Are You Listening?

Two problems I have been encountering as part of communication, just as often as I communicate, are

1. Interruptions – When I talk, people want to put their viewpoint in the middle of my sentence without letting me complete
2. Interruptions – When others are talking, I have this incredible urge to counter/correct them in the middle of their sentence

In the first case, I get frustrated – “if you let me finish…”. How many of us have thought/said that? Everyone! I, for one, always kept thinking, why don’t people have patience to allow me to finish and then counter? Sometimes, we both are talking the same thing. He/She would have known that if only I were allowed to complete my sentence.

Then I had the incredible realization of the second case above. I had the same problem that I have been complaining about others. That is when I started looking into the art of Active Listening. For a conversation or debate or discussion to be meaningful, the parties involved should play the role of active listener. The focus is to gather all the information, facts, perspectives and thoughts. Then, you are ready to put forth your views.

The first case above, I do not have much control over (at least, so I think). However, I can have complete control over the second situation. So, over time, I have made a conscious effort to gain that control. It is still a work in progress. However, now when someone is talking, I listen attentively – resisting the temptation of speaking or interrupting. It’s very hard to practice that, but not impossible. Sometimes in the middle of a sentence, the speaker sees my head nodding in disapproval or me shifting in my seat (sort of getting ready to talk). That's when I hear the "let me finish" phrase!

Active listening is not just to control your urge to interrupt by not talking. Active listening is also to control your body language. Nodding your head in disagreement, shifting in your seat getting ready to talk, other similar body gestures that communicate that you are getting ready to talk, all of the above when done in the middle of someone’s sentence has the same effect as verbal interruptions. So far, I got control over verbal interruptions. Body language to quite some extent, I have controlled as well. There is more work needed in this area before I can be an Active Listener.

With these said, I offer the following for your consideration. Active Listening involves a few key behavior patterns,

1. Attentively listen to the speaker(s) without interrupting (thru verbal or thru body language)
2. If you have to speak, ask questions to clarify what is being spoken (only at the end of a sentence)
3. Paraphrase to let the speaker(s) know you are listening, as well as verify your understanding
4. Strongly resist the temptation to interrupt the speaker(s) to counter or put forth your views
5. In the end, summarize what you have heard and verified to close the speaker’s notes

Now you are ready to speak.

Conflict or Opportunity?

You are in a conflict with someone at work. What do you see? Is it a battle or an opportunity? Life is not all about winning and losing. Life is about identifying opportunities. Life is not a battle that you have to win. Life is opportunity for you to learn and become better. Where there are two people, there are conflicts. Where there are conflicts, there are opportunities.
I have had conflicts with others (who didn’t?), in my professional and personal life. While I am still learning to see the conflicts in my personal life as opportunities, I have successfully converted some of the bad situations at work into opportunities.

Very early in my career, call it inexperience or adolescence; I was in conflict with a Vice-President of a company (that I went to work for later). My career was on the verge of crashing before even it took off. In a disturbed emotional state with no certain future, I still managed to see an opportunity, took it, went to work for the same company and set out on a path to success for next eight years.

While working for a manager with a knee-jerk reaction, conflicts were the norm. As people in my group were quitting every other day, it was especially difficult to keep calm. The day finally came when my company announced that they were downsizing and my manager told me that my job was being outsourced to India. Although devastated, and took some time to get back on track, I did leave the company, went on my own and ventured into Industrial Automation and MES.

Today, I am at the crossroads again. I briefly had the job of my dreams, before another knee-jerk reacting manager had to show me the door. Bounced back again on my feet, delivered some good projects, built a few references and was marching strong when the same manager paid another visit, this time with a grudge I never knew he had. So, I am at a crossroads again! I am trying to identify the opportunity in this difficult situation and make myself stronger and better.
With these three examples, I submit the following for your consideration during conflicts and difficult times.

