as in my childhood, being placed against a bigger opponent can have its benefits too. You learn persistence and resourcefulness irrespective of your current situation. These challenges are what makes a startup interesting, and those who drive the thrill out of overcoming these challenges are the right people for a startup.

Why would anyone do that?
You can ask that why would anyone want to fight against a tougher and stronger opponent? Why would anyone want to do something where the chances of success are only minimal? Yes, it doesn’t make sense. This ‘WHY‘ is very difficult to explain in words, but those who do it know the answer somewhere inside. Maybe it is the same reason people cheer the underdog team when they win against a stronger opposition in sports? Maybe it is the same reason that we draw hope from those who fight against the norms for something they truly believe in? Despite of all the fears and challenges. Despite of the very minimal chance of success.

Coming back to entrepreneurship, maybe it is just in some people’s blood (as they say entrepreneurs are born and not made). But whatever it is, the likes of Steve Jobs, Lance Armstrong, Bill Gates and Anna Hazare felt it and at many different times, each one of us have also felt it. When we believe in something for which we are ready to put a lot at stake, we all become entrepreneurs in a way. Whether it is fighting for a cause, running a business, or expanding the boundaries of human performance!!

How would anyone do that?
– Perseverance and Resilience
When you win against a stronger opponent, you become more confident and fearless. But when you lose, you start working on your weaknesses and try to make use of the resources you have. You very well know you can’t afford and have all the resources your competitors have, so you try to make the best out of what you have. And by doing so, you develop such a wonderful skill which even your big competitors doesn’t have – the ability to survive tough times with resilience.

Mark Twain said it very rightly so

– Iterate
In the startup world, as George Patton said “A good plan today is better than the perfect plan tomorrow”, it is very important to act on incomplete information and in a world where uncertainty looms large. If you are doing something worthwhile, then you have to constantly go into uncharted territory, try new ideas, fail, then start again, and then fail again. And so on. As you have to expand yourself so much and step out of your comfort zone in doing so, you also have a steep learning curve.

– Use your ego, but with feet on the ground
Ego is not always bad. Doing a startup is basically believing in yourself when no-one else does, and when even you have your doubts. It is about the confidence that “I can do it, I will do it, even if I don’t have the resources or skills to do it“. It takes a man with ego to go up and stand against the world. But at the same time, you need to stay realistic and know your limitations. A healthy ego is not only required but also necessary to constantly expand yourself and to keep fighting every day, even after facing many defeats. A healthy ego doesn’t stop you from getting back up knowing you might get beaten again.

– Getting things done, despite of a hundred things which need your attention
Startups aren’t for everyone. In a startup you always have thousands of things to do, and you don’t have anybody to delegate to. You will have to do all kinds of things which are normally reserved for ‘other‘ people in a normal job. In short, there are no boundaries of work. You might be planning, designing, coding, doing marketing and sales calls, all in a day. What becomes most important in a startup is to get a task done, irrespective of whether it is above or below your pay scale, irrespective of whether you have done it before or not, irrespective of whether you know how to do it or not. If a client is visiting and your office is a mess, the first person who picks a broom to clean up is the best fit for that startup.

In the end, I think it is the fighting that matters and not the winning. It is the daily grind you go through which is the most important part, even more than actually beating a stronger opponent. As it has been told by many great leaders – “The journey is more important than the destination”. I will end with a quote by Marian Wright Edelman –
“You’re not obligated to win. You’re obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.”

Jan 17, 2012