An utterly shocking air-hostess-institute ad: Seventy bloody thousand..!

A mockery of all the other professions where 'desirability as a female' is not the major criteria…
Disclaimer: I have taken around 400 flights in the past few years. Having witnessed the sheer HARD-work first hand, I have deep respect for the Air-Hostesses. This post is NOT ABOUT the air-hostess profession per se, but about a stupid ad by an air-hostess-training-institute.
Secondly: Whether you like it or not, “desirability as a female” is the SINGLE most important criterion into the selection process and I have no moral issue it.

The Ad: shows an impudent young girl who talks about her 'starting salary' as "Seventy bloody thousand!!! Who needs an NRI?" Her tone and demeanor and everything else will bring the word "F***ing" (instead of bloody) to mind in later recalls. The totality makes it clear that her entire capital is her gender, looks and age and she looks at life through roses and greeting card wisdom!

What I did not like about it:
1. Rs.70,000/- per month is a great value in the Indian salary context. If you don't agree, just think how many who retired by 2005 would have dreamt of crossing that figure even towards the end of 30-35 years' professional life? Is this girl doing more value-addition? It is a kind of insult to all those who were in much more socially productive professions, but never made this kind of money.

2. Forget retired people. Just recollect/imagine how much effort and grit YOU required (or will require) to cross this figure. Realize that that effort/grit can be trumped merely by the right "desirability as a female". I felt insulted. Don't YOU?

3. What about the millions of other girls who will not make this kind of money (nurses, doctors, teachers, lawyers, clerks, accountants, etc.) because they are in jobs where they choose NOT to capitalize on their "desirability as a female". Is "finding an NRI" the ultimate salvation of a girl's life? I would like to know the opinion of some female readers on this one.

4. This ad shows money as the singular output of a job. If we are talking purely of money, then Rs.70,000/- per month is waaay toooo cheap. The movie ‘Corporate’ showed that there are girls in that demography who make that kind of money in 24 hours, OK?. Doesn’t this ad promote the “money is the ultimate goal” culture? Yes, I see some boys too nowadays, but the numbers are miniscule. And yes, the ‘desirability’ criterion remains applicable with boys too.

So, I thought the ad insulting to both sides:
Those who join are being told, “Look – the hard-work etc is all ok. At the rock bottom, you are just a piece of *** otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”.
Those who choose join other professions are being told: “Look, you may slog for the rest of your life. That cutie next door will gift a Toyota Camry to her dad/boyfriend you can’t even dream of!”

Again, these are ‘facts-of-life’. Facts are facts, they cannot be right or wrong. The issue is not with the facts, but with the values projected by the ad. The attitude projected by the impudent girl in the ad is entirely unfit for an air-hostess. (At least an air-hostess-training-institute should know this.) This “Seventy bloody thousand” line has the potential to ‘get into the head’ of quite a few girls of that age. I can imagine the plight of many parents who will be forced to cough-up the astronomical fees against their judgment or lose face with their daughters purely on monetary grounds. I do hope the ad is withdrawn soon because it projects the wrong values.

Ohh! hullo, come back!!! Where is service management angle in this?
Service Management Issue: The service catalog lists services which are ‘stated’. However, in service management, for good customer satisfaction, ‘implied’ services are as important as ‘stated’ services. In a service management situation, if you fail to grasp the implied services correctly, you are headed for failure, regardless of your competence on the ‘stated’ services.
Now, please don’t read any innuendo in ‘implied’ services. Some of them are:
1. Making customers ‘feel’ pleasant and happy from welcome to exit.
2. Being very difficult to “shout at”. (it is difficult to yell at a 20 yr old girl!)
3. Invoking ‘gallantry in customers’ to cover shortcomings in service. People say ‘koi baat nahi!’ more readily.
Though an average middle-aged man would fall miserably short in these ‘implied’ services, there is nothing morally wrong with these services. Facts-of-life!

Cheers!

Ketchup sachets are free WITH THE PIZZA, OK?

