What’s relevant for me may not be relevant for someone else. What’s difficult for me might be an insignificant topic for others.

How many times have you experienced this?: you are participating in discussions where the different parties present are talking the same thing yet no one is able to understand each other. You’ve found yourself intervening just to make people listen and understand each other! This is a perfect case of miscommunication. Not intentionally, but just due to no common ground of understanding.

As good citizens of the consulting world, where, as the word automatically suggests, you need to ‘consult’ your customers on topics you know best; how will you do it effectively if you simply left the mapping of the labyrinth of information in their hands still? If you did so, you absolved yourself of one of the most important responsibilities that came with your job: ‘consult’.

In order to consult, you need to understand their language, map their information, respect their data, navigate through their processes, empathise with their story, and after all this bring out your knowledge on the drawing board and create your best creation for them. Your technical knowledge is no good if someone can’t understand how to use it in their world. And if you left your customer to map in their heads your fantastic technical knowledge and apply it to their business, it shows poorly on your ability to consult well. You might get lucky few times with special intelligent customers, but that will thwart your consulting skills and limit your thinking. In fact you haven’t thunk enough yet! (Now don’t miss my deliberate mis-spell here…..was meant for effect! 😂).

I urge my fellow consultants to burn down limiting thoughts and step out into the real consulting world. There’s a whole lot of green out there.

Transition or change from what is to what should be is truly governed by the various people involved in this whole exercise. How well the needs are articulated, how well they are transformed into workable solutions, how easy the solutions for the people to use, how effective these solutions are towards the overall goal, how smooth has been the communication to all people involved, how inclusive has been this exercise, how respectful towards the user community, how deep rooted in its thought process orientation? Well, these are questions asked by people not systems. Systems are meant to work well. The technical guys would ensure that. What nobody can/should assume is an automatic adaptation of change. This should necessarily be a conscious scope topic in any project. That is why an important component of managing projects is managing people. Not their time or cost or quantifiable contributions, but their mind-sets, their fears, their feelings. It is the collective feeling of the group that will make or break the success story.

Here’s to a fun-filled time ahead!

A question by Arjun to Krishna prompts the story about how Karna was more generous than Yudhistir. Story goes to tell how when asked for sandal wood sticks for a yagna during the rainy season (hey, was this in Mumbai? ☺) by some brahmins, Yudhistir delivers wet, unusable ones but Karna on the other hand chops off the (dry) doors of his palace and converts them into usable sticks for the yagna. Yudhistir did give but Karna made sure they were useful. If asked for the doors of his palace, Yudhistir too would have done the same, but Karna thought about it himself. This is because Karna loves to give not just due to the preachings of the Hindu Dharma.

Now, I am reminded of this story because this is so much applicable in our IT service industry. Almost daily we face situations where customers come to us with problems. What can be done with these problems?

Solve it with a traditional technical solution (go to the forest, collect the sticks, deliver them)

Solve it with workaround solution (buy sticks locally, deliver them)

Solve it with an industry best practice (everyone is using alternative fuel these days, suggest that instead)

…………….

Solve it with love (chop down the doors!)

Premise blinds us sometimes. Tradition bogs us down sometimes. Inheritance restricts us sometimes. If the mind was a clean slate and the intent was to give the customer what he wanted not what we ‘think’ he needs and there was an accompanied love for doing this right then our world would be so different.

Every situation lets out a different reaction from different people. Situation needs to be handled. Task needs to be completed. Some will do whatever it takes to ‘Let it happen’, some will ‘Help it happen’ and some will ‘Make it happen’. Finally it’s a choice which each of us make. The love of doing a job brings in energy, fills us with exceptional strength, helps us break boundaries, brings out the dormant passion, make us roll up sleeves and get into the thick of things rather than being an instructor from outside the ring, in short makes us happy.

