And Vijay Says…

Hobo joined our family on our daughter Shreya’s fourth birthday when he was about 8 weeks old .

We picked him up after her birthday party from his breeder Marci Sale’s house in Gilbert . He rode back home on Dhanya’s lap and I remember him squirming the entire way back. Sitting still was not his thing 🙂

Boss was five years old at the time and immediately took Hobo under his wings

Some of my most favorite moments those days were the time I spent with Shreya, Boss and Hobo in the backyard and in the pool at our old house.

They were inseparable – and so different . Boss was all brain and Hobo was all brawn . If I tossed an orange into the pool for them to fetch , Hobo would do a spectacular dive to get it back – and then at the last minute Boss will take it from him and deliver it to me 🙂

The only thing Boss really didn’t share very much with Hobo was me . It was clear to Hobo that Boss didn’t like him to be right next to me if he was around . He had to wait his turn . If I pet Hobo first – Boss would immediately sulk 🙂

But everything else was fine – Boss had no trouble letting Hobo share toys , treats , bedding etc . And unlike Boss , Hobo was not destructive when it came to toys – he just liked to carry them around .

Hobo didn’t like dog shows one bit . That was not his idea of fun . I am convinced he could have also been an obedience champion like my German Shepherd – and he was proofed on everything up to CDX when we gave up . I had no interest left in competing to win – so when o realized he didn’t like it, we stopped training .

He was the ultimate retriever . And fetching oranges from our pool was the one thing he didn’t mind doing a thousand times .

Eventually, I had to stop allowing him to swim after he started hurting and crying the next day.

Just as Boss did to him , when Ollie joined our family – it was Hobo’s turn to be the four year old big brother to the seven week old young gun . To be fair , Boss did his fair share in raising the kid as well .

I think what Hobo taught him first was to sit next to me and stare at me till I shared whatever was on my plate with them .

I am sure it was Boss who taught Hobo that it’s a foolproof strategy that works every single time .

When Boss left us for the rainbow bridge three years ago, Hobo took over immediately as my shadow . He was just there right next to me, checking on me from time to time and making sure I knew he was there for me .

Being a New Year’s Eve baby – Hobo’s birthday was the easiest to remember . And ice cream was his favorite birthday treat . We returned from Europe the day before his birthday last year to make sure we can celebrate with him .

He loved riding shot gun with me in the car .

We would have our silly conversations and he wouldn’t take his eyes off me throughout the drive.

When we celebrated his tenth birthday, he was still a bouncy young puppy . I don’t think he ever mentally grew up much beyond six months or so . It took very little to make him excited and jump around barking . Dhanya used to tease him with a new trash bag before putting it in the kitchen bin and he would go nuts .

Hobo enjoyed going for walks . Showing him the leash was a shire shot way of raising his excitement through the roof

Past his tenth birthday though, he started slowing down . He preferred sunbathing in the back lawn to playing fetch

He started having some trouble getting up , and he needed supplements for his joints and for his liver . But apart from a week or so where he lost appetite – he had almost returned to normal .

While I realized we didn’t have a lot of time left with him, I didn’t realize that it will come so soon . I had to fly to NY on Wednesday afternoon . As usual, before leaving I let him and Ollie our for a potty break .

Hobo was the first to come back in and we shared a banana . That was the last meal we shared . Today as I am flying back home, Dhanya messaged me mid air that he passed away in his sleep .

I am sure Boss is waiting at the Rainbow bridge for you dear Ojo-Bojo – May there be plenty of oranges for you to fetch and pools for you to swim . Till we meet again buddy !

There are probably very few people in the corporate world who haven’t had this thought at some point in their careers – and it probably is the primary belief system of many line executives . I used to be one of them – and from time to time, I still slip into that mindset – and then snap out of it .

So before I say anything else – let me say the answer is a resounding NO ! And they certainly are no more evil or clueless as the rest of us . I will go on to add that when we make use of their expertise the right way – life becomes significantly more productive !

As always – everything on this blog is strictly my personal opinion !

A lot of people I mentor have told me some version of “I could be doing a much better job if only Finance and Ops would let me” . There is some truth in that statement – and I have said it many times myself . I have also since learned there are larger truths that perhaps will change our perspective a little bit . That’s why I am attempting a blog to explain my point of view .

Finance and Ops colleagues have a very hard job to begin with – and we often don’t appreciate it. It’s not a job that many of us have the skill, aptitude or interest to do. I majored in finance in business school – and yet I don’t think I ever want to do a CFO role . Thanks to the nature of their job – most of us in line jobs don’t take the time and effort to understand why they operate the way they do , or how their analysis was done to reach the conclusion we disagree with .

Let’s use an example to put this in context . Revenue and profit are generally easy measures to understand . Cash flow and time value of money are less natural measures for many of us . So when a finance leader questions a deal that shows a high revenue and profit profile – it could be because the projected cash flow is poor , and there is debt that can’t be serviced . Another common occurrence is arguments about “expense vs cost” which both look similar to people without training in accounting, but have completely different accounting treatments . You don’t need a three year degree to understand the basics – but if you don’t take the time to do get it right , you will constantly talk past your finance colleagues and get frustrated .

Most people are familiar with how P&L statements work because their metrics are correlated to it . However there is also the Balance sheet and the cash flow statement that hold significance in a business – and till we understand how it all works together, we will never extrapolate our own reality to the company’s reality .

