If we take a typical month, we are likely to have a couple of great days and a couple of bad days. Most of the rest are divided between the good days and the “statue” days, depending on how we run our lives.
The term “Statue” day is inspired by the “some days you are the pigeon, some days you are the statue” quote. These are days when we just don’t feel with it. And they are part of being human, part of the usual ups and downs. If we run our lives well, we have less of these but there’s practically no way of avoiding them.
I have one big learning about statue days – be ruthless in shutting them down. Often, we head back home on a statue day thinking about all the things we could have done and tempted to make amends in the evening. Don’t. Shut it down. Go home. Sleep. Start afresh the next day. It will be better.
Great and good things are not done on so-so days. Great and good things are achieved on great and good days.
Today’s interview is that of a friend and person who’s gone from being a corporate person to then being a consultant and author, and then back to corporates before setting out to be an entrepreneur. His story as an entrepreneur is one of characteristic tenacity – he started up with an idea and, when that didn’t become the success he thought it would be, began working on a new idea which has been doing really well over the past year.
One year ago, William had reached out to test a product he was developing – Engagio. I had gotten to know William through Fred’s wonderful blog – AVC.com. His first minimum viable product launched on AVC a few weeks later and William hasn’t looked back. It’s a really cool story. Thanks William, for taking the time!
About William Mougayar
William launched his second start-up Engagio in 2012, having started Eqentia in 2008. He has more than 30 years of strategic, operational, and leadership experience in the technology industry, as an entrepreneur, business executive, professional speaker, management consultant and best-selling author. His career spanned 14 years at Hewlett-Packard in a mix of senior sales and marketing management roles, 10 years as an independent thought leader, and 2.5 years as global VP of Corporate Marketing at Cognizant Technology Solutions.
He was also the best-selling author of Opening Digital Market (McGraw-Hill, 1997), co-author of The Business Internet and Intranets (Harvard Business School Press, 1997) and was a columnist for Computerworld, LANTimes and Business 2.0. William is a graduate of the University of Washington (BSc), the University of Western Ontario (Marketing Management), and attended the University of British Columbia’s Graduate Commerce School.
Rohan: It would be great to start with your story, William..
William: Thanks for having me again on the program, Rohan.
I was born in Lebanon and my family moved to Canada when I was 17. We moved here in 1976 exactly because of the war and we landed in Montreal since we spoke French. I was not speaking English so well back in those days; it was more of a third language.
I went to the University of Washington, Seattle. Vancouver in British Columbia became our home in Canada. After university I started my first job in 1982 with Hewlett Packard (HP) when I was 23. My first job was in Sales in the medical division. HP was the leader in that sector those times. I stayed with HP for a good 14 years! As you can see I spent most of my formative years in HP. HP was the most admired company and held a great place in the Fortune rankings year after year. It was a 2.5 billion dollar company in the year I joined and when I left in 1994 it was 32-34 billion dollar company in terms of sales.
I think I have learnt a lot from HP. I have been in different roles there. I had also worked in the computer division. I was a salesman, a marketing manager, national sales manager and even in-charge of reengineering at one point. In 1995 when I realized the internet was going to be big, I jumped and become part the HP internal initiatives. It was called the information highway then.
Later I decided to leave HP and become a consultant. I wanted to write books on internet commerce and internet business. I did write some books and started speaking on these topics. This happened for ten years until 2005. I decided to go back to the corporate world and I joined Aberdeen, the research company. I went on to work with Cognizant Technology Solutions of Chennai. I was the head of global marketing out of New Jersey. It was a very global company and it did not matter where you lived. We would get on a plane and have conference calls. I used to work in the evenings because of India time on a routine basis.
In 2008, I decided to jump ship again and become an entrepreneur one more time. I founded my first start-up at that time (Eqentia) and a year ago I founded Engagio. To sum it all up, I went from a big company to a small company back to a big company and back to a small company. This is kind of the fourth stage of my career!
Rohan: If you could tell us more about the logo and the background, it would be great..
William: That logo you see there has just been changed. We are launching next week. We have twisted the e and it looks like an @ sign now. It symbolizes engagement as the new e-mail and communication segment out there.
Rohan: So what’s the story of Engagio? What is your vision?
