In recent times I have seen more companies developing a bad taste for MBAs. I have personally advised few of my friends not to enroll for MBA programs (correspondence mainly) as they could go with more inline courses. MBA is (or was) a buzz degree.

Here are some of the thoughts at Bnet about MBA programs:

• Five Hard Truths About the MBA:
  1. Hard Truth No. 1: The ROI isn’t what it used to be.
  2. Hard Truth No. 2: The training has become too theoretical.
  3. Hard Truth No. 3: Some of the people skills needed to be a manager today can’t be taught in the business school environment.
  4. Hard Truth No. 4: MBA programs propagate management fads.
  5. Hard Truth No. 5: The pressure to succeed inside MBA programs has weakened safeguards against cheating.
• The Secret Guide to the MBA Curriculum:
• What Executives Really Think of MBAs:
  1. Value the Program, Not the Degree
  2. Hard-Working, High-Maintenance
  3. Dropouts Make Better Entrepreneurs
  4. Practical Experience Is a Necessary Foundation for Theory
  5. Salespeople Don’t Need MBAs
  6. MBAs in IT

  “You Harvard guys don’t know crap about the way businesses really run.” - Howard Woolf, then a director of marketing at DEC, to a trio of consultants with Harvard MBAs as overheard by the author. Woolf is now president of the Converged Billing Solution Group at Comverse, a $1 billion-a-year provider of multimedia services.

• Three New Year’s Resolutions for MBA Students:
  1. Get (more) comfortable with public speaking.
  2. Dial back on the procrastination.
  3. Stop relying on school for the easy excuse.
• Three Things I Wish I’d Known Before Starting Grad School:
  1. Don’t stress over not having a business background.
  2. Three hours of class time at the end of a workday isn’t as bad as it sounds.
  3. Earning an MBA means more than mastering the coursework.
• Finding the Value in Wasted Time:

I call it restart option. It is such a wonderful day where you get a feel of restart. From your messy last month, last year you can give your life a restart. You can buy a new book for your finances, a new work report, a new way to start your love life, a better plan for your spiritual activities. All happens on the very first day.

Happy New Year!

I wish you and your family members a very happy new year. Last year was full of challenges and a lot of important devisions made. I have a lot to that. I take this opportunity to thank all of you for your support and love. Also I thank God Almighty for His presence in my life.

Resolutions
Everyone is suppose to take these and here I follow:

1. Will plan my finances better. Every morning I will add it to my budgeting section.
2. Will write 2 books: 1) Blogging - Anonymity to Identity 2) (name hidden) A book on Online marketing, covering almost all aspects of online marketing.
3. Will start a blog on spiritual experiences.

I want to make this year, year of Love, year of organizing and year of earning.

Afraid of making resolution?
As many, do you think resolutions are useless? Its a personal stuff then why do you say it in public? I can take these decisions anytime, why wait for the start of an year? What if I don’t make these resolutions happen?

Oh Man! Don’t worry! It’s the time to restart, you can do it anytime but its a mind game where you feel ITS REALLY A RESTART TIME (making it a little easier). When you make resolutions in public it helps you as a forced motivator. It helps you force yourself. You have personal commitments and the success of your decisions is completely personal but still a public resolution helps you put a little force on yourself. It also works as a reminder. So enjoy resolutions and have a very happy new year. May God bless you with all great things this year!

What is your resolution this year?

Recently I had an opportunity to talk to some of the great industry heads with great experiences and few patents. It was more fun than serious talk. Talked about web 2.0 stuffs, experiences in startup company, cluster for DBs, when technology can become bottleneck, social network technologies and many more things. It was great.