While being completely sold on ideas of automation, artificial intelligence, machine connectivity and learning, etc. I’d still give utmost importance to the human element behind more such discoveries. Someone felt the need, took off on it with the zest and passion required to make such an important invention. All these are but ideas coming out of minds so eager to discover, make stuff better and love doing so! I love to see the spark of such people around me, I love to be surrounded by many such wonderful peers and colleagues. Their energy rubs off and makes the whole environment charged up.

So today, are you working on a traditional solution or you’d love to add your own zing to it? Do you, like Karna, love to do what you do? If you do, you have some very lucky and happy customers!

Have a go at it……..happy chopping!

So this one is for……..

• The intellectual colleagues
• The persistence techies
• The fidgety bunch o’ newbies
• The dying-to-create-something-new youngsters
• The customer-is-God believers
• The monotonous maintenance folks
• The deadline acheivers
• The super-finicky quality gatekeepers
• The prize go-getters
• The consistent solution providers
• The highly-tuned business ambassadors
• The smoking their ways through the rough days (and nights?) puff-masters
• The always-making-it-right fellows
• The argumentative-of-every-idea varieties
• The 9-5ers, the 9-9ers, the 9-forevers!!
• The brains behind the million-dollar ideas, the brawn behind the brain
• The chaotic lot, the structure to the chaos
• The drama-queens, the sideys
• The team leads, the team members
• The on-stage award winners, the guys-behind-the awards by-standers
• The rolling-up-the-sleeve guys, the impeccable Armani suit guys
• The constantly lecturing fellows, the constantly lectured fellows
• The rule breakers, the rule benders, the rule followers
• The painfully preachy ones, the painfully preached ones

This is for all of us. Thank you for the variety and spice in life. Thank you for making our world colourful, enjoyable, intellectually-stimulating and responsible place to be in! Proud to be a part.

Digital age presents a vast range of avenues to express. You can take to any socializing platform to express yourself. Numbers, presentations, theory, books, sketches, poetry, articles, blogs, music, drama are just some of the few forms of expression. These various forms of expression have garnered different kinds of audience. Some love poetry, others music, yet others dance. If your thoughts are taking you somewhere, you can choose to express in these different ways and your audience will find you. Your thoughts can be anything……a great idea, an angry backlash, an inspiration, a confusion, some love, some statement of fact, a concept, or whatever. 

But it is critical to express is my very very strong opinion. One might say, it’s a freedom, so we choose not to express – this is our way of enjoying that freedom. Why, though? We talk about difference of opinions, generation gaps, mindsets, judgemental issues, etc. How do you get a buy in to move towards progress, unless you express. Speak out now or forever hold your peace. It is really the responsibility of every human being to contribute. To anything at all. 

So dear friends, have an opinion, say it. Let there be a flurry of thoughts. Let there be chaos. From this will emerge a unique theory, a new invention or a remarkable idea taking us to yet another success story!

This really brings me to my subject of this conversation: ‘relevance’ 

At different stages of any lifecycle, different topics are important. Mapping relevant solutions to the burning needs is what makes service industry thrive. 

Speaking of economies, the services inflation which is actually a silent element constitutes the major portion of the total inflation. If you really compare the materials inflation it isn’t alarming. But consider any service and you’ll realise how it’s grown seriously out of proportion. School fees for example, salaries of domestic help, etc etc are glaring at us in everyday life. While this is true, it is very very difficult to prove how the service itself has changed or improved significantly to warrant such an inflated price.

Same difference with our business too. For the customer, the service looks or seems the same. Inflation, competition and other such factors warrant significant price hikes. The problem of plenty seems to be the order of the day. Too many players offering similar services! 

In all this, what can really help? Staying relevant, probably! Making sure the problems, current needs and business requirements of the customers are understood and we tune ourselves to meet them. If this can be continuously done, then the customer will see real value in our service to him at a seemingly inflated price point! 

Here’s to staying relevant!

