Friday, July 14, 2017

Bye bye Cypress. Funny recollections


Someone told me that finally what you remember when a good run ends are memories of the good times. After 10 years, I say goodbye to Cypress.

The other day my son and I - we were playing a game to build up his memory on country names. I ended up counting how many countries I visited during my time @ Cypress - it was 30+ countries (I forget if it was 36 or 39) in 4 continents. For giving me the opportunity to travel world-wide  and work in 3 continents - I will be forever thankful to Cypress. One's thinking expands when you travel and work with different cultures and visit different places - this is something you cannot get otherwise. I'll list the top 5 entertaining moments I had in these 10 years when traveling. Damn it.. I see there were some entertaining moments.

1) Follow-me taxi: When I joined Cypress in India, I got sent to San Jose for a knowledge transfer training. It ended up as a close to 3 months stay. After a few weeks I ventured to rent a car (with another colleague who was also visiting CY USA). We somehow lost our way and it was fun trying to knock someone's door to find directions. Finally we hired a taxi and followed him!

2) Shopping in Israel: It's never fun when you have working Sundays. Israel is one of the places that does. In my first customer trip abroad I landed in Israel on Saturday night (Sabbath) only to lose my luggage. Saturday evenings are sort of closed out (that's interesting..no shopping during Sabbath!). I waited at a shopping complex for shops to open. Now comes the difficult part. Explaining what I really wanted to buy in an old traditional shop (not one of the jazzy malls)...is not fun. Especially try translating inner wear.

3) Detained in Switzerland: Borderless travel in Europe is no fun when you forget to carry your passport. Especially in Switzerland. I always felt traveling to customer visits in Southern Germany or Switzerland to be most fun. Trains are fast, efficient and always nice. I was on one of my usual visits in Zug / Zurich (I forget where now) and got selected for the random check (damn...now how random can it be that the brown-skinned guy always get random checked :-))... Carrying no passport. No visa. Detained in a police station for few hours. Psst. Never ever ever leave without your passport. That was the closest I came to being sent back to my home country.

4) Chef's special soup @ Ritz Carlton Seoul: Being a veggie is no fun in far east. Especially in Korea. One of the early fun days was always the long travels that our friendly JB Raa was fond of sending me to :-) Korea being his home country, I got packed there for 4 or 5 weeks to visit customers staying locally. The bland food in my hotel finally caught upto me after the first few weeks...I bought some rasam powder (the spicy curry) from local Indian store and asked the chef @ Ritz Carlton to prepare a soup daily. It seems the chef tasted this and took a liking for the Indian soup! He promised to include this in the menu as the Chef's special soup. I need to find someday if Ritz Carlton, Seoul really has this still on menu!

5) The night-time coffee in Finland: Traveling to Nordic (Sweden, Finland or Norway) was always fun. The customers are so friendly, people are so fun to be with, the places are so vast (no doubt I really liked traveling recently to Alaska for vacation.. it's so similar)! Vaasa is an interesting place in Finland. Being close to the Arctic circle - you can always count on sun at 1am or 2am during summer-time. The coffee you drink when there is a colorful hue (is that what they call Aurora Borealis...never mind, I didn't know that then) is awesome! Who needs sleep then. Just that you need to stay awake the next day...

6) Snowed over Sweden: The Nordic telecom customers were onetime big users of our RAMs.. it was a monthly trip visiting Stockholm or Gothenburg. Anders and I, after a price negotiation were just heading to the airport in the most horrible snow storm I have seen...3 feet snow; Anders being the honest guy you can find, trying to still make it to the airport (though we both knew flights would be cancelled). Struck in airport, no flights, no hotel to stay, no taxis going out now seems like a pleasant experience (atleast the old pics seem to show a happy me!).. Tip: book a hotel room asap when it snows heavily in Nordics. Airports are no fun.

7) Losing cell-phone can be dangerous (happy wife, happy life!): Specialty Memory days were so much fun traveling into Israel for customer visits. When traveling to airport like 3 hrs before your flight (so that you clear all the security checks at Ben Gurion Airport), I called my wife to say I'm heading home. There was a cop checking our taxi (this is normal when you are entering into the airport), I told my wife that I need to hang up to speak to the cop. I left my phone in the taxi heading into the airport. She seems to have called me back only for a strange guy to pick-up the call and speak in Hebrew. She ends up calling Sumit (I hope he remembers this call), Richard (sales guy in Israel).. and the airport. Luckily I remembered to call her after passing through the security check.

8) Never mix red-bull with vodka and Irish car bomb: Kamal is not a fun boss when it comes to drinking binges. Amol and I had an interesting drinking experience when we were based in Munich. Spending a night drinking with Kamal and Ludwig.. is never a good idea. Especially when you down 5 shots of red-bull with vodka and then end up drinking Irish car bomb. I ended up taking the wrong local train in Munich.., I really don't remember much. Waking up in Stanberg the next morning, I took the 2hr train back home. That was one angry wife waiting back. My colleague Amol had pink rashes all over his face the next Monday in office. Never seen someone like that.

Well there it goes (did I say i'll write top-5?).... I have no time now to edit and correct this to top-8... its my post anyway. Who gives the tower of pisa a second glance if it were standing straight! I'll leave this as is.


Ciao till next time...Harsha

Monday, July 03, 2017

Clarity: Understanding what you do not want


I am a big fan of Charlie Munger. His thoughts on building a frame-work of mental models is top notch. One of the thoughts he brings is "inversion" - ability to think backwards instead of forwards. Example: if you want to be happy, one can do that by cutting down on things which make you unhappy. Do not be around people you dislike, do not do things which give you dis-contentment, mental pain for no gain, non-stimulation, etc etc.. cut down on crap.