While talking, one of the technical head asked me, “Aji, where do you want to see yourself after 3 or 5 years“. This is quite a common question when you talk to a career oriented guy. It was a brainy session but some answers come out of your heart irrespective of your brain size, it was just another moment where it just came out of my heart. I almost answered it this way,

“Honey! I want to shrink my CV”

I was so happy that my heart answered so wonderfully (sometimes you should just allow your heart to flow). After the answer there was no further question about my career, goal or objective. Here is a small briefing for those who don’t understand what it actually means. In some years I want to shrink my CV to one line, “Aji Issac, Team/founder/Architect/blah, XYZ product, 200* - 20**“. Thats an advantage of working with product based companies.

This also answer few common questions thrown at me at various occasions by our Team members:

1. What will be my position after X years?.
2. I want to be senior programmer after 1 year, senior-senior programmer after 3 year, super-duper programmer after 5 years and many be programming guru after 10 years”, does your company allows that?
3. Why is my position the same for last 2 years?

In product based company your position keeps changing every moment:

• After one year - 2007: Aji Issac, ABC profile, XYZ product (Used by 2 people)
• After two years - 2008: Aji Issac, ABC profile, XYZ product (Used by 2000 people)
• After three years - 2009: Aji Issac, ABC profile, XYZ product (Used by 2 million people)
• After five years - 2011: Aji Issac, ABC profile, XYZ product (Used by almost every other people who uses web)

Thats the time when you can say, “Aji Issac, ABC profile, XYZ product, 2008 - 2011“. Take pride in working for products and product based companies. For selfish reasons make it work. If you are a company head/founder then make sure everyone working with you have have enough shares/stocks of your product (in black and white) else don’t expect the same commitment (This small move can create all the difference for your company). Enjoy the day!

Finding it really difficult to find time for blogging. Just spent two days in office to finish off the pending works. I got up a little late yesterday, around 9am as slept very late after work. This video is from the office bed (guest room). This video is my personal experience. I have seen people thinking too less of themselves just because of the knowledge limitation.

“So what if I am not from IITs or IIMs” was always been my attitude in life. Knowledge is certainly biased but Ideas are not. This concept is very difficult to conceive but once synced deep within blood you can discover a special person, a special confidence in you. I kept my attitude very high when I worked as librarian or a voluntary teacher (for 2 years, every Sunday, was great experience) or even when I was made secretary to Kolkata youth chapter. Its not how much you know, its about how much detailed you are, how much passionate you are and how much deep thinking you can do. So knowledge just adds on to your Ideas, fine tunes it but never a must for bringing a great Idea.

Enjoy the Video (I am not sure whether I was able to pen down my thought properly here, sorry was in real hurry, do ask/debate/agree comment). Happy Friday!

(this is again a group mail for one of the company I am associated with)
What happened to aji? Why is he giving such wolf stories now? Don’t worry this is as inline as it can be with our professional life esp with startup companies. Have a little patience and read it, don’t forget to add your opinion to it.

Wolves are professionals like us doing their work for their satisfaction. This is a story about a professional wolf who was very motivated and hard working inline with the dream of his team members. His career looked very promising; everybody believed that he will go on to become a big millionaire wolf with all hunting expertise. He was comparing himself to a professional who dreams of a BMW when others of his age laugh at such dreams. This Wolf was happy and focused.

But one day, he saw a blood Popsicle, a ball of ice dipped in his favorite seal blood. He was very intelligent and knew that such things can be risky and dangerous for his life but he went on and started licking it. “What a taste! I am enjoying it!”. Time was just passing by and he kept licking. He felt as if he is so involved it in and enjoying it thoroughly. But he was feeling a little weak as if his energy was going away but he kept licking. His vision was dimming a bit but he kept licking as it was giving him some pleasure. Now he couldn’t see much and he knew something went wrong and before he could decide to take a step back he fell and saw his tongue bleeding, he wanted to help himself but could not get up. He started recapping about his career that how good it was towards the staring, how motivated he was, how energetic he was but now even with so much of experience he was not able to help himself. With one drop of a tear and few unmeasured quality of wasted blood he ended his career and life. He died a death which he never thought of. He asked the God to give him one chance to do one work. He wanted to know that why he died like this and what was that he licked. God allowed him and he came back and found the following recipe for the blood Popsicle:

Recipe for blood Popsicle
First a knife is sharpened to razor sharp. Then it is dipped in the blood of a seal.
After dipping the knife in blood it is set outside in the cold so the blood freezes on the knife. After it freezes (a matter of minutes) it is dipped again into the seal blood and again with a delay to let the blood freeze. Layer after layer makes a blood Popsicle. When it is done, the knife’s blade is hidden inside the snow just like a popsicle stick.

