Delivering Happiness : A path to profits, passion and purpose

This is an extra ordinary novel written by Tony . At the beginning of the novel itself , Tony clearly mentions that this is neither an auto biography of Z
appos or his . He wrote this novel as if he is speaking to a friend . I found the narration very captivating .

Tony comes from an oriental background . Like most of the Asian parents Tony's parents took pride in showing their kid's achievements .They made him  to prepare for SAT, right from the sixth grade . Tony had always been entrepreneurial from childhood , he started a personalized button making business in his childhood and it was a success . Tony finally made to Harvard.  Though, Tony used to pick and attend most his classes and procrastinating many . He manages to pass out with manageable grades . Tony along with his friend room mate Sanjay joined Oracle . He did not fancy his job at oracle and resigned oracle within six months . Along with his friend Sanjay Tony for the first time venture into making a web designing company by name Link exchange .  Link exchange becomes a huge success later on he lost interest in the company and sold it off to Microsoft for whopping 250 million $ . Microsoft offered a 40 million $ to Tony on stipulation that he continues in Microsoft for one year . But he could not continue in the company because he was passionate about it .

After a few months of dillydallying , Tony finally decides to start a investment fund company . He wanted to help buzzing entrepreneurs with his sources . He along with some of his friends invest in many small companies . But , very few companies gave returns Tony and his team expected . One of the firm he invested was Zappos . Fred who actually came up with the original idea of selling shoes online, which was and is the whole point of Zappos . But , world and industry was not ready for that concept . Zappos was loosing lots of  money. Tony poured almost 40 million $ from his investment fund into Zappos . But , it still was not sufficient to keep his company afloat . Tony and his friends looked for external investments . Neither major investors nor any banks were not interested in investing in Zappos . Zappos started doing well  but not making enough money to avoid insolvency . On the brink of insolvency , to save Zappos Tony even sold his own house to inject funds into Zappos .

Finally , looking at Zappos good track record WellsFargo decided to give credit line to Zappos . From that point of time , Zappos started doing really well . From 2003 , transformation of Zappos quickened . It transformed from an online shoe company to a customer centric company . Tony fixed an overwhelming goal of crossing the gross sales of 1billion $ by 2010 . He and his entire company worked diligently towards this goal . Tony built a very transparent culture in Zappos . All the managers heed to their employees and customers. Entire company worked passionately about one thing that is delivering happiness to its customers . Tony came up with a culture book that showed entire Zappos culture and what it meant to customers and its own employees and vendors . During 2008 recession , Zappos also got affected but trues to its core values the entire firing process was kept transparent . This had helped to keep the employees morale up even during the down time . Slowly , the entire ecosystem around eCommerce had changed and Zappos had become leader in online shoe sales . Zappos achieves its goal of crossing 1 billion $ gross sales two years ahead of its deadline . Finally   , Amazon showed interest in buying Zappos . After pondering for a lot of time , Tony and his team thought it was good for future of Zappos to merge with Amazon . Zappo's is a cinderalla story but its been carefully built by passionate people . It stands true to the fact that faith can do wonders . ..!

Manoj
12/31/2013                                                      

Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

This is an excellent novel that talks about how habits form , how do they work and how can they be changed .

I am going to explain the crux of the novel in the following four segments

Ø  what is a Habit loop

Ø  What is a routine 

Ø  What is a cue 

Ø  What is the reward

Finally , how this can be changed

Before I started reading this novel I have a bad habit of not reading after I come from work

Ø  What is a habit loop

Cueà Routineà  reward

In my  case everyday I used to come waste time and sleep

Cue : come home
Routine : switch on TV , cook for time pass, check my office mails again
Reward : convince myself that I am tired and thus rejuvenated

What is a cue

Cue is something that triggers the routine that is bad habit

What is the reward

Reward is something that you get for following the routine .

