Take Two @vovasoroka - Tumblr Blog

Talking to Strangers

I am considered a social person by many. I am usually an extrovert. You can hear my voice in a loud party room. Sometimes I might get a guitar and start singing. The public attention is flattering to me rather than frightening. And yet, I am really terrible in what is considered the number one skill for entrepreneurs, businessmen and job seekers - mingling. If I get to a large conference and there is a room full of people at the conference party, I would never randomly approach people and start a meaningless conversation. I will gladly talk to someone if they ask me questions after my talk. I will readily participate in a conversation when I am dragged into it by an acquaintance. But making the first step is hard for me. So is it good or bad? Well, probably neither. It is pretty natural. Many psychologists will tell you that we as human beings are always tangoing - we want people close to us but not too close, as we also need our space.

The first chapter of the famous book “Master and Margarita” by the Russian writer Michael Bulgakov is called “Never Talk to Strangers”. It is a wise advice in general, especially when we train our kids to be safe on the streets. But very often talking to strangers can buy you a new friend, a new experience and maybe a useful information that does not exist in your social world. A very famous study by Mark Granovetter from 1974 (which I already mentioned a couple of times) is called “The Strength of Weak Ties” suggesting that casual acquaintances can sometimes bring more value to us than close friends.

The Web in general and Social media in particular, actually enabled us to talk to strangers on the whole new level, without really challenging our lack of confidence. It is called talkbacks and comments. We can react to a Facebook post or a newspaper article. We can stay anonymous if we chose to. We can engage in argument with the author or a fellow commentator feeling completely safe. More often than not it leads to an ugly discourse full of insults and bad words. Some journalists were even arguing that talkbacks should be banned. But this ability to express your opinion is, to my mind, a hidden gem, that if used wisely can bring us a lot of value as individuals or as businesses. And here is why.

Douglas Adams in his famous Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy stated that Planet Earth is just a giant computer built to find an answer to Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. The answer the computer came up with was 42. Could it be that Adams, a brilliant man by many accounts, was actually right? What if we are, in fact, a giant computer with an ability to calculate and find answers to universal problems? What if the very popular and maybe somewhat overused term Wisdom of Crowds is the key to something big we have realized but not put to any practical use yet on a large scale? A simple but powerful example that suggests the correctness of this theory is the ability of large crowds “guess” things like “How many candies are in the jar?” To realise the potential of this computer we should be able to do two important things: a) encourage many different people to express their opinions in online communities on a particular subject or a problem and b) being able to process and analyze their contributions to find the crowd solutions to the aforementioned problems.

Before we continue, there are two theories I will briefly mention here. One is called “Spiral of Silence” by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, a german political scientist. It suggests that since we as human beings are afraid of social isolation, we would be silent if we hear a very vocal expressions of opinions different to our own. Simply speaking, if there are people around us talking loudly about, say, expelling a certain group of people from the country, we would assume that it is a majority opinion and will remain silent even if we strongly disagree. If we map this theory to social media, the violent culture of talkbacks and comments very often cause good people to stay silent and not participate.

The second theory is a theory of “lurkers” in virtual communities, to which I was fortunate to contribute as part of my MA thesis (which is cited in this Wikipedia article). This theory studies the reasons that cause people to stay silent. And while there are a lot of reason to get people from silence to participation, a right culture and a great content is one of the major reasons to get people start talking.

We need to define the right culture of the community, showing people that good, different and civilized comments are cherished while violence is banned. We also need to touch people to make them say something. A great example of this is Humans of New York, a Facebook page of photographer Brendon Stanton, where he documents stories of various people by photographing them on the street and briefly interviewing them. He brings stories of real people, with real problems. As a results, thousands (!) of users feel emotional connection and post comments. Another example is a movie star and model Gal Gadot, whose Facebook page is so genuine that it also generates not only Likes, but many many comments. When you touch people - they respond.

The real Crowd Wisdom is our ability to tell our problem to strangers all over the world and have many of them voice their opinion. If Douglas Adams was right, there will be an ultimate truth inside their comments and suggestions. And when we will learn how to process those comments and distill the truth from it - Talking to Strangers will stop being a threat and instead will transform Humanity.

#opinioncrowdsourcing #wisdomofcrowds

The End of Life Coaching

I gave a lecture to a wonderful group of students who just came to Israel. I was mainly speaking of my life story and what makes people happy. The real goal has been to show that a Russian speaking dude can come to Israel, start from virtually nothing and get to something. It was supposed to be inspirational. It was supposed to give people wings. And then during the break someone has asked me: “Does Life Coaching really work? I mean all those books - “Think and Grow Rich”, “The Secret”, etc. - do they work?”

That actually made me think. I myself went through a phase of reading Robin Sharma, Napoleon Hill, Vadim Zealand and other people’s books on life and how to achieve success and self fulfillment. It was all inspiring. It was all useful to a point. But was it the thing bringing me to the next level? And especially, would going to a course led by a famous (and obviously rich) life coach help anyone, especially if they do not have money to really afford it?

The industry of life coaching is growing tremendously in the last years and it actually went to the next level - life coaches teach people how to become life coaches. It is viral. It is a disease. Which is kinda funny - since very often those life coaches have only one thing they really achieved in life - being Life Coaches. In a sense it is very similar to what is happening in the startup world - there is an industry of people who mentor startups though they never ever in their lives created a successful venture and sold it. Some of them have never ever created a venture, period. As the old proverb goes - “Those who can - do, those who can’t - teach”.

It is not to say, that the basic ideas of life coaching are false. They are very true. And listening to people who really did something with their lives is inspirational and useful. But those people are not Life Coaches. They are composers, CEOs, writers, olympic swimmers, architects, actors, you name it. They can tell you a real story. And if the story is real, it will show you that life is not a collection of cliches. It is hard work, disappointments and failures, problems in the family, making and losing friends, crying in the night and partying after a successful breakthrough. And if you focus on success, you might (just might) achieve it. You will most definitely achieve it if you never give up - but it also can come to you at the age of 55. Do you really have the patience?

If you read all the books on the subject from “The Monk who Sold his Ferrari” to “Transurfing Reality” - they will really tell you the same thing in different words and with different approach. a) You need to decide What is it that you like to do (short or long term goals)? b) Stay focused on your dream and do not give up even if failure happens (and it will happen multiple times). c) Work hard towards your goals - Universe will help you achieve it, but only if you work hard yourself. That is ALL to it. To understand those three simple things you can read only one book - “The Alchemist” by Paolo Cuelho. Reading other books can be useful to learn from REAL stories of real people. Read biographies of great people. Listen to TED talks talking about great projects that took years to achieve. Do it to help yourself believe.

Believe is a good word in this context. Life Coaching has become a religion. And religion and mostly the religious establishment (without offending any of my friends who believe in G-d) is exactly the opposite of what Life Coaching aims to achieve. Many people who I know and dived into an ultra orthodox religion did so to cut the Gordian knot of their lives. The religion gave them all the answers. Why am I feeling bad? - It is His will. Why am I Failing? – I should pray more. What should I do in life? - here are the rules you should follow and you will find peace and happiness if not in this life, then in the afterlife. I do respect other people’s beliefs but seldomly a blind belief in religion brings about a successful life. When Life Coaching becomes a ritual, it is not helping people, other than Life Coaches themselves.

So what should you do? It is simple really. Find your goal. Do not listen to anyone - it might be poetry or dancing or HR. If you like it and it makes your heart skip a bit, focus on it. Do not think “How much money can I make there? What is the current market situation?” People make fortunes only doing things they love. Focus on your goal. Don’t care about what others say or think. Do not let others discourage you. See the only thing in front of you - your success. And finally, work hard. And it is, by definition, hard. You’ll have good days and you’ll have bad days. Enjoy every day - it either teaches you something or brings you one step closer to the goal. And listen to real winners - people who achieved something, people who became successful. They are real Life Coaches and they did not make a career out of it. Find a mentor, a friend who will support you with all her heart and will not let you fall. And it will be the End of Life Coaching and the beginning of Life.

