The Facebook Generation

The only thing second  to strong Colombian coffee to wake you up in a hurry is getting a message first thing in the morning  that “You have been poked“. Now that you have been poked you need to respond by either poking back or  telling anyone who cares or doesn’t,  “What’s on your mind“.  This can greatly vary from “What a beautiful day” to “I ate an entire snicker bar today” or whatever is on your mind. You then click on Notifications to see what strangers are commenting on other strangers “What’s on your mind” comments or getting poked again. You then go look at personal pictures that your friends may have posted .. new dog, new kids, new bffs, or extreme closeups that would make their dentist proud. You may be tagged in a picture or you can tag yourself if you like. Then you take another sip of your coffee and proceed to  ”Add a new friend“. If you have time you can “Take a Quiz“  and post the results for anyone who cares or doesn’t or “Become a Fan” or just  ”Invite Friends“.

If you are smiling you are an FB addict. Admit it. You don’t quite get it, you don’t understand where all this is going, or what social networking really means but you still like it. You are on Facebook either because everyone else is, or  to keep a tab on your kids, or because you have nothing else to do, or because you are a genuine social butterfly – whatever the case  … you are addicted to it.

So where IS this whole thing going? The untouchable boundary between your personal and professional life has been permenantly breached. Your thoughts aren’t yours anymore. Your friends are making new friends with people they don’t know but trust others do. You have no control over who is looking at your picture or even posting your picture. You find out more about your family than you ever knew.  Updates are instantaneous. Events are globally celebrated. Your level of awareness is unprecedented. Alvin Tofler in his book “Future Shock” talks about the fact that Knowledge is Power – and the person with access to the most amount of knowledge wins. Which meant that the kid in New York in the 80s who could walk across the street to a local library had more access to knowledge  and thus power than a kid in Africa. Social networking collapses that gap. Which means it could be a catalyst to start tilting the base of power around the world. More access to information, more access to knowledge, and thus more access to wealth can now be instantaneous from any corner of the world. So is Facebook much more than a place for teenagers to hang. Is it the start of a new global movement so powerful that it makes previous innovations like faxes, telegrams, emails look diminutive?  And if so are we leveraging it correctly for maximum benefit?

I need to go. Someone just poked me and I feel the urge to poke back.

Desire creates Champions

As I watched the LA Lakers clean out the clocks of Orlando Magic, and see Kobe Bryant rise to the occasion, and Fisher put in a 3 pointer with 4 seconds to go,  I couldn’t but help ask myself  “Are Champions born or are they created”? Is it Nature or Nurture that is the biggest contributor. Is your success at anything predisposed at birth? Surely, Kobe has some physical advantage that he was born with and a temperament he inherited. Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France a record 6 times but he also was born with a heart that is unusually big for a human and thus has the ability to pump more blood. Pau Gasol has the height, Lance has the heart, Brett Farve has superior arm strength, Tiger Woods has the ability for unimaginable concentration, Sharapova has the grunt (ok, different blog topic)  - so it would seem that Champions are Born to be Champions and the rest of us don’t stand a chance. We might as well stop trying and focus on being “good enough”. True?

False. I think that is actually hogwash and a recipe for mediocrity. I think what all these guys have that some of us lack is DESIRE. The Hunger to succeed. The raw, untoned, highly focused, deliberate, unfulfilled INTENTION to succeed. I recently read two books that talked about the same thing in two different ways. “Secrets” by Rhona Byrnes (www.thesecret.tv/) and “The Intention experiment” by Lynne McTaggart (www.theintentionexperiment.com/). Both these authors claim that you are who you want to be, and not what you are born as - it’s all about having the intention and desire to accomplish your goals. That’s why a Donald Trump or an Amithabh Bachchan can rise from bankruptcy to fame multiple times while most other people seek solace in mediocracy.

