Category: Everything else

KIS – MBA Learnings

As I reflected on my graduate school experience the other day, I was reminded of the fact that there have been many unsung heroes who’ve gone a long way in making this experience meaningful and memorable. While I naturally thought of the many support staff at school who’ve helped with the many “small things,” the office of student affairs with whom I’ve partnered on a bunch of occasions, among others, I thought of a group that has been ever present through the experience – KIS or Kellogg Information Systems.

KIS has had a huge impact on my experience in two ways –
1. The support side of the  team has risen to the occasion every time I’ve had an issue to my laptop. Just this Sunday, I had a Windows update crash my laptop. I requested KIS for help by Monday morning and my laptop was ready by Monday evening. I’ve had a few of these over the past year – not every one of them had as smooth a resolution. But, when I needed them, KIS have always been there – supportive and helpful.
They’ve also put up with my requests for shared mailboxes for every team I’ve led as they’re wonderful tools for collaboration. After some initial hiccups as it was an unusual request, we’ve got on great on this front too.

2. The events side of the team, on the other hand, has been a true partner that has played a role in the success of every event I’ve organized. My events have rarely been plain vanilla events and, as a result, the requests have consistently pushed them – “Can you get a seamless Skype/video call experience with state-of-the-art microphones? Can you now record this call? Can you live stream it to the next room? Can you set up the auditorium differently? How about the lighting in this place? Can you set up a nice looking stage?” They’ve always answered in the affirmative, always been constructive, and when things have gone wrong, they have always risen to the occasion.

The KIS team, to me, represent all the wonderful support I’ve received here as a student. They don’t just their job – they go the extra mile. And, it shows.

As I thought about the KIS team and all the support staff, I realized that, every little thing that is done well, is a lot like a human pyramid – it has more people supporting it than we often realize. So, when things go well, it helps to pause and give thanks to all those who made something work. It takes an understanding and appreciation of all the pieces that make something work to build systems that work yourself.

Thank you, KIS, and all the support staff from team Kellogg.

KIS, Kellogg information systems, supportSource

5 small tweaks aiding intensity

1. Mobile – collapsing apps I don’t want to be checking into a group on my second screen. This increased intensity has reduced my propensity to check. Aside from the fact that it involves more work to check these app, I find myself asking – “Do you really need to do this?” – as I consider doing this.

2. Browser – Collapsing bookmarks into groups. I used to have all my useful bookmarks laid out. This is similar to surrounding yourself by all sorts of unhealthy food while attempting to diet. Collapsing them into folders means they’re no longer in view.

3. Browser – Collapsing the bookmark bar altogether. Why stop at creating folders when I can collapse the bar altogether? Chrome has a nice bookmarks bar usage flow. Once you collapse it, you don’t see it in a working tab but, once you open a new tab, you see it again. Perfect.

4. Laptop – Removing outlook from task bar and shutting all sorts of notifications. I’ve removed email from my task bar as of a few months and have it closed when I’m not clearing email. However, I think I’ve become more aggressive with regards to notifications. While I shut out all notifications on my laptop, since December break, I’ve made sure all notifications except a text or call (both of which are rare) are off.

5. Mobile/laptop – Switching off Wifi on my phone often. Whenever I set out to focus intensely of late, I switch off Wifi on my phone and put it away (often in another room). I’ve begun doing this on occasion on my laptop as well.

Small tweaks => Big impact.

intensity, tweaksImage source

Picking up the phone

I received a long email about an important project last week. I had a few questions about the email and decided to just call the person who’d written to me to go through my questions. We had a 10 minute conversation that would almost certainly have required 8-10 emails.

I do this once a while but don’t do it nearly as often.

A similar thought had crossed my mind earlier that day when someone I knew texted me with what could only be described as a pretty heavy discussion topic. As I let that discussion play out in my head, I realized that there was no way I’d get through the work I needed to get done if I spent time texting. So, I suggested that we better discuss this in person and ducked out.

I think the insight for me is that we often unconsciously tie ourselves down to whichever channel we receive communication in and don’t question if that would be the right place for continuing it. Having so many possible channels is a blessing simply because we can tailor the communication to the right channel. That only works if we use it well.

A wiser friend regularly responds to emails that require a long response with a phone call. Of course, this may not work for everyone at every time. But, he has a point. Sometimes, it is just better to pick up the phone.

phone, pick up

Saying 3 things

In all forms of public speaking and presentations, I’m a big fan of boiling everything you have to say down to 3 things. There are 3 advantages (of course) to doing so –

1. People don’t remember more than 3 things anyway. (Moreover, if the 3 things seem disconnected, the chances are high that your audience will remember just one.)