The Stone Soup

“We are not hiring smart people to tell them what to do. We are hiring them to tell us what to do”. Those words are attributed to Steve Jobs. Whether he really said it or not, they are simple and powerful. What they really mean is that there are many very smart people surrounding us. We go to great lengths to come up with interview questions to filter the candidates and hire only the best. Then we do hire the best. And then we do not listen to them. It is not even that we do not listen to them. We are not doing enough to make them realise that they can and need to speak up. It all starts from perception. It all starts from culture. But let’s start from the beginning.

There is a French tale about a stone soup. I guess there is a tale like this in almost every culture. The Russian version is called “The Axe Soup”. But the idea is the same. A tired soldier comes to a village and seeks asylum at an old lady’s house. She is very rich, but cheap. So while he is seeing that her cupboard is full of food she tells him that she has nothing and only can offer him a place to sleep through the night. Then the soldier says: “I know how to make a soup of stone. We do not even need fancy ingredients, just any stone will do”. So he brings a big stone, puts it in a hot water and waits a bit. Then he tastes the water and says: “It is coming along very nicely, we should just add a bit of salt and pepper. Do you happen to have some?” So the old lady runs into the cupboard and brings some salt and pepper. After a while the soldier wants the greens, the vegetables, the meat, etc. At the end there is a delicious soup they enjoy together and at the end when she asks about the stone, he says:” The stone is a stubborn thing. It needs to boil for another day before we can eat it”. Of course the first layer of this tale is the smart soldier and a punishment for being cheap. But the second layer, which is much more interesting, is that if you just put a stone in a soup and make everyone believe that they are doing the impossible, they will find the way to solve all the problems. They will bring the brilliant ideas out of their cupboard and create a delicious soup. Often though, it is hard to make people do it themselves. You need a stone.

What’s a stone in a corporate culture? There are several. One is giving people the sense of direction. They need to clearly understand where the company going and why. It seems easy, but it is not. “We are building a platform to create mobile apps” is clear and correct, but it lacks excitement. It is like saying: “Let’s make tea from a stone”. From the other hand saying something like “We are changing lives of millions with mobile technology” is too vague, general and not very believable. So you need to find just the right phrase, just the right message, that from one hand will be genuine and from the other exciting enough for people to care. In order to make it genuine, you need to believe it yourself. “We are making mobile technology accessible to many publishers and helping them making a difference in the world”. And then you give examples of publishers who use our apps to fight decease. And others who make a journey into a zoo a truly memorable experience. And yet others who make the voices of their customers heard and as a result changing their products every day to fit their needs. And then there is a clear sense of meaning.

The other stone is respect. People should know that if they say something they will be listened to Not mocked. Not disrespected. Not shut up. Even if their opinion will not be accepted, they will be given a good chance to speak up and be heard. It is very difficult to say things in public. Especially when you know that there is a very high chance of rejection. That is why respect not only means allowing people to speak up. It also means that if you do not agree or decide not to follow their advice, you need to clearly explain why you made such a decision. That will not prevent the person from speaking up again.

Yet another stone is allowing people to make mistakes. Most of the smart and genius solutions come not from a comfort zone, but from the courage to do something out of the ordinary (I recently learnt in one of the TED talks how bravery is different from courage - courage comes from a latin word for heart, so courage means running at something with all your heart). Very often when you do something like this, you make mistakes and you fail. If you embrace this failure and let people learn from mistakes and encourage the process and not necessarily success only, a chance of people opening the cupboard growth exponentially.

I’ve seen it work numerous times. I wanted a process to be built. I really just sketched a skeleton showing where we should go. That skeleton process could not survive - and other people stepped in and changed the process and adopted it and made it nearly perfect. I wanted a platform to be rewritten. So I threw some ideas into a pot. They were raw and unbaked. So people took the ideas, played with them a little and came up with ideas of their own, that were bigger and better than mine. And we will change the platform forever. Every two weeks when we are doing retrospectives of what we’ve done, new ideas are thrown inside the circle. Some survive, some die. But the process is amazing.

There is an old Biblical saying: “No prophet is accepted in his own country”. We tend to hire expensive consultants, we tend to pay for external courses. We tend to reach out the wise Oracles that can teach us how to do things. And all along there are hundreds of prophets sitting just under our noses. Our people. We’ve hand picked them. We’ve taught them. They are brilliant. All we have to do is to take a big pot, though in a couple of stones and let them make us a hot, delicious stone soup.

Growing Up

I asked an interviewee today who she wants to be when she grows up. She smiled and said that she does not really think about it and her next career move is usually dictated by her fascination with a new subject. I respect this answer (at least it is genuine and not phony) but having a clear long term goal for me is a sign of a successful person. Having a goal will help you making the right decision. It comes very handy when you decide to take upon a new job offer. The right question to ask in this case is: ”Will I learn anything new if I do this move and will it really help me in achieving my goal”? But the smile of the interviewee was because of me using the term “Growing Up”. She’s a young accomplished professional, so why would I use such a term if I was not joking? The thing is that I was not. At all. Growing up is a complex process that takes years. And with luck it never really happens. Growing Up has many aspects to it and today I will talk only about some of them.

First of all, Growing Up means that you become responsible and you start weighting all your thoughts and decisions carefully. This is not such a bad thing in itself and can help avoiding chaos and calculating your life moves. But then it also affects your risk taking capabilities. One day we were partying in a country and wanted to go and jump into a swimming pool that was closed for the night. One of my friends told us: “Do not do it, it is really irresponsible, grow up already!” We were at our late 20s and we jumped into that pool and I remember it as a wonderful experience (albeit slightly illegal). If we WERE grown ups, we would not go there and we would miss it. I left IBM after so many years and some people still tell me it was not a “grown up” decision. After all I had job security, excellent conditions and co-workers I loved and worked with for a long time. But I have not grown up yet. And I am enjoying every step of my current “irresponsible” journey. So growing up influences your risk taking capabilities and as it is widely known “Him who never takes risks never drinks champagne” (it is a literal translation of a Russian proverb, but you hopefully know what I mean).

Growing Up also means that you become serious. It is not that you lose your sense of humour. You are still laughing at jokes. But you are taking everything seriously, you do not smile often. You have a burden on your shoulders. Constant humour and occasional joking around have never hurt anyone and actually helped me many times to avoid tensions and resolve difficult situations. I was sitting once with a very stiff executive who was really harsh on us. And someone told him that I am good with jokes. So he asked me very seriously: “Do you know any catholic jokes that will not offend me as I was brought up as a Catholic”? I actually knew one (remind me to tell it to you next time I see you). After I finished telling the joke, he looked at me with a wide smile (he did not laugh, G-d forbid!) and the meeting became different. The tension was gone. He listened to us carefully and even supported our project. Recently we combined two dev teams and did a round of introductions. The meeting that started officially, quickly became a circus when one developer introduced himself jokingly and it was so much fun! The teams are yet to start working together but the energy between them is already so friendly and positive. They did not really grow up, all of them.

Growing Up also means that you have reached your goal. The one you set when you decided who you wanted to be when you grow up. This goal was everything for you and now you’ve done it. Life becomes full of a dull victory and a sense of accomplishment. What’s next is blurred and unclear. When I was preparing for my entrance exams in the University that was my clear goal. I put everything I’d got into that. When my mother opened a letter announcing that I was accepted, I felt nothing. You all know this feeling - there is no goal, you need a new one. This was an example of a small goal. What about when you achieve your grand goal, the one you have dreamed about all your life? Will you even be able to find a new one that will be as big and as far away and give your life a new meaning?