I remember an incident from when we first moved to So Cal about 4 years ago. My daughter Rayna had just started middle school in a new surrounding and had auditioned for a role as Cinderella for her school play along with 71 other girls. She said to us  that night, “I really want to get that role because that’s how I’ll get to know more kids”. My wife and I encouraged her but wanted to set expectations by saying that they will most likely pick a blond, blue eyed Cinderella to fit that role. After all, it’s our job with kids to set expectations. Rayna had a burning passion and kept repeating that she wanted that role. They went from 71 auditions to 25, then to 10 and finally to 3. I can vividly remember the call I got on my cell phone as I had to step out of a rather important meeting and had Rayna screaming on the line saying .. “I got it Dad, I got it, I knew I would get it. I told you I would get it”. Now that is DESIRE. An unwavering belief that you will succeed despite all odds. Rayna went on to write a great column in a local newspaper titled “This Cinderella ain’t blond”.

So does this mean, with the right desire we can expect all our aspirations to come true? That’s all we need to do – is sit back and wish upon a star? Well, not really -  the other ingredients are equally important…. Talent, Hard work (Tiger gets up early and putts 300 times before a game), a natural advantage of any kind, and of course dumb luck. But I believe that these are just table stakes that get you the permission to participate. To become a champion at whatever you do – you need DESIRE!!! And more importantly, Unwavering and genuinely Beckoning Desire.

 

Thoughts?

Hard work gets you sympathy, results get you rewards

Ever heard the phrase…”Hard work gets you sympathy, results get you rewards“!

Results Rule… always have ruled but rule stronger in this dismal economy. So if you are hanging on to your job, or looking at propelling your career further, or just looking for a job…remember the formula…”Results = Rewards”.

Several people wonder how they can effect results for the organization if their role directly doesn’t influence them. Well, I never said you have to impact corporate results – you simply have to impact your own.

Here are some steps in succeeding with your results

Step 1: Define and document anticipated goals, objectives, and proposed results

•      Develop measurements – keep it as quantitative as possible.

                   Stay away from generic measurements. “Complete project on time”, “improve quality”, “increase sales” are all interesting but for the most part irrelevant. Get crisper around them

• Decide who is responsible in helping you achieve your results. Use a “DACI Chart” if needed…who is the Driver, who is the Approver, who is the Contributor, and Who needs to be kept Informed. Write these down. You need to know your “eco system”
•  Make sure your “Eco system” understands and agrees with their role in helping you succeed.

Step 2: Start with the end in mind

Your results are empty without a vision. Imagine what success will look like. Is it finishing your project 15% under budget, is it hitting 105% of your sales goal, is it adding 7 customers in one week? Then imagine that you have won and experience that feeling.

Famous 100 meter sprinter Carl Lewis always imagined the feeling of breaking the tape before the race started. He heard the screaming crowds, he felt the camera flashes, he pictured his score on the board seconds before he took off from the starting spot. And then he had to win because he had already imagined what it felt like.

Step 3: Communicate your goals and anticipated results

  This is an important step that gets easily overlooked. If a tree falls in the forest, and no is there, it doesn’t make a sound. Your results are meaningless unless noticed. You are a brand – and you need to market your brand.

Step 4: Track your results – honestly and frequently

Ever played a soccer game and trailed 0-3 in the last 10 minutes. No matter how hard you try chances are you arent going to win. Stop falling behind. Measure regulary, consistently, and frequently

Step 5: Celebrate your success

Don’t wait for accolades. Start the celebration yourself. Be honest and credible – but don’t hold back. Hey – if nothing else, at least you had fun doing it. Celebration is infections and inspirational.  Give yourself a little something as a reward.

Step 6: Document the learnings

With every success you have hidden failures, and within every failure is a lesson in success. Take time to cherish it.

Step 7: Start over with Step 1

Be patient, but be realistic. And beyond everything, sorry if I’m now confusing you, work really really hard at your results.

Good Luck

The day my Bombay trembled…

Having lived in Bombay for 18 years gives me two privileges. First to call it “Bombay” and not Mumbai and second  to call it mine. I’ve hung out of the local trains to Churchgate during rush hour, jumped into moving BEST buses at Saki-Naka, eaten “wada-paav” at street side stalls in Dadar, tasted the breath of the first wave of monsoons at Gorai Beach, soaked in the careless waves at Carter Road Bandra, prayed at Sitladevi, prayed at Mount Mary, and have joined  the heartbeat of thousands of cricket fans at Brabourne stadium.

