And Vijay Says…

Last year , this week , I was in Austin TX -meeting my new boss and forming a team and planning for what we wanted to accomplish in 2016 . Turns out , this year I am going through the same thing this week – just a different boss/city/team . How cool is that ! On top of that – this might be the last flight of the year too . After the first 100K miles, I don’t keep track closely – but I am sure I didn’t cross 200K miles this year . There is a blessing !

Last year in fall, I lost my father in law and my uncle . This year , I lost my fur kid Boss .

He left me sleeping in my arms , just as he slept in my arms as a puppy the day he came home . I will miss you for ever kiddo !

Sadly , my sister lost her fur baby too – two year old Charlie whom I loved just as dearly . Such a tragedy 

There were just two international trips this year – the lowest in two decades . I could get used to it !

The trip to U.K. was extra special this time – I got to catch-up with friends and relatives I haven’t seen in ages . The last time I saw my young cousin , he was in high school – and now he is a plastic surgeon who bought me a lovely dinner ! 

Next time I should find some time to visit my old Liverpool neighborhood .

Then there was the trip to India for my college reunion . I never had a chance ( and had a fear of public speaking ) in college to get on a stage . So it was amusing and exciting to get an opportunity to address my friends as well as the final year students this time 

Also managed to have breakfast with school mates , hit a movie with my bff from childhood, and ran into a buddy from school after 25 years and he works in IBM too, and managed to have meals with friends in Bangalore that I am in touch only on social media these days   – absolutely priceless !

Even sneaked in a conference on sentiment marketing at SCMS business school 

The best part of that trip was the couple of hours my father and I went out for dinner at the new restaurant next to his house. Achan used to take me to dinner frequently as a child and it was very nostalgic to do it again just by ourselves 

It was also pretty cool that we managed to celebrate Onam with my sister and family in Dallas – something that has not happened in a long time . 

Talking about Dallas – we started the year there celebrating my brother in law’s 40th birthday . And to add to the fun – I also managed to recruit a young rock star developer at the party ! Always be recruiting 🙂

Things were pretty good on work front too . Between (my) luck and (their) smarts – we had an amazing year with fantastic results . The sheer variety of transformative projects – redefining guest experience for a theme park , cognitive analytics to get fine grained insights on viewership at a cable company , advanced smart metering at utilities ….the quality of work we did for clients was outstanding . I can’t wait for more in 2017 .

The real highlight for me this year was that I spent equal amounts of time with my team that I spent with clients . I think I have somewhat succeeded in letting go of my urges to be a front line player and become more of a full time coach for the team – of course with a few(?) exceptions 🙂 . The best part of the time I spent with the team was with my younger colleagues who are startup off in their careers . I am convinced that I want to work for some of them before I retire !

I am also blessed with a bunch of senior partners that I learn a lot from every time we talk . The guy on the left of this picture below – Dave Lubowe – was the one who taught me many years ago that we don’t have customers ,   Only clients !

A highlight for me this year was college recruiting . The passion and curiosity that I see in the next generation of leaders that I met at universities – its the most energizing experience . We are in the talent business and I will do more of this next year without a doubt 

I took a conscious decision last year to minimize the number of conferences I attend . I only did 4 – and the big ones were SAP’s Sapphirenow and our own World of Watson . Both were amazing events and it was great to to catch-up with old friends and make new ones . But the one thing I will never forget is meeting Grady Booch ! 

I also have mixed feelings when I look at the photo below that we took at sapphire . My two dear friends Gagan and Dale have both moved on from IBM . I look forward to cheering them on as they start their new adventures

There was a lot more work life balance this year . I got to drive Shreya to school , attend her orchestra concerts and swim team meets and go for weekly family dinners to our favorite restaurants . Dhanya and I also managed to go to an Ilayaraja concert in Dallas . 

All it took was to reasrange my work life a little by taking less critical calls while driving , delegating a bit more and generally stopping a bunch of low value work that I routinely did in the past . The only part that didn’t work out was a Canadian vacation which we had to abort after one day to rush home to take care of Boss . The one casualty was that I had to get out of a few whatsapp groups to make this work – need to find a way to make this work as I absolutely love the conversations there .

Hobo is now the senior guy since Boss left . He is about as mature as a 6 month old puppy , although he will be 8 on New Year’s Eve ! I am still not used to seeing only two fur kids in my photos instead of three

The photo above reminded me that we did move to a new house earlier in the year . It was quite dramatic with how the process rolled out – but it’s home now and we love it . The only regret is that I have not even hit the driving range once , let alone played a round here . On the bright side – the sheer number of golf balls that land in my back yard gives me comfort that there are plenty of bad golfers out there in the wild . I am in good company 🙂

India has had an amazing year of success in cricket and I managed to catch most of the matches live by sacrificing sleep . If they continue to have this form – I think 2017 will see me sleeping less too . That said , I hardly attended any dog shows . Need to change that next year . 