So boys and girls, find this thing you wanna be when you grow up. Go towards this thing every day and every second. Do not get serious. Laugh and joke around. Take risks, jump into pools, try something new. Go through that process called Life. One day this Growing Up might happen. And if you really really lucky it never will.

The Expectation of Failure

I really suck at ping pong. Well, I am sure there are plenty of people who are far worse than me at this wonderful game. But I am not good. And I have never been very interested in getting better. It was ping pong that got me thinking about my current subject, so bear with me all ping pong pros and fans. In Toluna we had that ping pong internal championship. I signed up for the sakes of it and sure enough I lost all my games. Some of them with quite an embarrassing score. There was only one guy that was at my level, give or take. We started playing. I was leading 2-0 in sets and in the last set I was leading 9-4. I had only 2 points left for a convincing victory. And then it came. A thought. Weak at first, almost incomprehensible. Then it was suddenly clear to me that I am going to lose this game. I couldn’t even understand how it is possible with all the lead I’ve got. But the thought was there and I started losing points. Then it was 2-1. Then 2-2. And then I completely collapsed in the fifth set and lost. I was not too sad, as I did not count on much entering the competition. But then it happened again, with another person in another place but also in a game of ping pong.

I did not reflect on it much but then I realized that this expectation of failure is a very powerful thought. It is so strong, that it actually achieves the impossible. It is able to take a very successful project and make it a total disaster in a matter of days. It is even more dangerous because of the fact that such thoughts seem very natural to many people. I am doing something, naturally I am afraid it might fail. So we are not fighting this thought - we are cultivating it instead.

When I started to think of it, I went back to my childhood and tried to analyze the things I failed at. I was part of a fencing team and once even won an open tournament. As a winner I was invited to the City of Kiev Fencing Championship. I was tall and I was fast. Becoming a City Champion was probably too much for a newbie, but I should have advanced pretty well. I started decently by losing one battle and winning the other two. And then I went fencing against an opponent who was much smaller than me. And I was leading by three points. And then I had the feeling I was going to fail. And I lost. I did not win a single point after the thought hit me and this loss eliminated me from the tournament. It affected me so much that I quit fencing!

Then there were the infamous Calculus classes at the University. I loved Calculus. I helped all my friends study for the exams. The Calculus exam is quite cruel. You get to chose one of 6 possible answers for every question. If you are right, you get 6 points. If you are wrong you get -2 points (so theoretically you can score a negative amount). At the day of the exam I went into the classroom with a wide smile on my face - after all I knew the subject well. And then 2 minutes into the exam a thought hit me: “I am going to fail!” And fail I did. I got an embarrassing 31 (!) out of 100. I scored 55 in a second attempt and a pitiful 67 at the end when I had to retake this class. All of this knowing the subject perfectly!

People who know me know that I believe that thoughts are material. But here is a more disturbing thing - Thoughts are Material, but Negative Thoughts are More Material. And the reason is quite simple. We as human beings find all negative thoughts natural.

“She or He will not date me - I am not smart enough and I am out of her/his league”.

“I am not going to be accepted by my peers - who am I? I am lame and they are so cool!”. “

“I am going to suck on stage, people will leave the room and I’ll be left alone in embarrassment...”

“My boss will hate my report, I just do not have enough skills to do it right!”

All those thoughts are accepted by us without questioning. We believe that they reflect something possible or even probable. This is why we embrace them quickly and strongly. And since thoughts are material, they become reality astonishingly fast. On the other hand, positive thoughts often seem a science fiction. “I am going to nail it and make the national team!” Yeah, right… “This girl will go out with me, because I am funny and intelligent” Dream on! “I will build my own company and change the world despite all the difficulties!” Why, all my friends who tried - failed… This is why positive thoughts have trouble sticking in our heads and rarely come true.

So, what should we do? We need to identify the negative thought immediately. And we should fight them fiercely. The best way that works for me is to enjoy the process of doing. “You are going to fail!” the thought says. “So what?” answer I. “I really enjoy what I am doing, the result is only a bonus!” After that you feel much better and it is easier to destroy the negative thought completely. For others a head to head combat might work better: “No, I am NOT going to fail!” I dislike this option for a simple reason that by fighting with the thought you are not eliminating it but potentially empowering it by creating a negative energy focused on failure (even if it is focused on fighting failure).

Next time you have a negative thought in the middle of doing something, remember this post. Smile, relax, enjoy and make it go away. Do not embrace it. Do not fight it. Make it dissolve in happiness and positive thinking. After all it is only Expectation of Failure and not the Failure itself.

On Being Nice

Last week I stumbled upon two pieces of content, that referenced “nicety”. One was a post by Brian Walker entitled “A Human Resources Career is Not for “Nice” People”. The other was a brilliant and simple TED interview of Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux and GIT. In the first post, Brian makes a great case of the difficulties of HR career, where it is rarely announcing great news to people (like promotions) and very often is about delivering bad messages, helping managers with troublesome or underperforming employees and such. With these tasks, being nice is not what matters, other qualities do. In the second piece, Linus Torvalds genuinely describes himself as “not a people person” and talks about being perceived by others as “not nice”. He is far from being not nice, it is just that his computer and technology genius comes at expense of certain social skills. Which just means that while Linus was the founding father of the greatest OS that powers the planet, other people had to step in to become evangelists of Linux and spread the word. I think a lot about being nice and about the benefits vs. problems it brings. So seeing two things above probably was a sign for me to write about it.

So here it goes. While working at IBM I was sent to this great training, called Basic Blue (I already talked about that in my earlier post on People Management). It is a basic managerial training each IBM manager has to do and it is truly amazing. I had mine in Zurich Innovation Center which is a brilliant building, a hotel and a learning center. We enjoyed the views and the food, but mostly worked our asses off doing homework until dawn and attending lectures from 8AM to 7PM. It was like a basic military training and we went through everything - from theory to role playing games where you would forget that the guy in front of you is an actor and not your employee. And we had brilliant teachers - IBM had recruited amazing talent to train their staff. There I met Hugh Leighton Grant - he really preferred to be called Leighton to prevent any mixup with the actor, whom he loathed. We learnt a lot from him, but one of his most famous phrases that stuck with me was: “As a manager you must learn to change your style often. Some people act the best when treated really nicely, some people react much better when treated with some authority. In some situations you need to be delicate, in some others you need to be firm and strict. The real trick is to change styles and not to be the best in just one style”. That phrase was a lesson for life.

I believe in being nice. Partly it is because I love people and I really love the energy they bring to my everyday work. I now work from my home office and it is a physical pain to not being with my team every day. So I really am looking forward to any business trip that allows me to see them face to face. Partly, it is because I believe in good energy. Good energy brings about a lot of positive change and it is what makes the impossible possible. And you just can not create good energy by not being nice. And finally, being nice is my comfort zone. This is who I am - a bit naive sometimes, but more often than not choosing the “nice” move over the “aggressive” move understanding the consequences. And here is the important part - the consequences of the nice behaviour.

First of all, the good things. You get a lot of friends. People like nice people. People feel comfortable with them. When you pay with love, you receive love back. You can also create very motivated teams. As I already wrote, love creates good energy, good energy fires up creativity, creativity leads to miracles. Finally, you build a strong social network, because people want to do you favours, knowing that you will always return them.

There are much more good things to being nice, but let’s focus on bad things for a second. There are people who mistake your being nice for weakness. These people are usually the people you do not want in your organisation. But often they are already there for whatever reason or they are someone from the outside you gotta deal with. These people will attack you. They will dig under you. They will be sure you are nice therefore you are weak. You need to spot them early. And you need to protect yourself by switching tactics. You should stay nice. But you should become firm. If this person is in your organisation and you are in charge - better make sure they are not staying for long. If they are outside, you need to stand your ground and let them know EARLY that you are nice, but you are also strong.

