After 3 Beers

Following is the presentation I gave at AgileIndia 2010 at Mumbai and Bengaluru.    This is based on the same article I wrote and published in 2009 in AgileJournal.

Click on the links for other presentations at Mumbai and Bengaluru. Some of them are real good!

Thanks

-Akki

In my earlier post I talked about the exit barriers that Indian companies seem to be struggling with to change their course.      Lets say, there is an organization that has set out to effect a culture change in the organization.  Let’s say this organization is willing to break the barriers and is set out to endure the risks that follow.

The next big hurdle that they will have to deal with is, most likely, their established star performers.  Who proved themselves over the years in the organization and/or in this market.    Who gradually went-up the ranks and have become middle to senior level managers.   Most of them are invariably the account managers.

I have extensively quoted my good friend Nagaraju earlier in my article in Agile journal.   I again want to point out where he asked some important and intriguing questions like  the following.  

We are living with “conditioned”, “process freak”,  “control maniac” managers.    That is the reality.   The more successful a guy had been, the obsolete he must have become in the real world today.   Successful professional in this industry is the one who got quickly alienated from programming and other technical abilities and has been made a “manager”.       What percentage of 8 to 12 years experienced (completely in India) can talk about any technology, business, application, emerging areas etc., that are relevant today?    I am only asking the question about those who started as programmers.

Sure they are successful.    What they can talk about is account management.  The best they can do is writing minutes of meeting.   Freak you out with umpteen number of numbers they captured to write a 100 lines of code.   All of those numbers will have fancy names too.     That is a separate language that one must learn.   

They wouldn’t know if it is 100 lines of code or 100 dosas that got produced by their teams.    Truly speaking, something like the FTR (First Time Right) makes sense more for producing 100 dosas than delivering 100 features.   I can go on with each of those wonderful terms and practices.   Some I find utterly hilarious too like traceability

Think of these guys having to endorse Agile!   Do I need to further explain?

• If they want to continue their “successful” career and become group/organization heads, they have to ensure that their competency remains the core of the organization’s business.
• Why would they allow any simpler leaner model proving their role to be redundant (let alone proving them to be a hindrance)
• Even if they are forced to endorse such a model, it is out of their system to trust people on the floor to do their job (let alone joining them on the floor).   There won’t be enough numbers to colour them and make beautiful reports for higher ups.

We can go on adding more to the list. 

Probably it is not the senior managements that have issues with trying new stuff.  It is this middle layer.   They have made themselves completely obsolete to the business they are meant to serve.  It is this crowed that one must face, baby sit, convince, mentor to breath some fresh air in this industry.

We the Indians have this unabated trust we develop for few brands and we find it very difficult to change.   My dad who passed away last year,  never bought anything other than a "BATA"  footwear.    That is what he has been buying and knows what to expect.  It was out of his system to try another one.   If you think I could be anymore adventurous than my dad, think again.  I drove Honda Accord during my stint in US.    That’s because most other Indians around me were driving that.  I now drive Hyundai Santro in India.

Either sticking to what we have been doing or following the crowd around us, we the Indians are not too good at taking "risk".    Be it  BATA,  Honda Accord or CMM, once we start living with, we will not want to move away.  (In lighter vein, may be that’s why our divorce rate is so low )

We are okay walking along with the crowd, even if it is delaying us.  We feel that is better than  taking the risk of trying a new path.

Here is an  article in Hindu Business that talked in lay man terms about  brand loyalty and commitment.   Besides our inherent nature of going with the crowd, this article talked about exit barriers of moving away from brands.   Case discussed here is about  the difficulty of letting to go the mobile number.

"…..Because if they change their service providers, their numbers would also change and that could mean that someone somewhere would not be able to get in touch with them.

Let us then look beyond satisfaction. The fact that the number will change serves as an exit barrier. So it would appear that the presence of a strong exit barrier increases commitment.

However, it can be argued by many people (including me!), that the exit barrier has increased only behavioural loyalty and not emotional commitment. In fact, the frustration at being unable to change the brand may actually reduce the commitment felt to it…."

Coming to Indian IT industry, it is easy to understand that they hardly had to endure any major cultural shift so far.  They may have moved from one certification to other.    But the basics of Indian s/w industry have not gone through any major "cultural" changes.   Specifically, two aspects to note.

• Wanting to have control on every project/team
• Boast the hot certificate to earn next project

These two essentially determine how they earn business and deliver.   Any deviation from these two will form a tough exit barrier.

Any idea is welcome as long as the above two fundamentals are not touched.  Be it Agile or something else.  It is okay if you want to try a practice prescribed by Agile.    But if you try to completely upset those two tenets of how the organizations are run, you are not welcome.

Thanks

-Akki

Recently there has been a long discussion about difficulties of adopting Agile in Indian organizations.   Even the places where it has been adopted per-se, it is argued that the situation  remained same.   Apparently there is no cultural shift that is expected and desired through Agile.

It is incidental that my article appeared during the same time in Agile journal.   The article touches few aspects of the culture in the Indian industry that may be relevant to the questions raised in the thread.  I want to elaborate little more of what I gathered, understood and mulled over on this topic before I published the article.     I will try to substantiate as much as I can on some of my fat claims on where and how arrived at those conclusions.   Anything not substantiated can be taken as my own interpretation and opinion.

In no specific order,  I will do a series of posts explaining multiple aspects to understand the Indian industry.    Some may not directly relate to  Agile specifically, but the cultural aspects that make any change difficult.

Thanks

-Akki

One of the difficulties in Indian software industry is to make people talk and make them talk in English.    It is kind of a paradox.  One side we hear concerns of losing regional mother tongues (like Telugu) as everyone moved and moving to English medium.  And the other side we have to worry about not having English where it is needed.

