Blog on Technology, design and life

Work vs Progress

It is easy to tell when work is being done or not. Although it is very difficult to tell whether you have made progress on day to day basis, over a period of time you can tell how much progress you made. But what will you do if work is being done and progress is not made.

one of the reasons for this is significant amount of the work you do doesn't lead to progress. managing your work effectively is a skill which gets honed with experience. If you cannot manage your work so that at least 90% of what you do leads to progress then it is clear you need a mentor. someone who has been there done that and who can give direction to your work. otherwise conflicting and irrelevant work is allowed to go on because none in the team noticed, cared or took the time to guide your efforts in more useful directions. Capable people may work away in their private tasks, believing they’re making progress when in reality they’re doing work that will be thrown away or even hurt the project. When someone puts their head down to work, how fast they’re going doesn’t matter if they’re heading in the wrong direction. How a talent is directed can be more important than the size of the talent itself.

The other reason may be what you think is progress is different from what other's in your team think as progress. It may also be because you did what our manager said but what your manager thinks is progress is different from what his superior thinks is progress.This is a classic case of lack of proper communication and understanding within the team. people should sit and conclude exactly what needs to be done to be termed as progress. There are so many names to this process, often called goal setting, vision, project planning. Some firms focus on flexibility and short term cycles (e.g. Agile and XP development for software), others on big long term plans. whatever it is once the goal is set it should not be changed mid-way. if you decide this is what is progress for this week. freeze it. no new work for the week should be given. doing so wont get the additional work get done. it will only jeopardize already set goals.

Enough of reasons. now what can be done so that work you do leads to progress. First thing is defining progress. If you follow a hierarchical structure. you have your team leader or project manager who alone gives all your work. make sure what his/her expectations are on this work regarding what quality he expects etc. In the end it is all about expectations. only by beating his expectations can you say you have made progress.In case you work in a flat structure it becomes relatively difficult. sit with all persons you interact with and note down each person's expectations upfront. It again comes to beating their expectations. If you feel you aren't up to the mark on managing everyone's expectations then let the team know this and request for a small hierarchical set up for some time. till you feel you are up to the mark and can take on multiple people's expectations.

Once you  know the vision and the expectations then everyday track down the work you do and make sure you are progressing towards the  goal at an appropriate pace. Divide all your goals into small units whih can be done in an hour or two. Then everyday before starting to work on a unit, ask yourself these questions :

• This unit of work contributes to which goal(s)?
• How does it help me get closer to that goal?
• How large a contribution is it? (Does it get us 5% closer to the goal? 50%?)
• Is quality sufficiently high?
• What other units of needed work does it support or enable?

Proceed with that unit of work only if you get satisfactory answers for all these questions. what this can lead to is what ever work you are doing will contribute significantly to the progress. Then after every day ask these questions :

• How much closer did my work today get us to finishing the project?
• Does the quality level of your work match what we need?
• What challenges did I overcome?
• What challenges did I prevent from ever happening?
• What difficult, but essential, questions did i ask that others forgot?
• How did i make us more efficient towards our goals today?
• What roadblocks am i currently facing that prevent faster progress?

Answers to these questions will tell you whether you are on road to finish the goals and if you are meeting the expectations set for you.

       These methods aren't any tested  and proven methods to achieve progress. i started implementing these quite recently and it will take some time before i myself know their effectiveness. One more thing i feel is one should be as open about his work as possible. If there is an easy way to do it then let the whole world know what and how you are doing the work. Let anyone and everyone in your team see it and listen to what they have to say about it. be open minded and embrace criticism.  Luckily for us, there is an easy way to share what you are working on. i recently started twittering about what i m working on every 30mins or an hour. In the end it is not an intellectual challenge but a psychological one. knowing what to do is different from wanting to do that. The best way to make progress may not be fun. it’s a simple choice that you, me, or anyone has to choose to make: will I do what I know is the right thing, even if I don’t want to do it, don’t like to do it, or am afraid to do it?