William: Engagio is based in Toronto. I am at the intersection of Yonge and King Streets now. It’s where the financial district is located and somehow it has also become the place for start-ups to be located. Between where I am and ten blocks going to the west of King Street, there’s probably about a hundred start-ups.
You and I being prolific commentators on Fred Wilson’s blog, we know what it is to comment. I was commenting here and there in a lot of places including blogs. And I was finding it difficult to keep track of all of these discussions. It dawned on me to put all these discussion in one place – aggregate them like e-mail.
I called Fred Wilson and said ‘what do you think of this idea?’. This was almost one year ago in October 2011. Fred really liked the idea and said ‘make it look like Gmail’. And we did that in 9 weeks! And we launched on AVC.com. Our story is known with the AVCers as well.
As for the progress of Engagio, there are three phases of development. Phase one is when you start by managing your own conversations at the inbox level. We evolved it into following your friends’ conversations through the dashboard – that was stage two. These are dipping points on engagements in all of your networks not just Disqus and blogs. What we are launching next week is a place where you can see anybody’s discussions and anybody’s conversation.
By the time this interview is out, we will be a search and discovery destination for the online social conversations out there. When you go to the homepage you will be able to see the discussions that are going on and you’ll be able to dip in even if you weren’t involved in these discussion.
Rohan: What do you mean by discussions here?
William: I refer to the comments on blogs and also the conversations on social networks. You tweeting or re-tweeting is not a discussion. The minute someone else responds to you it becomes a discussion. Especially when there is more than one person. The more the number of people in these discussions the more prominence these discussions get on our platform.
He goes back to describing Engagio…
Along with this discovery we have a Search component. This has been the vision of Engagio since day one from January 2012. It took a little bit of time to have a mass of conversation before we could launch this aspect. When you search through conversations, you’ll find valuable information. You’ll be able to create alerts on the conversation about the topics that matter to you.
This is the first time we bring such a feature to the mass market. Of course there are expensive business solutions that do this. This is the first time we have a consumer-based solution that lets you generate your own alerts. We are working with 14 different APIs right now from social networks to social communities to blogs to vertical networks. We are indexing millions of conversations.
Rohan: So essentially if I look for a conversation about Manchester United game on Saturday, I’ll be able to see all the discussion around that game on Engagio, right? Is that the potential you see?
William: Well, I wouldn’t say all the conversations because we are slowly building our customer/user base. We have started with a majority of American users, so the probability of finding discussion about a football game might less. We have about 5 million user profiles now and it is growing fast!
What we are doing is going under the surface. If you subscribe to Google Alerts and such you don’t get the information under the headline. We are doing that – going beneath and seeing what is being said. A 500-word blog post could generate 300 more comments with thousands more words. So we are looking below the iceberg here.
Rohan: There is a lot of talk about social here. People are speculating if it’s a bubble or not a bubble. What is your view on it?
William: When we say Social I like to say Social Web. It is not just social media but a web. The web is becoming social. Everything we do online is becoming social. We are becoming more engaged. The trend I see is that the online world is influencing the physical world. We are becoming more and more Advocates. Online advocacy is becoming more real, powerful and effective in bringing change. For an example we can look at what happened with the SOPA and PIPA bills. Few months ago, these privacy bills were going to be pass in the US Congress. Suddenly the blogosphere, comment sphere and social sphere started to discuss those issues and in the end we saw the online world defeating the traditional lobbyists from the legislative policy making world. The raise-up from the online world saw passionate commenting changing those laws.
That is equivalent to other parts of the world where governments are being toppled because revolutions have started online in the social media. It’s not just about changing policy it’s also about changing the minds of people for the good of mankind.
I think we are barely starting to scratch the possibilities of what online advocacy can do and how it can influence the physical world. We also think Engagio can play a role in helping the people that want to be advocates connect with each other. As an example, recently because of what happened with the Hurricane Sandy in New York, Albert Wenger realized we should come up with ways to protect the New York to prevent damages and the first thing he did was suggest an online Kickstarter initiative There would be discussions about the issue and that would become important foundations for the real world change.
Rohan: What were some defining moments that come to mind when you think of yourself as a leader?
William: I don’t think I have had one defining moment that changed everything. I have had small moments that I keep remembering. I had the opportunity to spend two days with Alvin Toffler (Author of Future Shock & The Third Wave) back in 2000. We were speaking at the same conference in Santiago, Chile. I spent a lot of time with him. We ended up flying back together to Los Angeles. He is the dean of the information age and of what’s happening right now in the world of web.