It is disheartening to see some really good programmers, who studied throughout in English medium not being able to write a decent email describing what he/she has done in a day.   Nor can walk onto the board and explain what is in his/her mind about solving a problem.  Let alone picking up the phone and start conversing with their counterparts in USA, UK, Canada, Australia.

Other side of the coin, I had seen few who studied in Telugu medium (say until high school) yet have picked up great English and became very good presenters.

Irrespective of the medium they studied, there are a few who do not know any good English anyway… yet are very good communicators.   And yes, this is something we have to see to believe.   I had seen people who cannot write a single grammatically accurate sentence but can pick up the phone and  comfortably communicate to their counterparts.

Now, how do we understand this?  What is our exact problem here?

After mulling over this for a while, I started believing that the medium of education is not the issue at all.  It must be a direct result of  keeping an entire generation for the past 15+ years focusing only on math sciences & technology and making them completely unaware of arts and social sciences.

Medium Of Education Is Not The Issue!

Let me explain this taking Andhra Pradesh as the case.  The same may apply at different levels to other parts of India as well.

EAMCET is an entrance test in the state of Andhra Pradesh to get into any Engineering or Medical colleges in the state.  One need to get a real nice rank to get into this.  One is eligible for this test after 12 years of education and last two years must be on the specific areas like Math, Physics and Chemistry for Engineering and Life Sciences, Physics and Chemistry for Medical.    Few lacs of people write this every year and the competition is undestandably huge.   Before the explosive growth of Engineering colleges, it used to be extremely difficult to get a seat in a college.  Every kid and parent would aspire to get a “rank” in EAMCET.  Not getting a rank simply means that the student  is “not good enough”.

The middle class fever for EAMCET resulted in coaching centers.   The coaching starts as early as the kid reaches high school.  Almost 5+ years preparation for a 3 hour exam is not unusual.   Students in last two years would do nothing else but prepare for this test.   There is no dearth for  horror stories of corporate colleges making these kids study from early hours in the morning to the middle of the night.

But what do they study?  The exam has always been conducted in a multi choice objective type format.  Let alone having a test for language/communication in this exam, there is not even discriptive type questions in there.  All that one must be able to do is, solve the problem and pick one of A,B,C or D.  No need to explain to anyone on how you got that A, B, C, D.

While the regular Intermediate course has languages and descriptive type question papers,  they are not given importance.  For example the coaching centers teach languages (English, Telugu/Sanskrit, Hindi) only for few months before the fnal exams.  From what I learned, even that the students will be given specific questions and selected answers to prepare.  The minimal effort required to pass the language exam is what is to be “wasted” .  Because, a good performance in language is no way going to help anyone get a seat in Engineering.    Even those who are not studying in a corporate coaching center, it is still not much different where their priorities are.

(On a side note, similar to languages, the practicals are also completely ignored. Lab and experiments are also waste of time.  While this is also a serious issue, not relevant to the topic discussed in this post)

The state reached a situation where colleges didn’t have students in any arts, commerce and social sciences.  State’s then Chief Minister who earned an iconic image for his technical bias, openly remarked everything other than science subjects  a waste.   I didn’t find any fault with what he said, he said what most in the state he is ruling were believing at the time.

How does all this affect the communication?

Math & Science Have No Emotions

While math and science are the greatest of the aspects that distinguished humans from other species on earth, they fundamentally lack emotion.   They are ice cold.   2 + 2 = 4.   This does not change no matter what mood I am in.  On a day I am ecstatic about my girl friend saying “yes” to me, the day I lost my dearest friend,  this 2 plus 2 remains 4.

Science is brutally static.  It can solve problems sure. But it cannot show any empathy to me!

On the other side take any art.     I can resort to nice music, a peaceful book, a soothing poem etc., depending on my mood.  A poem reads differently depending on my mood. The same song can sound differently at different times.   Staying in touch with art prepares humans to deal with emotions.   While communicating to others, it teaches fine tuning to others based on their reactions.  These are very subtle but certain traits one gets by having exposed to art.

In a world where reading news paper is a waste of time,  listening to music is waste of time,  taking a peaceful walk in a park is waste of time…. where do we get people who can connect to others?

All that we are left with today are our movies.  Even the movie makers realized that the youth of this region never learned to put some effort to understand an emotion on the other side in any form.       Our movie comedy is so raw today, we lost the taste for simple satire or an intelligent joke.   Violence is so violent, unless there is blood all over the screen it is not violent enough.  Difficult to explain that Godfather is one of the most violent movies ever made even though there is not so much blood on the screen in the movie.  The romance and sensuality has degraded to nakedness and vulgarity.  All this is now termed as “mass”.   But the learned termed it as “crisis of taste”.

It is this roughness we developed and struggling from within is what is making us not been able to relate to others. That is our core issue why we are not able to communicate to people around us.

What To Do Now?

Where should we start to “improve communication skills” ?  Every manager in Indian industry faces this problem.  Sending everyone to English classes is the easiest thing to do.  But it does not make anyone any better communicator.

What needs to be done is a new model of trainings.  The personality change will not happen in a short class room session.   Employees must be made to interact with artists.  It may sound silly.  But this is worthy of an experiment.  These companies must enroll some of the writers, painters etc., as consultants.  Make them mentor the employees.  Employee should at least get about 3 to 4 hours monthly interaction with artists.   There are enough writers, painters and musicians that are so poor, would charge a fraction of what the corporates are spending on language trainings and communication trainings.   If my theory is right, it does not matter which language the artist talks/writes.

Any takers??