Finally I found a Loop !

Not long ago, whenever I traveled the one thing I never forgot to pack was my jogging gear; shoes, T-shirts, cap, track pants, iPod, charger. I mentally chalked a route for me to run (ok, jog, ok trot, whatever!)

In Bangalore, which was my home for almost 10 years I ran almost everyday. My favorite spots for running were the short 3.5 km strtch to/fro Agra Bus stand, the slightly longer 5 km to/fro stretch along Sarjapur Road, the 7.0 km weekend special loop around the Agara lake and of course this 5.3 km stretch along the airport runway where I inevitably and foolishly spent precious energy trying to race planes that were taking off ! I tried running all the way to Marathhalli and back; it was long, it was hot, it was tiring on the way back; definitely not trivial.

When I visited my parents in Goa, I accompanied my dad and his friends on their morning walks. While it was fun listening to their learned conversations the urge to run used to soon overcome me and excusing myself I'd run up to to our rendezvous point and wait for them. It was a beautiful quite road stretching 4.5 km, surrounded by tall dense trees and lush green paddy fields. Obviously these were the most refreshing runs I've had!

In Ahmadnagar when I visited my sister it was a slightly different matter; young ladies there just didn't got for runs! ... and well I didn't want to cause any discomfort. But my ever supportive bro-in-law shooed away my doubts and I had to admit that was just an excuse to stay home with my darling niece and nephew. But my dad, enterprising that he is, decided that he would walk with them while I went for a short run :-) These were indeed short runs, mere 2.5 km sprints.

In Mumbai I left the task to my brother; he shares my love for running and I never had to bother with laying any routes. Of course I loved the 4.0 km stretch to/fro Gorai. He also took me along some loops on the Link road and a maze of inner roads that only he knew how to navigate :)

For that matter I even ran along the next to my office when I visited California (can't chalk the route using google map), and also settled for an easy 2.2 miles lppo in Mt.Laurel during my 6 months stay in New Jersey

When I moved to Billerica, MA last year I tried chalking a loop for my runs, and instead signed up at the local gymwhere I rarely went.

Most of the roads around where I live have no sidewalks and running on the roads is a big no-no for me. There is a lovely recreation complex nearby which has a football ground and people do run loops there, but I have never enjoyed running round in circles. After several attempts like this 2.5 mile stretch to/fro Middlesex Tpk, and this shorter 1.6 mile to/fro the above mentioned Lampson Recreation Complex

I just couldn't get anything worthwhile... that is until today, when I decided to get out of my comfort zone and discovered this 2.7 mile loop. What made it more enjoyable was I could trade smiles and "hellos" with others who were walking the same loop :-)

I've finally discovered a loop that I enjoyed !




PS: For a better idea of the geography set your google map view to "Satellite"

When God admits he still has a lot to learn from humans ;-)

A while ago my little brother, (well, not so little now :) took to sending us cousins a daily email with an anecdote highlighting a thought for the day. It was his way of helping us lead a better life. But as the big sister who knows-it-all, not always did I spend the time to read them. However his persistance paid off and now I've begun looking forward to getting these anedotal musings with their slight touch of humor at the everyday happenings around us.

Here are two such "My Time Musings"

============== (1) ====================

A man having no child, no money, no home, a blind mother, prays to God. 

God happy with his prayers, grants him only ONE wish! 

Man : I want my mother to see my wife putting Diamond bangles on my Child's hands in our new home! 

God : I still have a lot to learn from these humans !!

============== (2) ====================

A New York businessman dropped a dollar into the cup of a man selling pencils and hurriedly stepped aboard the subway train. 

On second thought, he stepped back off the train, walked over to the beggar and took several pencils from the cup. Apologetically, he explained that in his haste he had neglected to pick up his pencils and hoped the man would not be upset with him. "After all," he said, "you are a businessman just like myself. You have merchandise to sell and it is fairly priced."

Then he caught the next train.

At a social function a few months later, a neatly dressed salesman stepped upto the businessman and introduced himself.

"You probably don't remember me and I don't know your name, but I will never forget you. You are the man who gave me back my self-respect. I was a "beggar" selling pencils until you came along and told me I was a businessman. "

The Wow! factor in customer support delivery

In today's world of ever increasing expectations what does it take to consistently exceed expectations.