He understood the story ………………………….
The handle of the knife was buried in the snow leaving the blood Popsicle standing up and I was attracted by its smell and found it as a “bloodsicle“. I started licking it and enjoying every taste. Over and over I licked and without understanding that my tongue was becoming numb because of the cold layer. Finally the bloodsicle got over and I was licking the razor sharp edge of the knife. It cut into my tongue again and again but I did not even notice for my tongue was no longer able to feel anything. My own blood was flowing from my cut tongue. I was thrilled as the blood was now more plentiful and continued to lick more and more not knowing that it was my own blood. Instead of getting stronger I was going weak. I drunk my own blood and killed myself.

God gave him another chance to live and now he is a professional working in an Indian IT industry. He is asking every professional to read this very carefully. “I thought the life is different from the Siberia and esp being a human with IT company but I was wrong. I still see popsicles at different places. I see some people taking negative about India, about company and about my own team. I am very tempted to join them. I see that some of the best people join the discussion just for the sake of fun but slowly they go numb and without realizing that they are hurting themselves. They start killing their passion, their ability to think great and positive dims; they end up being less innovative and energetic. Even after understanding that such negative discussion is not helping anyone (and in reality is hurting everyone including themselves) they still do it as they are carried away by the numbness of it. After few weeks and months I see a very average person who once was a promising one dreaming about BMWs. I have only one thing to tell all such people, don’t die like me, I died my own death. Such negative talks only help none. For the sake of yourself stay positive and do good. If you see a team as bad, IMPROVE IT OR leave it. If you find negative things in a company, IMPROVE IT OR leave it. If you see India to be bad, IMPROVE IT OR leave it.”

Don’t ever die like a Siberian wolf. Do well for yourself and your team/company/India.

————-

Regards,
Aji Issac.

If you want to talk to the Siberian wolf, try this http://www.idealwebtools.com/blog/ … you are free to pass on this story to your friends ..

This is a copy of the mail I sent to all company members. Since I am not blogging enough and don’t have the time to draft better posts so here we go with a slightly modified version of the company group email. As a company and as a person this is a culture we/I want to develop and promote. Decision making/responsibilities should flow to the roots of a company. Enjoy the copy of the email.

Don’t get me wrong when I say “Lets fail more often” as this is a muddy and not so clear mixture of two phrases “attempt more for more success” and “99 attempts out of 100 will fail”. So “Lets fail more often”.

Here are few things that you can start with at decision level (And I SERIOUSLY want you to do that)

1. Take a decision and implement it if you feel confident about it. Once it is implemented or once you have taken the decision throw a mail to the concerned group. I really want the decision making to flow to the roots of the company.
2. Mistakes are often mistaken: Know what a real mistake is, it will give you more confidence in decision making.
3. Grow good in decision-making: I debate with myself more often that I can eliminate obvious errors with decision making (for cumulative respect point). So while making the decision do debate it with yourself and if you feel it as correct, GO AHEAD. Either the decision will be correct or the learning will help you grow OR BOTH :). We just need to attempt honestly.
4. Your decision has a cumulative respect: Don’t expect people to respect your first/second/….. decision, they will be more calculative but once you start making better decision more often your cumulative respect count will grow up. There will be a time when you will ask a person to jump out of window and they will do that before asking “WHY?” but it will take time :), so have patience.
5. Start with small decisions: Don’t jump into bigger decisions until and unless it is to be done urgently. Start with small decisions and grow. A person who is good at decision making at any level, be it home, group of friends, office parties, .. will be good at company level decision making as well. All you need is to start slow and start as smart as possible.
6. Multi-dimension knowledge: Years will only add up physical weakness but proper observation will help you gain experience. A 2 month old team member can sometimes do better decision making than a 2 year old based on a better observational power/attitude. Get multi
   dimension knowledge (Knowledge from all related field). A person who is able to think from various dimensions to the problem can do better at decision making, so get involved with different team works.
7. Ask for more opportunities: Your mouth is an open door to your thinking, talk wise. People give you more responsibilities based on your performance and talks reflects a lot of it. So talk wisely.
8. Make others comfortable: This will help others teach you. Learn from mistakes not necessarily only from yours, you can learn more from others mistakes as well. Keep your eyes wide open, dreams as high as possible and attitude down to earth for a better learning. Let others teach you more often.