1. Conflict is an opportunity – to learn and become better
2. Learn from your mistakes/failures, for it’s only a failure if you don’t learn from it.
3. Disagreements have reasons, sometimes good ones. Listen to know what they are.
4. Turning problems into possibilities focusing on what’s possible, rather than what is not.
5. Make the best of a bad situation – there may be a door or even a window waiting for you to open – Identify, and open it.

The possibilities are endless. No conflict will remain a conflict if you can see an opportunity. When you learn to turn a conflict into an opportunity, life will be filled with opportunities.

New Ideas and Motivation

A successful team has a good manager who is helping them be successful. Also, a successful manager has a good team that is helping him/her be successful. Regardless of which role you are playing in this success, you are helping generate new ideas and out of the box thinking. You participate in innovation and improvement – be it products or processes.

It’s important for a manager to understand that handling new ideas effectively is a multi-step approach. The core of such discussion must be, not to prove your abilities or others’ inabilities, but to generate new ideas and encourage constructive participation. It is not uncommon for team members to compete with each other. However, this is not a forum for competition, but a forum to generate new ideas. To that end, I submit the following for your consideration.

Required Personality Traits are:

1. Listening – patiently and attentively to the complete idea presented, without interruption or dismissing
2. Constructive and Positive Attitude – to analyze the idea from a positive and how to make it work perspective

What to do during the discussion/presentation?

1. Listen carefully and patiently to the idea presented
2. Identify and highlight the positive aspects (why it is a good idea and will work)
3. Only identify, not highlight or verbalize, the issues that may hinder the successful working of the idea
4. Frame and ask questions around the issues identified in step 3 (Have you thought about this issue or that need?
5. Encourage the presenter and/or the group to find solutions to the issues that may have tempted you to dismiss the idea at the beginning

At the end, you may or may not have a working solution, but what you definitely have is a positively charged team that is willing to come up with more new ideas.

1. Presenter – My ideas were heard, discussed and (a) were accepted, or (b) were not accepted because… Next time, I will have better solutions and fewer issues
2. You – I heard some good ideas today and my problem is solved, or encouraged my team to come up with more such ideas that will eventually provide a solution

What is not taken away from this discussion is

1. Presenter – My manager does not listen to my ideas. There is no point in presenting any more ideas, only to be shutdown immediately and then feel humiliated
2. You – My team is a worthless bunch of people that cannot come up with a single good idea to resolve my problems. I am still where I started with no end in sight. I look bad in front of my superiors for no fault of mine. My team is to blame.

Negotiation

One of the modern day negotiation mantras is “win-win”, essentially stating that everyone at the negotiating table has to win. At Microsoft, it’s a “win-win-win”, underscoring the importance of the “invisible” and often ignored customer/partner as the third winner. Excellent strategy at the outset! However, it may not always work because of its premise – everyone has to win.

What I have come to realize is that there are times when one may have to lose – and that one may very well be me. There are times when the larger interests should be kept in mind – such as corporate goals – to ensure what is best for the company is agreed upon by all involved regardless of who wins and who loses. While it’s not always about winning or losing, it’s also not always about winning for everyone either. This gives a whole new dimension to the art of negotiation. It’s most certainly about winning for the company – an attitude that demonstrates the negotiator’s value add to the company.

It’s important to realize that Negotiation is not a battle, but a tool available for negotiators to ensure the interests of the party they represent are safeguarded at all times. The challenge I have seen that many negotiators have is identifying the party they truly represent. This is often times mistaken to be the organization they fall under.

Last year, I was working on a project in collaboration with over a dozen different groups. All these groups were contributing for my project, and a couple of groups were actually developing components. Everything was going smoothly until… the time of delivery to user acceptance came. One of the groups delivered a mismatched interface from original requirements. Thus began the negotiation. While I was pushing hard with the group to get their interface changed so that it matches my requirements, my opinion at that time was that this particular group was not cooperating, despite their “failure”. This was a challenge I had to overcome to ensure success for my group or I am looking at the failure of the project. I knew that I had all the “ammo” to win the battle.