As a customer support professional of several years this question has formed the basis of all performance measurements. Not withstanding the touch of individual psychology in customer support, measuring quality of support performance merely on the basis of Turn-Around-Times seems rather trivializing the entire experience.

What then are some measures that can help bring the Wow! factor in the entire interaction?

The Association of Support Professionals surveyed support managers and service delivery experts from 142 companies to get insights on what made their support organization one of the bets. The report, with inputs from inputs from Intuit, BlackBaud, Nokia, Palm, RWK Enterprises and several others sheds light on what would constitute the Wow! factor in customer support delivery.

Some excerpts ...

Anticipate customer needs:
...what if we anticipated a question a customer may encounter, and presented them with an answer before they reach for help?

Stellar Support Reps:
...No software system can ever truly be perfect, but when you have really spectacular support people behind it, that just doesn’t matter.

In the Web 2.0 era:
...Your customers... they buy them— all this happens without a single visit to your site. You can’t fight this phenomenon. So join it.

Speed Demons:
...There’s one surprisingly simple way to astonish and delight customers: provide a lightning-fast answer.

Expectations:
...So really all you can control is how well you meet or exceed existing expectations.

‘Wow’ vs. ‘Ow’ Service:
...the customer sensing your overriding wish for his or her well-being.

Empowerment:
...a KB that even comes close to this ideal is bound to be seen as dramatically more helpful at solving user problems

Measured response:
...Only if a situation warrants it, should the customer service experience be delivered in a surprising way.

Wake up in the morning test:
...The Best Service is No Service

Quoting the closing statement; "From a customer’s perspective, great technical support is not about process, policy, toolsets, or technology. Rather, it’s about the interaction between two human beings."

Army, Real estate, what other (trap)doors ?

In mid-Feb 2009 the global immigrant community was abuzz with news that the American military would begin recruiting immigrants holding temporary visas, with a chance to become citizens within six months.

While this appears to be a good move to reinforce depleting war resources the potential of a security threat is surely not as invisible as it appears... or rather doesn't appear.

As if this wasn't sufficient reason for US-citizen wannabes globally to start drooling, today Wall Street Journal published an article suggesting how immigrants could help re-build the American real estate financial empire if they were granted resident status on purchase of surplus houses!!

What with the American treasury depending on Chinese finances to get itself out of the financial doldrums, the military building it's strength on resident "aliens" and American consumer finance attempting to lure immigrants to help re-build itself, where does that leave the US as an independent entity? Or is this the quintessential spirit of "unity" that USA stands for?

I pray and hope it indeed is.

Surviving 2009 as an IT professional

As a subscriber to TechRepublic's newsletters today my InBox had an email with the very topical subject line "State of the IT Profession 2009".

Authored by Jason Hiner, Editor in Chief at TechRepublic, it provides a sanity check on the current state of IT profession and is based on the Gartner 2009 CIO Survey and Veritude's 2009 IT Hiring Outlook.

It seems to say that despite the global financial turmoil the IT profession "remains strong", but will face challenges. Re-training on skills such as Web-based applications, virtualization and utility computing hold the key.

All is all it summarises what is happening to majority of the non-production professions. Re-train, specialization, expect resource restructuring and being prepared for reduced spending are key characteristics of survival.

In late Dec 2008 computerworld.com published a list of the 9 Hottest IT Skills relevant for 2009. It is interesting to read the reader feedback about this assessment.

1. Programming/application development
2. Help desk/technical support
3. Project management
4. Networking
5. Business intelligence
6. Security
7. Web 2.0
8. Data center
9. Telecommunications

For the slightly non-technical process minded (like me) infoworld.com had brought out this piece on "How to keep your tech career afloat" that highlighted not only the technical skills but also essential process skills for IT professionals.

A Castle, snowy woods and frozen lakes

The castle at Winnekenni Park.


Gently sloping meadow opposite the castle, covered with snow.


The WW II memorial; the plaque says Dedicated to "The Greatest Generation" World War II 1941 - 1945


An enormous tree in the woods; notice the branches spreading in alternating circular pattern. The enormity of the tree can be gauged by the purple dot at the base; that's me standing.


Hubby posing for me, on our way back from a short hike in the woods; frozen lake in the background

Time of my life at MSG

If not for the fact that we had already booked our tickets several months in advance, I doubt we would've travelled from Boston to New York for the BNP Paribas Showdown for the Billie Jean King Cup!