There are other people, who do not thrive in the “nice” environment. They need to be closely managed and they need authority. There is a trick to that and it is not an easy one - being nice but authoritative. You need to show that you are making tough decisions. You need to make it clear to them, that bad work is not appreciated and will be punished by simply excluding them from being part of something great you are all building. And you need to be empathic and help them perform, getting them slowly into the culture. This one was very difficult for me and required a lot of training, through mistakes and failures.

And the final trap, that is really related to Brian’s post from above - there are many situations where being nice misses the point. You need to tell someone to become better at their job, because they are really not performing well. You need to fire people. You need to communicate company wide decisions, which are very unpopular. It is the easiest way to try and be nice in these situations and say something like: “You know me, I am Mr. Nice! It was not me who made the decision. It was the organisation. It was the boss. It was the Universe. So take the bitter pill and like me, like me still!” You are not allowed to do that. You need to be empathic and nice, though the other person will blame you. The other person will throw things at you as a person in Brian’s post did. But the real trick is that despite of that, you are doing the right thing. And in the long run, these exact people who hated you at that specific moment, will come back and tell you: “Thanks for making me understand. Thanks for making me change my life and my career”. The hard messages unfortunately are not received well and are not effective if delivered by a nice person in a nice way.

I have been in people management business for 13 years now. And I am still learning. Making mistakes. Hurting people’s feeling unintentionally. Being nice where I should not be. I am still getting cold feet before going into difficult conversations. But I truly believe that good vibes are the driving force of everything. You put in Good Energy, you take out Great Energy. After all, it is not that difficult - treating others with respect, loving what you do and just Being Nice.

The Power (and Weakness) of Hexagons

Isaac Asimov once written a story (“Profession”) about a world where all people are destined to do something specific. Big unimpressed computer identifies what is the best job that fits a person and “puts” the knowledge about this profession into his head when he turns 18. This knowledge along with natural talent creates a professional in that world and then Professional Olympic games are conducted where the best specialists compete for best jobs. This is a mere setup of the story (I am encouraging you to read it if you haven’t) so I won’t spoil you the ending. In our world the situation is kind of similar. I’ve written before about the happiness of finding your destiny and your dream job. Some people make it, some other struggle. But many people eventually find their dream job and are very good at it. They are policemen, firemen, engineers, teachers, managers. And they compete with each other on the best jobs available.

If we map this situation to the world of geometry (bare with me for a second), we can map various professions to geometric shapes. Some people are circles, some people are squares, some other are triangles. And the jobs can be represented as a puzzle looking for those exact shapes to fill in the spaces. Everything works perfectly, until somebody screws up and puts a hexagon in a box. Hexagon, by definition, is not a standard shape in the world of puzzles. It is built from several standard shapes. Or sometimes it is not. But there is nothing to do with a hexagon while solving that particular puzzle. So if the hexagon is the last shape remaining, it might be a good idea to cut it into standard pieces.

Let’s put geometry aside for a moment. I grew up in a mixed family. I had my portion of lyrics (my father is a poet and a journalist) and science (my mother is a math teacher). To add some pepper to this wonderful mix, my grandmother was a brilliant paediatrician (or more precisely child otolaryngologist). My grandmother wanted me to be a doctor. My mother thought that I might become a good engineer. And my father (whose opinion on the subject was not very popular) taught me about literature and poems, so it is not far fetched to assume that he would gladly see me continuing the literature line. As a child, I was interested in medicine, loved math and written short science fiction stories. It is probably normal when you are young, but this mixed set of skills did not really go away as I was growing up. I discovered Computer Science when I was 15 and got fascinated. But I still fantasised on maybe being a doctor and written stories and songs. I also started playing the guitar at that age, so writing songs was actually even more fun. I also discovered that I had management skills. I probably have to thank the communist party for that, as I found myself taking all formal roles in the youth organisations at my school and people liked to work with me and let me lead them.

With that wonderful cocktail I started my career. Fortunately, I actually enjoyed the cocktail very much. My first job was in a startup company where I had to do almost everything - write code, design UI, be a system administrator, talk with customers and at some point leading a small team of contractors. This was all fine and all my sides worked perfectly. Then, I moved on to work in the Engineering Chocolate Factory - IBM Research. I can write a book about the wonderful world of invention and innovation of IBM, but one thing is sure - a person with a multitude of skills can do anything he or she pleases there. I worked as an engineer and a researcher tackling the most intriguing technical problems. I moved from a purely mathematical field of Search into a wonderful mix of social and technical - Collaboration Technologies. We introduced instant messaging into enterprises and while everyone was telling us that nobody needs it at work, we managed to make it a reality and witnessed the 400000 IBMers embrace chat. We worked on social networks. I was even encouraged to deepen my knowledge in a soft side of things and massage my creative gene by doing Masters degree in Communication. And then after leading a big team of people, I got a chance to try myself in business development and there also used both my technical and soft skills.

But then, when I decided to leave IBM, suddenly there was a problem. I was not really the VP R&D type of person. i never really managed a product R&D, since in Research we built prototypes and integrated with products, which is not the same. I also was not the VP Product type. I never worked on the formal product roadmap, though I invented many things and watched them become a reality. I was not really the HR guy, though I had a lot of experience in HR and building the right culture in a company. You get the point. I was not a square, or a circle, or a triangle. I was a hexagon. It is there and then when what I considered my greatest power (my multitude of skills) suddenly became my biggest weakness. People just did not really want to hire me. It was not only that - they did not want to invite me for an interview. I was a strange bird and people were looking for swans. Toluna managed to see more behind the resume and I spent wonderful two years there, but even there it was a constant struggle of where is the perfect use for my skill resides.

I had two opportunities though which taught me an important lesson about myself. Both places were looking for VP Product Development - an interesting role that combines R&D and Product Management and basically means: go and build our product and we do not care about the details. Both places invited me for the interview and loved me. Exactly for the mix of my skills. Any “classical” VP R&D/VP Product character would not have fit there, because he would be lacking some important skills. I did not sign at any of those companies, partially because Toluna was already on the radar, partially because of other reasons. But I realised that I need to build something, something that will have a part of me and something that I can use all of my skills to build. Building things from scratch while doing everything on the way - is exactly what hexagons are great at.

I now begin a new journey. Building a new thing. I will stay quiet about it for some time - I need my silence and I need my focus. But one thing is clear - I will be a hexagon while building it. And I plan to enjoy every step on the way. And to all hexagons out there - if you are still struggling, if you are still being cut into standard shapes - raise your head, find your thing and build it for yourself. It is after all the Power of Hexagons.

The Everyday Leadership

As someone wise once said: “Shit happens”. It is what happened several weeks ago, when a flood hit us. We were lucky, because when it started we haven’t left for lunch yet. An air conditioner above our server room has exploded and flood the servers. We were able to cut the electricity off almost immediately. However, the server room was full of water, we poured glasses out of our servers and hard disks and everything looked gloomy. All employees came to take pictures and pass jokes (“After me, the flood!”, “We are so busy - we are under water!”, “So that is what server pool means!” are just a few). I was standing there thinking about fast and creative ways to kill myself. Thankfully, it was not a production environment. But the impact was still huge. I stayed there, half paralyzed, and tried to figure out what to do. Of course, our IT guy and our Admin both were on disconnected vacations abroad. Of course… When I was contemplating between jumping out of the window and drinking a lethal dose of sedatives, our DevOps guy put his hand on my shoulder and said: “Let’s get to work!” It was a simple sentence, but it did the trick. I turned to him, saw his reassuring smile and we started to work. We called a company that dries server rooms and servers (there is such a company and they are wonderful!), we found the machines that suffered less and tried to recover them (we succeeded with several of them which created a great base for first hours recovery), we ran through documents that were kept in great shape by our IT guy and were able to understand what we need to do and how. All that was challenging, but very interesting, fun and kept us running on adrenaline for hours. But it all started with a small act of leadership by the DevOps guy. I am his boss, I should have been the one giving orders. And eventually I did. But when he saw me in the state of shock and everyone around not helping - he was the one who stepped up and did what every leader should do - act.