Apart from consulting, I also am a trainer for almost the entire pyramid of ITIL / ITSM courses. Right from ITIL V3 Foundation, to the Intermediate levels of RCV, OSA, PPO and SOA on one side and the SS, SD, ST, SO and CSI on the other. I am also accredited to deliver one of the most obtuse courses ever, the MALC! Naturally, travelling to new places and meeting new people is one of the chief attractions of the job. Every time I face a new batch, I meet many new people. Since, these courses are in the Management Training domain, I never cut short on the introduction round as it gives me good insights into the personalities. Over the few days of training, the participants share very intimate aspects of their professional life and I am required to share the ITIL wisdom on that particular aspect. (occassionally, I have to restrain them from going into their personal lives...) Being able to help highly competent technical people to transcend their technical boundaries and venture into the management domain is a great source of personal fulfillment and satisfaction.
Every time a training program is closing, there is a feedback session, where often people voice their opinions. Many communicate with me over email after the batch is over, and over the past few years, I have collected quite a few geniune friends; these relationships have endured over the years, where we keep in touch and report our 'current states', 'whereabouts', career choices, etc.
So, when I got a chat-request from one Varma from Agra, in India, I took it routinely as a participant who wants to stay in touch, nothing more. Over some time we exchanged polite "GoodMornings" and "How are yous".
Now, I don't like to set up the BUSY red-dot on the GoogleTalk - it is kindof standoffish. So, my status is always green. I would rather run the risk of people pinging me at inopportune moments rather than appear uncommunicative. [Ofcourse, this is my blog so it is all about ME. I am not accusing anyone else of being standoffish, so don't get peeved if you happen to set up red-dots all the time. That is your choice and I fully love and respect people who put up busy signs...]

From the last few days, this Varma asked politely whether I would answer queries. I said yes. Then he asked a question. I answered. Then he started arguing about that. Then I told him that I wouldn't be able to engage in a debate with him on chat. If he had simple queries of the "which course should I do before which" types, I could reply quickly. Then I educated him on the difference between closed questions (name two components of priority) and open questions (tell me something about priority model), and indicated that the chat medium is suitable only for closed questions. Then I told him, that delivering trainings is my PROFESSION, so if he needs elaborate answers, he has to get into one of my training programs. Now if you have read so far, your patience must have run out, and so had mine. So, I explained to him that he could ask questions on LinkedIn if he liked, and I would reply publically when I could. The next day, I got a friend request from him on linked in and then I got a question in the LinkedIn inbox which I reproduce here verbatim: "Please advice how Service Operation (SO) maintains a balance between an internal IT view and an external business view. Pleas elaborate!" Phew! So, now the LinkedIn inbox becomes the chat mechanism..!
When I had said LinkedIn, I expected him to start a discussion into which I too could have contributed. This is an invitation to write books without any royalty! So, ultimately I had to do the ultimate... I felt sad, but I have only so many hours in a day (24 last time I counted) and simply cannot devote the time to such open-ended questions.

However, I had to clarify the situation in Service Management terms, otherwise I would not be able to sleep properly. So, bingo! I realized ***Service Catlog SubVersion*** How? Well, as a trainer, I deliver certian paid services. Out of which, there are courses like V2M, V3F, ST, SO, RCV, PPO, MALC, etc. To access these services, participants have to pay the requsite fees. They land into a classroom, and there depending upon relevance and participation of other class members, their queries are answered. The other (friendly) services I provide (yeah, friendly, no extra charge!) are minor queries over email, chat and rarely, phone too. These would be queries which could have been legitimately asked in the class, but somehow were not. So, ok, you can ask them now, provided they can be answered quickly. Often, participants, call-up and discuss career options, and looking at the serious nature of the query, I usually devote sufficient time to these. I usually guide the participant to first formulate the question. And usually in a subsequent call, help them to discover the answer.
The first set are paid services, and through them, if one get access to me, the second set are free services with due trust on the discretion of the user. But when a user gets access to the free services, and tries to use that free access to obtain what is essentially a paid service, then we have a case of Service Catalog SubVersion. And once a SC_Sub incident is raised, it might impinge upon the user's access to the free services too.

Yeah, I mean the freebies are always associated with a paid service. Sugar is free with a cup of coffee! How many cubes? ok someone might get away with as many as 20 cubes! But if you start talking boxes? Pl BUY as many pounds as you want. The ketchup sachets are free if you BUY a pizza. And then too, you can take 2 or 3 or 4 or ... ok 8, NOW STOP!!!! For a truck-load of sachets, you have to approach the place where they sell them. We give them free with pizzas!
Pray how many, one may ask, sugar-cubes or sachets are legitimately 'takeable'? This is the difference between a service situation and a product situation. There is no REAL answer to this question. However, one easily KNOWS when the boundary gets crossed. In a service situation (exactly parallel to mens-rea), intentions define legitimacy, not specifications!

Ohhh, sorry, come again, what was that? "What is mens-rea?" Oh. Please sign up for my classes on Indian Penal Code!

Cheers!

Priority Issue: Importance is a function of USER Utility..! Samsung Corby Color and what not..!