Right about this time, I was given some very high level insights into what else was going on in that group, an insight I did not have before. This made me look at the challenge from a different angle. My goal is to ensure success for the party I represent – not the org I fall under, but the company I work for. Winning for my group would mean at least a couple of things – one, putting a severe strain on the relationship with this group, and two, putting strain on the corporate goals. So, I discussed the issue with my team, did some research and found that accepting the deliverable “as is” and changing the component my team developed would be easier than pushing forward with my narrow agenda of winning. I would have ensured my victory, but would have lost a possible ally, made many professional enemies and strained corporate goals.

In the next meeting, I communicated to the other group's representative that my group will make the necessary changes to complete the integration successfully. It required some more testing on our part. However, it did not strain the relationship nor the corporate goals.

Strictly speaking, this was not a win-win. However, after properly defining some key terms, and understanding what is not being said at the negotiating table, it turned into an all-round win – project was successful, the group relationship and the corporate goals were at a status quo.

Key Message – Negotiate to succeed, not necessarily to win.

Decision Making

Often times, we tend to see decisions as rigth or wrong decisions. However, we often tend not see them as good or bad decisions. We also tend to ignore the fact that a right decision at one point in time may transform into a wrong decision at a later point in time. This transformation or lack thereof does not necessarily make the decision a bad or a good one. We tend to ignore these other two forms of decisions and settle with “right” or “wrong” classification, especially when we are judging others.

Decision Making involves answering questions that fall into three broad buckets

1. Questions you know answers to (the Known)
2. Questions you don’t know the answers to (the Known Unknown)
3. Questions you don’t have (the Unknown Unknown – what you don’t know that you don’t know)

Broken down into these three buckets, it is not prudent to make a decision purely based on the first. This is the point where you do due diligence on the three aspects. Due diligence involves

1. Verifying items in the first bucket (the Known)
2. Get answers to the second category – the known unknown. If the decision is time-bound and you cannot get the questions answered in a timely manner, make some reasonable assumptions that would answer these questions. Then, move these items into bucket one and go thru that process.
3. The third bucket is, by far, the most risky in the decision-making process. First step in mitigating this risk is to try and move the items into the second bucket – the known unknown. Then, follow the procedure you have used to handle the items in that bucket.

This is an iterative process until you either have only bucket 1, or you have worked closely with all the stakeholders to accept the risks around the items in the other two buckets. The second part is especially important when your decision-making process is time-bound.

At the end of the due diligence process and by the time you are ready to make a decision, ideally, you should have eliminated all items from the third bucket. You should have also built and verified reasonable assumptions around each item in the second bucket. And of course, you should have verified each item in the first bucket to be accurate.

Having completed the due diligence, now you are ready to make your decision. Ensure that the decision you make takes into account all the information you have, including the assumptions you have made. The decision you make should accommodate a change of course in the actions you take, should the information you have or assumptions you made were to change.
Once all this happens, then you have made a good decision! If you have ignored any item in these three categories, depending on how critical the ignored item is, the decision becomes good or bad decision.

Being a Perfectionist

Here I would like to talk about what it means to be a perfectionist, and how the rest of the world perceives a perfectionist.

Let me start of by saying, nobody is perfect, including the perfectionist - the degree of imperfection varies. Perfectionists are more of an anomaly than the norm. I was recently talking to a great friend of mine who is, as I am, a perfectionist. We started as colleagues and turned into great and trusting friends. One of many reasons we had a great working relationship that turned to great friendship is that we understand each other. As I was talking to her, I realized a lot about myself and how the rest of the world sees us. When we do a piece of job or deliver a product, we want to ensure it is perfect. We are masters in picking holes. We are just as hard on ourselves as we are on others which could be troublesome for many! A few weeks after a “perfect” job, we revisit our own work and wonder how we could get away with such a sloppy job. That’s how we think and operate. We never have a problem working with the people of our own kind, but the rest of them have trouble with us. They think we are insane, nitpicking, and/or controlling.