I have role-models who have been guiding me. They don’t know that they are my mentors, but I follow them and learn from them. Alvin Toffler is one such person. Of late, Fred Wilson has become a great mentor. Not just as an investment guru but also as a professional advisor and as a friend. I benefit from my relationship with Fred and that has helped me a lot.
Rohan: Is there a productivity hack that you would like to share?
William: There are a couple of things I do. I used to have to-do lists but I don’t use them anymore. What I do instead is e-mailing myself the task that needs to be accomplished. I use headers to guide me when I am looking for these e-mails. For example, I would use ‘to-do’ as the subject line and when I search for that phrase, I get the list of things I need to complete.
I have another one where the subject line is ‘listen’ for podcasts or audiobooks or just music. I spend a lot of time travelling, so during those times I use these e-mails to listen to things in my car. Similarly I have ideas for my products and I use the ‘product’ subject line. Other examples are ‘marketing’ and ‘pitch’. I essentially have four or five categories of things to e-mail myself with. Haha.
Rohan: What is an idea that you would like to pass to our small and growing group of audience?
William: To never give up. I am bold, tenacious and I try things. That is what I want to give to others. When things don’t work out don’t take it personally. Take what you learn from it. Don’t let it affect you. My baseline thinking is this and I have been believing in it for 25 years now – I never let problems get to me.
I need to be in a full position of control to deal with these problems.I park them and I go and deal with them when I am in a better state of mind. Obviously there are some things you have to deal with right away. But the astonishing thing is that you don’t have to deal with them immediately. Some of them go away and if the others stay you just need time to think about them. If you spend a couple of days thinking about it you can come up with a way to solve it; you can be in a better position to be effective with them.
Thank you for the interview William. We loved your thoughts on the online advocacy – with social web becoming the new platform for businesses we should be aware of its effects on the real world, indeed.
This week’s learning is part 2 of a 5 part series from ‘So Good They Can’t Ignore You’ by Cal Newport. (Part 1)
There are 2 parts to this principle.
First, build “career capital“. Career capital theory says that you first build up rare and valuable skills and then use these skills as leverage to shape you career into something you love.
So, how do you build career capital? Adopt the craftsman mindset.
Why? The deep questions driving the passion mindset i.e. “Who am I?”, “What do I truly love?” are essentially impossible to confirm and can keep us perpetually unhappy and confused. The craftman mindset, instead, asks us to leave behind our self centered concerns and just plug away at getting damn good.
So, Cal’s advice here is simple – regardless of how you feel about your job right now, adopt the craftsman mindset and focus on what you deliver. By doing this, we move from asking the question “What can the world offer me?” (passion mindset) to “What can I offer the world?” (craftsman mindset).
Another incredibly powerful thought. I realized, as I was writing this, that 4 parts would not be enough. So, I added a 5th part to ensure I did justice to a question that is likely on your mind – what is this “craftsman” mindset all about?
Coming up next week..
Here’s to simply focusing on what we deliver and can offer, this week!
Of late I’ve replaced most of my bus commutes and walking with biking. Thanks to not feeling like biking a few days ago, I thought I’d walk to the the tube station instead. And I stumbled (literally) onto an interesting insight.
As I was walking, I suddenly got a few ideas for blog posts. And asked myself “why.” I realized that activities can broadly be split into 4 buckets.
Idea Production activities – Walking, shower-ing, sitting (there’s a reason why we imagine writers write sitting, staring out of a window)
Idea Consumption activities – Biking, driving, running, waiting (and in general standing, for long periods)
Combination of both: Commutes involving long train or bus journeys
Non-idea activities: Activities that fully engross us. Playing a game of football or playing the piano or working.
Idea consumption activities are such because they involve some amount of stress to the system. In Daniel Kahneman’s words, idea consumption involves more system 1 (quick thinking) than system 2 (deep thought). This ties in with my observation that standing is better for getting things done while sitting is better for creative thinking.
Key Takeaway? Don’t feel guilty about time spent in the shower.
It was Diwali this week back home. I was recollecting some memories growing up in India with some friends and was reminded of “Holi uncle.”