One of our lead engineers moved on to his career challenge (and we wish him luck as we love him and cherish his work). But there is a lot of code left behind. A code that is used by many customers. The requirements keep flooding in (o, a flood again!), there are bugs and issues to fix. This time it was a concerto of several people who just took every issue and started to deal with it. They opened the code, they played with database scripts and read a few documents that remained from the previous owners. And in no time all customers got a feeling that everything’s under control. It is of course not really under control and it will take us days to learn everything we need to support it properly. But nobody knows that. Because the Product Manager transmits confidence and collects requirements professionally and with a smile. A front end developer crunches PHP code and does quick workarounds making things work. The team lead manages to find time in her busy schedule and fix things that are most important to customers. QA writes test documents on the fly to accommodate a new product they never tested before. They do not think of themselves as heroes. But they are showing a true leadership.

One of my friends just got his degree this week. He was studying in Open University and stopped some time ago. Now he decided to finish the degree and did. After receiving his diploma he called me and thanked me. I was not sure what I had to do with it. He told me:” We had a conversation 2 years ago and after that conversation I decided to crack this last mile and finish my degree. I would not have done this without you and your words”. I thanked him for the kind words and I was pleased. But here is the thing - I have no idea what he means. I really don’t. I do not remember what I’ve said to him. Somehow what I said touched him deeply and led to an important decision.

Drew Dudley, a leadership expert, urges us all to not think about leadership as something huge and noble. Leadership is in everyday actions. Fixing the flood, figuring out how to solve an urgent problem, giving a good advice - it is something we all do every day. Very often we do not even remember doing it. But it is from those mundane tasks that true leadership grows. You do not have to have a fancy title to be a leader. You just need to understand that you are that guy on the front line and that your actions will make the whole difference. They say that not everyone should be a leader. I disagree. Because when we all become leaders - from a VP to a Software Intern - only then the Red Sea will open wide and only then our people will cross it. Because there is nothing impossible for true leaders.

The Sherlock Holmes Syndrom

My mother did not really know who she wanted to be when she grows up. She went to a technical college specialising on Geology (out of convenience and not out of passion) and started to build a career. It was not very exciting, but my grandmother put a strong work morale into us all - you need to work hard and ask questions later. So my mother worked hard. At one point it became clear that she needs to get a full Bachelor degree to develop her career, so she went to the first University that would accept her without quitting her day job. It was a Pedagogical Institute and my mom worked days and studied nights. The same happened to me years later, but that’s another story. To finish the degree, my mother needed to spend several weeks in school teaching math (after all, it was a Pedagogical Institute). She went without really knowing what to expect and prepared to count days until it was over. But when she came to school, she fell in love and never left. She quit her job and became a Math teacher. I actually need to write Teacher with the capital letter. I am not objective of course, but hundreds of her students would justify the same. It was a coincidence, serendipity. She found her destiny. Teaching was the thing, working with kids. She never was a brilliant mathematician in school or college, but teaching kids math was exactly what she was great at. She retired last year only to rush back again and continue working. Because she can not imagine her life without school and kids.

My mom was lucky. Actually, luckier than majority of people. And the issue seems to be the fact that our education system does nothing to help people find their talents. Sir Ken Robinson (Google his TED talks, they are funny, amazing and educational) makes this argument brilliantly. So instead of making the argument, I want to talk about the future of education and ask a question that bothers me lately (as my older kids finish school and think about their future). Finding one’s talent is not only important in order to make many people useful, it is also very important to make people happy. Positive Psychology - a movement in psychology that studies happiness - actually found out scientifically that one of the major components of human happiness is having a job which is also one’s passion. How would you know that you have such a job? It’s easy - when you are doing it - time stops for you. You emerge into your dream job and forget about the world. Sounds familiar? Lucky you! Because many of us have never had this feeling.

Back to education. A perfect education system would really help kids find their passion. To achieve that, it would have to treat each child personally. It would find this one thing that makes that specific kid tick and invest a lot of time into this one thing. I call it the Sherlock Holmes syndrome. Sherlock Holmes was a brilliant detective and he knew and studied everything that could help him be great at his job - chemistry, guns and gun powders, geology, medicine etc. But he had no idea that the Earth was round or that it revolves around the Sun. He just did not want to put this information into his head instead of some other useful information. If we only could find the passion of each child and develop this passion. It would mean that his or her curriculum would include many things that will help develop skills required to achieve that kid’s passion. And maybe there could be some basic knowledge courses which one has to pass but does not have to excel in. It would mean that every child would know why he is studying whatever he is studying. He would have a purpose. Now, my kids often ask me - Why am I studying that thing? I do not like it and I do not understand why it is useful to me. And my only answer is - that will get you into college or University. Which leads me to the next argument.

I used to work for IBM Research lab and every time when people asked me whether they need to go to University, I would say: “Of course! That’s the only way you will learn a craft!” When I was looking for employees, I would look first and foremost at where they went to University. And if the University was not good - I would reject them. I stopped doing it after this one time, when my friend recommended me to hire a guy who was just expelled from the college. He was missing classes and he was terrible at exams. “Take him”, my friend told me. “The guy is a brilliant software engineer!” I met with that guy and my hunch screamed like crazy: “This is it!” He became one of the best software guys I have ever worked with. Passionate, professional… He knew everything there was to know about software and he learnt and read constantly. It was his passion. He left IBM to join another company that doubled his salary. After that I started to look for people who love software. And now, in Toluna, we have people who did not even go to college. And they are brilliant. We hired them because at their interview they have shown such a deep knowledge of software that I asked myself - why would this guy go to college? He would probably teach his professors a couple of things!

It is not that I am saying that Universities are not important. They are. We need to move science forward and we need researchers. Also for people who do not know what their passion or lack the motivation and discipline to self study - University is a great alternative. Universities also have facilities that are sometimes unaccessible otherwise. But for those who do have passion and motivation - online sources like Google, Coursera, Khan Academy and other places become a Klondike of information on almost any subject.

And now to my question. How would you go about finding children’s passion? I have some ideas myself, which I can share with you. Maybe we need to change the training and salaries of our teachers, so we have people who are passionate about finding kids’ passions. Maybe we should let kids study many things, including music, dancing, sports, poetry, engineering and see who excels at what. Maybe we should cancel exams as indicators of success and only use them to find who is strong in what. It would be very interesting to hear what you guys think. Looking at my kids, I want them to be happy. I want them to experience love. I want them to experience material happiness. And I want them to experience the feeling of time stopping. So they find their passion and never work again for the rest of their lives.

Just Do It

We just got back from a three weeks long family trip to the US. We have always dreamt of this trip. We imagined how we’ll hit the best adventure parks in Orlando, do a Caribbean cruise and hike the mountains and valleys of East Coast. We would talk about it during the family dinners, my kids would hear stories of me visiting Universal Studios and we would look at pictures of sea turtles in Caribbean waters. It was a family dream, but somehow, it seemed too good to be true. It sounds funny and strange, but there were many apparent reasons why this trip could not happen - it was too expensive, kids had all sort of summer activities they did not want to skip and our vacation days were not sufficient to afford such a long trip. So we never did it. Until this April when we were walking the dog and my wife said: “Do you realise that last year we had the last family trip? Our son will not come with us anymore”. Though I kinda realised that (he is 17 and has his own life now), it struck me. The last family trip ever. While it was a nice one (to Austria, Slovenia and Hungary which we enjoyed a lot) - it did not seem the right way to do the last ever family trip. So when we came home I talked to my son and asked him: “Will you come with us this year?” “Never ever, dad”, he said with a smile. “I want to go with my friends this year". And then for some strange reason and out of an impulse I said: “And if we do the dream trip to the US?” My son stopped for second, smiled widely and said: “Well, if it is the dream trip…” The same night I sat down, booked two cabins on a Royal Caribbean cruise and the planning of The Last Ever Family Trip has begun. We found a very good deal on flight tickets. We found zillion hotels that happily hosted a family of five in a big single room, cutting costs even more and the rest is history. We had the greatest trip we ever had, we swam with turtles, we did all possible roller coasters in Orlando and Tampa, we hiked in New Hampshire and Vermont, we browsed the streets of cities and villages, we had enormous fun. That was the greatest Last Family Trip Ever.