To elaborate more on cue and reward relationship , for many people smoking is a bad habit , in my case its is not reading . People find it really difficult to break the bad habit loop even if they want to . The question is what makes it so difficult to break the pattern .Answer is habit loop that is formed in subconscious mind .However this  can be changed with following the below seemingly simple formula

Formula is  TOILE . though it doesn't sound right it actually works

T: time , what is the time when habit loop starts
O: Who are the other other people around you
I ; immediate proceeding action
L : location
E emotional state

In my case

Time:

Sunday. : at around 07:30 went out bought groceries and slept
Monday : come home my office at 07:30 , watched TV slept
Tuesday : came home at 07:00 attended a meeting , cooked and slept

Wednesday:Have some office work , worked late and slept

So it is clearly in my case habit loop is kicking in at around 07 to 08

Other people around you:

There is no one around . So others are not influencing me :-)

Immediate proceeding action:

Monday : travel led by bus from office to home
Tuesday : came by bike from office to bus

Location :

Home on all the days .

Emotional state:

Sunday : tired and want to take break as it is weekend
Monday : tired due to long day and want to take a break
Tuesday : tired due to riding bike in traffic and want to take a break

So cue is 07:30 , routine is waste time and reward is relaxed

I enjoy reading a lot so I got to replace TV watching , checking unnecessary mails , attending meetings , with reading and learning which is very helpful to my career

How ?

Pack new habit in the same loop to get the same reward
After coming home practised having power nap for half an hour during 06:00-07:00 , so I am not tired and thus not resorting to time waste means to get relaxed .
I am able to read most of the days .
As I enjoy it too,  I am getting my usual reward of relaxation ;)

Understand and unleash your power to change habits

Crisis Management By Harvard Business Review Press

Crisis Management By Harvard Business Review Press .

                   Here is the essence of this book  . Personally, i took a week to read this and got a couple of chances to apply my learnings to real life situations , it has helped indeed . I would narrate this with the help of an imaginary character called Snigdha.

Snigdha is an amateur DBA in Acme Inc. As any employee in Acme, she rarely gets to work. God has blessed her with a very good project where she gets to work very rarely. Every day she spends more time on checking the quality of her dressing style than quality of her work. Her manager, who started her career also at the same position as Snigdha, attributes the reason for minimal work in the project to her management skills. Snigdha’s manager rarely puts an effort impart new ideas in team and assess new technologies .Rarely the tickets resolving procedures and teams technical skills be cross verified . On fine bad morning, customer has lost half of his database. So customer raised a production down ticket to Acme Inc. Snigdha picked the ticket and read a one-liner “replicate the production database to test” . She gave a look as if it’s her one of those spam mails in her inbox . Unaware of the process to be followed for high priority tickets, she replicated development to production which wiped out whatever the little data customer has got. It took 10 hours from there on recover it completely back.  Quality team who never got a chance to review the quality of anything but quality of office interiors, suddenly had to review the quality of work done by Snigdha. As they never followed any standard quality check procedure nor do they have any metrics. They decided to postmortem the ticket. They exhorted the ticket out of database and started analyzing. Suddenly, people started looking at her work (ticket) as if its manuscript of Jesus Christ. To save their day, quality team has simply put all the blame on Snigdha for not paying attention and sends the analysis report to customer. The poor non-technical customer was heavily bombarded with technical jargon and was convinced that it was his mistake for not giving the requirements clearly. Further, Acme Inc. gave some action items to customer on improving the communication on such incidents in future. Looking at the concern of Acme towards them customer has awarded the contract to Acme Inc again .

Here is how crisis should have been handled better . As per author of this book , lifecycle of any crisis can be put into 8 of the following categories .

1     Identification of possible areas of crisis.

2     Prioritsing crisis based on impact.

3       Crisis contingency plan

4    Crisis containment.

5       Communication to media

6     Documentation.

Applying these principles to above story gives the following results.