The northeast had recorded one of it's heaviest snowfall on 01-Mar, there were weather alerts and travel advisories in place. Worse still, Peter Pan cancelled all buses to NYC (and some other routes) so out pre-booked non-refundable tickets were a waste of some much needed good money :-( None of the other operators were plying either and spending $300.00 for a one-way train ticket seemed too extravagant, even for die hard tennis fans like us.

Luckily Megabus had their last bus leaving, and we managed to get the last two tickets. I believe it was a do-good-get-get thing, when hubby helped out a young man who needed $15.00 in cash to buy a ticket to Springfield. Despite there being almost 20 people who heard his entreaty nobody offered even $1.00 to help him out. A Chinese contributed $5.00, and hubby (Indian) offered $10.00. I found it helplessly disturbing to realise that either everyone else did not have cash to spare (very disturbing) or did not feel the need to help out (even more disturbing). Anyway, we were soon on our way.

Reaching NYC always feels like entering fairy land, what with all the glitter and shimmer of the lights; even the reds of the car brake lights added to the scene. Our apprehension of being late cleared when we managed to reach the Madison Square Garden around 07:05 PM.

This was my first live tennis experience and though not new to live events, catching the first glimpse of the blue court was definitely exciting. I was surprised to see the crowd turnout, especially given the existing financial doldrums. Lot of the people were decked rather formally which made me wonder whether they had come directly from work. Black, gray, red and blue were the main colors. I seemed to be the only purple there :-)

What do I say about the tennis; Venus v/s Jelena was as expected a fighting match. Characteristically, Jelena lost her groove for that critical game and Venus pounced to take the break, and served next for the set. No much ado about anything there. Tying Ana and Serena was, IMO, unfair. I expected Serena to devour Ana and that's exactly what happened.

Sitting here at Madison Square Garden, in the heart of New York city, one of the most powerful financial hubs of the world, in one of the most powerful nations of the world, it was very strange to hear ille Jean King talk about gender equality, Just goes to reinforce that people problems are quite the same everywhere. Bill Clinton's talk about "having the heart of a champion" was quite touching, especially when the overhead screens showed Bille Jean clasping her hands pensively and nodding modestly to the encouraging words. Several past and future champions were present at the ceremony. Seeing these past winners of multiple Grand slams and Olympic gold medals appearing so normal only reinforced the earlier words that champions are just like you and me, normal people who decided to win and become great people.

Seeing and hearing BJK and Bill Clinton was one among the few moments of life where you are in complete awe of the present.

Extracting from my notes made during the matches

1. Venus and Jelena are both TALL ; Jelena especially is much taller than she appears on TV, and both look prettier than on TV
2. Venus had a rather low ball toss; it's strange I noticed this, but I haven't especially observed her ball toss before- Both players play wonderfully well, despite what the TV appears to show about Jelena's game
3. Serena and Ana both seem bit shorter, especially when coming after Venus and Jelena. Ana entered the court first and she seemed almost petite, Serena didn't loom as large as she does on TV
4. Ana keeps her ball way low on her returns; she tended to hit the ball almost below the net on the returns. Again, I haven't noticed this while watching TV, but will surely observe in the future
5. Ana Ivanovic is absolutely b.e.a.u.t.i.f.u.l
6. All four ladies wore make-up; I guess appearing on a tennis court is as much worthy of looking good as appearing on stage for any live event
7. If the ball happened to whiz past Jelena or Ana they always looked behind, apologetically, as if to ensure nobody had been hit by the ball they missed. Serena and Venus didn't show as much concern
8. In fact when Serena fell twice in the final, the 2nd fall looking rather nasty, Venus simply stood with her own thought possibly concentrating and trying not to worry about her own sister
9. Ana _definitely_ has a problem with her toss; on TV it may not be as obvious, but here in person she tossed the ball all over, and at times even had to lunge at the toss getting all off balance when trying to make contact for the serve. Venus, on the other hand took as much time and as many attempts it needed her to steady herself enough to consistently blast those 129+ mphs!
10. Serena's little-blue-dress doesn't look good at all; rather it looks quite odd, common and few sizes too small
    