What I have come to realize is that a piece of work need not be perfect from our perspective – just from the perspective of the recipient of the work product. The rest of the world doesn’t care about the perspective of a perfectionist if the perfectionist doesn’t care about the rest of the world. So, with that thought and realization, I respectfully submit the following.

Define the term perfect from the perspective of the users of your work product. What is the acceptable level of perfection to your users? If your work product is a document, does it address all the areas required to realize the purpose of the document, without confusing the reader? Does your work product meet your customer’s minimum requirements/needs? Once you answer these questions, you have your parameters defined. Anything more, is more than required and the customer doesn’t care.

A good way of verifying if you, or someone you are directing/working with, did a perfect job is to ask the customer. Review your work product with one who actually is going to use it. If it satisfies the end user (not you, the initial reviewer or project manager), the work product is at an acceptable level of perfection. If it does not, do not speculate as to what is below the level of perfection. Ask the end user again, correct it and re-review. As a general rule, if the work product leads to more unanswered questions or confusion for the customer, it is not perfect. Typically, for a job well done, you would not require more than two such iterations. However, after several such iterations in concert with the end-user/customer, you have a perfect product or deliverable without upsetting the rest of the world. What’s more, the user actually cares about and appreciates the perfection. Remember! Your customer, not you, says whether the work product is perfect or not.

Note to Self: Learn to let go of being a perfectionist from your perspective. Learn to identify and deliver acceptable levels of perfection from your customer’s standpoint. Make it so.

Effective Communication

I quite often speak to many people regarding the subject (including my wife – trust me, not very smart thing to do :-). Many people think that I have excellent communication skills. As good as one might say I am, I have known for some time that my communication skill has, at times, much to be desired. Skill is one thing, effectiveness is another. Skill refers to the tools such as language, means, articulation etc., while effectiveness refers to “how” one uses these tools causing least or no adverse side effects. Anyone who can put their thoughts into words, constructs coherent sentences, and speaks may be termed as someone who mastered these tools. Without being effective (the “how”), there is still much to be desired. This is the area where improvement is required for me, and many others who are skilled in communication.

Skill and effectiveness must go hand in hand for the communication to yield qualitative long term results. Even with skill and effectiveness, communication sometimes breaks, but without one another, the risk of communication breakdown goes off the scale.

Effective communication requires charm. And that takes time, and patience.

A message can be communicated in several ways. A better way to communicate is to do so in a manner that is most pleasant to the receiver of the communication. An incident in my recent past highlighted to me the importance of not just the sender’s feelings, but also the receiver’s feelings and what impact that could have on relationships.

I have been trying to get in touch with a manager at a company for quite some time. I was dealing with a high pressure, critical to business need that required immediate action (at least, so I was impressed upon). I left her several messages on her voice mail, never to be returned. The discussion was going on in emails which I considered time-consuming and counter-productive. I would receive a response to an email a few minutes after I leave a voice mail. When I received one such email, I immediately responded “Call me immediately at 425-555-2211”. I wanted to get her attention while she was still at her desk. I got her attention alright, but in a wrong way. Although it was a completely innocent communication with no offence intended, offence was taken and the relationship took a nosedive.

“Can we discuss this over the phone and resolve? Please call me immediately at 425-555-2211. Thanks,”

“I strongly believe we can be more effective and quicker in resolving this issue if we have a telephone conversation. Can you please call me at 425-555-2211 at your earliest convenience, preferably immediately so that we can discuss? Thank you very much in advance.”

Patience and staying calm in dire situations are the most important virtues for effective communication. All the three messages above essentially say the same thing. However, the “how” is different. My belief is they are progressively better, effective, and pleasant-toned in the order they are listed above. It takes time to articulate your thoughts in a manner that is pleasant to the receiver. It is especially difficult to take this time when you are pressed for time, stressed, or under pressure. That’s where the ability to stay calm and patience become great virtues. Making these virtues a part of your personality and communication style is what wins allies and helps build relationships.