Thinking about this trip, I realised, that there was no real reason why we did not do the family trip to the US before. All the excuses I mentioned previously were exactly that - excuses. We could have found cheap tickets before, we could have saved on accommodation before, we could have planned accordingly and do the trip. But we did not. This is what happens to us all constantly. We have dreams. Some of them are big. Some of them are small. Most of them seem pretty far fetched or merely impossible and that’s why we do not pursue them. It might very well be that if you stop for second, think and decide to follow your dream, it will not be as difficult as it seems. I already mentioned Lior Zoref - the guy who left everything behind - his Microsoft job, his company car and his fat salary - to pursue his dream, do a Ph.D. and conquer the world. He became a bestselling author, a TED speaker and a global celebrity. His dream was crazy and impossible. My neighbour had a dream to drive a BMW. It seemed like a stupid and expensive dream. But one day he told me: “You know what, I do not care if I will pay for it forever, I want to drive it every morning”. And so he went and bought himself an expensive car. Some think that he is crazy, but I do not think he is. Someone would say that this is a material dream and it is not worth pursuing - but I do not agree with that also.

Dreams have this dynamics of coming true if you pursue them. It turns out that it is really fun to work on your dreams. I spent hours planning the family trip and I enjoyed every second of it. Everything can come true. One of my colleagues actually opened my eyes the other day when she said: “People with dreams are lucky, so many of us just do not have any dreams”. And she is right - many of us live our everyday life day after day and we do not stop to think: “What do I want? What is my dream?” So do yourself a favour - stop and think. What is that that you always wanted to do? And if you are among the lucky ones that do have a clear dream - please do not hesitate. Start small. Go online and book that cruise. Go to see your banker and ask about that loan that can help you start your small business. Join this voluntary program and start teaching kids. Whatever your dream is. Nike had it right - just do it and your dreams will come true. Fast.

Breaking the Wall

Ever since I was starting to work in the area of Social Computing I had a dream to get an MIT Media Lab degree. I couldn’t really understand why it was my dream, but it sounded really cool. One of my colleagues, a brilliant mobile researcher, joint us from MIT Media Lab and has shown me the very cool gadgets she built there. Another colleague who I was fortunate to manage, told me about cool projects he did there. I never got to even apply. I did my Masters in Communications with great people and the best supervisor and I was happy. But dreams have this feature of sitting in your head. And now I dream of getting a Ph.D. from MIT Media Lab. Will I one day? Sounds fictional, but who knows? On the paper there is a wall between me and this dream. I have a great job, I provide for my family and becoming a student after 40 sounds crazy. But it is a dream, so who knows what will happen?

I am looking at examples of other people, some of whom I am fortunate to call friends. One who left his great job at Microsoft, became a TED star, a PhD student and a great public speaker. Another one who left it all, a great job in high tech, money and fame and became a restaurant owner. It might have been difficult at first, but he is a real star now with a flourishing business. And yet another one who left a high position in a big company and became a University professor with a talk show of his own.

But I get really excited when I see someone who has a dream, pursues it and never gives u despite the hardship of life. The hero of this post had no easy life. He worked in various low paying jobs, had to get our of debt many times. But he is and always has been a brilliant musician and poet. He has always been a backbone of any band he was in. He was the one writing music and lyrics, he was the one keeping all the others adrift, he was the one making sure they practice every day. People said to him that he should grow up. People said to him that nobody really needs rock music. People said to him that he stinks. He did not really care. He was working his jobs, he was providing for his family, he was a responsible father - but he invested his soul into his music. So many times he felt that he reached the wall. So many times he felt helpless. But he always said that his music will show the way. His new band made one great album and then another. They travelled the country and sometimes had to do shows in half empty pubs. But they did not really care. They played on. He was the leader and the singer and the poet. And great people sticked with him. Finally his band became one of the best around - playing together they built a real team that played wonderful music together. And one day a famous producer happened to hear them. He got interested. He came to Israel. He came to our small town. He listened to them play. And he invited them to the biggest rock festival in Russia. A festival where all the big bands are playing every year. A festival that usually starts it all for young and promising bands. A festival that usually is a beginning of the great success. I do not know whether the wall that stood between my friend and success has already been broken. Maybe this festival will be a "one of" experience. But I can’t really believe that. Because the guy has so much energy and talks to the Universe so clearly that it is only the beginning.

So how to break your wall? Think about your dream. Think hard. And do something for your dream. Every day. Every step of the way. Start by just hitting the bricks of your wall. One by one. Then you will see a small hole. Then the hole will be bigger and then your wall will be broken. Nobody said breaking the wall was easy. It is difficult. You will want to stop a thousand times. But seeing the wall crumble, seeing the audience shout your name, hearing the standing ovation - it is all worth it. When my friend will go on this stage he will see all of that and he will sing his songs - songs about Breaking the Wall.

The Biggest Crime

I stumbled on a TED lecture by Ricardo Semler on how to run a company without rules. This talk is highly recommended for many reasons. But one idea that particularly stroke me was the idea of Terminal Days. What he is saying essentially is that if we were announced that we have only 6 months left to live, we would probably create a Bucket List and try to accomplish everything we never accomplished while we had the time. So he defined “Terminal” days for himself and in those days he is doing everything he wants to do without waiting for the morbid doctor prediction. This great idea actually made me think on how we waste our time. Think of that - some of us have a long commute that for many of us is wasted time. We attend zillion meetings, big part of which are a complete waste of time. We spend time on the phone with various service companies, trying to negotiate a better deal or simply make sure that the technician will come on time (true story!). All this time is going to waste. And this time could be used for doing fun things, to learn, to develop, to build something cool. So I decided to start using my time.

Let’s start with Commute. Many people I know are listening to audio books while commuting. I can’t. My mind wonders around and I stop listening. Also many books are intended to be read and not listened to. But there is a great thing that is designed for listening - lectures. I started to listen to Introduction to Psychology Yale course and now my commute is not as bad as it’s used to be and I am learning something new. The next one is meetings. My default for meetings is now 30 mins and not an hour. Interesting thing happens with that. If you set an hour, the meeting might take 40-45 minutes. But if you set only 30 minutes all participants have the sense of time pressure and those meetings usually end in 15 minutes! Then the service companies. I just do not care anymore. I am trying to call and make my arrangement. If that does not work for a reasonable amount of time - I send them an online request to disconnect their service. And - o, miracle! - they call me back immediately and handle my issue right away! The last thing is being organised. There are many posts and books on how to manage your time - but the most important tip is “Do not multitask!” Create a list for the day and try as much as possible to finish all tasks in this list one by one. Your productivity goes up and you save time!

The next step is to dare and do something with this time. I am guilty as charge - I am trying to do more work with it! But actually here is the thing. After certain amount of work time your mind becomes really inefficient. I made so many mistakes working late, that I made a conscious decision to stop using this saved time for work. Instead I want to use it for myself. So I am starting a mini list of things that I want to do. Beyond psychology that I always wanted to learn I want to go back to coding, and do some cool things at home with my son who is just getting excited about software. I want to try and make my daughter to start reading books (it is going to be a tough one!). I want to write a book. I do not care if it is going to be bestseller - I want to write it. I want to talk to many smart friends I have all around the world, who I hardly see and talk to - BECAUSE I DO NOT HAVE TIME!