Had a day off, made a debt calculator in excel and studied NPER again. Mom is a true diet killer, she made kaju upma with desi ghee and I couldn’t resist it, so had a lot of khanna and little workout. Had 12 hrs of sleep and now back with the series of stories that inspired me, I have learned a lot from these small stories and try to apply it. Thanks for all the appreciation.

There was a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’

But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

This story is not as interesting as many others but acts like a mirror. I have faced similar situations many times. (Sorry for taking a better position here, I am sure I also go wrong but at this blog I think I can take a little advantage, sorrrry). I had treated them very nicely when they joined work. I forgave their bigger mistake and never shown my anger. Always helped them improve. But when they get experience they fail to do the same and lose patience with their juniors. I get (nick-picked) silly silly complains by people who were at major fault at times and were allowed to sail smooth. I have defined mistakes in a different way and expected others to do the same. My seniors were kind to me and I tried to be the same as well. After traveling miles lets not forget the first step and the journey, help others make a better journey. Love you all!

Here I continue my series (1,2,3) of short stories. I heard this story during his Aug 15 competition. Here we go:

A successful business man was growing old and knew it was time to choose a successor to take over the business. Instead of choosing one of his directors or his children, he decided to do something different. He called all the young executives in his company together.

He said, “It is time for me to step down and choose the next CEO. I have decided to choose one of you.” The young executives were shocked, but the boss continued. “I am going to give each one of you a SEED today - one very special SEED. I want you to plant the seed, water it, and come back here one year from today with what you have grown from the seed I have given you. I will then judge the plants that you bring, and the one I choose will be the next CEO”.

One man, named Jim, was there that day and he, like the others, received a seed. He went home and excitedly, told his wife the story. She helped him get a pot, soil and compost and he planted the seed. Everyday, he would water it and watch to see if it had grown. After about three weeks, some of the other executives began to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow. Jim kept checking his seed, but nothing ever grew.

Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks went by, still nothing. By now, others were talking about their plants, but Jim didn’t have a plant and he felt like a failure. Six months went by - still nothing in Jim’s pot. He just knew he had killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had nothing. Jim didn’t say anything to his colleagues, however. He just kept watering and fertilizing the soil - he so wanted the seed to grow.

A year finally went by and all the young executives of the company brought their plants to the CEO for inspection. Jim told his wife that he wasn’t going to take an empty pot. But she asked him to be honest about what happened. Jim felt sick at his stomach, it was going to be the most embarrassing moment of his life, but he knew his wife was right. He took his empty pot to the board room.

When Jim arrived, he was amazed at the variety of plants grown by the other executives. They were beautiful– in all shapes and sizes. Jim put his empty pot on the floor and many of his colleagues laughed, a few felt sorry for him! When the CEO arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted his young executives. Jim just tried to hide in the back. “My, what great plants, trees, and flowers you have grown,” said the CEO.

