Categories
art misc movie Opinion personal dev

The Ox

Fantastic short about Eric Hollenbeck – a master wood worker in the red woods forests of California. Watch it.

 

There are some subtle yet deep philosophies in this video.

  • You cannot fit nowhere. There would be some place where you would fit.
  • Not all people are created equal. There are thinkers and there are doers.
  • You can be selfsubsistant if you want to.
Categories
Opinion

Quality Surveys after Service Transactions

This has been a pet peeve of mine for a long time, and it recently reared its head again.

The Maruti Conundrum: Earlier, when I had a Maruti car, this used to occur at a frequency of about 9 months, when I used to get my car serviced. Each time after my car was serviced (rather well, I should say), someone from the workshop would call and tell me that, I would be getting a survey questionnaire directly from Maruti and they would appreciate if I could mark it all excellent.

I used to get extremely irritated with this. I would have even brushed it off if someone from the workshop and had just asked if I was satisfied and if they could do anything better. But no, they had to bring up the topic of the survey and request me to mark excellent. And this request varied in tone from ‘begging’ sometimes to downright rudely ‘telling’ me to mark excellent.

Each time my response would be something like: ‘I was going to mark excellent, but since you made this call, I am going to mark ‘poor’. Of course, the response again from ‘begging’ not to do so, to ‘I-dont-care’.

PepperFry.com: When you call up Pepperfry.com customer service, at the end of your service transaction the rep requests you to help improve their quality by answering three questions to their IVR. Ideally I would be OK with this, except for two issues:

  • I am already paying long distance rates .These guys dont have toll free numbers, and the only contact number is a Pune call center number. Why cant they just send an email questionnaire immediately after the call is finished? They are an online shopping store. And I am sure this can be automated using their IVR (or initiated by the rep). I would bet, they would have a better response than over the phone.
  • The Maruti conundrum reared its head once. One of the reps kindly requested me to mark 1 for all questions that were asked. I was floored. Dang. Its the new age. This is customer service of a reputed online retailer. Sure, it happened only once. But the fact that the rep was lured into saying something like this, means, there is a carrot (or a stick) that the rep is being guided by. And that is what is bringing the rep to stoop to this level.

Are there any other ways by which service transactions can be measured? I understand these people are doing work. And the quality of work should be measured. But then, when the carrot/stick method is applied too rigorously, this is what happens.

Categories
misc Opinion productivity usability

Youtube vs Vimeo [Usability Peeve]

There is one big usability peeve I have about launching and watching embedded videos. My typical embedded viewing experience is as below:

  1. Read the article on theoldreader.com (yes, I moved from greader -> feedly -> theoldreader – more on that in a different post).
  2. If I see a good video that I want to see, I typically click on the “youtube” icon or “vimeo” icon on the post, so that it opens up the video in youtube or vimeo respectively in a new tab.

vimeo   youtube

Now, when I do that, my reasonably average cognitive capabilities want me to think that the video link would open up in a new tab, and should wait for me to go to that tab and press play. Why? Because I had never pressed play on the embedded video. I had just said – open it for me in youtube or vimeo.

  • Youtube opens the video up in a new tab and begins playing it ! Whaa ??? I dont want to watch it now. I will watch it later.
  • Vimeo dutifully follows my thought process, opens up the video in a new tab and waits for me to go and press the play button.

In this duel, Vimeo wins. Sorry youtube.

PS: By the way, you should watch the planet six video. Hilariously done. Simple claymation with a message.

Categories
Management Opinion productivity

Delegating vs MicroManaging

Just read a great post by Steven Sinovsky in his “Learning by Shipping” blog, which he started, just after he left MS. This is one of his few rare concise posts. He has a ton of experience and fantastic in-depth into software management, but some of his posts just run too long. I liked this one.

The problem is clearly stated in the words of a first year MBA student:

High-performing people generally want autonomy to get things done without anyone micromanaging them.  At the same time, as a midlevel manager, I’ve often had someone above me who’s holding me accountable for whatever my direct reports are working on.

I’m struggling to find the right balance between giving people their autonomy while also asking sufficient questions to get the detail I need in order to feel comfortable with how things are going. 

And Steve provides 5 tips to find the right balance between delegating vs micro-managing.

  1. Delegate the problem, don’t solve it.
  2. Share experiences, don’t instruct.
  3. Listen to progress, don’t review it.
  4. Provide feedback, don’t course correct.
  5. Communicate serendipitously, don’t impede progress.

I mostly agree with all of them. My favourites (which I try and practice as much as possible) are (2) and (5). I am a big believer in Management by Walking Around (for middle managers atleast). It is so much more productive for the manager and the team.

Maybe sometime later, I will write up something myself on what I feel one can do to find the middle ground. But for now, you can read the full article here.

Categories
history misc Opinion

Pink vs Blue

An awesome read on Co.Design on how the pink vs blue dressing for girls vs boys was not always the thing. It is a much more recent happening. What is more interesting is the fact that, it was originally the other way around – pink for boys and blue for girls. And then that changed too.

For example, a June 1918 article from the trade publication Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department wrote, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” Other sources said blue was flattering for blonds, pink for brunettes; or blue was for blue-eyed babies, pink for brown-eyed babies, according to Paoletti.

My opinion is on the same lines, but a little more brutal. I think this is similar to the whole “Hallmark” days (fathers day, mothers day, dogs day, neighbors dog day, dentist’s daughter day etc!). I think this came when the kids clothing manufacturers entered the game, and found that bleached white dresses didnt fetch them enough.

Read the Co.Design article here.

The article references a #longread Smithsonian article which is also a great read. Read that one here.