Writing this list for me is a first step. I hope you also will do that for yourself - start with saving time and then making a list of things to do with this time. After all, we never know what will happen next. It does not have to be death. Children grow and leave and you start feeling sorry for the things you did not do with them. Friends go to other countries and you do not see them that often anymore. Parents age. Killing time is a crime. But not using it for yourself is a bigger crime. And who knows - maybe it is the biggest of them all.

Silence is Golden

There was an old couple on the train - in their 70s by their looks, maybe older. They argued. Well, the wife was really getting on the husband’s case. He did not help her with the suitcase, he forgot to pack his black trousers, he almost lost his phone… And then the husband smiled at her and said: “Dear, you are arguing with me all day, why won’t we just sit together in silence. Silence is Golden”. It of course did not help him at first but eventually they started to talk calmly and fell asleep. Silence is Golden, another cliche sentence.

This sentence is of an utmost importance. It is very important to dream. It is very important to express yourself. It is very important to be on stage, especially if you are an extrovert. But to achieve your dream, you sometimes need silence. And while you should never forget the dream goal (not even for a second), it is critical that at some point you shut up and start working. It is very much like building a house. I remember us coming to the architect and working for a month closely with him until we got a plan of a house of our dreams. Working on this plan was fun. We told the architect what we wanted. We discussed the possibilities and even touched the future design. And at the end of the month we had a plan of a beautiful home. And then there were ten months of construction. Anyone who ever went through supervising his own home construction knows - the only way to survive it is to realize that it is very stressful and calm himself down. It is hard work and to do it efficiently one needs silence.

Silence helps you to focus on the goal, it helps you plan for the next steps. Silence by definition almost eliminates distractions. But silence also helps you think. There are many things in our life which we do not think about every day. What do we really want? What is our ultimate goal? Is everything we are doing gets us closer to this goal? Silence helps us realizing what’s right. Not focus on the ego. Not focus on the Wow effect. Just think. After some time of silence many things will come into place. Many decisions that were blurry and unclear will clear out. And then you can go back on stage, to your busy life.

Silence means different things to different people. One thing - which I recommend to everyone - is to take a vacation and disconnect from the world. No work phone calls, no distractions - just time with yourself and your family. During this time you are only allowed to think about yourself, your future, your dreams. No customer complaints, no crisis at work. Another thing (which can create silence for some people) is to take yourself out of all problematic situations for some time. Just take a step back. Do not give up on your specific vision of some project, let people who violently argue with you do their thing. They might be right and you might be wrong. Help them succeed - you are their friend after all. Add your ideas into their vision. Take all that bad energy that suddenly frees up and transform it into good energy. Build something. Dream of something new. Write a song for your daughter. You’ll be amazed how many good things you can create now, when you have silence.

Finally, silence gives you an opportunity to reflect on the things you are actually saying every day. How many of them do you regret? How many of them made you lose connections you could still have now? How many of them literally destroy your career? Do a retrospect and try to fine tune your speech. It can be a traditional THINK (is it True? is it Humble? is it Intelligent? is it Necessary? is it Kind?) approach or you can come up with your own. Try it and you will see how suddenly you have less conflicts at work and at home.

As I am writing these words, I am sitting on the plane and seeing snowy mountain tops. It is tranquil, serene and soothing. One could look at it forever, admiring the beauty and strength. But yet this strength comes with a great silence. Knowing how to find your silence and how to use your silence will eventually make you stronger. After all, Silence is Golden.

Memories of India

India is a tough cookie. The first thing that you feel when you leave the terminal building is the smog. The smell of a burned air. You add this to all the things you heard about India and say to yourself: “It is not going to be easy”. Then you get into the taxi (the driver is very polite and tries to do everything to make you happy) and start exploring. You look around and see a very interesting mix. Big buildings, high tech companies logos, neon lights. And near all that old roads, litter, rickshas and everyone is honking. They honk so much that you forget what silence is. The roads are pretty narrow and you do not really understand how it is possible to drive here. You see a lot of poverty but also Bentlies. You see people asking for money, but also young businessmen hurrying to the office. This wonderful mix of spices, smells of the streets, big buildings and bad roads makes your head spin. “It is going to be interesting”, you sigh again.

The views of India can be stunning and strange - depends on where you go. Great sites of New Delhi - Qutub Minar, Gates of India, Presidential Palace and others are all a spectacular view. It is (as everything in India) a mix of Hindu, Muslim and European architecture and this combination is a real jewel. But just near all that beauty you see slums, broken buildings, poor people. The amount of people of all religions, colors and languages in India is a thing that is hard to grasp. Hinduism temples, mosques and churches co-exist here in a seemingly peaceful symbiosis. There is a of course a struggle beneath the surface as they all are trying to attract the poor under the roof of their religion, providing free food and free education to those who are willing to try. Posters of Indian films (I was definitely raised on Bollywood movies, “The Disco Dancer” being one of my favorites) and upcoming shows can be seen just near the place where a bunch of poor kids are doing gymnastics exercises just in the middle of the road trying to get money from the drivers stuck in traffic.

Yes, traffic. It is pretty terrible - it took us almost an hour and a half to get from our hotel to a recommended restaurant which was just 18 km away. And the rules of traffic seem to be a recommendation only. People really seem to co-exist on the road by following some unwritten rules that probably can be summarized as “the first to see an empty spot takes it”. You can add to the traffic the fact that most of the drivers you can hire for a day (which is relatively cheap) will take you only to expensive shops. You are a tourist after all and you need to support the economy (and help them get a store commisiion). Not that the expensive shops are so terribly expensive.

But all of the above is just a cover. If you dare to open it, you will see the real India, which is awesome and breath taking. Let me start with food. The food is spicy. The food has unfamiliar names. The food can not be eaten on the street because of the bad water and clear lack of hygiene. But if you know places, the food is just marvelous. Chicken, lamb, rice, lentils in wonderful sauces create a real celebration in your mouth. The desserts are modest but very tasty. And the fact you as a European fear much of all - spices - add so much to the food. If you are not overdoing the red chili you will be fine.

The most interesting thing about India is its people. There are zillion languages, zillion cultures, zillion food recipes. In the same office there are people from the south and people from the north. Some of them speak Hindi and some do not. Some of them have one accent in English and some have another. But the thing in common that makes them all unique is that they are so good. They are smart and funny and pleasant and have deep understanding of the business. They can agree with you and they can argue with you. And they make you feel welcome. The part of the culture is doing everything to make you feel comfortable. They will even not correct you if you misspell their name. But their level of understanding of their jobs is remarkable. I learnt more during this trip than I did in my first year about how our company works and how it makes money. We identified together ways to make it even better and more efficient, but it would have been impossible without the knowledge, the professionalism and the attitude of the people of India.

India is a tough cookie. It can be loved. It can be hated. It can be tolerated. It left me wondering and wanting to explore. Maybe it is still not love, but it is a clear affection. I want more. And I will be back.

How to be a Superwoman - 2

I already wrote many times about strong and intelligent women around me. Being a successful woman in the high tech industry is not very easy and is not something that should be taken for granted. So here are the three stories from past week that made me speechless with admiration once again.

We faced a difficult problem with sending emails. Not all of those emails were reaching destination and with the variety of email vendors and policies in each of them I seemed like a very tough nut to crack. But a trio of women, that were determined to solve the problem, did not rest for a second. One of them found a peculiar thing in the email header. She raised the issue with the team and with expert who was helping us to solve the problem. The expert (a man of course) smiled and patronizingly told her that it is not a real problem. She insisted but to no avail. Then a second woman, who took the responsibility of the project from the first, saw the same peculiar thing and reported it. This time though the smile of the expert did not work and she went to the third woman, who was appointed the development lead of the project. They both decided to solve the peculiar issue and prove the world that the problem really exists. So they took a day, dedicated it to the problem solution and released a fix to the issue. Needless to say, all our emails are now finding their way to destination. The trio has prevailed. They were the trio of superwomen.

