OK, so what’s a Finish Quotient? It’s a ratio I just made up – the ratio of the number of tasks you “finish” to the number of tasks you take up. Obviously, the ideal ratio is 1. Or, is it really? We’ll discuss that a wee bit later. It can include tasks at any granularity, professional or personal. The deal though is, be honest to yourself!
Why is this quotient important? Because in some sense, it’s a measure of how efficient and reliable you are! It’s a measure of whether you are spending your time doing useful stuff, or whether you are one of those people who do have a lot of enthusiasm at the beginning, but quickly switch on to something else, without completing your earlier task, wasting a lot of time, effort and money in the bargain. Like someone who pursues guitar one day, then table, then kite flying! A jack of all trades, but a master of none. Kick starting a dozen things every week, but completing few. But more dangerously, you might be someone who people cannot rely on to do what you are asked! Because while you start off on a great note, a few hours later, you have left it hanging around and moved on to something else…
Why do we behave this way? Sometimes, we are just careless or insensitive, sometimes it’s because we have never really understood the criticality of the task we have been assigned, or simply do not believe in it. Sometimes it’s because the task was just a means to get to something else, and as soon as the other objectives are met, we lose interest.
Is it always important to complete what we start? No, of course not! Many times, it’s more prudent to stop and stop quickly! Visionaries, leaders, innovators can never really always complete what they start – simply because their growth is in mistakes, and it’s important to quickly stop a mistake when you recognize it. The challenge, here, is to make sure you stop as soon as you can. Far too many people I know continue having a bath because “paani toh waise bhi garam kiya hai”. You wasted the electricity, and now you are also wasting the water!
So here’s another quotient you can start thinking about – Saved Wasted Efforts. It’s the ratio of the “wasted” efforts you saved by taking quick action to stop a task to the total “wasted” efforts planned for the task. Remember, you cannot use this ratio to justify not completing work – it’s only applicable to “wasted” efforts :)
Take a few mins to look into your near past, and I am sure you’ll know what your quotients are. And I am sure you can get much better at both!
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
At NASSCOM Innovation Summit
I attended the NASSCOM Innovation Summit in Bangalore last month, where I presented our Bridgestone work. It went off well, and though results are awaited, I am pretty confident we will pull it off :)
Here's something from the NASSCOM reporter covering the event on it's EMERGE blog:
Next in line we have an interesting speaker who opened the talk with “Tyre as a Service“. It was a welcome change given we had heard SaaS, IaaS, PaaS all through. The tone was rightly set to highlight the innovation they did in business process and in business model but for their client. They on their own still operate like a technology services company.
Siddhesh Bhobe of Persistent Systems presented the change they brought in BridgeStone, a global leader in tyre industry. The problem they solved was to get rid of the lethargic and ineffective tyre servicing of trucks. BridgeStone guaranteed their customers to provide this service and used to pair up with service centers to provide the same facility for which they had to pay upfront. Persistent Systems came up with a mobile based solution levaraging RF tracking to completely remodel the way the servicing was done at the service centers. The synchronised tracking and update has also enabled BridgeStone to move to a pay-per-service model.
In a very compact and user friendly application they have enabled viewing and updating history about the tyres - age, miles driven, damages and repair etc. Additionally all tyres are trackable by just walking at a close distance. Apparently in cold weather this improves productivity a lot as the mechanics don’t have to make multiple trips back and forth to measure and note down their findings. Given a extensive history of the tyre is collected this helps BridgeStone in optimizing their internal processes. In all BridgeStone focus has moved from ’selling tyres to servicing tyres’, enabled a direct B2C relation than the earlier B2B.
Though their high involvement into a client’s problem and delivery are exceptional, what was little unexpected was that they did not deliver on a business-value delivery model but rather for the technology development. Again, though this was highly impressive, the innovation was still about enabling innovation for a client than innovating for themselves. At this point it dawns on me that the “Market Facing” in the Innovation Award series is stressed more than I thought. On a personal opinion I think we in India should gradually also focus on innovation at core than enablement (a services model which has always existed).
The jury seemed to quite impressed by the presentation and the Q&A sessions did not have anything much to add.
The slide deck used for the event can be accessed here.
Here's something from the NASSCOM reporter covering the event on it's EMERGE blog:
Next in line we have an interesting speaker who opened the talk with “Tyre as a Service“. It was a welcome change given we had heard SaaS, IaaS, PaaS all through. The tone was rightly set to highlight the innovation they did in business process and in business model but for their client. They on their own still operate like a technology services company.
Siddhesh Bhobe of Persistent Systems presented the change they brought in BridgeStone, a global leader in tyre industry. The problem they solved was to get rid of the lethargic and ineffective tyre servicing of trucks. BridgeStone guaranteed their customers to provide this service and used to pair up with service centers to provide the same facility for which they had to pay upfront. Persistent Systems came up with a mobile based solution levaraging RF tracking to completely remodel the way the servicing was done at the service centers. The synchronised tracking and update has also enabled BridgeStone to move to a pay-per-service model.