So to see my Bombay reel under cowardly terrorist acts hits hard. I’ve taken trains from the VT station, stayed twice at the Oberoi Trident, and multiple times at the Taj. In fact my very first “buffet” as a kid was at the Oberoi, when my brother and I  stared in shock at the spread on the food table , and had asked our Dad how many hungry mouths in Bombay could this buffet have fed. And these were the very establishments that came under attack.

The feeling of anger, desperation, helplessness, and fear surround all of us now … particularly those of us who aren’t in Bombay to heal it’s wounds. Empathy for the same policeman who we mocked as teenagers, as we bribed him 20 bucks for going down a one way street, is now emphatic. Seeing this unarmed, underpaid, and out-of-shape policeman attack the terrorists with his weary  ”laathi” (baton) and slump over after taking a bullet to his chest made me shamelessly cry. Seeing the staff of Taj put themselves between the terrorists and their guests was a reminder of the Indian saying “mehmaan to bhagwaan hota hai” (Our Guest is our God .. loosely translated). And seeing firefighters with their spirits stronger than their ladders throwing themselves into the flames to save anyone they could was a horrid reminder of similar scenes on 9/11 in New York.

And when it was all done, watching the youth of the city rally with a cry that said “Enough is Enough” was encouraging. Truly – Enough is Enough! Let’s end the dichotomy of India’s confused international image which conveniently switches from portraying India as the “Economic waking Tiger” to the “Politically resilient Yogi”. Enough of false promises from our politicians, enough of displaced rhetoric from our neighboring nations,  and enough of a confused identity with the world. It’s time for India to stand up on it’s own feet and take it’s destiny into it’s own hands. We did it 61 years ago and we can surely do it again.

Bombay will shrug this one off as well and bounce back. And it will forgive. It always does. It will once again stretch it’s tired arms to give shelter to the millions who call this their home …including the Ambani’s in their $2Billion 27 story skyscraper “bungalow” to the little boy in tattered clothes and his stray dog, the only thing that hasnt  betrayed him yet,  who cuddles up alone in a sack under the marine drive bridge clutching on to the 5 rupees he earned during the day and staring at a poster of a bollywood hero who he plans to replace one day.  Or the next Slumdog Millionaire. Finally the crazy day will come to an end, the lights on Marine Drive’s Queens necklace will begin to dim and  Bombay will go to sleep again  - a little more afraid but a lot more wiser.

Bombay – I helplessly love you.

CERN Particle Accelerator – The God Machine

Beneath the rural tranquility of suburban Geneva, where the shores of Lac Lemon melt into wide open grazing pastures, scientists are looking for God. Looking for ways this Universe came into existence and the possible 10 dimensions that surround us. Here underneath 100 meters of solid rock and sandstone lies one of the biggest, scariest, and most complex machines built by man.

The machine is called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and when working at full tilt it will drive two beams of particles in opposite directions around a 17 mile (27km) ring at 99.9999991% of the speed of light. Every second each of the beams will complete 11,245 laps of the machine.

The machine will search for extra dimensions, which could be curled up into microscopic loops. It might produce “dark matter”, the unknown substance that stretches through space like an invisible skeleton. And it will almost certainly discover the elusive Higgs boson, which helps explain the origin of mass, and is better known by its wince-inducing moniker, the God particle.

I got to visit this site in March 2008 – or at least drove past it – during my visit to Evian-Les-Baines on the French side of Switzerland.  This machine was turned on in September as the world paused to see if it would get sucked into a man made black hole which was a distinct possibility if things didn’t go per plan. (Check out a graphic video of what this would have felt like – for a trillionth of a second – would have been quite a show – after all crossing the “Event horizon” doesn’t happen everyday)

But given that you are reading this post today the black hole didn’t happen. The experiment is safely underway and even as we speak particles are speeding up to approach the theoretical light barrier. Here is a good site to keep up with the particle progress: http://press.web.cern.ch/press/

I’m sure God is smiling somewhere as he watches us trying to understand his consciousness by making his particles go round and round very fast in circles.

