3 things that drive Amazon

Jeff Bezos talks about the three things that drive a company forward: 1. Customer obsession, 2. Invention and 3. thinking long-term and how these three business drivers are inherent in both Amazon and Zappos’ business cultures.

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When hiring use survivor bias

I have had opportunity to conduct interviews on behalf of my company for over a year now. Most of my colleagues who have been on the interview panel have asked me why I spend lot of time asking candidates about tasks and jobs that they failed at. Well this is what helps me differentiating between the good and the best candidate. I call this technique ‘Survivor Bias’ – an important statistical principle that can greatly affect the future of my company and quality delivery to my clients.

Let me site this with a simple example

During World War II, the English forces sent planes each day to bomb the Germans. As you might expect, several of these planes were shot down. And, the ones that did come back typically returned with multiple bullet holes. Now, the English obviously wanted to maximize the chances of its planes and soldiers returning home so English engineers studied the planes that returned. In doing so, they found patterns among the bullet holes. Specifically they found lots of holes on the wings and tail of the plan, but few in the cockpit or fuel tanks.

As a result, the English added armored plating to the wings and tail. As you might have already concluded, this was the wrong thing to do. The better decision would have been to add armored plating to the cockpit and fuel tanks. For, the planes that were shot in those places were the planes that were shot down and never returned. The English engineers' analysis missed this data because these were the planes that they were unable to examine. This is "survivor bias"-- their inability to include this critical data in their analysis since it was unavailable or didn't "survive".

So why does it matter to you when you are talking to a brilliant candidate with superb success record? When you hire candidates who have only worked at successful companies, you may fall victim to survivor bias. They may not have learnt many of the lessons that individuals learn when they fail.

Now I am not advising that interviewer shouldn’t go for candidates who claims that every one of their projects have been successful. I personally believe to differentiate a good candidate and the best ones, as an interviewer you should use survivor bias.

Do take couple of minutes to share (below) the unique techniques you have used while interviewing for aspirants for your company or portfolio.

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WebP - A new images format 4 web

WebP pronounced as "weppy" is a new image format for web by Google that gives you a file size reduction by an average of 39.8% percent, without affecting its quality. To make Internet more faster and loading pages in lesser time, Google plans use this new image format. As 65 % of web traffic comprises of images, WebP can potentially make the web faster.

The WebP format works with Google's Chrome browser. And since it is an open-source project, others would be able to provide compatibility to this format without having to pay a fee.

Visit Google gallery page that puts JPEGs and converted WebP sample images side by side to compare.

Read more about this image format in Richard Rabbat blog

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Up for a probability challenge?

Today after a long time I came across an interesting probability question. I think there are two ways to solve this problem but don't know which one is correct. Leave me a comment if you know the right answer.

"A couple has two children and at least one of them is a boy. What is the probability that their other child is a boy?"

1) 1/2, it is equally likely that the other child is a boy or a girl.
2) 1/3, in terms of order of birth, there are four possibilities for the couple's children: BB, BG, GB, GG. At least one child is a boy, rules out the the possibility GG, ;leaving you with three possibilities: BB, BG, GB. With two of these, the probability of the other child being a girl is 2/3. Leaving the probability of the other child being a boy at 1/3.

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Xobni is Inbox - spelled backwards

As a project manager, communications makes up a huge portion of my work and like it or not the bulk of that communications happens through emails.

Considering I am spending quantifiable hours every day working with Microsoft Outlook, I was always looking for optimizing my time spent with MS Outlook and about six months back I came across Xobni. Xobni is email add-in for outlook and one of the latest additions in my project management toolkit. This small plug-in has made Outlook much faster and more useful.

This add-in makes Outlook inbox fun to use, adds instant news ways to how you view people, lets you extract phone numbers, pictures and tells you upfront at what time of day, your mail buddies are more responsive to emails. And guess what? It’s free.

The latest feature addition in social networking space is Xobni’s integration with Yahoo Mail – Now you can search your personal emails in Yahoo mail. If the person has a profile on the business-oriented LinkedIn social-networking service, the Xobni panel can display his or her job title, employer, and a photo from LinkedIn.

Xobni plugin sidebar in Microsoft Outlook has three sections - The first one shows the person's email "network" -- a list of everyone that person has placed in the "To" or "Cc" fields of emails you've exchanged. The next section is called "Conversations" and displays the entire threads of all the email exchanges you've had with the profiled person. Finally, there's a section listing all the files you have exchanged as attachments with the profiled person.

Folks, believe me this program has made managing my emails faster, smoother and simpler.  Check the demo below or go to http://www.xobni.com/ to download the add-in.

If you know more such tools/programs that can make life easy for project management professionals, drop me a note or leave me a comments below.

image courtesy: xobni

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Talent Grooming

A successful leader is the one who believes in his people and makes every attempt to groom them so that they can reach their potential. Here are some of the guru mantras that have helped me groom my team:

Believe in your folks before they succeed: If you want your team to reach their potential, you need to believe in them before they become successful and sometimes before you can persuade them to believe in themselves. Though it is much tougher to believe in people before they have proved themselves but as a leader, you need to carry this trait.

Emphasize their strengths: The best way to show people your faith in them and motivate them is to focus your attention on their strengths. By emphasizing people's strength's, you are helping them believe they possess what they need to succeed. Praise them for what they do well both privately and publicly. Tell them how much you appreciate their positive qualities and their skills. Any time you get an opportunity to compliment them in front of their family and close friends, do it.

