Leadership: Knowing your role in the process

People often envy and criticize leaders and question what they do. Here is a simple answer: they are people in the front making decisions. Leadership is for those who have the courage to make decisions and are not afraid of failing. In my view there are three types of people in the world - whether it is your personal life or professional life.

Decision makers
These are the leaders. The people who analyze information at their hands, filter the important from the unimportant, and take a decision. Decisions are often taken on partial information. If precise and complete information was always available you could train computers to take decisions. An important aspect of leadership is knowing that there is no way to lead without failures. Bad leaders are often who are afraid to fail. These leaders delay acknowledging failures and hence make the consequences of those failures bigger.

Influencers
Influencers who understand that they are not in charge of making the decisions but realize the importance of participating in the decision making process. Influencers are of 3 types:

1. Future leaders who are training themselves by putting themselves in the leader's shoes.
2. Perpetual influencers who are best suited as advisers to leaders and lack other aspects of leadership
3. The negative influencers who are typically putting their personal agendas ahead of the leader's primary responsibility. Leaders need to recognize this group and eliminate their influence.
   

Followers
This is a very important and perhaps the most important group. They implement the leader's decisions and vision. Followers need clarity. Clarity in:

1. Decisions: Clear articulation of the decisions, the rationale, objective and goals.
2. Communication: Clear communication and constant reminder of the goals
3. Operational mechanism: Clear way of setting goals, measuring success and tracking progress

Each group has its place and is a necessary function for progress. What is important is to know who you are and the role you are playing and do it well.

Microsoft PDC 2008

I attended Microsoft PDC 2008. It was my first time at this event. I must say that I was impressed as seeing Microsoft's focus on the right things. Below is a highlight of areas I found interesting.

Azure Service Platform
Yes, Microsoft is late to arrive to the cloud computing race. Amazon has shown world the way to monetize the cloud computing paradigm. But I think Microsoft is thinking right and doing right in this space. Cloud Computing is not a choice for Microsoft. It is a natural progression in the evolution to a distributed computing model. It has realized that conquering this new frontier is critical for its existence. I believe Microsoft is going to make it easy to extend every aspect of software development, deployment and service to cloud computing and become one of the top 3 players in this space.

Windows 7
With a focus on Performance and usability, I think Microsoft is finally thinking right. I have long believed that the PC has changed from being a computing device to a consumer electronic device. Apple has demonstrated this through the way it makes it easy to do the most common things easily on its Mac units. I believe Microsoft is going to make the PC a consumer device with its Windows 7 OS. One example is the demo of the ease of home networking shown at the PDC 2008

Silverlight
Microsoft boasted about Silverlight 2.0 and said it has 25% penetration of all internet connected PCs. That is pretty impressive and demonstrates the distribution channel that Microsoft has through its dominance in the PC market. I think Silverlight is an important technology in Microsoft's overall cloud computing strategy. Good to see that Microsoft is aggressively working on adoption, developer productivity and creative tools around Silverlight

Surface
Amazing new technology. I had seen it on TV when it was launched. I was more impressed when I played the scavanger hunt game on 5 sets of surface computers located at 5 different locations at the event. It demonstrated the capability of camera based vision system, multi-touch, intelligence and ruggedness very well

Books: The Game Changer

Just read this great book - The Game Changer (by A. G. Lafley and Ram Charan). It is based on the phenomenal story of innovation in P&G and other companies and how others can benefit from it. For the benefit of someone who has not read the book, here is a very high level summary:

P&G operates in a highly commoditized business space and depends on 2 “moments of truth” for its business to grow

• Product selection - when the consumer is shopping
• Product use – First time the consumer uses the product (and of course every user experience

Innovation - Customer is the focus and business growth is the outcome

• Customer has to be the focus of every innovation
• Every innovation has to lead to business growth
• Innovate with everyone – including competitors (Believe it or not P&G has a JV with one of its competitors)
• Make innovation “routine” (Counter-intuitive)
• Check out a few platforms that are used at P&G to collaborate for innovation:

http://www.ninesigma.com/
http://www.innocentive.com/
http://www.yourencore.com/

Micro-racism

Around the globe the western world is often criticized for racism. Some part of it is history. It is a tough legacy to overcome. It is a slow process and needs a lot of policy and social changes to eliminate and still there will continue to be pockets of traditional racism in the social fabric.

What is alarming is the failure to notice the micro-racism around the world. This is the attitude of exclusion and discrimination amongst narrower segments of the society. I have found the most appalling examples of this behaviour in India. You can call it protectionism or remnants of the caste system but it is just another flavor of racism and I call it micro-racism.

Attempts in Bangalore to ban non-Kannada movies; places of worship have been destroyed causing riots in the whole country; fanatical bias toward Tamil language in Tamil Nadu; Preferential treatment given to local people purely based on their last names, which in India reveals a whole lot about your origins. These are all examples of micro-racism. I say this not because I don't believe in keeping the local culture and traditional alive, but because of the chosen means to the end. Take for example the Tamil language. I personally find it one of the most poetic languages I have known, very much like the Urdu language. But it still doesn't justify forcing it on people.

The recent incidents in Maharashtra is an example of an age old political agenda of treating people from other states as outsiders. Believe it or not these are the same people who are reaping the benefits of their own children and grand-children bringing in the riches from immigrating to other countries.

Destroying the present and future to make up for the past is not right. I am a fervent supporter of local economies and keeping age old traditions and culture alive. But banning new change to keep old culture alive is not the right approach. Often the policy decisions made by government and religious organizations are based on emotions and not based on well thought through rational frameworks. I am surprised to see that having a good education alone doesn't equip us to leave emotions out of policy making.