11. Neither does Venus' little-yellow-dress; it is shorter than it appears on TV
    
12. At 4-1 in the 2nd semi-final Serena was, as expected, devouring Ana Ivanovic
13. The ball boys rarely miss any overhead ball coming towards them, thwarting all hopes the audience have of catching a ball and keeping it
14. Up close, the 2nd serve is almost as low-quality as the 1st serves we hit when friends play
    
15. The Williams' sisters definitely have the crowd on their side, being the local gals. But Serene was the uncontested darling of the audience
16. Both of them tend to run around their backhand quite often; again, this hasn't been as apparent on TV
17. Serena isextremely nimble and light on her feet; her feet appear to skim over the surface of the court when she moves
    
18. In the 2nd set of the final match, at 1-4 down, Venus had won only 1 of the last 7 games. In effect losing a set 1-6 .. and that was the essence of the last set of the final match

We didn't wait for the award presentations; instead rushed to Port Authority to catch the last bus, but it was cancelled. So, rushed back to Penn Station to get the next bus out, but it was, if any, only at 7:30am.

Wasted some time at MacDonalds outside MSG; Macs have the best french fries among all fast-food, aka, junk-food vendors! Decided we could loiter no more, went into Penn station, booked two tickets on the next Amtrack (used the AAA discount ;-), spent 2 hours in the waiting area then slept all the way back to Boston South Station.

All in all, it would have been a wonderful experience, if only I hadn't had to spend all the extra money for the bus & train tickets... and .. of course.. if Jelena had won :-)

Everyday lessons from the WSJ

Lesson #1: "Leaders must face reality."

Reality starts with the person in charge. Leaders need to look themselves in the mirror and recognize their role in creating the problems. Then they should gather their teams together and gain agreement about the root causes. Widespread recognition of reality is the crucial step before problems can be solved. Attempting to find short-term fixes that address the symptoms of the crisis only ensures the organization will wind up back in the same predicament.

Lesson #2: "No matter how bad things are, they will get worse."

Faced with bad news, many leaders cannot believe that things could really be so grim. Consequently, they try to convince the bearers of bad news that things aren't so bad, and swift action can make problems go away. This causes leaders to undershoot the mark in terms of corrective actions. As a consequence, they wind up taking a series of steps, none of which is powerful enough to correct the downward spiral. It is far better for leaders to anticipate the worst and get out in front of it. If they restructure their cost base for the worst case, they can get their organization healthy for the turnaround when it comes and take advantage of opportunities that present themselves.

Lesson #3: "Build a mountain of cash, and get to the highest hill."

In good times leaders worry more about earnings per share and revenue growth than they do about their balance sheets. In a crisis, cash is king. Forget about EPS and all those stock market measures. The question is, "Does your organization have sufficient cash to survive the most dire circumstances?"

Lesson #4: "Get the world off your shoulders."

In a crisis, many leaders act like Atlas, carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. They go into isolation, and think they can solve the problem themselves. In reality, leaders must have the help of all their people to devise solutions and to implement them. This means bringing people into their confidence, asking them for help and ideas, and gaining their commitment to painful corrective actions.

Lesson #5: "Before asking others to sacrifice, first volunteer yourself."

If there are sacrifices to be made – and there will be – then the leaders should step up and make the greatest sacrifices themselves. Crises are the real tests of leaders' True North. Everyone is watching to see what the leaders do. Will they stay true to their values? Will they bow to external pressures, or confront the crisis in a straight-forward manner? Will they be seduced by short-term rewards, or will they make near-term sacrifices in order to fix the long-term situation?

Lesson #6: "Never waste a good crisis."

This piece of advice comes from Benjamin Netanyahu, the next prime minister of Israel, at the panel I (Bill) chaired in Davos. When things are going well, people resist major changes or try to get by with minor adaptations. A crisis provides the leader with the platform to get things done that were required anyway and offers the sense of urgency to accelerate their implementation.

Lesson #7: "Be aggressive in the marketplace."

This may sound counter-intuitive, but a crisis offers the best opportunity to change the game in your favor, with new products or services to gain market share. Many people look at a crisis as something to get through, until they can go back to business as usual. But "business as usual" never returns because markets are irrevocably changed. Why not create the changes that move the market in your favor, instead of waiting and reacting to the changes as they take place?

The Bottom Line: In a crisis we learn who the real leaders are, and whether they have the wherewithal to stay on course of their True North.

From the Wall Street Journal article Seven Lessons for Leading in Crisis by Bill George