List their past success: There may be times when you need to encourage an individual beyond emphasizing his strengths to motivate him/her. An easy way to do this is to make the individual feel important. Help people remember their past success and they will have confidence in their future actions. Not everyone has natural ability to recognize their past successes and draw confidence from them. If you can show them that they have done well in the past and help them see that their past victories have paved the way for future success, they will be better able to move into action.

Instill confidence when they fail: Some people are resilient and willing to keep trying in order to succeed, even when they don't see immediate progress. But others aren't that determined. Some will collapse at the first sign of trouble. To give them a push and to inspire them going you need to keep showing your confidence in them, even when they are making mistakes.

One of the ways to do that is to tell about your past troubles. Sometimes people think that if you are currently successful, you have always been that way. They don't realize that you had your own failures and flops. Show them that success is a journey, a process and not a destination. When they realize that you have failed and yet you are successful, they will realize that it is okay to fail. And their confidence will remain intact.

Experience some wins together: It is not enough just knowing failure is a part of moving forward in life. To really become motivated to succeed, people need to believe they can win. Coming alongside others to help them experience some wins with you give them reasons to believe they will succeed. And in the process, they sense victory. That is when incredible things begin to happen to them in their lives.

To help people believe they can achieve victory, put them in a position to experience small success. Encourage them to perform tasks or take on responsibilities you know they can handle and do well. And give them the assistance they need to succeed. In time as their confidence grows, they will take on more difficult challenges, but they will be able to face them with confidence and competence because of the positive track record they are developing.

Visualize their success: Each time you cast a vision for others and paint a picture of their future success, you build them up, motivate them and give them reasons to keep going.

If you can practice the above mantras with your direct reports you will not only be able to successfully groom talent but you will be their hero. We all live under the same sky but we don't have the same horizon. Make people see beyond today and dream big. When you put your faith in people, you help them expand their horizon and motivate them to move to a whole new level of living.

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Chinese Stir Fried Mushrooms

Today I had some mushroom in my fridge and was looking for a different mushroom recipe. I usually cook dry mushroom with peas. I found this cool and really easy recipe and the mushrooms were cooked and all ready in just a few minutes ...
So here I am sharing my pictures and the recipe .

This one is a mushroom lover's delight! Tossed with garlic and soya sauce, these mushrooms are sure to tickle anyone's taste buds. Loaded with iron and fibre and low in carbohydrates, this hearty and healthy dish makes a full meal, if the mushrooms are tossed with ½ cup of boiled whole wheat noodles.

Cooking Time : 15 minutes.
Preparation Time :10 minutes
Serves: 2 adults

Ingredients
2 cups mushrooms, cut into halves & Steamed in the cooker for 1 whistle .
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 green chilli, finely chopped
2½ tablespoons soya sauce
2 teaspoon cornflour (cornflour is not finely ground but coarsely ground )
1 cup spring onion greens, finely chopped
a pinch chilli powder
1 teaspoon oil
salt to taste

Preparation

1.Dissolve the corn flour in 2 tablespoons of water and the soya sauce and keep aside.
2.Heat the oil in a non-stick pan, add the garlic and green chilli and sauté for 2 minutes.
3.Add the mushrooms , white portion of spring onions and salt and sauté for 3 to 4 minutes.
4.Add the corn flour mixture and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes till the sauce coats the mushrooms.
5.Add the spring onion greens and mix well.
6.Sprinkle the chilli powder and serve immediately.

Enjoy the dish!

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Bankless Banking - P2P lending

Person-to-Person (P2P) lending is an innovative solution for credit worthy buyers who need money and lenders who have extra cash at hand. When US economy is in doldrums due to credit-market crisis, P2P lending business model is helping individuals who need small loans. Given the success of this consumer lending model, large financial institutions need to watch carefully the development in this space. One of the leaders in P2P lending is Prosper.

How Prosper works?

Lender registers at Prosper and sets a minimum interest rate they are willing to earn and bid in the increments of $50 to $25K. Lender can use credit scores, histories, borrowers personal stories, endorsement from friends and group affiliations to select borrowers.

Borrower creates a loan listing of up to $25K and set the maximum rate they are willing to pay to lender.

Prosper takes the bids with the lowest rates and combines them into one simple loan to the borrower. The company handles all on-going loan administration tasks including loan repayment and collections on behalf of the matched borrower and lenders. The company generates its revenue by charging borrower 1% to 3% fee on funded loan and 1% per annum loan servicing fee to lender.

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From behind the (fire)wall to the cloud

Being in an IT services company, I envy product vendor’s sales reps job. Whenever they bring any new product to their customers, the promises they make are just too big to believe and the jargons they use are just too confusing to the customers (like the subject of this discussion). One of my clients who made 6 digit investments in buying all the hardware, security suites and BPM packages to implement one-off BPM programs using SOA principles was given the sales pitch that public cloud computing is the way forward for BPM.

Imagine the state of the client who has not even seen the break-even for her investment is given one hour session on new technology buzzword cloud computing. As soon as she was released by these sales reps, she was aghast and came by my desk …. Is public cloud computing going to replace traditional enterprise IT?

Donning my IT consultant hat, I said I don’t think so. Public cloud computing won’t replace traditional enterprise IT however few years down the line service IT providers may sell business services using the new technology of virtualization. But rest assured your recent investment in BPM tools and hardware will not go waste. You will still need privately hosted hardware, customized services for your key business processes whose security, privacy, performance and availability cannot be compromised.

As this virtualization technology matures and organizations gear for adopting BPM enterprise wide, they may see cost advantage in moving certain BPMS components to public clouds like

• business process modeling and analysis tools, repositories
• collaboration and social networking tools
• test and demo environments
• monitoring and optimization components

But at any point of time, it is not practically possible to move all IT business processes hosted behind the fire(wall) to the cloud.

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