In a very compact and user friendly application they have enabled viewing and updating history about the tyres - age, miles driven, damages and repair etc. Additionally all tyres are trackable by just walking at a close distance. Apparently in cold weather this improves productivity a lot as the mechanics don’t have to make multiple trips back and forth to measure and note down their findings. Given a extensive history of the tyre is collected this helps BridgeStone in optimizing their internal processes. In all BridgeStone focus has moved from ’selling tyres to servicing tyres’, enabled a direct B2C relation than the earlier B2B.
Though their high involvement into a client’s problem and delivery are exceptional, what was little unexpected was that they did not deliver on a business-value delivery model but rather for the technology development. Again, though this was highly impressive, the innovation was still about enabling innovation for a client than innovating for themselves. At this point it dawns on me that the “Market Facing” in the Innovation Award series is stressed more than I thought. On a personal opinion I think we in India should gradually also focus on innovation at core than enablement (a services model which has always existed).
The jury seemed to quite impressed by the presentation and the Q&A sessions did not have anything much to add.
The slide deck used for the event can be accessed here.
Express India Article
Story on Express Computer on the adoption of VSTS and Sharepoint in my team: http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20090112/management03.shtml
Has a nice photo of yours truly too :)
A mail circulated to stakeholders at Microsoft by the media company says (till the end of the post):
Quoted in the story Siddhesh Bhobe, Associate Vice President-Microsoft Technology Practice and IVV, Persistent Systems said, "It was getting difficult for the team manager to remember what needs to be done and take tasks to completion. Tasks would fall off the plate and would become very difficult to track. This development helped in quicker deployment cycles of the tool ensuring that people get to start using it sooner and also feedback could be incorporated in a timely fashion, Continuously changing requirements and updates to the business processes and workflows are a big challenge to any such system. The system needs to be nimble and very easy to customize and adapt to changing needs. Sharepoint made it very easy to keep it simple and very customizable with minimum disruption to the team”
Other comments provided by the writer are as below with point 1 and point 2 as the sub headline in the story:
1. Persistent Systems has deployed Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2005 CVSTS) to expedite the process of generating reports automatically and to enhance the existing development environment
2. Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2005 provides Persistent with a programming model and infrastructure that lets developers create scalable and secure connected applications
3. Through the tool, now, all that the team lead needs to do is add the resource to the project using the given InfoPath form and all the tasks that need to be done are generated as tasks and can very easily be tracked.
4. The solution integrated well with other Microsoft applications, optimized its system architecture and advanced the quality and speed of its development process. VSTS offers all the features that are required to automate the processes during different phases of the software development cycle.
The story ends with a positive note explaining that Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2005 provides Persistent with a programming model and infrastructure that lets developers create scalable and secure connected applications. This helps in increasing productivity, better manage and understand the application life cycle, and increase software quality.
The story is extremely impactful and strong to bring out the messaging of Microsoft tools in the SDLC space and how it has benefited existing customers.
Has a nice photo of yours truly too :)
A mail circulated to stakeholders at Microsoft by the media company says (till the end of the post):
Quoted in the story Siddhesh Bhobe, Associate Vice President-Microsoft Technology Practice and IVV, Persistent Systems said, "It was getting difficult for the team manager to remember what needs to be done and take tasks to completion. Tasks would fall off the plate and would become very difficult to track. This development helped in quicker deployment cycles of the tool ensuring that people get to start using it sooner and also feedback could be incorporated in a timely fashion, Continuously changing requirements and updates to the business processes and workflows are a big challenge to any such system. The system needs to be nimble and very easy to customize and adapt to changing needs. Sharepoint made it very easy to keep it simple and very customizable with minimum disruption to the team”
Other comments provided by the writer are as below with point 1 and point 2 as the sub headline in the story:
1. Persistent Systems has deployed Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2005 CVSTS) to expedite the process of generating reports automatically and to enhance the existing development environment
2. Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2005 provides Persistent with a programming model and infrastructure that lets developers create scalable and secure connected applications
3. Through the tool, now, all that the team lead needs to do is add the resource to the project using the given InfoPath form and all the tasks that need to be done are generated as tasks and can very easily be tracked.
4. The solution integrated well with other Microsoft applications, optimized its system architecture and advanced the quality and speed of its development process. VSTS offers all the features that are required to automate the processes during different phases of the software development cycle.
The story ends with a positive note explaining that Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2005 provides Persistent with a programming model and infrastructure that lets developers create scalable and secure connected applications. This helps in increasing productivity, better manage and understand the application life cycle, and increase software quality.
The story is extremely impactful and strong to bring out the messaging of Microsoft tools in the SDLC space and how it has benefited existing customers.
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