personal
Theory of God
Nov 18th
The idea of this blog post has been running around in my mind for quite some time. In this blog post I try to give a logical explanation to “God”. I will try my best not to sound like the jogi baba (spiritual guru) giving a lecture. Note that I am not a atheist and strongly believe in the existence of a Supreme power. Here it goes, do let me know your comments…
First let us try to answer this simple question. Who/Where/What is God?
In my humble opinion, I think god is someone who can solve “ANY” problem. I would like to stress on the word again “ANY”.
Lets keep this thought aside for a while. We all face problems in our day to day life. Some are domestic, some professional and so on. That brings up the next question. What do we need to solve a problem?
The most important thing required to solve a problem is INFORMATION. With the proper information we can solve “ANY” problem. A person who know Maths, can easily keep accounts. A person knowing all the languages on earth can talk to anyone.
For the discussion so far we can conclude the following
“God is someone who has all the Information and hence can solve any problem”
With this thought lets move forward. Mere mortals spend their life engrossed in their day to day problems. In the process they gather information and become adapt in solving their problems. For example the Accountant becomes a expert in statistics, the musician becomes the Mozart. The point to note here is that, one can become an expert in only one or two subjects. The expert in one subject might not be adapt in solving problems related to another subjects. The following is a clear classification.
God has all the information
Expert (guru) has lots of information on one or more subject.
General public has some information about many subjects. 
The experts help the us solve our day to day problems. The Math teacher teaches us accounts. The Gym Trainer helps us keep fit and so on. All these experts are giving us more and more information. In a way they are guiding us towards god. Every great religion has a Guru, a central figure who shapes up the group of people. The central person teaches the common man how to lead a fulfilling life. They give them more and more information which brings them closer to god.
Trying to reinterpret the statements made so far, In my humble opinion, I think that noone can actually reach god. We can actually treat the teacher to be god, who shows us the way to god. In other words who gives us information.
As the ancient Hindu Scripture point out. matha pitha guru deivam . Which means, Mother, Father and Guru are Gods. Mother and Father are our first teachers. Guru represents all the teachers, Living and non living. Books, Internet, TV. Everything around us can give us some or the other information. And hence the whole world is god.
Now comes the catch. You can call it catch 22. Here it goes.
One also has the information within oneself which can help the one in solving ones own problem. In other words One is also ones own God. In fact one is ones most important source of information, as one can guide oneself to the correct teacher to give the one the proper information to get the one out of the current trouble. If one chooses the wrong teacher the one might end up in more trouble. So choose your teachers wisely, and believe in them. They will take good care of you.
I hope you are convinced with the explanation. I know that some of the points I made in this blog post are inspired by Hindu religious teachings. The most probable reason why I came up with this line of thinking might be because I am a Hindu myself. There can be alternate explanations too and I am totally open to them.
An interesting point to note is that, this blog post validates itself. My teachers (Hindu religious Scriptures) give me information to solve the problem which we originally set out to answer.
New Age Ramayana.
Oct 14th
Brilliant stuff by krishashok.
Ramayana – Core Value Proposition
View more presentations from krishashok.
Rules While Resigning
May 19th
Rule 1) Don’t leave a company, try moving to a different team in the same company.
It takes time to ramp up and build contacts in a company. Leaving a company will undo all the hard work. And the same process has to be repeated again.
Rule 2) If decided to Leave, then leave as early as possible.
No point in waiting. It only adds to the stress. Go for the first offer you get. Just make sure you will get sufficient time in the new company to keep looking for new opportunities. If you like it be there else move on. Companies now a day’s accept three months of jobless period.
Rule 3) While resigning leave as quietly as possible.
The more fuss you make, the more problems it will create in the long term. Always try to retain the old contacts, you never know when you will cross paths again and in what capacity.
Rule 4) Referrals are the best way to get a new job.
A friend inside the company is always of great help. They have the inside knowledge, and can help you get a good deal.
Rule 5) Try getting into a company with similar work culture.
In other words, if you are in a product based MNC then try getting into another product based MNC. Changing work culture can be very stressful and takes a long time to adjust.
Rule 6) If possible take a break.
A nice little vacation can be really rejuvenating before taking up the new challenge.
Always listen to the Wise Man
Mar 30th
It’s not often that you come across wise men. They are hard to find and even harder to get advice from. But if they advice, be sure that you listen to it and act on it. No matter how uncomfortable it might be.
The other kind, which is the show offs are found every where, and they will give advice anytime on anything. Literally speaking , if one has the power to fold his/her ears into the ear hole to stop listening to anything, then the right time to use it will be when the show offs start speaking.
Recently we embarked on a big project in eBay. We started working on it and went deep into the Design Doc. We proposed to change the existing code base to add the new feature we were trying to add. We had completed most of the doc and were about to start the Implementation.
Enter the wise man, the wise man looked at the design and advised that we change it totally. He brought in a totally different perspective. He had the business sense or I should call it the sixth sense. His point was that our project was an experimental project and it could be taken out anytime. So it’s better to have a design which touches the existing system to the minimum.
