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?