While I did not manage to read all the books I wanted to – it was an above average year in terms of quantity and quality of reading . The three that I loved a lot outside business books are here 

On blogging front , I was just plain lazy . I read a lot of blogs but generally didn’t write as much as I usually do . Laziness combined with lack of inspiration is a bad combo . I will need to try harder to write more . For the first time since I started blogging , I have plenty of drafts in my wordpress app – just need to decide if any are worth publishing . My gut feel is that I will delete all or most of the drafts over Xmas . 

Merry Xmas and Happy new year everyone !

Its December , and its that time of the year when I am torn between planning for next year and closing out the current year on a strong note. As I sat down with a bunch of paper drawing up crazy ideas of what we will do next year, I realized I am falling prey to my biggest strength and weakness – the desire to measure everything at the most granular level.

I grew up in BI where if you had granular data, you can generate very sophisticated insights. And I have spent countless hours modeling such data, and writing ETL scripts to get that data in a shape I like. Over time, this has become second nature to me even though I don’t get to do the fun stuff with data any more. Most of my decisions are made on aggregate data today, and the only time I need granularity is when things go wrong and I have to “debug” to find out what the heck happened.

Granular data comes at a high operational overhead – in terms of management itself, and a lot of data wrangling. You need codes to tag every bit of data – and I am not kidding when I say that some times I come across more attributes about the data, and the number of data records itself 🙂

So as I sat here staring at the stack of paper on my desk and the array of spreadsheets on my macbook, I came to the sad realization that my penchant for granularity is simply a representation of my fear of failure. Over time, I have taken over more and more responsibility at work – and the measurements have also become more and more complex and time consuming. This is true for pretty much every employer I have worked for and every client for whom I have designed solutions.

Which brings me to the “scale of failure” issue. As your responsibilities increase, the number of ways in which you think you can fail also increase. And to compensate, we try to measure across multiple dimensions, and matrix the organization some more. At some point, you will absolutely realize that operational over head is not worth the trouble (do you need more checkers and double checkers than people in the field?) but by then you are also a creature of habit that cannot get away from this mess you created for yourself. And finally you also make everyone else in your team miserable – because you force them to tag more and more attributes and unlike you, they might not even know why they are tagging it. I am not kidding – there are many things I was told to do 10 years ago that I had no clue why I had to do. It would have lessened my grief significantly if my bosses at least explained why they made me do it then 🙂

Tagging data and multi dimensional operational reports have another consequence that was perhaps never intentionally designed – the sinister idea of taking credit for someone else’s work . At some scale of business – especially in sales type work – it is hard to pinpoint what all led to a given sale. You will have a direct sales team, and assorted over lay teams that all think they were the ones who drove the business. So they will enthusiastically start tagging more attributes to show their value add and we end up with “everyone is a winner” type scenarios. Even then we won’t typically stop this madness.

So my current plan is – I am going to sacrifice some granularity of measurement in our measurements. I want me and my team to design our work around the idea that we are aiming for success instead of lack of any kind of failure. I would rather fail responsibly quickly and stop doing things that don’t pan out, rather than worry about it every step of the way for all activities for ever. Lets see how that goes 🙂

 

 

He was the biggest teddy bear of a pup when I picked him up from Marjorie Blake’s house in Bakersfield on May 8, 2004 . Turned Dhanya , who was mortally scared of all dogs , into the biggest dog lover overnight

He helped raise our daughter Shreya – she used to call him Chetta (big bro) till she was about 5 🙂

He was a great big brother to Hobo , when he came home for Shreya’s 4th birthday

He loved his toys – and food . Learned everything he needed for competitive obedience in about 4 weekends and two packs of hot dogs

He was a sage by the time Shreya was born . He got to be a puppy again as Hobo grew up . Hobo was ten times stronger , and Boss was a hundred times smarter and wiser 🙂

Along came little Ollie – Boss was already 9 by then but young enough to show the kid the ropes .

He kept alive my dream that Shreya would some day choose to handle in the show ring 🙂

He loved water – and was the ultimate gold fish . I must have tossed a few thousand oranges into that pool in last decade 🙂

Boss never met a stranger – he loved everyone . But for me he was my best buddy , my shadow . If I slept in – he would come find me and wake me up without fail . He loved riding shotgun with me in the SUV

He was the “boss” of the gang – from day 1

He grew older gracefully , and we celebrated every birthday

He was diagnosed with Hemangiosarcoma in September 2016 . He underwent surgery to get a tumor removed . The surgeon gave us three months with him , and we tried our best to make every day with him the best he had

And today , December 3rd 2016 – he had all the ice cream , eggs and bacon he could eat . And before the vet took over – he had a giant slice of chocolate cake

And he went to sleep on my lap , just as he did the first day I met him and brought him back on a united airlines flight back to Phoenix .

You will always live in my heart Bossappai – you were and always will be the boss . Till we meet again , buddy !