I believe that the cause of micro-racism is that the local culture and people feel threatened and usually have an inferiority complex against the alternative. The philosophy of forcing ideas and culture on people is always easier than promoting it through free will. But it is not the best approach to nurture local culture.

Bringing out interest in local culture in innovative and interesting ways is the best way to keep them alive. The new generation has a crucial role to play in discovering the past and keeping it alive for generations to come through free will. You have to create a framework for people to discover and enjoy the treasures in the diversity of India.

Shut Up and Listen!

All of us have met people who already know what we are going to say before we say it. May be I should start talking by saying "Shut up and listen!". These are people who try to complete your sentences or guess what you have in mind. Some of it is to show how fast they can understand your point some of it is just this fast moving impatient new world.

The truth of the matter is there are very few people who are real geniuses who get your point in round one. I call them geniuses because they can understand even a poorly articulated point. There in lies the crux of the matter. Most of us can't articulate our point well. This makes it worse when people try to project that they have understood a badly articulated point even before it is made.

Articulation of what you want to say has 4 parts - the context, the key point, the justification or explanation, and the delivery.

• The context: This is usually required when you are changing the conversation or starting a new one. It is important to set the context before you share your key insight.
• The key point: This is your punch line. In this fast moving impatient world it is best to get to your point as soon as possible.
• The justification or explanation: This is for those who don't get your point from the punch line or there are some key insights that led you to arrive at your conclusion.
• The delivery: This is the most important aspect. You have to think how you can make your point in the least possible time using the least possible words.

Next time you are with someone who won't listen or won't let you finish, just try to tune your style and see if it gets better.

Role of Technology in Media Censorship

Have you ever seen the ads running during prime time? Watching a game or a G rated movie with your kid requires a constant run for the remote to block inappropriate ads. It is the same while watching a funny video on YouTube with unexpected and undesired content flashing all around you. Today you can block access based on channels or specific time slots but that approach is too coarse grained. We need to look at censorship differently.

There are so many ideas, already implemented elsewhere, that can be applied to this problem. Let's take the phone industry. They can measure every phone call down to the second and decide how to bill you based on the package you have bought.

The key to the solution is thinking cohesively about media creation, media distribution and media access. We rate media in a coarse grained way and hence it is impossible to control it at the access point. Imagine the possibility of having a viewer rating preference button on the remote. While watching a sports game with your kid you switch to the G viewership mode. The access point - TV, IPTV on your computer or your mobile wireless device - detects your viewer rating preference and replaces an ad for an R rated movie with an ad for a G rated movie.

The realisation of such a cohesive solution lies in innovation around three areas.

• Media creation: Create content with adaptable delivery e.g. Being able to watch an R rated movie in G mode and being able to make this decision half way through the movie
• Media distribution: Increasingly we are moving towards dynamic content and contextual ads. Take into account the user preference for rating of the content.
• Media access: Enable the user to have the ability to add rating as one of his viewing preferences

As far as technology is concerned, the media industry needs to get out of the singular focus of how to protect & monetize content. Let's get the technology crowd creative and change the way we get entertained.

Keep The Radio Alive

Listening to radio is one of the strongest memory I have while growing up in India. Music, regional programming, news and sports - All India Radio's Vividh Bharthi had a little of everything for everyone - even children's programming. The radio medium was not open to the private sector then but the programming was comprehensive and the quality was rich. The memories like listening to the program dedicated to song requests by people from the armed forces are etched in memory. Many of the family Sundays and late night with friends have the sound of the radio in the background.

Radio as a broadcast medium has declined in popularity since then. Television has dominated the late 20th century. Internet is fast becoming the new kid on the block with the ability to let the audience engage and interact with the content. In fact, Internet is becoming the platform for delivering all media including TV and Radio. The much awaited media convergence is around the corner.

Regardless of the new media that come along, radio has some special qualities that make it my favourite.

• Simplicity & reach: It is really easy to understand the medium and consume it. Radio technology is not threatening to the consumer. Even the technophobes are at ease with it. Listen to radio in a remote village, while travelling in a high speed train, while cruising in your car or relaxing at home.
• Element of surprise: You can never beat the feeling of learning something unexpected while driving to work. Or the feeling of nostalgia that hits you when you hear a song that refreshes a golden memory.
• Quality of programming: Radio has to engage the audience only through their sense of hearing. The bar for quality of content is very high because you can't supplement it with visuals. Quality of programming on NPR and Vividh Bharthi are a testimony to this.
• Voice as the great equalizer: Have you ever felt that you have known a person for a long time without ever meeting the person? Radio can do to you. A specific personal experience was listening to Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air. The association caused me to read "All I Did Was Ask" but the voice on radio and the conversations are just so much more memorable. When you are listening to someone, you are focused on the content and not judging them on their race, religion, sex, or looks.
• Listening skills: Radio helps developing listening skills in people. In our education system and in the corporate world listening is a very underrated and underdeveloped skill.

There is a lot I am discovering about radio as a part of social culture in different parts of the world. Listen to an old recording of "The Jack Benny Program" from your local library or the vibrant Radio Mirchi while you are stuck in traffic in Mumbai. Radio is an interesting window into our history and culture.

Two very interesting and relevant innovations on the Internet are Pandora (radio from the Music Genome Project) and Mercora (radio using peer-to-peer technology). I hope such innovations keep the beautiful medium of radio alive and interesting for a long time.