“Holi uncle” is famous amongst our group of friends as we have regaled the story many many times. This was about 10 years ago now and a bunch of us were playing with color (as is Holi tradition). One friend was suddenly ambushed and found himself on the receiving end of a whole bucket of coloured water.
So, in his attempt to take it out on the one who’d ambushed him, this guy came out with another bucket and yelled “Krishnaaaaa.” Unfortunately for him, this gave Krishna ample time to just about dodge his bucket of water, which he did. To our horror, it landed on a passerby in a brand new white suit. “Holi uncle” was clearly not pleased and he gave us – a bunch of drenched teenagers a shouting and went away.
A few days later, we were playing cricket near the same area and another friend fetched the ball and threw it back to us from afar. But, as luck would have it, “holi uncle” was passing by then and the ball landed bang on his bald pate. We were terrified again. He said nothing, and walked away.
The very next day, he happened to be passing by again while we were playing. This time, however, we were really prepared. The first one who saw him shouted out a warning and we all held a minute of silence as he passed. Every one of us looked down sheepishly. This time, he caught a few of our eyes and grinned. We grinned back. And that was the start of a friendship. He passed by many a time and we always remember to stop and smile.
A few years later, I even said hello and got to know him. He was a doctor and wished us all well.
This is one of those incidents I will never forget and brings out all those little things that came with growing up in India – festivals, “uncles”, play, love, elders, mischief, cricket..
Thanks to Holi uncle for making it special. I saw an “Incredible India” commercial yesterday that I thought it would share. There is a small part of it that shows “Holi.” I think the word “incredible” sums India up well. You might love, or hate India. But, you will never be indifferent to it. It is incredible.
I made an embarrassing mistake recently. Luckily, nothing came of it thanks to the kindness of someone who got my back. But, it was embarrassing nevertheless.
In times like that, I can barely express how hard it is to live the “a learning a day” philosophy that there is no failure, only learning. It’s much easier to forgive someone else than it is to forgive myself. There’s no one to tell me it will be okay. Even if they do, it’s not like I’ll feel better because I didn’t fail anyone, but myself.
I did end up remembering a piece of advice I received from a wiser friend. “Be kind to yourself” – he had said. It’s tough and in many ways, I’m still kicking myself.
Right after that, I apologized to, and thanked this friend, who said simply – “Don’t worry, there’ll be many more.. you will make many mistakes much worse than this as life goes on.”
I laughed. It was only on reflection that I grasped the significance of the remark.
Just had a big win? Don’t worry, there will be many more.
Just had a spectacular failure? Don’t worry, there will be many more..
It help put things in perspective. Another day. Another big learning.
I’ve been trying out a rule in my workday over the past couple of weeks – no distractions allowed for 3 hours. Distraction = email, google reader, facebook, twitter.
I still take breaks every 25 minutes (roughly – depending on whether or not I am in flow..), but I’m now working to make sure I do something useful in these breaks until I hit the 3 hour mark. Another consequence is longer stretches of flow with no succumbing to distraction temptation.
It’s been working really well so far. Since I’m experimenting with rules practically every week, many of my rules die fairly quickly. This one looks here to stay.
A friend wrote to me yesterday forwarding a rather brutal “No” she had received. It sounded like the kind of “no” you’d receive from an absolute idiot. But, it hurt her.
Of course it did. I’ve been there. And that’s why I thought I’d write about 3 things I attempt to remember when I get rejected. This isn’t a “3 ways to deal with rejection” because dealing with rejection is really hard, and really personal. There’s no running away from how you feel. It’s easy to trot out the “it’s not personal” line. But, it is. Well, at least it tends to feel so. That’s why many spend entire lives running away from being rejected..
– Get rejected a lot more. Learning to get rejected is like developing a muscle. Like any muscle development, the early stages involve a lot of pain.
– It will still never be easy. It does eventually get better. You develop a thicker skin, get hit by self doubt a lot less. I won’t claim rejection becomes easy. It almost never does. But, you learn there are other things more important than more important than fear..It will just feel a little better.
– Rejecting others. We say no to others ourselves. I see a marked difference between folks who’ve been rejected a lot in their lives. The cruel no’s come from those who haven’t experienced it themselves.
I’ve had the opportunity to try out many kinds of work and the most difficult of those was giving out flyers at train stations in Singapore hoping one or two would convert. It was a painful experience as people treat you like crap as they walk by you. Since then, I’ve never been able to say no without a nice smile to anyone giving me a flyer..