2. You save yourself from rambling while also harnessing a powerful principle – structure makes you look smarter.

3. Yes, there might be many more important things to add. But, by picking 3 of the most important factors, you’ve likely boiled it all down to the essence. And, for the most part, the essence is all your listeners need.

Like all wonderful simple ideas, this is incredibly powerful when executed consistently.

3 thingsSource

A few notes on British Airways: Fuelled by Love

British Airways has a fantastic piece of advertising up – a 5 minute ad movie titled “Fuelled by Love.”

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFb01yTR9bA%5B/embedyt%5D

A few notes as I reflected on it –

1. British Airways had a bit of a public goof a few months ago when India’s cricket icon, Sachin Tendulkar, took to Twitter to express his annoyance at recent service received by BA. The customer service person managing Twitter by responding to Sachin’s tweet and asking for his full name. That enraged his fan base (~9M followers at that time). I am not quite sure if this ad series is in response to that but I’m sure it contributed to it.

2. While this is undoubted a fairly long ad at 5 minutes, it is a compelling watch. To the Director’s credit, it has all the aspects of a great 5 minute watch – many emotions, good acting and a sweet story. It also helps that it starts with “Inspired by a true story” – as human beings, we are suckers for that line.

3. The biggest reason I termed it fantastic is because the BA Advertising team demonstrated mastery over many small details. The BA brand is mentioned just the right number of times without it feeling too much – it, of course, helps that the Air Hostess is in BA colors. Love is a great theme because it isn’t something many people associate with flying. But, they layered all too familiar emotions of sadness and uncertainty in the story that we can all relate to. By bringing this all together nicely, they almost managed to personify what BA stands for. And, that’s powerful.

4. “Loving India back since 1924” is the tag line at the end. This is clever use of the colonial relationship. Hat tip to whoever thought of that.

5. I had tears in my eyes at the end of the ad.

6. And, I’m glad they kept the movie grounded in reality – you see, that sort of a bond between an air steward and a passenger is near impossible in Economy class. :-)

Well played, British Airways.

Career and life lessons from a business class upgrade

I was upgraded to business class on Emirates Airlines last month for a 4 hour leg of a 17 hour journey. It was funny how I immediately found myself wishing I had been upgraded for the longer leg. Ha. Human nature. It had been a while since I traveled business on a good airline and what I observed had some interesting implications on thinking about careers and life.

To begin with, I perceived a change in behavior from the staff the moment I got my upgrade at the counter. I felt I was suddenly treated with more respect and felt special. Of course, the comforts were great – a full recline bed on which you can sleep comfortably and a table on which you can get work done without feeling squished. But, what struck me was the visible difference in the way I was treated. This disappeared the moment I stepped back into Economy for the longer leg.

The principle here is signaling. I was treated as someone with perceived higher value simply because of my accidental/serendipitous business class tag. It is powerful because we, as humans, are always categorizing people and things. And, signaling, one way or the other, determines which buckets we fall into.

So, when it comes to planning careers, my thought process and advice are really boring – work hard, get into the best school you can get into, then work hard and get good grades (or do something really cool in the risk-free zone that is school), then get into the best job you can get into, do very well and you’ll find yourself with more options over time. The reason for this boring advice is that it reduces downside. Yes, we love talking about entrepreneurs who made billions by taking crazy risks. That is largely media fueled nonsense. Most smart entrepreneurs are actually masterful de-riskers – they only take the next risk when they feel they’ve minimized chances of failures. And, as far as drop outs who made billions go, the most storied of the lot – Bill Gates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Mark Zuckerberg – dropped out of Harvard and Stanford. I daresay they would have done fine even if things hadn’t worked out at Microsoft, Google and Facebook.

Fivethirtyeight had a sobering article titled “Rich Kids Stay Rich, Poor Kids Stay Poor” presenting results from a research study on how growing up in poverty affects kids. One of the charts in the article was –

career, wealth

Most charts told a similar story – folks who grew up in wealthy families remained wealthy as adults.The article underlines just how hard social mobility is. And, if these were the results in the US (the land of opportunity), I can only imagine what similar studies would unearth elsewhere.

My hypothesis is that the principle that underlies all of this is, again, signaling. Do well early and you reduce downside for the rest of your careers. Once you’ve reduced that downside, you are well placed to take risks to increase upside. That isn’t to say your chances are low otherwise. But, it is also no coincidence that you have an absurd number of risk takers in places like the Silicon Valley. The truth is that places like the Silicon Valley both place a premium on failure and encourage risk taking once you’ve had a stint at a successful tech firm. So, in some ways, you’re probably only increasing your career capital. Sure, you will always be able to point to many who “made it” without following this principle. But, I could say with a good degree of confidence that the many are a small proportion of the “many others” who fell by the wayside without a Fortune cover story.

