And Vijay Says…

My intro to philanthropy came via a short lesson on economics from my late grand father when I was in high school. He was a retired professor of history – and interestingly had similar depth of knowledge in economics and political science. And for the record – he is the biggest hero in my life !

One day, when I was back home from school and finished several cookies from a new packet that was on the table , he asked me “why didn’t you eat the four that are remaining?”. I told him I was full and don’t need any more . He asked me if I am too full to finish my glass of chocolate milk , and I told him that I was indeed planning to finish the glass of milk . That was a planned teaching moment and I learned the idea of diminishing marginal utility.

That discussion eventually led to a discussion on whether money/wealth also followed diminishing marginal utility . Logically, if it did – then all the rich people should be able to help all the poor people and world will be such a happy place, right ?

My instinct though was that it didn’t apply to money – who would really say no to more money ? . We were solid middle class – Dad was an engineer , Grand Dad lived on his small pension , and my mom and grand mom were home makers at the time . We were living comfortably but very far from even dreaming of money having diminishing marginal utility.

This is where I got my first lesson on philanthropy – money is not the only thing you can distribute that has value to someone . Your time and your wisdom are perhaps even more valuable ! Later in life, I heard first hand from several very successful people how my grandfather helped them get over their struggles with his time, his advice and his willingness to get them connected to influential people from his network. And my dad – his only son – takes after him.

Grandfather was a learned man and had a terrific network. What if someone doesn’t have money , a lot of education or a big network ? My mom proved that it doesn’t matter either . From her I learned – If you have a mindset to help, then no obstacle is big enough to stop you!

My mom finished high school and married my dad – never attended college. She doesn’t speak much English. But to help raise me and my sister, she ran several small businesses over time and made it work . And throughout the time – she helped the less fortunate people in her life get a leg up .

I have lost count of how many orphans she helped find jobs , get married , get loans etc . She could absolutely convince total strangers to help someone she knew and they didn’t know – and some of them were friends of my dad from other countries who would come home for dinner when they were in India. She never felt any embarrassment asking people to help others and in general no one she asked felt awkward and most of them did what they could . How I wish I had that kind of confidence and conviction ! She never bothered about credit – most of the time the people who got the leg up didn’t even know my mom was behind it .

So when is the right time to start giving ? For the longest time I have believed one should start at the earliest – like from the first pay check itself if possible , and proportionately increase it as we progress in life . And a dear friend of mine gave me an alternate perspective this past weekend – there is no one-size fits all method to do the right thing!

He and I come from similar modest backgrounds . He started his own business and I chose the safer route of getting employed by someone. While I don’t deny I did reasonably well – he totally outdid himself and is very wealthy now and I am very proud of him . I knew that giving back was very important to him from childhood . So I was shocked when he told me that he has stopped making big donations.

It’s not because he stopped believing in it – he just realized that he can compound his wealth better than many others and thus solve harder problems in the world later in life with a lot more money he can put to use. I asked him how he came to this conclusion – and he said “From an interview of Warren Buffet that I watched on TV few years ago, which made me open a spreadsheet and come to the same conclusion”.

To be clear – He is nowhere as rich as Buffet . But he is good at math and is ruthlessly logical in decision making . He still makes small donations – which is still considerable in size in my opinion – but he spends a lot of time studying the problems and choosing where he can make the most impact and how . I have a strong feeling it won’t take that long for him to start solving big ticket problems.

I asked him if that’s how I should think about it too – and he said something like “Man , there are so many problems all around us that we can all help in some way . So you can do it whatever way you choose and the world will still benefit “.

To some degree, we all need some validation to feel good and perform better . As we grow as leaders, it becomes a big part of our lives to balance the need for validation of folks in our team. Too little and they may never realize full potential and too much and you will never have time for anything else. Striking the right balance is key, but real hard !

It’s one of those cases where the leader has to err on the side of more validation, not less. It’s also a multi dimensional problem which needs you to come at it from several angles

1. Is it just a pure lack of confidence ?

There are several people who can do a great job and the only ones ever in doubt of that are – ironically – themselves . If that is the case, it’s usually easy enough to fix. I just reinforce them with some version of “You got this – you no longer need to check with me on every step. You have earned the autonomy you deserve”

2. Is it incompetence ?

Sometimes it’s a job that someone is just not suitable for and no amount of help is going to solve it . Once that is clear – after training , multiple chances etc – it is time for that hard conversation on next steps .

3. Is your open door policy abused ?

I have had an open door policy for a long time and it looks like this after a few evolutions . Anyone in the company can get 15 mins of my time for a first chat. They can ask me anything at all and I will help what I can . But from then on – I need to know why I am the best person to help them if they need my time again . If they don’t convince me (or my EA if they go to her first), they don’t get that meeting .