Finally, congrats on being rejected, if you have! Failure teaches us things too. Once we get past the emotion, we learn a fair bit.. often, whom to avoid.
I think there are two ways to “help” someone – we can “be of help” or we can “help.”
“Be of help”
“I am thinking of taking friends for dinner to ….. Quick thoughts about the place?”
“Would you mind taking a quick look at my resume and give me feedback in 5 minutes?“
“Honey! Do I look fat?”
With all 3 questions, there is only one answer. It’s a simple distinction. When you are asked to be of help, you are asked to affirm someone. It doesn’t matter what the truth is. All that matters is you tell them what they want to hear.
“Help”
The same 3 questions would be answered very differently if you were looking to really help someone. Let’s work with the same examples.
– The dinner discussion could revolve around the kind of place this friend is looking for. (“What ambience are you looking for?”)
– The resume discussion could easily be much deeper. (“What are you trying to convey?”)
– The “Do I look fat?” discussion could be about exercise. (“Are you looking to start an exercise routine?”). Don’t try this at home, of course..
My point here is that it’s two distinct ways of approaching things. The ask is different. The first is a tad superficial and about affirmation while the second involves digging deep and making the effort to understand the context and the back story.
If I have to build on resume’s (thanks to a resume side project being a constant factor in the past 3 months, I’ve been blogging about it a bit since it’s been on my mind), depth is generally a quintessential part of the result. It’s easy to help someone with a few format-level changes. The magic comes in a 3 step process –
– Understand the context (why did the person do what they did so far? i.e. past. why is the person applying to …..? i.e. future) – Craft the 1 line pitch (why you?) – Improve the presentation (how can we ensure the little things look great?)
There’s no short cut around these things. You either go through the process or you don’t. The first two steps take a bit of thinking and the final step typically takes 12-14 drafts. It is deep and painful.
From my own past experience, I’ve learnt that depth is generally not appreciated (more on this later..). More often than not, we, as humans, prefer the superficial. Having been on the other side, I’ve learnt that I must ask for help only if I want “help”, and as far as possible avoid “being of help.” This realization helped me understand why very few people make it through my intensive resume program. (Haha)
This insight hit me yesterday evening and I think I finally understood why I told a young friend her “being of help” question was one that didn’t work for me. I wasn’t able to articulate my reason. Now, I know. It just doesn’t work for me. If I’m involved, I prefer digging in. It’s not always pretty but it’s the way I prefer..
I know better now. I just need to learn to say “no” nicely when I see a “be of help” request to come through.
This week’s book learning is part I of a 5 part series from ‘So Good They Can’t Ignore You’ by Cal Newport.
Heads up first – this is one of the best books I have read. It is a manifesto-style book and doesn’t have a traditional story approach. I will be covering all 4 principles as in the book and hope to do them justice.
Cal’s advice is opposite to conventional wisdom – “Don’t follow your passion. Rather, let it follow you in your quest to become so good that they can’t ignore you.”
He points out that if a young Steve Jobs had taken his own advice (in his famous Stanford commencement speech) and decided to only pursue work he loved, he would probably have been a popular zen teacher at the Los Altos Zen Center. But, he didn’t follow this simple advice. Apple Computer was decidedly not born out of passion, but instead was the result of a lucky break – a “small-time” scheme that unexpectedly took off!
Research has shown that the happiest, most passionate employees are not those who followed their passion into a position, but instead those who have been around long enough to become good at what they do. Scientists have found that motivation requires us to fulfill three basic psychological needs:
– Autonomy: the feeling that you have control over your day, and that your actions are important – Competence: the feeling that you are good at what you do – Relatedness: the feeling of connection to other people
Never was it found that “matching work to pre-existing ability, interests, passions, or personality” is important for motivation.
I think Cal’s book is brilliant because he’s tested all of what he says and I find that it all ties very well with the principles I have picked up over the past few years, like deliberate practice.
He makes a compelling case and it is a book that I would highly recommend, should you be looking for an addition to your bookshelf. More to follow in the other 3 parts of the series, of course..
And, in a funny way, it seems to tie into what Viktor Frankl might say – Be so good and passion will ensue simply because you forgot to think about it. :-)
Here’s to listening to letting our passions follow our excellence, this week!
William launched his second start-up 
A Learning a Day 