India in Olympics – Will The Plot Ever Change ?


In a (sick/sad) way, I am glad NBC has a delay telecasting Olympics here in the USA. As an Indian living here, I cheer happily for both countries. But the contrast between the two is way too much to ignore.

Lets start with Athletics. Every year, India sends a bunch of athletes to Olympics. There hasn’t been any success – and we still celebrate the 4th place P.T Usha got in Los Angeles in the 80s. Even before they leave India, their coaches will issue defensive statements like “even if we enter the final medal round, we should be proud of it” . Seriously? isn’t that getting old after all these years? Why bother traveling across ocean if the best you can do is nowhere close to getting a medal? If participation is the big deal – why not participate in lesser events and gain the experience?

Almost every retired athlete in India will start an academy in his or her name. Everyone wants to send their wards to Olympics, and do 4 year and 8 year plans. They then go on TV and blame the government a lot for lack of support. If the athlete who started the academy never won an Olympics, or has never coached an Olympic medal winner – what is the chance that they have it in them to do something different? If proof of the pudding is in the eating – well, lets see what comes off next week when the athletics kick off in London. I hope there will be a miracle, knowing well that hope is not a strategy.
Take badminton – where Saina Nehwal is a world class player. She seems to be doing well so far, and good luck to her. And I applaud what P Kashyap is doing too. But the doubles players were atrocious. They just did not play like a 13th ranked team in the world . There just was no intensity in their game.

Or take tennis – where the two big boys have egos fitting a soccer field. India could not field their best pair because they just hate each other. Whether the big boys Paes and Bhupathi would have won in Olympics is yet another question. I would doubt it . In Grand Slams – the top singles players in men’s circuit do not play doubles any more like Connors and McEnroe did years ago. That is not the case in Olympics – where top singles players usually play doubles too. It makes it hard for Paes and Bhupathi to win against players of Roger Federer’s class. Sania Mirza was never a top 10 player in singles, yet is the highest ranked Indian in the mix in women. Does she have a prayer in winning singles ever in Olympics? No – and I would be surprised if her teaming with Paes is going to work out very well after airing dirty laundry in public. After all the fuss – Bhupati and Boppanna who seemed confident of winning a medal, crashed out meekly in second round.

Archery was an area where we had world class competitors. They didn’t do too well either – and were totally outclassed. The lone silver lining is Narang who won a bronze yesterday for shooting. He won a bronze in an event where Bindra had a gold last year. As much as I am happy for him, can we ignore the decline?

All is not lost though – Field Hockey and Boxing are two areas I feel some confidence in. Boxing more so than Hockey. In both these cases the big difference is the difference in preparation that the teams went through. Their coaches are from outside India and they prepared the team to play to its strength. With Hockey – first match did not go well. But the second half was quite good – and I hope the team strikes back. In Boxing, the first rounds were excellent. I was surprised to see how physically fit the boxers and hockey players are now. Way to go – and good luck !

What causes this sob story to repeat each year? I can think of many reasons , but here is the first half dozen that comes to mind.

1. Politicians head sports in India invariably. Most of them have never played at a high level, and have not coached or in several cases not even followed the game. So there is hardly any vision . The one exception probably is our current sports minister who seems quite capable.

2. There is a cultural issue with taking up sports for a living. Other than cricket – most sports don’t have big sponsorship. So most parents won’t encourage kids to make a career in sports. It is changing, but way too slowly

3. Coaching is mostly stuck in the past. Past athletes who themselves were not capable of winning anything are now coaches. Bad idea – we should aim to partner with the best coaches in the world and get Indian coaches exposed to newer methods of training and conditioning. This includes boosting confidence of players

4. Infrastructure sucks in most sports centers. The only way out is to get private sector interested. Government cannot solve it themselves – and we should realize this after all these years.

5. Sports Quota from government needs to be revamped, or done away with. I personally know many who get a government job and never take part in sport ever after.

6. International exposure from young age. Don’t start sending athletes to compete abroad just the year before Olympics. Start sending them from a young age from minor leagues, and build up some bench strength.

I am glad the India – Srilanka cricket matches are there to give something to cheer about now. It is a little less gloomy thanks to that. But who knows – Miracles might happen next week.

Random Management Lessons From Dinner Table


Couple of days ago, I had the opportunity to host a client CIO and a senior IBM executive for dinner at a restaurant in San Jose, CA. It was one of the most interesting conversations I ever had over dinner, and to say the least – it was more valuable to me than many business school lessons. Since the CIO and me have regular meetings, some of it I already knew and had tried on my own. I wish I had taken notes – although it would have been awkward 🙂

The CIO explained how he helps his team set goals. He just asks them three questions periodically

1. What will you stop doing?

2. What will you start doing ?

3. What will you continue to do?

What an extremely simple framework , but it is extremely powerful. I have known his team for a couple of years now, and I have seen them transform. For the past several months, I have asked myself the same questions – and came to an interesting conclusion. My biggest conclusion was that it was way more hard to be fully critical of myself than I thought. Several things that I was very proud of about myself – I realized I could not take the amount of credit I have been giving myself.

Of the three questions, there is one that is harder than others for me. And that is “what will I stop doing?”. I delegate a lot already – thanks to the coaching I got over the years from my mentors. But as I thought more deeply about it – I could delegate a lot more. And if there is one thing I focus on with my mentees now – it is to delegate more. Delegation pays back in spades.