The article and data also goes to show how fortunate you are if you won the genetic lottery and were born into the right family. If you are in those top percentiles, maybe this data ought to be a wake up call to stop complaining about all the things that go wrong and to use all that privilege you have to leave the world better than you found it.

Shifu-isms – doing only what you can do

Long time readers know I am a big fan of the Kung Fu Panda series. While KF3 isn’t as good as the previous two, I enjoyed it all the same.

Master Shifu had a lovely nugget when he was making the case for why Po (the Panda) should now focus on teaching –

If you only do what you can do, you’ll never be better than what you are.

When you become good at something, it is natural to move into a comfort zone of sorts. I’ve found myself reflecting on this by looking for areas where I could push myself more – and there are two that came straight to mind.

A great reminder.

Shifu, comfort zone

Being reductionist

A wise friend remarked that, if we were to be reductionist for a moment, perhaps life just comes down to one central idea – love.

Author and psychologist Scott Peck defined love as the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. (He treats mental and spiritual growth the same)

There’s a lot to unpack in that definition – “the will,” “to extend,” “nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth” – can all inspire essays themselves. But, to me, it says two things. First, love is a verb. Second, to seek growth is to seek love. True self love, as I have learned over years of daily notes here, requires us to push, challenge and extend ourselves without judgment. Where growth and love are concerned, to speak of one is to speak of another.

As simple as this idea may sound, it is, of course, incredibly hard to consistently act on. But, do small things with extraordinary love and do so one day at a time, and, it is likely we will chart a path that describes a life well lived.

reductionist, love

Educators

Education changes the way you approach problems. Any experience that has a formative and positive effect on the way you think, act, or behave, is, in essence, educational.

So, it follows that an educator is someone who has had a formative effect on the way you think, act or behave. We don’t stop having educators once we leave school. Instead, our formal educators are replaced by informal educators – colleagues, friends and family we learn from.

Let’s take a moment and think about educators in our lives in the past months – people who’ve changed the way we think, act or behave. And, let’s consider if we’ve done our bit to share lessons we’ve learnt and been educators ourselves, too.

PS: The truest sign of an educator – they are students first, sharers and teachers second.

Anticipation – The Gretzky way

The FiveThirtyEight website had a nice birthday tribute to Wayne Gretzky’s incredible stats.

anticipation, wayne gretzky,

I didn’t know much about Gretzky aside from his oft-quoted quotes. And, I found it very interesting that Gretzky’s size and strength were described as unimpressive by NHL standards. In fact, he was described as “too small, too slow and too wiry” when he started out. He was, however, blessed with athleticism and had worked hard to build up great reservoirs of stamina. But, even that, by NHL standards, didn’t make Gretzky exceptional. These skills were a dime-a-dozen.

Gretzky’s specialty was anticipation. As his Wikipedia page reads –

Despite his unimpressive stature, strength and speed, Gretzky’s intelligence and reading of the game were unrivaled. He was adept at dodging checks from opposing players, and he could consistently anticipate where the puck was going to be and execute the right move at the right time.

Accounts of Gretzky seem to focus on this ability to anticipate what was going to happen. Gretzky’s take is telling (Wally is his father)-

Some say I have a ‘sixth sense’ … Baloney. I’ve just learned to guess what’s going to happen next. It’s anticipation. It’s not God-given, it’s Wally-given. He used to stand on the blue line and say to me, ‘Watch, this is how everybody else does it.’ Then he’d shoot a puck along the boards and into the corner and then go chasing after it. Then he’d come back and say, ‘Now, this is how the smart player does it.’ He’d shoot it into the corner again, only this time he cut across to the other side and picked it up over there. Who says anticipation can’t be taught?

Wally’s drills focused entirely on building anticipation. As described in his autobiography –

Him: “Where’s the last place a guy looks before he passes it?”
Me: “The guy he’s passing to.”
Him: “Which means…”
Me: “Get over there and intercept it.”
Him: “Where do you skate?”
Me: “To where the puck is going, not where it’s been.”
Him: “If you get cut off, what are you gonna do?”
Me: “Peel.”
Him: “Which way?”
Me: “Away from the guy, not towards him.”

Not only were Wally’s drills ahead of their time, Gretzky also benefited from a head-start. In his own words –

See, kids usually don’t start playing hockey until they’re six or seven. Ice isn’t grass. It’s a whole new surface and everybody starts from ground zero. … By the time I was ten, I had eight years on skates instead of four, and a few seasons’ worth of ice time against ten-year-olds. So I had a long head start on everyone else.

Fascinating. Anticipation transformed a played with below average NHL attributes to someone widely considered to be the greatest hockey player of all time. And, best of all, this ability to see ahead was trained – from the age of 2. Seeing ahead is a skill.