Small vs Big

what is the most striking difference between working for a small startup and a big company ?

flexible workplace policies ?
More responsibilities ?
stock options ?
no bureaucracy ?

actually none of these.  it is the  spirit of the team.  that uncontrollable urge to bring a blockbuster product out and prove a point, either to someone else or to yourself. ask anyone in the team about what their goal is - back comes the same answer. There is no "i work more than you"  or "you take more salary than i do" attitude. All that is immaterial. because getting that product out matters hell lot more than anything else. it gives a sense of achievement and a meaning to the precious time they spent at the office.

sooner or later one will get bored of the first 4 points. It is the last point that matters without which a startup experience is not as enjoyable as it is hyped .

i am a regular reader of seth godin's blog. most of his posts make you think and question the existing norms, mostly in marketing. once in a while comes a remarkable post. If you take it's essence and put it into other fields you will get some amazing insights. He made one such post yesterday. Read it here. Quoting his post...

Most people spend a lot of time to get an education.

They wait for the teacher (hopefully a great one) to give them something of value.

Many employees do the same thing at work. They wait for a boss (hopefully a great one) to give them responsibility or authority or experiences that add up to a career.

A few people, not many, but a few, take. They take the best education they can get, pushing teachers for more, finding things to do, exploring non-defined niches. They take more courses than the minimum, they invent new projects and they show up with questions.

If you are an employer(a start-up), who would you hire? a guy who waits for you to tell him what to do and then does it or a guy who spots patterns, takes initiative, volunteer and mobilize others to make something out of it. well i know it depends on the size of the company and the post which you are hiring for. But typically a start-up needs the second type of guys in its initial stages. does your current hiring process tell you which category the prospective employee belongs to?

HR branding on world wide web

when Internet got mainstream it revolutionized a lot of things. From the desktop publishing revolution till the latest social networks, what we are doing is using the power of internet to slowly change the way we used to do things.

Now the question is how can you use the power of internet to changed your employer branding strategies ? you are a cool start-up with an uber-cool culture. you treat your employees as humans and not like zombies. you don't have chairs and desktops but have bean bags and laptops. Everything is cool.  you are sure that if any prospective employee has a look at your work space he will definitely fall in love with your company. But then how do you let the world know about this ? will you bring all your prospective employees to your work place and show them how you work ? will people be willing to come ? will this model scale ?

Internet provides a lot of tools (blogs,wikis,youtube,twitter) which you can harness to express your workplace culture like never before possible. sad thing is i don't see many people harnessing this power. Are you ?  If not may be your compitetors are already doing it...

Why niche Communities Matter ?

i don't believe social networking sites will last long. don't get me wrong, i agree social networking is important to users. It is just that every product will imbibe social networking features and the present social networks should rebrand themselves or fall into oblivion. Take orkut for example. They expect people to join them and be there for the rest of their lives. This is quiet opposite to human nature. we don't like to be in the same surroundings for long. next they offer no value proposition other than a way(which only young will find interesting) to spend your leisure time. you know what hell lot of others,from movies to amusement parks, are competing for your leisure time. without these two, orkut as it stands now is more like a fad. yeah every year more students enter college from high school and become latest orkut fans. But then no-one will ever gain anything significant from it.

Now take niche communities like PaGaLGuY. It is a community of MBA aspirants. A typical user joins the community when he decides to give CAT(most famous MBA entrance exam in india for entry into IIMs and many other institues). he gets all the knowledge about cat, gets advice from previous years CAT crackers, knows the mistakes done by those who failed in the previous year, collaborates with fellow CAT aspirants, makes schedules and forms small study groups, all online. finally he cracks the exam. he will get all the needed help from those who are already studying in his dream college. he gets into his dream college and give back his knowledge and experience to the community and the cycle continues. In this process he makes good friends who along with him shared the journey of CAT preparation.

usually members will be part of this community for 1-2 yrs and move on which is more more natural. They expect their users to be active members for 1-2 years during which they provide significant and unique value proposition. According to me they are the only website in india which understood the true meaning of online community.