The reverse is also true that often the world looks different when you abstract it to a spreadsheet or PPT . So an Ops leader might tell every VP to cut 10% of their staff as a solution to save money – and it will make perfect sense at the highest level . And yet , for obvious reasons it is hardly ever a good solution . Another classic problem is resource fungibility looks infinite (Why hire a manager for AI in west coast now when we have two managers in IOT in Midwest and East who both have bandwidth to stretch?) on a spreadsheet when translated to headcount and dollars – but ridiculous when it is translated to skills and location and so on .

Essentially – a little bit of active empathy and trust building via training, job rotations etc will go a long way in reducing friction in decision making .

A CFO – now retired – that I respect a lot once told me this . “When a business is run well, my job is to make sure I record everything and provide insights to where we may have opportunities to grow. When it’s not running well , my job is to get it back to a shape where it can be run well again”. My appreciation for that statement was admittedly low when I first heard it , but it has improved over time 🙂

A lot of frustration happens when finance and operations policies are created by people who don’t have sufficient appreciation for what happens on the ground. All business needs a happy middle of “let’s not take any risk and let’s not trust anyone” vs “let’s take every risk and let’s trust everyone” . Similarly there is the tension on what’s the best way to generate profit – where should be the happy middle of “let’s increase revenue by any means possible” and “let’s cut costs to the bone” . The manifestation of this is best seen in how companies operate their budgets .

Budgets assume that almost everything is known upfront for the year in front of us and we can optimize resources to get a certain goal . It’s all good except that things do change all the time ! And this is where business reasoning should prevail over broad policies and processes .

When a leader says “sorry – no budget” to a proposal , what that translates to usually is “this is my first filter to see if you have the conviction to prove that my budgetary assumptions were wrong” . There is always budget to make more money for a company if you can prove the risk-return trade off works . But that needs you to ask questions to understand why your request is denied , have a relationship with all the stakeholders so that you even have a chance to ask in the first place , and a lot of effort to make the case in a way it makes sense . And in reverse – it needs finance and Ops to be flexible enough to change assumptions when there is proof that it’s the right thing to do .

The easy path – the one often taken by many of us – is to shrug and give up with “these bean counters don’t get it” and “These utopian ideas are why we are in trouble and why we need to tighten policies some more” 🙂

I am consciously staying away from a discussion on metrics as the driving force for some or all of corporate dysfunction. That needs a deeper discussion by itself 🙂

I have been a coffee drinker from the time I was a five year old . I grew up with my paternal grandparents ( Dad and mom stayed in a distant town where the factory he worked for was situated and that place didn’t have good schools ) who were both coffee drinkers and I would get a small cup too when they had theirs . Kerala is famous for tea – and strangely I don’t like tea . Everyone else in my family enjoys tea except me 🙂

The very first trip to US – the ONLY food item I packed was a big bottle of BRU instant coffee . I also remember my excitement and relief finding BRU in the local Indian store in Colorado Springs !

I value efficiency a lot – and BRU instant coffee with milk was the easiest solution at home . A mug of milk takes 90 seconds in the microwave to heat up and another ten seconds , I can have a great tasting coffee . Outside my home – Starbucks cappuccino is where I end up spending all my disposable income .

I have always had great espresso makers . But the time it takes to get a coffee and the clean up afterwards essentially meant they stayed in the garage shelf more than on kitchen counter . Few years back – I shifted to a Nespresso machine . While definitely more expensive and not very sustainable – it was a great solution to having high quality coffee in thirty seconds .

A little while ago, I stopped having milk altogether . And this posed a problem – if I drank big mugs of coffee throughout the day, the acidity in my tummy took away the pleasure of coffee . So I switched almost exclusively to espressos . I really needed a small quantity of intense flavor and it will last me several hours . Two a day is plenty for most days . But for that – Nespresso wasn’t cutting it .

So with great reluctance – I dusted off the espresso machine and researched good beans and started grinding and making my own from scratch . It does take a lot more than 2 mins to get a perfect shot – and some days the magic doesn’t happen and I try experimenting some more .

The process – to my utter surprise – proved to be rather therapeutic . I no longer know what I enjoy more – the process of making a great espresso and the experiments to make it a little better the next time , or the resulting drink itself !

It is an interesting parallel to how my views on work have evolved similarly over time as well .

I used to compete in Dog shows actively while I was in college . It was not easy to find time to train my dog and also not let my grades drop – so I micro optimized both the study routine and the training routine . I was fairly successful from an outcome point of view – my dog won regularly and I had decent grades . But honestly I can’t look back and say I enjoyed the learning experience very much on either side .

As a young engineer – I only cared about making sure I could deliver high quality code within time and budget . My enjoyment was more about typing a few hundred lines of code and see it compile the first time itself . Someone created the rules and I improved my skills at optimizing within those boundaries and delivering what I was asked to .

By the time I was a senior manager – I had a little bit more confidence in redefining problems before solving them . The one I remember the most is convincing a finance leader at my client that she didn’t need 150 reports that her team scoped about and can get everything she needs with just 70 by redefining the problem to a certain business outcome that will “move the needle” . And then I had to convince my boss that we will make a lot less money doing the lesser scope of work. Both worked out fine and over a long period of time we earned good business from that client .

Looking back, I think the next evolution was in encouraging my team to redefine the problems and then optimizing the solutions while I try to spend more of my own time trying to gaze a little farther into future and preparing for what is yet to come . I minimize my intervention to what business schools call “management by exception” – and even then only to the extent of helping them think through. I guess that’s where I am now – with of course plenty to improve on finding the right balance .

My biggest learning from all this is the importance of operational excellence . If the routine blocking and tackling is not well taken care of – your ability to expand your horizon becomes rather limited . I have done more than my fair share of whining on operational aspects of executive roles – but I no longer do it with the kind of zeal I used to 🙂 .

This is why I call coffee as “liquid wisdom” 🙂