I worked for the past month to submit a proposal for an important project. A big accounting firm was chosen to help me with that. Two ladies, smart, intelligent and nice, were appointed to work with me. I know how to write proposals, spent many hours doing it and I started to work with them with a bit of arrogance. Like what in the world can they teach me? Boy was I taught a lesson! After the very first meeting I realized how much they both knew about the process and how little I did. They were everywhere, helping me with the text and the budget, with Words and Excels, with ideas and interpretations. They helped to frame the work of our company into something great and coherent. They even told me: “What you have already written is good. But we want it to be great.” They caused me to rewrite certain sections multiple times and they made me believe I was the only client they had. But I knew for sure that they worked on at least ten other proposals in parallel. And all the way they made me feel special and focused on every problem I had. When we submitted the proposal, I knew that I couldn’t have done even a quarter of the job without them. They were the pair of superwomen.

There is a team in my company. It is strong and it works hard. Their product is great and popular. And they have a development lead. She is almighty. She is the only one who knows everything about this product. She is great on so many levels. When she is taking a vacation, we need to put three people to replace her. Sometimes the pressure on her is unbearable. But she only smiles and continues to do miracles. She is always there - on Saturdays, holidays and vacations. She comes up with creative solutions. She juggles with multiple tasks. She will never let her people down. Even if they screw up - she will always take the blame. Sometimes I think there is no way a man would take so much pressure and not crack. But she is a rock. She does not crack. She puts in so much work that it just has to give fruitful results. I found myself multiple times coming to her for help – and never ever did she send me back, even when she was overwhelmed with work. I stand there with admiration and understand that she is a Superwoman.

They are around us. Silently, getting things done. We are men. We know better. We are stronger. But we have no clue what it takes to be a superwoman in this business. So we just need to pay attention and learn from them. Every day and everything. Because they are Superwomen.

The Professionals

Last night I was listening to one of my colleagues, VP responsible for sales of one of our fastest growing products, do a Sales training. Sales training is a routine presentation, nothing fancy. But hearing him speak, I could swear he was talking to the most important customer of his. He was making an effort, giving his best. I was just listening in, out of curiosity. But I could not help noticing that he had it all figured out. All the important details of the software. All the key features. All the things that usually “buy” customers. Things that are more difficult to explain while selling the product. He promised to go deeper on those in follow up sessions. After that session I felt that I could probably go and try and sell the product myself. Or maybe buy it myself, though I can get it for free, working in Toluna. It was an internal training, but my colleague was brilliant, he was a real professional.

I read in one of the blogs last week about a guy who was working on a beach, giving hotel guests chairs and tables. And while some of the guests could not understand why they could not take it themselves, after a while everyone realized that this guy really takes his job seriously. He would smile to everyone, tell a joke, ask how they like their chairs and tables to be organized. And he did it all silently, without complaining and actually giving people the best service. He was a real professional!

Observing our Analytics team fighting with a bug for several days, staying late, missing a party because of this and missing a lot of hours of sleep - I thought several times about telling them to stop and leave. They had a nasty bug to catch and they did not give up until yesterday night they fixed it and finished the release. They did not complain, they did not try to be heroes. They were doing their job. Why? Because they are professionals.

When I was at IBM, my last gig was a startup competition. This is where I met Sharon, a young woman entrepreneur, who immediately made us all smile with her great energy, passion and attitude. She was promoting a social platform for making volunteers collaborate across different social networks. She did not win that competition, but I stayed in touch and was watching her progress from afar. She is flying from San Francisco to Israel and back, meeting clients, supporting a growing team of developers and a growing customer base, raising money and being a superwoman. I want to tell a story that actually strengthen my main point. I had a small idea I wanted to run by Sharon when she was in Israel and I tried to catch her. She was polite and listened to my idea over a chat, but then did not come back to me to set a date. I was taken aback a bit, but then I realized something important. While being very polite, Sharon was very professional. She is a CEO, she has a task at hand and every second of her professional time has to be dedicated to growing her startup. Why my idea was nice, it had little to do with what she had to do. Instead of getting insulted I actually started to respect her even more. Sharon is a professional, who now not only took a nice idea and made it a successful company, but also made it to a list of top 10 Israeli female entrepreneurs to watch.

It does not matter what you do - you have to be a professional. You have to respect your job. You have to respect your people. You have to respect your customers. You should do your job greatly whether you do it for a huge corporate client or for a small local shop. You can be a genius. You can be very talented. But if you are not being professional, your customers will leave, your reputation will suffer and you will never get to the top. Because those others will outperform you, outsmart you and steal all your clients. After all, they are professionals.

People Management

I was fortunate. You can say whatever you like about IBM, but this company really knew what it did with regards to management and people treatment. IBM invented many of the modern management policies. It is really sad to see that some people are leaving IBM because they are being mistreated. When I was a young IBM manager I was sent to People Management training in beautiful Zurich. The place was magnificent with wine and beer literally coming out of the walls. But much more importantly - there were the trainers. They all were very exceptional people hand picked by IBM and trained well. They allegedly participated in creation of the very policies we as young managers had to apply. And there was the best of them - Leighton Grant. Funny enough, his real name was Hugh Leighton Grant, but he personally hated the actor with the same name, so everyone called him just Leighton. When I first saw him, I was literally mesmerized. The guy had WISDOM written all over him. And when he started speaking my mouth opened and did not close until the course was over in 4 days. He did not only taught us - he shown us what we are going to face. He took one of the more arrogant students, who said she was a manager for more than a year and was doing it just fine and he did an amazing show. He told her that she needs to tell an employee that his relocation already approved by management is cancelled because the job is given to another (who happens to be African American woman,and it is done in order to promote the minorities - these facts are of course should not be communicated). The lady said: “A piece of cake” and prepared to do her thing. Leighton entered the room and before she could open her mouth he started telling her how happy he was and how his wife quit her job and how they already rented a beautiful house near the lake. Before long, the arrogant lady was crying like a baby and told Leighton everything - about African American woman, about how it was not her fault he does not get to go to his relocation - basically doing every possible mistake. When we asked her afterwards, she told us that she really forgot it was an exercise. Leighton convinced her it was for real. So now you can see which type of training I got. Since that time I realized how much good people management can change.

We are living in an interesting time. There is a clear lack of charisma and leadership even in high power echelones. And sadly I see more and more that many managers do not pay slightest attention to their people. They do not spend time with them. They do not talk to them. They do not try to understand them. I heard one person tell me that why his family was in a war zone, his managers called him saying: “ Well, missiles are missiles, but someone needs to write that code!” People management really seems like a waste of time not only to managers but to many executives. They think that their people should invest into getting the job done and not into meaningless talking. But people management is not about talking. It is about showing people who work for you and who build the foundation for your success that you care. Surprise them with small presents. Try to fulfill their desires that you overheard in a hall conversation before they asked for it. Give them a raise before they come and threaten to leave to another company. And understand them. One thing Leighton taught me was that a good manager needs to know how to wear several masks and change them according to a person he works with. Some people really need their freedom and like to be given a lot of responsibilities. Others perform much better when they are given clear tasks and feel that their manager is strong and keeps a good distance. Yet another like a good joke and like to work in a relaxed atmosphere. You need to be able to do it all. Still, after eleven years of managerial experience I make a lot of mistake exactly in this - not understanding what people expect and treating them wrongly. And still, I believe in being good. Shouting and fear, while effective with some people, never bring anything good to life.

If you work hard and you manage to become good people manager - miracles happen. People go above and beyond, because they care about the environment that you built together. People help you when you fall because they care about you. People go an extra mile because they do not want to disappoint you, even if they know you will not be angry with them if they fail or miss the deadline. And a task that someone said could not be accomplished in a year is done in just three months. And an impossible deadline is met. Because when you are good people manager everything you seed becomes a beautiful plant resistant to almost anything.

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Take Two