Talking of mentors – I learned the hard way the need to have multiple mentors. Just take the career front for example. To be a successful executive in my line of work- there are 4 things at least that you need to excel in

1. Developing People

2. Developing thought leadership

3. Managing projects and client relationships

4. Managing pipeline and sales

If I look at my mentors – there is hardly anyone who excels in each of these. If I don’t choose multiple mentors – it is not possible for me to become a well rounded leader. And if all of them work in the same environment as me – I probably won’t get any new ideas. IBM has a lot of emphasis on mentoring, and we can find out easily on intranet on who is looking for being mentored, and who is willing to mentor us. But that is just a first step – it does not mean you and your mentor will be compatible. I try to get leaders at my clients, at SAP, from analyst/blogger community, and at competitors to mentor me. It is not easy – and I have ways to go in finding mentors for all aspects that I need improvement. It is also important that I should be able to do something for the mentor in return. There might be a few selfless mentors who will help you without expecting anything in return – but my general philosophy is that if I am taking up their time, I should be able to help them in return in whatever way I can.

The IBM executive at the table is one of my mentors, and I have learned a lot from him. But let me point out just one thing he always does – which I don’t do, and I should try doing. I have taken many clients to dinner at this particular restaurant. The food is excellent, but service is not the best. And then we walked in and took our seats at our table. Next thing, the IBM executive asks the server what her name was. He talked to her using her name in every sentence for about 3 minutes. The result was unbelievable – this was the best service I have ever seen there in 10 years. I have seen this done many times by now, and it works like a charm. He does this with every one he meets – he treats them as peers, respects them, calls them by their name – and remembers them. I firmly believe it is a big part of his success in life.

There are a few more things I am surely missing here from last evening – but I need to go drop my daughter at her dance lessons. Off we go.

SAP Announced Fantastic Q2 Results – And Vijay Says..


Good job – SAP, Kudos on having an awesome Q2. Those are impressive numbers indeed. An 18% jump in revenue is nothing to sneeze at, especially for a German company with a huge European market where everyone else seems to be suffering. Every region had double digit growth. What I loved the most was that average deal size was up. That is not something a lot of companies can pull off in a bad economy.

So where did all the money come from? Looks like HANA brought in more than its fair share. With Sanjay Poonen/Steve Lucas at the helm – I would not have expected any less. Their team probably would have also covered for Q1 misses if they had any, with some room to spare. Vishal would be a happy camper seeing the number of HANA customers rise.

I am seeing a lot of traction for BW on HANA in the field. Many customers have bought Hana licenses already – and several have done so before they have a finite time line for implementation. So consulting and HW business for partners would lag software quite a bit. But BW on HANA is the cheapest version of HANA now – and that alone is not going to make big numbers. Business Suite for HANA is probably going to come out by end of year – but I have my doubts on how many customers will make the switch in near future. RDS might see good traction since it lets customers start small with HANA.

Here is some color from my buddy Dennis Howlett – it is an excellent read. http://www.zdnet.com/sap-defying-gravity-whoda-thought-that-7000001501/

Dennis points out that SIs might see an issue going forward because SAP is aiming to reduce the consulting effort needed to implement its products. I am not going to hold my breath quite yet – time and again, across product lines – very few customers have been able to live with vanilla installations. RDS might help some – but probably not in sufficient scale. Even as recently as HANA – SAP could not scale implementations without partners getting involved. I strongly believe that had partner enablement been efficient up front, HANA would have sold about 2X what is has sold so far. Good thing is that it is all good now – and I expect to see more traction from HANA.

HANA is not a discounted product. However, big SAP customers don’t buy SAP licenses without discounts.HANA is not at a stage that large number of customers will just buy without a sweetened deal. So SAP sales people will need to throw something into the basket for sake of discounting. It is a game SAP taught customers, and now they cannot do away with it.

From Den’s post, my understanding is that SAP has taken the foot off the pedal for Analytics part of their portfolio. I wouldn’t worry too much about this . SAP has a very capable sales force that can overcome this quickly in rest of the year.

But there is an investment question that worries me a bit. With most of the development force dedicated to Hana – and SAP keen on bringing out several new products ( Visual Intelligence, Zen, Predictive Intelligence etc) – I have a feeling that the Analytics team are in a position of doing more with less resources. Despite million man hours, BO 4.0 had bugs that many customers have complained about. SAP has been pretty good about solving issues and supporting customers. However, it remains to be seen if SAP can allocate enough resources to effectively cater to the needs of such a growing portfolio. Alternate approach would be to not trying to be everything to everyone in BI. But I doubt Adam Binnie and Jon S and Michael R would want to take that direction.

Analytics has several options to increase market share. Most ERP customers don’t have BOBJ presence for starters, and it is a market SAP can readily tap. And Analytics is by far the only HANA usecase for now. So there should be some pull through demand too.

Mobility seem healthy too – but despite SAP spending a lot of effort, I somehow don’t get the comfort feel on their value proposition. I am not holding by breath on apps saving the day – or even platforms. Where I see traction is mostly in Afaria. I am seeing some traction for mobility – and some for SFSF, but not to the extent that I think that this will be the next billion dollar opportunity for SAP. I could be wrong – and I will be happy to be proven wrong. It could also be that Hana just gets more oxygen and Mobility messaging just chokes for now . I will wait for Sanjay to chime in with how he sees the future.

All things considered – I am bullish on SAP, and think that they are well placed for future. I can imagine a lot of champagne flowing in China this week where SAPPHIRE is happening 🙂