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I went to a restaurant for a buffet which was a bit crowded. I thought the service at some of the live counters will be slow but was surprised that the people at the counters were able to serve large number of customers in a short span of time, especially the salad counters.

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I was curious so visited one of the salad counters to see how was it possible for them to serve that many people at once. It was shocking to see that in the name of speed the person at the counter was cutting fruits in such a way that about half of them got thrown away along with the skin and the seeds. If this person had maximized the fruit content then it would have taken 4-5 times the amount of time taken now on fast cuts.

It is very clear that the restaurant can afford to waste as much of half of the food because they still gained from servicing a lot more people than operating efficiently. It was optimized for time not cost.

This is something people don’t understand while choosing tradeoffs, people often choose both cost and speed as key without giving a second thought that both cannot go hand in hand. If the same set of people had to do things much quicker and at a larger scale there has to be expenditures in tools, training and also some change in processes where there will be huge wastes before optimization kicks in. This is what happens in software development teams, often there is a tight budget and an impending doom if something does not happen; leading teams to easy burnouts.

I did not include the word quality here as it is non negotiable, you can do things quick and cheap but with a poor quality of work like serving the fruits with seeds still intact or skins not peeled well. That is not work done, there is no work without quality; eventually it drives away customers.

Next time when you have a debate about speed consider moving the cost sliders.

 

 

 

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If you are a salaried person, then imagine that you are a business owner who serves only one client at a time. Won’t you keep looking to improve the product/service you offer, won’t you keep looking at emerging trends and stay on top of your business domain, won’t you find out who your next prospective client is? It is not that hard to answer these questions, a business owner always has to stay aware of the market and stay relevant.

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When it makes sense as a business owner to explore the market, find the options and stay relevant; why should salaried employees not be aware of what is going on around them? Each salaried person should always stay aware of the market and keep themselves relevant. I have often come across people who scamper for opportunities or rush to update themselves when they are either disgruntled or unable to perform with their current employer. This will lead to people making bad decisions as survival instincts kick in to stay employed. Your best decisions will come to you when you are least stressed.

If we treat our employment as a business that has to be sustained, we won’t be relying on the learning & development programs of the companies. We will constantly be in touch with the industry and will continue to stay aware and stay relevant. To be aware of what is going on in the market, time to time conversations has to happen about opportunities like any other business. If we are aware of the market, then we are aware of our abilities and will shape up quickly to always be a market fit.

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This is a follow up of my previous post Gamers, musicians & artists. The TL;DR of that post is; people tend to self organise, find what they have to do and also hold their peers accountable to an expected standard. All they need is to work in small teams, some clarity on what their objectives are and leave them to be in a state of flow where they are constantly learning & improving while going behind their objectives.

I used to go to my college by town bus service. Town bus services are mostly run by governments. There are no incentives for the government employees to run a great service; but the ones we took to our college were run by enthusiastic drivers and conductors who treated their buses as their second home. These guys kept the buses squeaky clean and in best shape though it was an old bus, they pooled in their own money and added a radio when new FM channels were introduced. They would enquire about our health if we did not turn up for a few days. They would also signal us through the horn when they approached the college gate so we could run outside the blind spot and catch it on time.

The students became fans of these services and started celebrating bus day every year. All the regular passengers got together on a day along with the staff and distributed sweets & gifts. I still feel these guys will be running their buses like how they did before even though they are nearing their retirement age.Nothing prevented them from checking in and out, run a poor service and still be paid for; but they wanted to enjoy something they do day in day out and went for an ever improving quality of service even when they were not expected. I have rarely seen these people fall sick even though the climatic conditions varied from cold to too hot within few months.

Software development teams also if left on their own, will always try to punch above their weight when they buy in to the purpose they have signed up for. The reason people will stay engaged and go for it is a light tension to constantly be challenged, learn to overcome failures and the support to bounce back stronger. People need to have business knowledge, be competent in their tech domain and also have room for failures which promotes creativity. Eric Schmidt in one of his talks mentioned that his teams always try to shoot for the stars, but many times they fail and land on the moon, but landing on the moon itself was impossible and at times it seemed to be more easy to reach what was impossible, when work was allowed to happen. He calls his people smart creatives and there are people to facilitate decision making to make them go fast.

ely-cathedral-414090_1920I always quote this from Semco’s management style. They call their managers ‘Facilitators’ who help the team to set unimaginable goals and equip them to go behind. To go behind audacious goals, we need to communicate well to the teams and make sure they are equipped both technically & people wise; which will then let work happen itself with very less intervention. By trying to make work happen through a great plan, we will be predictable and deliver as per plan week on week and quarter on quarter but it won’t be anything disruptive or far fetched. Even if we achieve a great objective tracking to a plan, in an ever changing environment plan will soon become obsolete. There is this cliched story of cathedral builder vs person laying bricks. Everyone would want a cathedral builder, but many will choose the cathedral builder to just lay bricks as told by the planner.

Let work happen and see the magic