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 🙂

Not Even Apple Can Keep The Market Happy


So AAPL announced its Q3 results – and next thing we know its shares took a beating – almost down 5% in after hours trading when I looked. Did anything change fundamentally for AAPL to deserve this brutal treatment from investors? I doubt it – they are just paying the price for being a very successful public company for the most part. It is not as if they did bad in absolute terms – they made a lot of money in the quarter, but not enough to keep up with the market’s instiable appetite for more.

Their product cycle did not do AAPL a lot of favors – despite the excellent iPad sales, and a new mac model. Everyone I know – and me – are waiting for the new iPhone. Till next model comes out, large numbers of  existing customers will not pay for an existing model . It is not as if the analysts did not know it – they just did not cut AAPL any slack for it.

There is an interesting question here – how much of iPad sales is killing the traditional mac revenue? I know many who barely use a PC or Mac any more, and just use iPads. I have seen this more with ex-PC users. But this might be affecting mac buying behavior quite a bit too. I am sure some smart analyst has figured it out. I need to find out more. While AAPL is a clear leader with iPads,  the tablet market is getting brutally competitive. So they cannot slacken one bit on iPads .

AAPL has always been very conservative when it comes to guidance to market. It is now at a stage where Apple’s guidance and  analyst consensus is a few billion dollars apart for revenue each quarter. That is a lot of money to make up every time. Apple and Analysts need to reach some middle ground to avoid wide swings. It is hard to pull off though given AAPL’s success.

Some small investors will probably panic as always and sell now. My feeling is that some smart fund managers will just buy at the low price given the company has strong fundamentals and tonnes of cash.

AAPL might not be totally immune to economic issues in Europe – and that could be a long term issue. I would be keen to see how 4Q turns out for them. Guidance for 4Q is 34B USD – which is probably way too low for keeping analysts happy. I am pretty curious to see if they will revise it soon after seeing the stock take a hit.