My daughter cleared her tenth (High-School) exams with CGPA 9.0..! She was promised a mobile as a reward, and yesterday, I had to buy a mobile..! For various reasons, I was heavily in favor of LG Cookie. My experience is that LG have perfected their phone software long back, and features which are just now arriving on many phones were there with LG since ages. Somehow, the guy at the CROMA store had placed his customer accurately, and was hell-bent upon selling us a Samsung Corby Color. Now this Corby Color has five different backs, which come in five different colors. All 5 backs together must be costing less than Rs.200/- (oh, five dollars). He showed many features about java and zoom and bluetooth-hack and image-processing, et al. Ultimately, my daughter decided she wanted the Corby Color, the most important reason being the five different color flaps which can blend well with different colored dresses from a fashionistic perspective!!! (won't the entire army of software designers in LG / Samsung hate it! Their brilliant efforts to stay ahead were vanquished by a few simple pieces of colored plastic!!!) This was the first lesson about priority / importance: Importance is decided NOT by erudition or technical brilliance or quality of effort, or anything on the input side. Importance is simply a function of how the feature fits the User's (or customer's) needs!
Then came the hardest lesson for me. Today morning, I hooked up her phone to my laptop and tried to transfer phonebook entries to her phone. The idea was that she would automatically get all the numbers of umpteen relatives and family friends, and some important people...! There was no question about family names except some of my Mamas (uncles) had to be re-named as her Ajobas (grandpas), and some of my friends like Gobi, had to be respectably named as VinayKaka! The real issue was with Important People. I have almost a thousand names in my phone-book, numbers of many VIPs and VVIPs collected over the past decade..! I am in touch with most of them, but obviously not all. Whenever a name came up which I thought was very important and a good name to have in the phonebook, my daughter had wrinkles on her forehead..! There was one who is the lifetime chairman of a non-profit international organisation. "So what!" Another was the owner of the first branded non-stick cookware in India. "So Whatt!" Another was the vice-chancellor in a University. "SSSOOO Whattt!" and it went on..! I was aghast to see pure disdain on her face when I tried to give her numbers which some people would have gone to great lengths to obtain!!! Imagine my surprise when a critically acclaimed film star who has also become a producer was shot down..!
Phew..! Thiss generationnn!!! (and similar other exclamations about the generation came to my mind and I even verbalized a few..! )
And then there was the realization which came from a Service Management Perspective!
In a service catalog, which services are important? How do we decide the Priority model? By looking at how much each service serves the user/business or how it addresses pain-points!
At her age, my daughter simply failed to see how a vice-chancellor of any university would be a great entry in her phonebook!
The trump card came from her in very simple words...
She asked, "What would be the average age of people in your phonebook?" A little mental arithmetic gave a ballpark of 38-45 years.
And then she asked, "What should be the average age of people in MY phonebook?"
"Phew..! Ohh godd!"
How much I still have to learn, just have to keep eyes and ears open..!
Cheers!

Service Quality Issue: Lavasa City: Perfected Looks, wanting experience!!