Of course, we were reluctant to take the advice as we had already done lots of work and changing things now would have caused considerable rework. Anyway with lots of squalling we decided to take the new approach. When we were finished with the task we actually found that the design was actually much cleaner now.
We just started implementing when we got the shock. They downgraded the priority of our project due to some weird issue. Good that we were in the initial phase of implantation. I can’t imaging what would have happened if we had taken our earlier approach and we got this shock a month or so later. All our efforts would have gone for waste. Plus we would have spent time to restoring the system to the original state.
The moral of the story.
“Always listen to the wise man. He knows more then you do.”
Crossing the Chasm
Mar 23rd
Today I gave my 2nd Toastmasters speech “Organize your speech”. I choose the topic “Crossing the Chasm”. It was based on the book written by Geoffrey A Moore, “Crossing the Chasm”. The following is my speech.
Crossing the Chasm
Opening
How many of you dream of starting your own company some day? How many of you want to be the CEO of your own firm? I know deep down in our heart everyone of us have the secret desire to do just that.
Today I am going to talk about the book “Crossing the Chasm”. A must
read for all the Startup aspirants. This book was written by Geoffrey A Moore in the year 1990 and sold about a million copies since then.
So what is this book all about? This book outlines a set of problems faced by all the startup and identifies certain well defined
solutions.
Let’s jump in without much ado. I know all of you are dying to hear more about it.
Body
The Bell Curve
To identify the problem w let’s look at this diagram here. The Bell curve the parabola. The market scope of a product can be defined by this cure. At the front are the innovators, the folks who invent the product. They are the first user of the products. Closely following them are the Early Adopters. These are the folks who use the early version of the product and give their views. Then comes the Early and the Late majority of the user. This user base is the major chunk of the user base. And for a product to be successful the product
managers have to position their products to this section of the curve.
The Chasm
We often think that all these user groups are connected. And once we start selling a product it will quickly spread across the curve via
word of mouth. But that is not the case. There is a major problem gap between the 2 groups the early adaptors and the majority. The Chasm. The problem is that the majority group uses only those products which are already used and recommended by other folks in the majority curve. They cross reference each other. A classic case of Catch-22. The majority will use only those products which are already used by the majority. So how can we get them to use a new product? That is the chasm.
Movie Example
Let me give you a real life example. Take the case of the movies. The director, actors and the producers are probably the first people who see the movie. They are the innovators. When a movie is released we have the college students who don’t have anything else to do. They see all the movies. They are the early adopters. But for the movie to be a hit the general public has to see the movie. People like you and me. But I won’t go to see a movie unless my friends tell me it’s a good movie. And they won’t go to the movie if I don’t tell them that it’s a good movie.
The D-Day Analogy
Now that we have identified the chasm, let’s see how Moore solves them. Moore gives a brilliant analogy to explain the solution. The D-Day analogy.
During World War II, Hitler had captured most of Europe and the allied forces wanted to get a foot hold in Europe to launch there invasion further. So on June 6, 1944, the allied forces launched a massive invasion and landed on the beaches of Normandy. About 2 lacks troops were involved in the war. Once the allied forces setup their base in Normandy they could go further and capture other parts of Europe and eventually defeat Hitler. This day June 4th of 1944, is referred to as the D-Day in history books.
In his analogy, Moore refers to Britain as the Early Adopters, The English channel as the Chasm and Europe as the Majority. Moore suggests that to get to the majority group we should identify the point of attack (a weak point which is overlooked by the competitor) and put all our force to capture it. Once we have become the market leader in the inch we can go ahead and invade other portions of the market.
Point of attack
Let’s dig deep into the solution. Firstly let’s see how to indentifying the point of attack. Every market can be segmented into smaller groups. Once we have segmented the market, we can identify the segments which are not well served by the competitors. See if the segment has certain pressing problems which can be addressed by the product. Let me give you some examples.
Blog Example
Let take the case of blogs, we want to start a new blog and want to make it very popular. Clearly we can take over the established players, we can write about the same things the established players are writing about. Lets take the technology space. There are many blogs, Meshable, GigaOM.. etc. which are well established. We can start a blog which writes about a specific technology inch. That is what Cloud Avenue did. Its concentrated on cloud computing and it’s a popular blog now.
Postit Example
Another example is the case of Yellow Post Its. They were first manufactured by 3M. During the initial days no one used them and the product was not doing well. The product had hit the Chasm and 3M was going to shut it down. That’s when a dynamic Product manager hit upon the idea. He sent packs of Post It to the secretaries of all the Fortune 500 companies. The secretaries used them to scribble agendas, send memos and note phone calls. And the rest is history.
Assemble the Force
Once we have identified the point of attach we can assemble our force and start the attack. So what do we mean by Assembling the force. When we are selling a product it does not end with there. It has much more to it. We have to identify the packaging which will suit our target audience. The product may be complicated so we might have to provide training. The product might need supporting products. Moore calls this the whole product.
Oracle Example
Oracle databases as a whole product. When a company decides to by oracle product it actually buys a whole lot. It also buys after sales support. The company has to buy more software to manage the database. Plus additional software to access the database vie the application layer. Apart from that it might have to provide training to it employees. Oracle has solved all these problems very efficiently, it delegates the training stuff to third party and the oracle database access is done by open source community and oracle encourages these efforts. Oracle collaborates with its subsidiaries to develop products for managing the database. And that is the whole product.