Finding our footing right there, gathering yourself and swimming through with the others in this desert, and then surging forward…….you need every ounce of your energy for this. Because today, all these are everyone’s possibilities. It’s really up for grabs and we HAVE to grab them with both hands, much like the kid at the toy store! 

We kick start our new engagements with a very focussed, ambitious and strategic approach. Our goals have our shareholders buy-in! Our teams are result driven! Our spirit is all charged up! Our path is clear! Our mission? Yes, it is possible and we will accomplish! 

Maybe, there are some desires that are so deep down that they don’t find a reference in our checklists. Neither in our ‘things to achieve before I turn 40’. They are too un-identified, too un-articulated and therefore forever un-met. There’s a whole bunch of people who’d agree to this instantly. Take the whole community and you’ll hear a louder roar of yaays. So, it is such a prominent feature of people? To have tons of unarticulated needs? Sure. Routine, transactions, mundanity keeps us occupied. With activities. There is literally no time to stop and think. Slowly, lack of time is replaced by intent. If everything is going fine, the intent disappears. Till such time that an unfortunate wake-up-call thingy happens, we will happily fade behind the anonymous state of existence.

Organizations (a collection of people) are no different. As long as everyday routine keeps the organization busy, all is well. To shake the status quo, it takes much more than a small wedge in the wheel. The whole lot of people running the organization have each got a list of un-articulated needs and desires that if met can bring up the ‘fulfilment’ quotient of each one and thus of the organization. Imagine having one big happily fulfilled company rather than not. Approaching a biggish goal along with these small yet important fulfilled desires will be so different than hurtling towards this very goal with several compromises, unhappy team-mates, escalated situations and such more chaos.

People are at the heart of all innovation. Placing them at the center of all future plans is pivotal to any success story. Using this very basic theory, we at AAKIT love using the people-centric Design Thinking approach to understand what and where everyone around us are headed. Design Thinking helps us ensure we have collaborated with people to understand their latent, unarticulated and unmet needs. It gives people a platform to identify their unidentified problems. And further it ensures, we are headed towards finding the solutions to these problems and not just already-articulated ones.

 Here’s more happiness to you all!

Who was the weaker side in the Mahabharata war? The Kauravas or the Pandavas? Did the presence of Krishna tilt the favour towards the Pandavas? Did the absence of Barbarik make the sides neutral? Don’t know and it remains subject to our own favourite picks!

What would you choose? Pots of money or a peaceful happy life? Then again, is happiness dependent on money….or it really is a state of mind? 

Is democracy really the better governance mode? Or were we better off with kings and rulers? 

And more closer home…….

What is more important? Human touch or artificial intelligence? Ah! Finally a more relevant question for us ‘technology’ people, eh? 

I would fight the urge to let this question get a rhetorical status unlike the many others above! Here’s my take;

Moving forward, technology services companies have some strange threats. Not that these are new but definitely these occupy centre-stage and more so in the future. Threats come in the form of what they need to build into the psyche of their teams who will take their technology and services to the market.

In our near-future world, the most important skills that will be needed are centred around examples like…..

• Critical thinking 
• Creativity
• People Management
• Emotional Intelligence
• Judgment and Decision Making
• Service Orientation

Read, human touch in each of these?  Oh yes! Couple these with your Artificial Intelligence, machine integration and learning, iOT and other such future technologies. 

Who will you sell AI to? Human beings. Who are the consumers of iOT? Human beings. Who will connect ML with commercial applications? Human beings. Who will say what integration is required between man and machine? Human beings.

Both are needed. Both are critical. Both are imperative for growth. Both are the future. Technology will grow beyond human understanding. Humans will evolve beyond pre-programmes ‘artificial’ intelligence. Hand-in-hand. No chicken-egg there. Period. 

AAKIT’s approach to technology using Design Thinking, thus keeping human centricity intact is our best step forward in this fast moving business world. This is our way of bringing technology to human beings. This is our way of winning. 

Happy technology to you, fellow humans! 🙂

Thanks for stopping by.