Yesterday, I had a chance to visit Lavasa City..! Wonnnnderrfully landscaped, it was giving the exact effect of walking in London city, like near Victoria Station to Terminus, or a hundred other paths. The evening sunlight shining directly on the picture-postcard perfect buildings was also looking European! The buildings on the waterfront have been constructed huddling together exactly in the European style, and the signature spire on top of a building and the two towers along with the cobblestones complete the effect, to such a high degree of accuracy, that I was finding it difficult to believe that I was not in London (or some similar European city)..! I mean I am not an architectural freak, so probably I wouldn't be able to argue with someone who can point-out that "European spires are built on octagonal towers whereas British ones have hexagonal ones" so I won't fight. Neither is the average pedestrian an architectural freak! So, apart from a few architectural puritans, most will agree that the effect created on the wharf (or similar) on the waterfront on the Lavasa city is absolutely 100% Londonish!
So, in this pseudo-London, with a bunch of hungry kids, at around 3:00 PM, I walked into an impeccable joint with a concocted English name, which sold pizzas and burgers. Now my expectations had been set for the kind of service which goes in with these kinds of places. Alas, the service there was pathetic...! The restaurant owners simply had rounded some of the frailest gents, (who naturally were unfit for the hard-labour which goes in there) dressed them up in some uniform and started calling them waiters!
Believe me, being a waiter is one of the most demanding jobs in the world, and a waiter at these high-end restaurants simply requires highest competence...! These poor souls had difficulty in reading the Menu items. So, I pointed out the items on the Menu by place to avoid mistakes. Even then they managed to jumble up the Mexican with the Italian and sandwiches with similarly named burgers..! Also, the lead time in a supposedly fast-food joint was more than 30-40 minutes!!! Kids were practically howling by that time, so nobody wasted time in analyzing what s/he had ordered vs what they got!! Whatever came on the table was immediately cut up in four portions, and each kid devoured one..! By the time, it came to me and 'the boss' downing a few morsels, we had covered half the menu, run up a huge bill, and nobody was satisfied. Not only that, the waiters had no idea about paper-napkins, and other niceties (which become ESSENTIALS in such fine dining joints).
I realized the importance of Service Maturity once again..! Why is it that we pay so scant attention to the Quality of Service? Just because it is intangible? We are willing to spend billions of rupees into pouring the concrete, but hardly any into making sure that it gives the correct experience..! After all, when visitors come here, they are not going to carry home the buildings! They will take the EXPERIENCE home! (ok, maybe a few snaps too!) Compared to what has been spent in getting the cement and the rocks in place, we will have to spend a miniscule amount to get the EXPERIENCE right. But we don't! Because, Service Maturity is soooo completely intangible to us..!
The same experience was repeated at the Baskin Robins outlet. The guy there was so rude and uncouth that it was impossible to relate that to the normal Baskin Robins experience in India, let alone the service experience one would expect on the streets of London!
If the Lavasa City Administration spends a few thousands on exploring their service management criteria to ensure that everyone gets a complete European experience, that would be money well spent..! Otherwise, we will end up creating a perfect shell with perfect looks, but it will fail to give the perfect experience. Looking at the grandeur of the effort and its potential to become a landmark in India, it would be a crime not to invest in service management!!!
If we are making an egg, we have to understand what's inside. Otherwise, we will end up making somethign which looks like an egg, but cannot be used to make an omlette!
In Lavasa City, I believe that we are trying to create the perfect EXPERIENCE. After creating the platforms on which the experience is to happen, let us work on the experience too!!!
Cheers!

14 hyr Sahal Kaushik cracked IIT JEE.!! What is more important School or Schooling???

Today morning greeted us with the news of a huge David-over-Golliath like triumph! The David team is a 14-yr old boy, Sahal Kaushik and his doting doctor-turned-fulltime-mom Dr. Ruchi Kaushik, and the Golliath in this case was the IIT-JEE exam which is a very difficult nut to crack, going by the accounts of hordes of hard nuts who try to crack it every year. Parents and students alike are gushing over his success, and I too LOUDLY join in the cheering.! I am experiencing a very strong connection with the event.

Being something of an off-roader myself during my school and college days, (never got more than 65% upto graduation even though I figured in the National Merit List of IAPT Physics NGP Exam), I can understand the plight of gifted children much better than some so-called educationists. Not only that, since earn my bread and butter by teaching process design, I also understand the limitations of the school-as-a-system. So, here, I share my views of the event from both sides.

The SCHOOL SYSTEM is designed to handle masses of students in a wide band of intake quality. Regardless of the money spent in making the school LOOK good, (and maybe some of them also spend to BE good), the school nevertheless remains a SYSTEM and therefore cannot be an absolute fit for any INDIVIDUAL. The difference between ready-made shirts and tailored ones will always be felt most acutely by those who are in search of the perfect fit. The best any school can guarantee, is very high-quality MASS PRODUCED talent. Individual merit like Bhimsen Joshi, Amitabh Bacchhan, Madhuri Dixit, Pramod Mahajan, Lata Mangeshkar, Ram Jethmalani, Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji, Sachin Tendulkar, Ankit Fadia, Saina Nehwal, et al CANNOT be produced by any school. In fact these people have been successful, not because of the school, but INSPITE of the school! No system can fully cater to an individual. This is a universal law. You will see this in all fields of human endeavor where high individual merit is required. Music, Drama, Literature, Politics, Science, Technology, Law, everywhere. Every time you create a system, you crystallize your thinking into the rules and regulations of the system, and before you realize it, the SYSTEM becomes more important than the SUBJECT! The classic frame-vs-picture dilemma!

What is more important, school or schooling? It seems, Dr.Ruchi Kaushik realized that to answer this question correctly for HER SON, she will have to become Ruchi. She did. And we are seeing the success of her decision.

Sahal Kaushik, on the other hand, is an individual who has (proven) high merits. His blessed mom, Dr. Ruchi Kaushik realized soon enough that the conventional schools are not fit for schooling her son. What a bold decision it must have been!! I can almost hear the friends and relatives, "in which class is your son? waaat, no class? no school?? tutt, tutt.. ouimaaa my son is only 11 yrs old, but they took him in seventh class..! My son is soooooo clever.. your son too must be getting atleast 70%, no?" I can imagine the frustration Ruchi might have faced when dealing with people who will never understand the difference between Mass Produced Standardized quality and individual excellence which comes from original merits which don’t have to be certified by any system.