1     Identification of possible areas of crisis.

                            One of the important skills for any manager should be identifying the signs of crisis. Crisis can be anything ranging from unkemptly designed ergonomic chair to office building not complaint with security measures.  In this case, Snigdha was never working or practicing as she did not get a chance; she never had any experience handling these sort of high pressure tickets. Quality team should have a clear metrics to assess quality of someone’s work. It was her manager’s responsibility to pick up these signs and to make sure that Snigdha was competent enough. Her manager should have picked up the sign early and trained team appropriately.

2      Prioritizing the crisis based on cost of impact

Crisis impact can be estimated with simple formula.

Value of crisis = Probability of occurrence X Cost of impact

In this case, cost of impact = 10 employees had to work 10 hours more to resolve issue

                                                    = 2000$(10X20X10)     

         Customer losing business for 8 hours = 10000$

Probability of occurrence= 0.1

Value of crisis = 0.4X (2000+10000)$

                         = 5000$

3 ) Crisis contingency plan

In case of a crisis there should be a crystal clear plan on who should be contacted for resolution. How should be contacted, what are the emergency contact number of key resources. How to organize a team and how and who should send communication to customer on the crisis updates. These should have been in place by the appropriate team.

If Snigdha doesn’t know how to perform the activity, she should have at least known whom to contact when she is struck.

5 ) Crisis containment.

It is not completely possible to avoid all the crisis . But having a proper backup plan or an insurance never hurts.

In this case if entire business is going down, the team should have at least pondered over the strategy to contain at beginning stage like routing traffic to another database server. Having a backup copy at offsite location would have surely helped.

 6 ) Communication to media.

In this case , who would get intouch with customer incase of crisis . Good way to deal with this is, Manager should have come to office to handle the situation and percolate the seriousness . To show exigency and convey the gravity of something it is always better if someone at top goes to site and address media or customer .

Before addressing media or customer the manger or CEO should guess to 5 question that could be posed and visualize the answers and the way to deliver those answers.

 Documentation

The crisis should have been documented properly. This would help really incase of future situations. So when the database is fully recovered the whole history log how the ticket was issued should have been properly documented.

Customer should also have documentation on how the issue is resolved and ways to improve the procedure in future.

Must read for all the managers ….!  

Motivation

1001 ways to inspire your organization, your team and yourself 

–David E.Rye

This book is all about what its Title says

Humans can be classified into four categories

Type1: Inspirational: Leaders, bit of arrogant, Goal Oriented

Type2: Creative: Emotional team members

Type3: Followers and conflict avoiders

Type4: Uncommitted and jovial

First and foremost thing to inspire is , to know to which type you and people around you belong to. Let us take a look at how to motivate others. On a day to day basis, we interact with many people around. Everything that we speak, everything that we do and everything we express is not haphazard. Everything has a hidden motive. All the actions that we do are inter related, our actions somehow would have an impact either positively or negatively. There is no such thing called, unplanned or without consequence. Our day to day actions and our interactions with people around decide our path and finally destination of ours. So, it is every important to understand people around so that you can help them and can seek help to reach destination.  Every type of person can be motivated if we can understand them well and do sincere effort.

Type1’s love to take control of things and are powerful leaders. They would plan ahead for them and for their closed ones. They would go any farther to get proper recognition to them and their team and deliver results. Negative side is that they can be insensitive. They can be motivated by letting them know they could be in control of the project and can get name for it. They could put your project on your table before your deadline.

Type2’s are very creative and emotional. They are very loyal to what they believe. They could be very suspicious of nature at times. They could use little leadership from Type1’s. In case your organization wants a job to be done and to be delivered with great quality. Types2’s are your life savers.

Type3’s are followers. They would normally don’t get into conflicts. They would avoid conflicts to the maximum extent possible. But, in case you get into conflicts with these you could face a passive wall of resistance. They are loyalists your organization.

Type4’s are insouciant and jovial in nature. They are not very committed. They can be motivated by playing to their populist card. They love technology gadgets

Finally, how to keep one self-motivated. You can keep yourself motivated all times provided you know your goal (professional & Personal). Biggest motivation that can drive us towards our goal is the progress we are making. So a quantifiable goal is always achievable in specified time, investing specific effort at regular intervals. This would itself keep us motivated.