India.com

What is India.com? A 3,000 year old start up. Actually a paradox. A wild, gutsy, audacious, conflicting, appeasing paradox. A place where the ostentatiousness of the rich is balanced by rancor of poverty. A place where the enlightened ones peacefully coexist with the materialists. A place that boasts of the highest standards of global education but supports a population of over 300 million illiterate children. A global IT superpower which copes with 5 hour power cuts every day – on a good day. A place with one of the youngest workforces in the world – most of these working folks still living with their parents. An outsourcing mecca of the world that has now started outsourcing it’s work to other countries like Kenya and the Philippines.  A place that houses four of the world’s top ten billionaires, but an average household income of less than $10 per month.

I visited this India.com a few months ago and once again immersed myself into this perpetual paradox. Since I had promised myself to get some work done during my vacation I asked my father to install broadband in his house which he delightfully did in a matter of 24 hours. (A feat unheard of 5 years ago. When I was young it took a year to get a regular phone connection). Then came the problem. A rain storm later the broadband turned off and I was back on dial up. Being a prodigal son of the IT sector I ventured to “debug” the problem and traced the broadband cable from my father’s house to what I was hoping to find … a junction box. A junction box I did find .. wrapped around a tree. Take a look.

My first example of a paradox. A little plastic sheet around the tree solved my problem and I resumed my quest on the global connected network.

A week later I took my wife and kids to the magical city of Udaipur – where we stayed in the 7 Star Lake Palace Udaipur Taj Hotel built in the middle of the lake. We experienced royalty enjoyed by the kings who lived there many years before us…. an unparallaled experience of 18th century luxury with the 21st century ammeneties. Where we were greeted by a shower of rose petals from the ceiling and our “Maharaja Suite” was actually used by a king a hundred  years ago. A 19th century sandlewood table delicately balacing a high speed modem.  A city so old yet so rich. Built in the proud state of Rajashtan where the local Rajputs are still known to put death before dishonor. We were greeted by traditional mewari dancers in the evening as we toasted our lemon drop martinis… especially prepared shaken not stirred…a tip picked from Mr. Bond Roger Moore himself who stayed here during the filming of Octopussy. A smogarsboard of paradox.

A country where you still get a three course meal on any domestic flight and yet get to ride a camel to your favorite destination, or an elephant…..just for the heck of it.

  

A country situated between a global superpower and a powerhouse of terrorism but yet as free and democratic as free can be. A place where inflation borders at 12% each year but a smile doesn’t cost much and you get one readily.

That country is India….. my India.com. Visit it someday – you won’t regret it.

The Sage Brand

I was recently asked by someone what the Sage brand stands for and what does it convey. Here is an internal memo that I sent which might have broader applicability to a wider audience.

 

The Sage brand stands for something credible, consistent, and customer centric, and its essence is about extraordinary customer experiences for living breathing businesses. Our proposition is to help customers meet their objectives by freeing them to do business their way. How exciting and liberating!!

 

The challenge, however, is to bring such an ambitious and inspirational brand promise to life within our businesses on a regular and noticeable basis. Putting our customers at the heart of our business may be easy – making them our passion could be challenging.

 

Within the business units that I manage, we broke this challenge down into four steps for simplicity.

 

·         Step One: Define the experience

·         Step Two: Make extraordinary customer connections

·         Step Three: Measure it!

·         Step Four: Make what we learn real and actionable

 

 

Step One – Define the experience

I have heard customer experience sometimes defined as the difference between customer expectation and delivery.

 

For example, several years ago British Airways conducted a research project on why customers were delighted with Virgin Atlantic but were “less than satisfied” by British Airways. After all, they flew the same sectors, in similar planes, from similar airports (clearly before the Terminal 5 “event”), at similar prices, with similar looking staff. What they found out was surprising to them – customers loved Virgin because they expected less from it and were dissatisfied with BA because they expected much more of the brand than what they experienced. For the same reason we are perfectly fine chucking away an ordinary pen when it stops writing, but expect a Mont Blanc to go on for ever.

 

So we began by exploring what our customers expect from us. Firstly, our customers don’t come to work to use our software. Quite the contrary, I believe. They use our software so that they can go home on time. A Friday afternoon end-of-month payroll run stands between an early start to a fabulous weekend or a complete social disaster. They want us to take care of their tasks quickly and correctly. So the first two expectations are performance and accuracy.