Sahal is a high-performance individual. And having interacted with a number of high-performance individuals all my life, I can see what the system would have done to him if he had been put through the grind.

His brain is very strong in detecting patterns, and such brains are excellent knowledge organizers. So, he has no difficulty in understanding logical systems built upon axiomatic concepts.

I would like to caution two things here:

Firstly: please protect him from the media glare: His unseemly age is a major factor in all the celebration. If he had been an 18 yr old who had gone through the regular system, we wouldn’t have seen so much national gushing. But in the long run in his life, unless he can sustain such spectacular success every year, he will soon find that the world is very cruel and ruthless in dropping him from the limelight. There are quite a few studies about the fate of individuals who were thrust in the limelight and faded in a few months. Winners of national singing competitions and various Idols find it very difficult to cope with life after the cameras have found other Idols. As far as I know, he has shown success in understanding the existing knowledge. His REAL LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT will come when he is able to Synthesize new knowledge. At his level of spectacularity, a mere run-of-the-mill PhD won’t suffice. People would expect it to be a landmark PhD..! Till these things happen, his mom would be well advised to protect him from the media, or his success is likely to be adversely affected by continuous publicity. After all, come on, he is a 14yr old boy!!! Some principles from the story of Young Archimedes by Aldous Huxley may not be entirely irrelevant here.

Secondly: His entire support system should aim to make him a successful human-being, not a spectacular human showpiece. Such a mind needs to be protected from isolationism. He has to connect with other humans who may not be as sharp as him, and that can cause him to lose interest. Logic is great, but almost all major decisions in life are taken illogically. His mom too took a very illogical decision in home-schooling him! Selection of friends, career, love, marriage, job changes, affairs, all extremely important decisions in life are taken OUTSIDE the logical realm. Logical people (programmers are the best example) think in black-and-white, whereas the real world is made of many shades of grey. It becomes extremely difficult for very logical people to come to terms with grey areas in life. I have seen this very often in my training sessions, when very logical people cannot read simple questions and write sensible answers.

Ultimately, he should become a well-balanced human being, not a demo of a spectacular performance! He should do what makes him happy, and if he doesn’t know what makes him happy, then he should be allowed to discover it himself. So far, he LIKES logically organized systems of knowledge, it is ok. Tomorrow, if he loses interest in logical things, and his mind seeks higher levels of fulfillment which are above logic, he should not be driven to become a ‘great scientist’. So far, he has mostly experienced a protected environment. At the appropriate time he should get opportunities to explore his world and stand up on his own feet. At the moment, his support system consists of his mom and a few others. Over time, this support system will expand to include bigger stakeholders who would want the success to be repeated regularly. The best success of his life will come when he lives a happy life. “Making a spectacular success of his life” could be a dangerous project which his support system might take on. And in chasing their (possibly well-wishing) dream of MAKING HIM SUCCESSFUL, they might make him unhappy. And, here, the ENTIRE STORY of Young Archimedes might be relevant.

Sorry, got carried away – but this is a subject close to my heart, so couldn’t stop.

Well! I am sure he has a bright career and life ahead of him and the whole world would bless such a brilliant mind.

Pray, the brightness of his career should not be allowed to scorch his human life.

All the best, Sahal, and a billion Indians cheer for you!

And Salutations to Ruchi! Sorry, do I have to call you Dr. Ruchi?

Dream...Dream Big, DDRREEAAMM Biggg!!!

Yesterday, I was made chief guest in the CSD. It felt weird to be a guest in the same environs which (collectively) we had practically ruled a few years ago...! Yeah, quite a few years ago, 18 years to be precise...!
The new 'kids' who are studying for a Master's Degree in Computer Science were looking absolutely starry eyed, and I was supposed to share some 'secrets of success' with them. Suddenly, I realized that I was already successful..! Ohhh! Woww, I never knew that! But THEY thought I had succeeded. Actually, success is a very personal thing, and I don't believe that there are any SECRETS about it. The moment one thinks they are successful, they stop learning, and hence I never knew I was successful, though I have already crossed many social and other parameters of success.
In the function, I had to deliver a thought-provoking speech and a technical session on ITSM.

The only thought I shared with them was this: Dream, Dreeaaam! Drrreeaammm Bigggg!!!
Dreams are not something which you get by making extra efforts or more work..! To qualify as a DREAM, the target has to be Un-Achievable on the day you start..! Then you work towards the dream and gradually MAKE it happen.
Can you dream? What is your biggest dream? Come on, tell me..!