Heads Up

Have been doing quite a few things for the first time lately:
Bought a bike about a couple of months back which makes mobility real easy within the city. Need to go pick up groceries or need to go have dinner you don't feel lazy anymore to walk or hail an auto. Offlate on holidays I just go to the French part of the town and just get into ultraslow cruise mode....speedo reads 12 kmph.

Also I just ran a half marathon in Jan 2010 and planning to run the Sunfeast 10 k run this time in my home town in May 2010.

Been sitting through a a wage settlement for the last 4 months. It has been a real rollercoaster ride and sitting through and contributing to a wage negotiation process is an amazing experience.
My HR business partner is one guy who you'd to have on your team like the Aussies would want to have Sachin on their team. It's an amazing introduction to the Art of Negotiation. For the first time I realised negotiation is so much about strategy and not too much about being able to haggle too well.

Reading has taken a back seat but I really should get back to it now. In my peak, in my 2nd and 3rd years in college I used to be one of the one book per weekend guys. Gone are those good old days.
Work is awesome and whenever I hear about my illustrious predecessors I get inspired to do more and leave a mark behind. I need to have more energies to do that. I really need to start having breakfast regularly and I really should start drinking more milk. I am a firm believer in milk drinking and my beliefs are sumarized here.

The first post of 2010

I just realized that this is my first post in 2010. For a veteran of 176 posts since 2005 and ~ 100 reader comments, this surely is a lean patch.

Let me begin with something I had been looking forward to since 2007 and could happen only happen yesterday : I ran my first marathon (half-marathon) and finished it on my first attempt.

21 km in 3 h and 8 mins is not the best timing by any measure but given that I hadn't trained for this at all, given that on the previous night I was at a bar till 1 AM, given that I had only 3 hrs of sleep, given that I have given up the habit of having breakfast for the last 15 months, given that I am having a slight breating issue which needs a surgical intervention --- Given so many things, I am proud and it makes me enjoy the pain.

Feet are burning. Hands, legs, joints infact the whole body is aching and I need to catch a flight in 2 hrs.

I am leaving Mumbai a proud man having achieved what I came for.

It would not be out of place to thank my friend who was a great source of sound advice and vital carbohydrates during my stay. Without him I would never have finished my first marathon.

Vishnuvardhan (1950-2009)

It was long ago that the umblical cord of Kannada culture was abruptly cut off from me.

When I crossed the Vindhyas in pursuit of higher studies and a decent career leaving behind a culture so rich, and yet for its richness so underrated; I was one of the millions of Kannadigas who have a historic weakness: We realise the value of our treasure after it is lost. Some of us never realise it, ever.

Since the inception of the Jnanpeeth Award in 1965, Kannada writers have been the conferred the award 7 times (I personally feel that the 8th Jnanpeeth award missed DVG rather than the other way round) is the highest for any language. Hindi writers have 6. Our much-decorated Bengali brothers have bagged it 5 times.

Long long ago, when I was an impressionable young chit of a boy, in those days when a cable connection was a luxury, I used to look forward to the Sunday evening 5:30 PM weekly movie on Doordarshan. Ofcourse, this was long before we got we got a cable connection and I got a laptop. Long before I started watching how someone met someone else's mother and all that.

Those were the happy days. Those were the days when Rajkumar had just about moved to the 'vintage' category and Vishnuvardhan was 'The Contemporary'.

Vishnuvardhan was my first hero. Eventually I went on to study in the same college he attended.

My dad and he were batchmates in National college and went to NCC together.

It was after watching Muttina Haara that I had resolved to join the army.

Today as Vishnuvardhan has left us, I am groping for words to write a tribute worthy of the man.

If I were a more gifted man,I would have written something like this for my first hero.

Indecision - The root cause of most of the misery

It has been discovered in the last few months that there are very few greater enemies to the manegerial mind than indecision. One way or the other, good decision or bad a responsible guy has to decide. That is what is appreciated by all around us. Superiors, sub-ordinates, peers, customers, vendors ...all of them.
People like the quiet and the meticulous. Who avert all damages. Who foresee problems and sidestep them. Who make things look easy. Who are calm and composed. Who have things under control.
Control comes from knowing. Control comes from the confidence that nothing can go wrong when I am in charge. Control comes from planning -- Incisive, ice-cold planning.
Planning to last detail.

A Dream Fulfilled

Bahut din se bas itna khwaab hai ki office mein baithke ek blog post likhoon.

Why I am so domesticated?

Why don't I do crazy hours these days?

Why do I work so hard at work and come home all spent out?

Dunbar's number

Heard about this for the first time on Seth Godin's blog.
Basically, do we believe that the maximum number of stable social relaitionhips that a person can have is 150 (on an average).

My thinking: Agree mostly but depends on how overworked the person in question is. My Dunbar's number would be less than 150 and dwindling. Blame my job and the flux of change in it.

Teamwork

Last few months I've been working this global project,in which I am at the fag end of the execution chain. It has been a great lesson on understanding dynamics of teams spanning across nationalities,mindsets, differential levels of rigour.
Also, the 'local' execution also involves keeping a small set of 4 people completely aware, motivated and focussed on details.

Have spent quite a bit of time thinking about the 'concept' of team and why some are better than the others.
Am I doing the right things in my own team to encourage the spirit of 'never drop the ball' or am I encouraging the beginning of an endless 'blamegame'?
Am I doing enough 'team' things apart from writing substance-less 'team' emails?
Building great teams is an art that needs to be perfected over years and great teams are like seed which will spread across the organisation.