“Today one of you will be appointed the next CEO!” All of a sudden, the CEO spotted Jim at the back of the room with his empty pot. He ordered the financial director to bring him to the front. Jim was terrified. He thought, “The CEO knows I’m a failure! Maybe he will have me fired!” When Jim got to the front, the CEO asked him what had happened to his seed- Jim told him the story.

The CEO asked everyone to sit down except Jim. He looked at Jim, and then announced to the young executives, “Behold your next Chief Executive! His name is Jim!” Jim couldn’t believe it. Jim couldn’t even grow his seed. How could he be the new CEO the others said? Then the CEO said, “One year ago today, I gave everyone in this room a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds; they were dead - it was not possible for them to grow.

Being honest is more important. I will always prefer to work with a honest below average guy than dishonest smart guy. Failure is not bad just attempt honestly and keep the transparency in life. Happy Monday!

Do you use IM (Instant messengers) at work? I started using MSN towards the starting of my career and then shifted to YIM and AIM. I still use YIM most of the time but Gtalk is also in the list for some of our officials. Most of us learn the IM usage from a different school, the “masti ki patsala (School of fun)“. When asked to use IMs for official talks the old habits stay but here is a chance to learn the basics to stay politically correct.

Here are 10 Unofficial commandments for official IM use:

1. Use “all upper case” fonts sparingly: Upper cases often reflects shouting, anger, extra emphasis and importance. Don’t use all upper case with your seniors, neither on IM nor for emails. Different people have different perception towards all upper case sentences but more often it is taken as a command with shout/anger. “COME HERE” implies your boss is not happy with you and want to point some mistakes, so be prepared .
2. Smilies: Different people use different smilies but more often you will end up hitting the wrong definition. So use smilies carefully. Most safest smiley is :). Then comes and the list will continue. You can spend some time in understanding what different smiley means and how differently people can interpret it.
3. Abbreviated talks: Don’t try this with corporate heads they are really bad at it. To be safe use proper and complete sentences and if possible with proper punctuations. Be grammatically correct to avoid hitting the wrong button.
4. Type fast: You need to type fast. If you are not good that, practice, practice and practice. This matters a lot. I used to chat using multiple windows to train my fingers and now I am very good at that.
5. Expect unexpected: I have seen many love birds breaking off due to IMs. Girl sent a YIM offline, “I will be there at pulia(this is the where we spent most of our time) at 5:00, see you there” and the poor boy did not get the message. She waited for the day and the boy for rest of his life. They never expected technical problems in love life but it certainly happens in techno world. Office being no exception runs on similar unreliable IMs. So make sure to reconfirm the sentences in case you smell something wrong.
6. Use proper status: A proper status helps. It acts like an answering machine. If you are not at your desk then put the status else a senior may feel denied for delayed messages. If you are going out or going for lunch you can put the time you left and expected time of return. You can be really creative over here.
7. Avoid IMs: If you can avoid IMs with the next door team member, avoid. There is so much positive energy when you talk face to face and communicate eye to eye. IMs CANT REPLACE HUMAN TALKS, they act as gap fillers. Turn around, walk to, run to but avoid IMs whenever you can, it certainly helps.
8. First timers: Be careful when you are talking to someone for the first time, like your client. Don’t tickle your funny bone, sometimes they are not in the same mood as you. Know them and then use the right bone.
9. Don’t talk too much: It hurts your fingers and others time. Also it can hurt your performance and relationships. Talk less and talk sense, be funny with known members. Be witty but not silly.
10. Stealth options: Explore the stealth options, sometimes it is really helpful. Online to few and offline to others. I use it when I am working from home.

Happy IMing! Sorry I don’t use personal IMs for various reasons. If you want to talk to me on Gtalk (add ajiissac@gmail.com), YIM (ajiissac1) and drop me mail at ajiissac@gmail.com with the time you want to talk.

Last week I met two new entrepreneurs, one from my batch(she is doing well with the startup) and one a junior (after leaving Saatchi & Saatchi, he is starting his own venture). I will try to interview them in the coming days. I was always attracted towards entrepreneurs (I don’t know why, ohhh I think I know why). After every conference I try to meet and appreciate new entrepreneurs. I just love them and often end up helping them for free.