 

Secondly, they don’t want to spend a lot of time learning and unlearning our products. Let’s face it – a degree in software development isn’t something our average customer aspires to, they want our stuff to be easy to use. The next expectation, therefore, is “simplicity.” Finally, they look for a true return on their investments – better than what they got from their previous solution. Thus they seek “value for their money”.

 

So how do meet the expectation around performance, accuracy, “simplicity, and delivering value? We can do it in three ways – deliver quality solutions built for customers, provide them superior customer service when they need it and where they need it, and listen to them at every occasion.

 

Step Two – Extraordinary customer connections

So how do we make an extraordinary customer connection? Fundamentally this is about listening. Across the Business Management Division (BMD) in North America we are looking at a new and innovative way of “listening” to customers. We are creating community portals to hold not just one-to-one but many-to-many customer conversations creating a social network of sorts between us and our customers. We are openly discussing problems, challenges, and ideas online. We are trying to convert an otherwise ambivalent user community into Sage fans. This isn’t always easy. Once we make a commitment to have a conversation we have to hold up our end of the promise, regardless of how uncomfortable that conversation may be although we can set some ground rules.

 

Our ACT! community site is a great example. This site went live a few months ago and we registered 30,000 hits in the first week! Here are the latest statistics as of July 2008.

 

Web Statistics for the Act! Community Site

 

Launch Date: Feb 2, 2008

Pages viewed since launch: 4.45 Million

Total Posts: 14.3 Thousand

Total Registered Members: 4,828

Total logins: 73,555

 

This demonstrates the appetite within our customer community to interact with us, with our partners, and with each other. Not all conversations were initially easy but each one was essential. Interestingly our Business Partner (or VAR) community often gets uncomfortable with this approach. They believe it is dangerous to have customers “air dirty laundry.” My response to them is that if we “made them wear it they have the right to air it!” Needless to say, to convert an ordinary customer experience to an extraordinary one needs an extraordinary effort – and online customer communities are one way that we are exploring to do this.

 

Step Three – Measure the customer experience

How do we know we are addressing the right needs of a living, breathing business? For several years now we have standardized on an industry wide metric called a Net Promoter score… I know several of you have done the same. This is based upon a survey conducted by Satmetrix and on a scale of 1 to 10 it measures customer responses. By consistently measuring customers over a period of time, the trends indicate how prepared they are to recommend us. The only drawback with this method is the data is good for trending and not always immediately actionable. Therefore we are currently working with Satmetrix to tweak this methodology a bit. The proposed approach sets up triggers to automatically flag troubled accounts via e-mail and escalations. This can serve as an early warning system enabling us to step in early and turn an unhappy customer round.

 

Step Four – Learning and acting

Last but not the least, let’s look at the issue of making all of this actionable and real. After all, if the airline loses your bags, while you appreciate the letter from the president saying how sorry he is and the call from a service rep that she is “looking into it” – what you really want are your bags back! For that reason we have created a customer loyalty champion within each business unit who is the gatekeeper of this extraordinary experience and holds the rest of us accountable. To ensure that this individual is empowered to make decisions they report directly to the General Manager in most business units.

 

In summary – I believe that our brand promise is genuine and credible. It puts our customers at the center of this transformation and we have millions and millions of them who will thank us. While the brand transformation won’t happen overnight, I am confident that it will act as a catalyst for change. And speaking of customers and the ACT! community site, I would like to end with this story that our BMD CRM General Manager David Van Toor shared with me.

 

A customer recently responded to one of David’s blog posts and commented how excessively long hold times and bouncing to three different phone queues had caused him to return the ACT! product. David called the customer back directly and asked for a second chance by arranging a support call. Partly as a result of the investigation into the root causes of the customer’s poor experience, we changed the routing of failed entitlement calls from Sales to Customer Service, resulting in a better experience for these all customers. Today, that customer is back with us and is probably thankful that we treated him as a living, breathing business and not just another statistic.

It’s Apples and … well, airlines.

I recently purchased an IMac from Apple for my daughter. And I realized that in a world filled with decreasing customer loyalty and foreboding customer experience – Apple is quietly creating a customer revolution. And it’s doing so by going back to the basics.