4. Are there systemic insecurities ?

It’s very often the case that there is some history that causes people to need your validation more than you think is normal . Perhaps the people who held your job were micro managers , or the company had just laid off a bunch of people , or there is news of a market down turn . Leaders need to keep up with the environment closely to know if there is a systemic issue to be tackled heads on.

5. Are you causing the problem ?

When I am new to a role – I often dig very deep into even small issues to learn more . Long after I stop doing that, some people in my team will keep involving me on things where I have no value to add . This is on me and not them . I shouldn’t be sending mixed signals.

6. Are you balancing praise and criticism ?

Whatever the balance – first thing is to make sure is that it’s timely . To start with – If it’s praise – do it in public . If its criticism – do it in private . If all you do is praise – your team at some point will think you are not sincere . If all you do is criticize – no one will enjoy working for you . That’s the hard thing with leadership !

As I look back on my various leadership roles – There are two mistakes I have made multiple times

1. Not validating repeated good performances

There are some people that I routinely would go to for specific tasks because I know they will execute flawlessly . After they do it a few times, I tend to stop validating their good work . Bad idea – consistent performers also need validation that they are still adding value .

2. Ignoring the low maintenance folks

The needy folks always get time from you . And while the low maintenance folks are usually much appreciated by their leaders – they often don’t get the deserved validation for their good work . Also an equally bad idea obviously.

There is a quote I love which is attributed to Mahatma Gandhi that goes “the sign of a good leader is not about how many followers you have, but how many leaders you create” . Validation of their good work is a foundational aspect of creating self confident leaders

The first time I saw bottled water being sold at the TRIVANDRUM Central railway station, I remember it being a big joke in my family . We continued taking water from home when we travelled for a couple more years, constantly making fun of those “Bisleri” vendors, and the idiot travelers who could have just brought water with them like we did . And then, my family too made the switch to bottled water and no one reminded us that the joke was on us now 🙂

A similar story is going on in companies too – there are now official titles of “Chief Story Teller” in many places. The first time I met a story teller in flesh and blood – she knew in a second that I didn’t take her role seriously. She didn’t defend her role or anything – instead she started humming “Do you believe in magic” and we both burst out laughing.

Pretty soon I became a believer – I started seeing the effectiveness of story telling in sales scenarios . When dry PowerPoint presentations were replaced or augmented with good crisp stories – we started winning more business. I became a big fan in quick time – and also realized that the only way to scale this is if all of us became good story tellers – instead of relying on one story teller for the whole team for everything .

Once they see something that helps them sell – the people with sales quotas don’t need any more motivation to take it up. But engineers don’t work that way and I should have known . I started hearing things like “I am a DBA – what fluffy story do you want me to tell?” . For a little while I could get away with “Well, I am an engineer too and if it works for me it works for you too”. Pretty soon – and of course quite expectedly – my defenses were met with “Yeah, but you are not much of a real engineer anymore”.

So is there any good reason for techies to gain some experience in story telling ?

To answer that, we don’t really need to dig very deep. The biggest frustrations of technologists is usually that people who need to make important decisions that affect us – like approving budgets, resource allocations, Infrastructure purchases , hiring … those folks are usually not techies and never seem to understand the gravity of what we tell them . It’s almost as if we don’t even speak the same language 🙂

The frustration is quite real. The very first time I had any alcohol was when my boss came to my apartment with two bottles of wine to get over our grief about the client PM not agreeing to upgrade the test server we were working on, despite we taking turns to walk him through twenty pages of performance statistics . I also got introduced to some of the most colorful German phrases that evening 🙂

Good stories are well engineered and have great structure and flow. All the more reason that engineers should find it easy to tell great stories.

All stories have a simple design pattern –

1. There is an intro, to set the context

Engineers are finding it hard to get approvals for essential stuff like more cloud capacity, better brands of beer in the fridge etc .

2. There is a conflict, since there are choices to make

An alarming number of engineers are ordering cheap wine online and getting it delivered to office, and coming up with rude names for the project managers and the CFO. Monthly outages have been replaced by weekly outages even though everyone is working weekends. Customers are saying things are not working as advertised . And yet everything magically looks fine on the CFO spreadsheets and the board deck !

3. There is a resolution or revelation

Engineering VP shares his cheap wine with John in marketing who tells him they have surplus CMO budget for the quarter. They convince the CFO to use it for buying more cloud capacity . CFO buys expensive wine to celebrate problem resolution . They live happily ever after !

That’s pretty much it ! Give it a try – After all, we are people who made the switch from waterfall to agile and lived to tell the tale . Story telling should be an absolute piece of cake for us.