Note to Myself – Make is so!

My Life in Redmond, WA

Flashback January 2005, Albany NY - I just completed my two year long contract as Industrial Automation Specialist and Sr. Developer of IA Tools at GE Industrial Systems. As I was originally hired to work on GE's customer contracts, I could work for two uninterrupted years. Now, I had to take a 3 month break before I could work with GE again.

My wife, who put her career on hold to be with me in Albany, has an interview in Redmond, WA (yes, with Microsoft, her lifelong dream company) for a contract position. As moral and emotional support to her, I flew along with her to WA. She attended the interview and got thru. It's time for me to move to WA to realize my wife's dream. She put her career on hold for too long for me. I can always find a job in WA.

Flashback February 2005, between Albany NY and Redmond WA - Loaded up my 1995 Mazda 626 (with over 170K miles) with some absolute necessities and set out on the road to WA (I-90 all the way). The car had about half a ton payload (not including us). Next 5 days, we covered 3200 miles stopping for gas, pit stops, food, a couple of hours of sleep (had to be there in 5 days as her contract started on 7th day). Once I dropped her in Redmond in the new apartment we rented a few minutes walk from her work place, I flew back to Albany to pack and make the move. A month later, I completed the move (by first week of April), started looking for jobs and found one in next 3 weeks - a contract job at Microsoft's OEM IT - termed as the finest team with really hard to get in interview process. Great! Life in WA had an excellent beginning...

Fast Forward to Today - I am at loss of words to accurately describe my life in WA in past two years, other than to say, it's been a ship in the high seas. It had several ups and downs. I started working with with Microsoft, successfully delivered 5 projects, 3 concurrent big-bet projects, got into deep trouble with a new manager and left (I want to believe the reason is as simple as miscommunication, but the real reason still eludes me, and I will discuss the importance of communication in a later blog), got rehired immediately at another group, successfully completed two more contracts, and was hired on the third as a shining star soon to be paid a visit by the same ghost from my past, right the day after we closed a deal on our dream house. When times were good, they were good, but when they were bad, they really tried my strength to see what my breaking point was. By the good graces of the lord, I am not broken, yet!

The details of my difficult times in Washington are for another time. Between picking up my career pieces, assessing the situation to move forward, finding a new job, and also trying to organize the move to our new home, for now it is very important to realize that every difficult time has a lesson (or more) to teach – if not how to do something, at least how not to. Life is filled with such lessons. I am a strong proponent of “Every creation in the universe has a purpose, something to offer to the rest, and something to learn from”. I have treated everyone I have encountered as my teacher to a degree, in one respect or the other. Long since, however, I have come to realize that one’s own life itself is the greatest teacher, if one knows how to read, observe and learn from it. Smart ones learn from their own lives and that of others. I have encountered both kinds (who learn and who don’t). I for one, would like to believe that I do learn from my own mistakes and that of others when I see. I plan to document some of those lessons learnt so far in my lifetime, if not for others to read, just for my own sake and future reading – so that I don’t forget.
Sanskrit Quote - Swa Adhyayan Ma Pramadah
Translation - Never forget what you learn once!

The Beginning...

I have been thinking about maintaining a blog of my own for quite some time. I do a lot of thinking about a lot of topics. These topics range from my profession (IT/general management) to my personal life to politics to religion. Everything that my free-sprited mind can think of.

Sometimes, I document some of those thoughts (especially professional) and leave them somewhere on my hard-drive, rarely to read them again. Some of these thoughts fade away over time, and the documents misplaced/lost. Hence this blog - have a central place (online) where I can pen my thoughts, and don't have to remember where I stored them under what document name.

I hope/intend to update/maintain my blog as regularly as possible with my thoughts. And hopefully, I will continue doing just that, every so often.