Here is how that revolution is being conducted

* Knowledgeable team of people who are young, motivated, and intelligent. Once you proclaim that you are there to buy something you will be assigned an expert. That expert walks with you around the store zapping on UPC labels placed on interesting products with his bar code gun.

* This generates a wish list which is printed for you – complete with current offers and promotions

* Highly simplified pricing and promotions. No coupons or rebate forms necessary. If a promotion exists in the Apple world it is printed out for you.

* A fantastic rebate system. All rebates are processed automatically and electronically once you complete the purchase. I received 2 emails from Apple giving me the status of my rebates and received a check for $300 in 7 days. No more cutting out UPC labels, attaching original receipts, and waiting for 4 to 8 weeks

* A product that just works. From the time I cracked open the package (the packaging itself is revolutionary) I had the whole thing up and running in 45 minutes. No blue screen, no CTRL-ALT-DEL keyboard sequence. no “abort” messages, no endless hourglasses, and “device not responding error”, and no clicking on a Start button to Shutdown.

How would our world be if every enterprise defined customer service the way Apple does. Take the ever sinking airline industry, for example. My latest airline encounter was with a near in-tears flight attendant who gave me her business card and asked for help finding a job. Being a single mother living in Seattle she had no confidence that the airline (I didn’t say United, did I) would take care of her and fully expected to be sacked in the next 30 days. That would be the equivalent of my Apple buddy searching for a job online as he demonstrated the computer to me. I couldn’t but help wonder, as I patiently chewed on my pretzel treat, if the pilot was browsing through monster.com as he prepared to land the plane at LAX looking for a job.

Remember, Apple wasn’t in a very different place a few years ago. Financially strapped and criticized as a :has been”. But they turned it around. And they did so by placing the customer in the center. So may be it’s time for some airline to stand up and notice, that instead of putting the customer in the middle seat – try putting the customer just in the middle. Things might actually change. And that beats the heck out of charging $2 for water.

Left Brain or Right Brain?

Ever wonder what it really means when people say “I’m a right brain person but she is a left brain person”? Well I did. So I researched and here is what I found. Both the neurophysical and metaphysical versions of this discovery are worth sharing.

The brain is divided into two distinct halves connected by a bunch (like millions) of nerves. The right side (hemisphere) of your brain controls the left side of your body, and the left hemisphere controls the right side. Although the two sides of the brain look like mirror images of each other, they are different. In most people, the left hemisphere is important for language, maths and reasoning, whereas the right is more important for emotion, recognizing faces and music. In computer terms, the right brain parallel processes and the left brain serial processes. The right brain registers harmony with the surrounding, while the left brain register the self and awareness (“I am”). The right brain lives in the present but the left brain lives in the past and plans the future. The right brain tells you to enjoy and harmonize but left brain tells you to measure and recount.

So what happens when one side of the brain is damaged; like through a stroke and the other takes over?

How do we deal with a change in bias in emotion?

Leading brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor recently spoke at the TED conference and explained exactly what happened to her when she had a stroke on one side. Jill got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness –- shut down one by one. An astonishing story. Check it out by clicking here. It’s incredible stuff.

Insight into the brain (http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229)

This raises the metaphysical question. If we were given the ability to activate a certain part of the brain as and when we needed it, which would it be, and when? What would you activate as a parent? As a lover? As a student of mathematics? As a recovering paraplegic? And would the results be satisfying? Or would you loop back and relearn the excess and be back to square one? Would you be able to count songs or smell numbers? And would it allow me to realize that no one really reads my blogs? Now – that would be a no-brainer.

Top 10 things to do before moving on …

I think it’s important that each person has his or her own top 10 aspirational things to do/ places to see / stuff to experience before moving on to another world (ya – whole different blog topic). Here is my Top 10:

•   Parachute out of a plane

        ·       Visit a Tibetan Monastery

·         Spend a week in a wild game reserve in South Africa with my parents

·         Spend a week in a South American country with my wife helping kids for charity

·         Dive the Great Barrier Reef with my oldest daughter

·         Watch an English Premier League game in England with my middle daughter

·         Get to the base camp of Mt Everest with my son

·         Climb Macha Pichu with my brother

·         Teach at a school after retirement

·         Be around to witness India emerge as a global super power

 What’s yours?