Regards ,

Manoj

Why Job Hoppers Make the Best Employees

Reference :

An interesting read .

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-45040110/why-job-hoppers-make-the-best-employees

Here's why: 
1. Job hoppers have more intellectually rewarding careers. 
In almost any job, the learning curve is very steep early on. And then it goes flat. So by the end of two years at the same job, you often have little left to learn. Which makes me wonder what people are doing to keep their brains alive if they stay at the same job for 20 years. It also makes me certain that job hoppers know more.

If you change jobs often, then you're always challenged with a lot to learn -- your learning curve stays high. This is true for office skills, and industry specific knowledge. It also applies to your emotional intelligence. The more you have to navigate corporate hierarchies and deal with office dramas, the more you learn about people and the better you will become at making people comfortable at work. And that's a great skill to have.

2. Job hoppers have more stable careers. 
Corporate America doesn't provide stability for its employees. The only people who think it does are really old and completely out of touch. There are layoffs and downsizing and just-in-time hiring and contract workers -- realities that barely existed a generation ago. The stability you get in your career comes from you. If you're counting on some company to give you stability, realizing this is scary. But if you believe in yourself and your abilities and treat your career with this understanding, then it's no problem. You can create career stability -- you just have to do it on your own.

The way you do that is through networking. Because you can be sure you'll need to find many jobs in your lifetime, you want network as efficiently as you can. After all, the most efficient way to find a job is through a network. It's how most people land jobs. People who work for lots of companies have a larger network than people who stay in one place for long periods of time. Which is why job-hopping creates stability.

3. Job hoppers are higher performers. 
If you know you are going to leave your job in the next year, you're going to be very conscious of your resume -- that is, what skills you're tackling, what you're achieving, whether you're becoming an expert in your field. These issues do not generally concern someone who has been in a job for five years and knows he's going to stay another five years. So job hoppers are always looking to do really well at work, if for no other reason than it helps them get their next job.

You can't job hop if don't add value each place you go. That's why job hoppers are usually overachievers on projects they are involved in; they want something good to put on their resume. So from employers' perspective, this is a good thing. Companies benefit more from having a strong performer for 18 months than a mediocre employee for 20 years. (And don't tell me people can't get up to speed fast enough to contribute. Fix that. It's an outdated model and won't attract good employees.)

4. Job hoppers are more loyal. 
Loyalty is caring about the people you're with, right? Job hoppers are generally great team players because that's all they have. Job hoppers don't identify with a company's long-term performance, they identify with their work group's short-term performance. Job hoppers want their boss to adore them so they get a good reference. Job hoppers want to bond with their co-workers so they can all help each other get jobs later on. And job hoppers want to make sure everyone who comes into contact with them has a good experience with them; it's not like they have ten years on the job to fix a first impression.

This is why job hoppers care more about their co-workers and will go further to make them happy than long-term employees. And it if you think about it, this makes sense for a company, too: The company isn't hiring you with any decade-long commitment, so you would be foolish to think you have to give one.

5. Job hoppers are more emotionally mature. 
It takes a good deal of self-knowledge to know what you want to do next, and to choose to go get it rather than stay someplace that for the moment seems safe. It takes commitment to personal growth to give up career complacency and embrace a challenging learning curve throughout your career -- over and over. And it's a brave person who can tell someone, "I know I've only been working here for a month, but it's not right for me, so I'm leaving."

Doubtless you'll hear that you should stick it out, show some loyalty, give it at least a year or two. But why should you take time out of your life to spend your days doing something you know is not right for you?

It is okay to quit. No career is interesting if it's not engaging and challenging, and your most important job is to find that -- over and over. Do not settle for outdated workplace models that accept complacency and downplay self-knowledge. Sure, the job market is tough nowadays - but that's no reason to settle.