Categories
misc news Opinion

Istanbul protests – Close Parallels to Delhi #repression

Last week of May 2013 a group of people most of whom did not belong to any specific organization or ideology got together in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. Among them there were many of my friends and yoga students.  Their reason was simple: To prevent and protest the upcoming demolishing of the park for the sake of building yet another shopping mall at very center of the city. There are numerous shopping malls in Istanbul, at least one in every neighborhood! The tearing down of the trees was supposed to begin early Thursday morning. People went to the park with their blankets, books and children. They put their tents down and spent the night under the trees.  Early in the morning when the bulldozers started to pull the hundred-year-old trees out of the ground, they stood up against them to stop the operation.

They did nothing other than standing in front of the machines.

No newspaper, no television channel was there to report the protest. It was a complete media black out.

But the police arrived with water cannon vehicles and pepper spray.  They chased the crowds out of the park.

In the evening of May 31st the number of protesters multiplied. So did the number of police forces around the park. Meanwhile local government of Istanbul shut down all the ways leading up to Taksim square where the Gezi Park is located. The metro was shut down, ferries were cancelled, roads were blocked.

Yet more and more people made their way up to the center of the city by walking.

They came from all around Istanbul. They came from all different backgrounds, different ideologies, different religions. They all gathered to prevent the demolition of something bigger than the park:

The right to live as honorable citizens of this country.

Sounding familiar. Wow. The only two differences that I see from what happened in Delhi late last year are – the original reason that triggered the protest ; and the press was not blacked out (we had Arnab and co. covering it for a week!). Well, to be fair, there was some biassed reporting. But it was there.

In Delhi, the protest started by asking the Government to ensure protection and safety for the citizens. When the police started using force, it quickly turned into “asking for the right to live as honorable citizens” too.

Categories
Opinion productivity technology

Spam is no longer binary

Saw this statement in an article which was announcing the new tabbed Inbox for GMail (which I totally dig and am waiting for).

Spam is no longer binary.

I think this is very true these days. There are ofcourse some emails which are clearly 100% spam, but GMail and other webservices catch these pretty well. I rarely get any of these any more.

There are some of the other emails that land in my inbox announcing offers and getaways and deals. Most times it looks like spam to me, but there are times, when I let them be, because I feel there might be use for it later. A 50% offer on all best seller books in flipkart is something that looks like spam, but I may look it up some time.

Similarly, emails from my credit card company and/or banks. Most times I dont read them (except for the statements). But I am always afraid that there is some important information that these guys may have told me and that I may need to look up later (maybe during tax filing season!). Thank God for the Archive button in Gmail.

The third type of grey-spam are the social updates. Updates from Twitter, facebook, and LinkedIn. These are important to me, but look like spam to me sometimes.

The new tabbed inbox that is due to roll out very soon in GMail takes care of this, by separating these in different tabs, so that it does not distract you from the important actionable email.

tabbed

Read the FastCo article here about the new tabbed GMail

(pic courtesy – the same fastco article).

Categories
misc Opinion

Temples in India

Priest in the local temple (to me): Where is the kid?

Me: Oh, he has gone for his summer vacation. Wife’s parents place – Kumbakonam.

Priest: Ohh, Kumbakonam. Where is this?

Me: Down south. Near Tanjore/Trichy.

Priest (with a hint of recognition of the nearby landmark towns): Ok. Ok. Famous for which temple?

Me: (Flummoxed). Lots of temples. Temple town. But a couple of very big Shiva temples.

I came back home and thought about this. Wow. Temples play a huge role in the culture of India. Sure, he was a priest, and he attaches a religious significance to everything. But on hindsight, I have seen a lot of people ask me this question. Or sometimes, offer it as part of the answer. “I am from Sirkazhi. Famous for its Shiva temple. Also where Gnanasambandhar was born.” “I am from Chidambaram. Where Lord Nataraja dances his cosmic dance. “

Categories
leadership Management Opinion technology

Yahoo! and Daily Habits

I don’t remember which stage it was. It was just after Marissa Mayer took over the helm of Yahoo. She was being asked – “What is Yahoo!”. It was true. Yahoo was going through a bad identity crisis. Yahoo was tottering aimlessly. It was the poster brand. And now, no one knew what it was doing.

It took a while, but I think Marissa has a repeatable answer to that question. There are two messages that are coming out.

Identify daily habits of Y! users and take them Mobile

Make the daily habits so damn good, that users would love it and be delighted.

I think this is a great mission. Mobile is so ubiquitous now. So much so that, there are people who are forming habits using mobiles. Alarm clocks. Foursquare check-ins. Twitter. Figuring out where to go for lunch. Checking their calendar. Folks cannot do without their mobile for some of these tasks, or should I say habits. If you are able to focus on a handful of Y! apps which have become habits, and make the experience fantastic. That makes a lot of sense.

There is some criticism that, she sounds like a broken record, but I disagree with that completely. If she was not doing that, then the press would be saying that she does not have a cohesive strategy. At the point in time, where Yahoo! is, I think what they need is a well defined cohesive mission. And repeating it a 100,000 times is not a bad thing at all.

Way to go Yahoo!. I have always been a Y! fan. Would hate to see it going down.

 

Categories
misc Opinion technology

What is wrong with the Indian IT Industry?

Whats Wrong with Indian IT Industry? from Rajesh Varma

Ok. Controversial topic alert. I agree with a lot of what Rakesh says. Unfortunately a lot of it is true. It is got to do with our mindset and circumstantial presence and we need to change it.

There is only one issue (which I had commented out also in the Slideshare page). I dont see it apt to compare TCS and Infosys with Apple. Not a good apples-to-apples (pun-not-intended) comparison. They are a hardware/software manufacturer while the other two are not. Margins are different etc. Would be fairer to compare with Microsoft or Cisco or one of those guys.