I am associated with many startups, from being the first employee of my present company to our own startup Idealog. I am also a board member to some non-profitable startups. Also I have stopped/scared many from starting new companies :), sorry for that.

Its a great challenge to be an entrepreneur and here is a small barometer to measure your progress. Take a piece of paper or create a Google doc and list all your team members. Now mark them as either visionary or missionary and rate them from 5 for respective group. See the % of visionaries you have in your team. Now create another column and mark the missionaries who can be converted to a visionary with a time frame and plan. In most of the cases you will see the missionaries with high ranks can be converted to visionaries. I will also pen down the plan for converting a missionary to a visionary. Do this check every quarter and if you can see a progress then I can assure you that all company stars are in right place.

Table will look something like this:

How to mark/be visionaries and missionaries?
There are many factors that separates visionaries from missionaries, both are important for company’s progress but visionaries will decide a company’s territories. Earlier I had drawn the thick line between a leader and a manager. A visionary is one who is inline with the vision of the company or inline with a partial vision of the company and a missionary is one who takes up a mission. A visionary is also a respected missionary but not vice-versa. Here when I use the word missionary I mean a pure non-visionary. Here are top 5 marking criteria:

1. Task vs Purpose OR work vs ownership: A missionary will do the task but will hesitate in understanding the real purpose of the task. And thus a missionary will finish a task and a visionary will add a never ending quality check/innovation based on the purpose understood through this task instance. A missionary will take up a task while a visionary will take up the ownership.
2. Attempts or failures: “Can we do this“, “why not this“, “I think we are missing this“, these are some iterative sentences by visionaries. They always try to innovate and add more value to the projects. The reason behind these innovations/attempts is their feel of ownership towards the project. You need to be crazy towards your work to innovate. Check how crazy a person is, by counting the number of attempts/failure.
3. Making others comfortable while working: A visionary will make others feel comfortable while at work as he understands the need of extra pain. He will enjoy the process and will make it easier for you to work with him. On the contrary a missionary will like a defined list of work, won’t prefer a messed up attempts. Rate them on the basis of “how comfortable you feel with them at work“.
4. Defined territories: “I was not good at that so I did not do that“, “Why should I do that? thats not under my list“, “I am a technical guy why should I do this work“, these are frequently thrown valid excuses by a missionary as they are missing the overall goal of existence. We don’t program as we are programmers or we don’t write content as we are content writers but we do so as that will help us achieve the final goal. A visionary will also redefine his territories to help company progress to next level. Check the various areas of contribution for the person to rate him (from Kitchen food to company ad, from bathroom to conf room improvement).
5. Problem Handling: I remember the first sentence by our Princy at Xaviers, “Welcome to The Xavier family. Xaviers is not the best college to be in (we were a bit shocked, we thought the other way round). If we say we are the best then that takes away the scope of further improvement. We are better and better everyday.” Expect the imperfection everywhere, with yourself, with your girl friend, with your friends and with your company. Do they bring problems to the surface or they hide it at surface level and dig/spread inside? A visionary will frustrate you by bring 2 problems-3 solutions everyday while a missionary will need a perfect environment for work.

I couldn’t frame it as per my expectation but I will end this post with a small thought (that I always believed in). “No one is a perfect congress man or a perfect communist, we have a mix of both“. We have a visionary in all of us, it is only a matter of choice whether we want to develop this side or not. There are instances where I have seen a visionary getting converted to a missionary, thats an ALARMING MESSAGE FOR ANY COMPANY. Start loving what you do by understanding why you do to become a visionary. A visionary will enjoy more of his time. If you want to check your current role then rate yourself using the following table:

If you have a positive count then you can be termed a visionary and a negative count is asking for improvement. Finally ending this long post, please let me know if you encounter a mistake.