Launch the Invasion
Once we have identified the Point of Attack, and Assemble the Force it’s time to launch the invasion. This is where we think of distribution and pricing. According to Moore, in a battle distribution is the vehicle and pricing is the fuel. Moore dwells deep into these topics in the book. But they are out of scope at this juncture. You can read more in the book.
Conclusion
Let’s recollect what we learned so far. Every product has a market scope which is represented by the bell curve. At the front of the curve is the innovators and the Early adopters and at the middle of the curve is the early and late majority. For a product to be successful it has to be used by this majority group. But there is a chasm between the two groups.
To cross the chasm we have to identify an inch in the majority market which is not addressed by our competitors and put all our force in capturing it. Once we have that we can target the other portions of the majority market.
For all the startup aspirants, I highly recommended that you read this book before you plunge in. I bought it on eBay for Rs. 230. It is a worthwhile investment.
Types of Problems
Mar 13th
People have classified problems in many ways depending on various factors. I have tried to classify them according to there solution space. They are the convergent and the divergent problem.
In case of convergent problems, we converge to a solution. There is usually one solution to the problem eg what is your name? : Kumaresan. That’s it nothing less nothing more.
The other problem is the divergent problem, which do not have a defined solution space and is left to the imagination of the solver. Eg, Tell me something about yourself? Blah Blah…. Blah Blah Blah… Ba Blal Ba Baaaalh…
The IQ Exams tests the ability of an individual to converge to a problem, where as the speech competitions, Group discussions etc measure the divergent problem solving capabilities.
Often the genius (or geeks as we call them) is the ones who have an excellent IQ but lack the Divergent problem solving skills. The other extreme is the artist, the writer they can express themselves creatively in beautiful ways. Somewhere in between lies folks like you and me, who don’t have a great IQ nor great Creative mind.
To become a leader one has to be an expert in both aspects.
My Unheard Toastmasters speech
Mar 9th
I am a active member of the Toastmasters club in my company. Today I was the Grammarian and the Wordmaster of the day. The following is the small speech / writeup I had prepared but couldn’t deliver due to a mess up. So thought of sharing it in the blogsphere.
Hi I am Kumaresan. Today I am playing the role of Grammarian and Word Master of the day. My job today will be to note the good and bad usage of words by each speaker and report them at the end of the meeting when called upon by the General Evaluator. I will also be noticing the no of times the Speaker uses the Word of the day during their speech.
Before going to the word of the day I would like to point out that in toastmasters it a practice, or one could say ritual to clap when some user uses the word of the day.
Now coming to the Theme of the Day and Word of the day. Today’s theme is “Necessity is the mother of all Innovation” and the word of the day is Innovation. The meaning of these words is well understood and I would not spend more time explaining. But I would like to narrate a story. It’s actually not a story but the sequence of thoughts of thought that might be running in the minds of a One Day Old kid.
The Kid opens the eyes for the first time. It’s surrounded by people. “Acho Acho.. ole Ole… Kicku Kichu”
Ah ha.. I see something. Who are these people making funny noises? Are they mad? Don’t you folks have anything to do? I am trying to sleep here?
The baby closes its eyes to avoid the mad people shouting at it and tries. But after some time baby has an Uncomfortable feeling.
What is this feeling am having. It’s not good. I don’t like it. It seems to come from my stomach.
The baby names this feeling Hunger. It tries to tell the mad people that its hungry. But they are still busy doing mad thing. ”Acho Acho.. Ole Ole”. Frustrated the baby gives up.
But then the baby gets an Idea. The baby Cries. The mad people hear it and give it milk. The bad feeling goes away and the baby goes back to sleep. End of Story.
Necessity is the mother of Innovation.
Foolish Ideas
Mar 9th
It’s better to accept a foolish idea then arguing with the fool explaining the idea is foolish. Because at the end no matter what the fool will make a fool out of you.
Often fools have that burst of idea, and they can’t control it. They have to tell it to someone.. and if that someone is you.. then you are gone. The foolish idea should be accepted unconditionally accepted. Never ever try to give advice. The fool will take the advice, think for moment and throw it back to you using a different set of words as though you are the fool who couldn’t think of it.
When you analyze this further, you will realize the following. Actually, the fool is feeling a bit low and wants to get some kicks by making someone else a fool. They are actually sadist’s fools who derive pleasure by driving others crazy.
The moral of the story
If you hear a foolish Idea, accept it unconditionally, as soon as you hear it and run away from the place.
Writing after a long time time
Feb 24th
Read this blog post from Seth Godin http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/02/luckiest-guy.html
It has been a while since I wrote anything to this blog so thought of writing something, The news now a days is slumdog millionaire wining 8 Oscars. And our own AR Rehaman bagging 2 of them. Frankly Rehman had done many other songs which I feel were better the “jay ho” but just because this was a international movie he got the Oscar this time. Any way hope he brings more such awards in future.