critique

We all crave love and respect. It is easy to get angry and give feedback point-blank to your subordinates. But is it the right approach? Can this take your team far in the journey of building the rocket ship?

Why can we not make constructive criticism instead of pointing fingers? As a leader, you are responsible for everyone’s success. You have to empower your team, work with them and understand what drives everyone.

We all go through a rough phase in our life. A leader needs to understand it. They should let team members mourn, relax and come back recharged.

Money is not the only incentive that keeps the team together: a unified goal and how everyone is treated and respected as an individual matters.

Against

In sales, it’s a simple trick and technique where your customer will throw you against your competitor. They will remind you what features you don’t have or what price point will work for them. At times they will also come back asking about being costlier. I have gone through all these scenarios.

Our market expects us to join the pit and get into pricing negotiation, so most companies have a sticker price and original price. We have not been part of this madness. As a result, we have lost a few customers.

The introspection makes me wonder if we should have followed industry practice and gotten into a negotiation like selling vegetables and haggling. The reason being a lot many of us enjoy the process and get a sense of superiority and self-gratification in winning some battle in reducing the price.

Ingrained

A leader’s role is temporary but the organization lasts for decades. A successful leader creates an environment and trains and motivates their team so that teaching and learning continue even in their absence.

You don’t want to be a control-free leader but create an environment where teaching philosophy has deeply ingrained within your organization. Whether you stay or not, present or absent, the organization performs to its core.

If you want the organisation to function on its own carrying your teachings and philosophy then you have to ingrain it within.

community

Over seven years as a community manager and an evangelist my only job was to spend time with community contributors. The thing working for me has been treating contributors as human’s first code contribution or organizing events being secondary. The same goes for gifting swags, it came last.

I still hang out with folks from Drupal, Ubuntu, Linux, OpenStack, and Minio community. I am no more an active contributor or evangelist for any. But we still talk and meet at events like FOSSDEM.

The only thing that has worked for me is being authentic, and treating people as humans first before evaluating what I will get from them.

In the last five-plus years, I have been building Taghash, a software suite for VC/PE industry and the same folks from previous relationships are helping us, in whatever way they could.

The more I see the current trend of community building, I find it is transactional and least humanly. People in general want love, care, and respect along with an appreciation for their contribution. How difficult it is to give them?

PS: I am not perfect, I have been an asshole too at times. Took me ages to learn and get better. So yes, in short, am still WIP.

Leadership Principles

In the book, “The score takes care of itself”, the Author talks about 13 leadership principles. I liked it and felt like sharing it. 

  1. Be yourself. As a leader, the most important trait is being the best version of self. We are all different. It is not necessary that what worked for Steve Jobs or Mahatma Gandhi will work for us. We all have our unique journey and set of challenges. 
  2. Be committed to excellence. Build your checklist with what you are seeking from the team and yourself. There should be absolutely no negotiations with it. 
  3. Be Positive. As a leader, you have to be positive. Your team will mirror you and your traits. So not being positive will harm the overall organization. 
  4. Be Prepared. Things always break, and surprise is part and parcel of our entrepreneurial journey. Avoid kneejerk actions and plan for the worse. 
  5. Be detialed oriented. When we have complete access to the team’s weaknesses and strengths, it becomes easy to plan the sonata. As a team, we get perfection and deliver the best. Get all the fine-grained details.
  6. Be Organized. Running an Orchestra requires every instrument to function in perfection. A leader is to set up and organizes a team for optimal performance. 
  7. Be Accountable. A leader is responsible for an organization’s failure. There should not be room for blame games or making others responsible for their own mistake. 
  8. Be near-sighted and far-sighted. A leader has to plan, execute in present, and be prepared for the best future results. The plan has to be articulated for both the short term and the long term. 
  9. Be Fair. A leader has to be fair with the team. They have to treat people right instead of favoritism and partiality. 
  10. Be Firm. Stay with your vision, mission, and core values otherwise the organization will turn into a dystopia. Don’t give up or negotiate on it. 
  11. Be Flexible. Things change, and time requires adapting to the new. Be ready to mold yourself with time. 
  12. Believe in yourself. A leader has to believe in themselves before expecting others to join in their cause. So be firm and believe in yourself and your actions. 
  13. Be a leader. A leader has to fill in multiple shoes. So get accustomed to it. Be a mentor, guide, therapist, cheerleader, guru, or whatever it takes. Your team depends on you. 

progress

What is your definition of progress?
Is becoming famous and rich a sign of progress?

The more I see these days titles where the author talks about getting rich, famous, or finding a soulmate who falls for you. I start questioning consciousness.

We and the world has become more prosperous than before. Our life expectancy has increased. We have become busier like a robot, running on calendars.

Is progress only related to accumulating material wealth, power, and fame? What about our mental peace, enjoying our solitude, and living life at our own pace? What about enjoying and living moment to moment?

Validation

We live in a world where our survival depends on how others perceive us. The reason why beauty care, fashionwear, or social media thrives.

The burden of validation impacts everyone. The person seeking validation and people in their circle.

Sometimes I wonder which came first our ego or the craving for validation. Or is anger or health issues part and parcel of this validation?
Has validation taken us, humans, beyond humanity and made us part of an endless reel where we are less real?

Do we crave validation to fulfill our inner void?
Do we crave validation because we are broken?
Do we crave validation because we are lost?

complex

Have we made our life complex with our needs, actions, and desires? We want love, we seek attention and we crave independence. As a result, we end up building a complex maze of wants. We end up being angry, depressed, and sad when desires are unmet. We get stressed, overwork, collapse and go down further with wishes not met.

ethics

Any relationship is fruitful if it’s built on some ethics. We are mammals and we do see and observe things. We do have emotions.

The more I venture out into this uncharted territory I feel isolated, be it personal or professional life. The importance of ethics is rotting with the generation. Is it the progress of civilisation where everyone is running after everything with no ethics?

Manipal

After living in metros for over two decades, I am moving to Manipal, a small town in coastal Karnataka known for engineering/medical college.
It also has an adjacent temple town named Udupi which I want to explore.

Moving out of Bangalore is simple: to indulge in nature and water sports.

I also have half a dozen of my team working from there during pandemics. I made over a dozen visits there and loved the laziness and vibe.
What the future holds for me there, we shall see.
As a traveler living in the present, I am switching bases.
I am excited.

If you are around Manipal, feel free to catch up for lunch/dinner/coffee starting tomorrow.

Will I miss Bangalore?
I will be visiting here for customer catchups once or twice every quarter.