In many of our work and things that affect our lives, we are more mechanical in approach and fail to question why we do what we do. Ability to focus on work is critical to success. Most successful people have found that focused work is very critical to success. You can read on what I wrote here: Focus: a key tool for success.

One of my colleagues who read what I wrote on focus asked me this pertinent question: "Harsha how can you focus on something when you really do not know what to focus on! I think I can do so much better, but I have so many things to do and all needs to get done as I've agreed to do everything"

This is such an important question in our lives. We have so much potential and still end up doing mediocre work. The potential to do wonderful things exist in all of us, but we end up with sub-par results since we are unable to focus on "what we want".

From time immemorial we humans have had the same problem. We have our lives to live, the rigmarole to make ends meet and somehow in this midst of it all, fail to focus on things we want to do. There is an inherent "lack of clarity" - the inability to understand clearly what we want, what matters and the resulting issue of mediocre performance overall. There seem to be very few people who have understood the power of "clarity".

Guru Munger says:  "Invert the problem. Always invert". So, looking at our issue of "no clarity" - it is very important for us to remove all those things which are clouding the judgement and not really important or are not giving us enough energy to drive on. Let's list all the items which one needs to remove in order to be left with "clarity":

1) Distraction. I think this is our no. 1 enemy of our life and times. We have so many distractions and so many pulls which are meaningless yet time consuming. Prevent yourself from becoming distracted. Read my "The do-nothing strategy".

We feel that if you keep running around in circles - you are creating something of economic value. Example - generating reports on why something is where-it-is or looking too much into history and forecasting what something needs to be or looking into set of random data and creating patterns where none exist and creating complex models around them, etc etc are running around tree patterns. Let's stop getting distracted.

2) Unorganized behavior or lack of prioritization. This is something I have observed increasingly after I started looking at things more critically. This tendency can affect any of us well meaning individuals. The main root cause for this to arise is due to our perceived inability to say "no" to things. Read my "Urgent vs Important".

We want to do everything. We like to be in every meeting. Read every email we are on cc, attend every single conference call which adds minimal value to us and do everything that ideally our boss has to do because you cannot say "no" to him / her. As a civilization, we have lost our capability to "say no". I think our society has built an army of yes men - which has resulted in loss of critical thinking. Sorry for the meandering thoughts.. but again prioritize. Say no more often. People understand - they actually take you more seriously once they understand that your "yes" means world-class work and your "no" means no.

3) Lack of physical energy. Some of you may be surprised at this third bullet. But, as I get older I have observed that ability to perform at sustained high quality levels need high levels of mental and physical fitness.

This was a constant problem for me with constant head-aches, migraines, back-aches, etc. The root-cause of all these was simply lack of physical fitness. An hour in the gym thrice a week or couple of hours playing tennis a week or an hour of yoga a day will normally be sufficient if you are not after that Greek-God body. But, this takes effort and the ability to mark-down a time to do it.


Well, there would be many more I suppose that needs to be removed. For starters - here were my top 3! I hope you will be left with more clarity and result in increased focus on things that you ought to focus on after reading this!

I hope I was able to bring a little more clarity in your thoughts. Do, let me know what things bring you clarity.

Ciao till next time...Harsha

Monday, June 12, 2017

Focus: a key tool for success

Our world is a very distracted place. We live in a summary world. The first thing our children or our executives or our spouses want from us is a summary of that book / that important proposal / that movie. Nobody seems to have the time to dedicate to focused effort. That has become our world today.

I watched my 2-year old son flip through youtube cartoon videos as if he's trying to get a peek into the cartoon before moving on. I tried to reason with him a few days back. I failed. I think he feels that what comes next maybe better than the current one (its a guess - nobody will come to know until he can articulate!). But - I think we all have the same problem. Its something which we brush under the garb of keeping ourselves busy.

Let me articulate my thoughts here.

If you've watched the latest documentary on Warren Buffett (on HBO) - you will notice the friendship he shares with another of the world's wealthiest men - Bill Gates. There’s a scene where Buffett and Gates had met early on and were sitting at a table, when they were both asked to write down on a piece of paper the one thing that they each felt attributed most to their success.

Surely enough, Buffett and Gates had written the same word down on their respective papers: focus.

Tom Watson Sr., the man who built IBM was asked what his secret for success was - his reply was a classic - "I’m no genius. I’m smart in spots—but I stay around those spots". Again an attribution to being focused.

Many of the highly regarded men attribute their success to a singular focus - commitment to a main goal or purpose in their lives which result in out-sized success. Be it playing a sport or running a business or creating art or whatever else that someone is endowed with enough talent - its usually the maximization of those talents that result in out-sized success.

What can we do to stay focused?

1) Limit your time spent on weapons of mass-distraction i.e., TV, Internet, Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Email, etc.

Get real. Read a book. Take a walk, come out of the virtual world. Refrain from responding to that email with 50 people on cc. Who really cares anyway. If its that important - they'll call you. Probably you should make a call - if you think you're feedback is so important in the first place.

Wake up early. The one hour in the morning is a wonderful time to read 20-pages of that book. In two weeks, you will read a book. In a year - you will read 26 books.

2) Set a goal - maybe learn a new sport. Your goal should not be a laundry list of 10 or 20. Just one or two works fine.

Learn a sport. I have seen that many a sport can be learnt at reasonable prices - if only we put in the effort to go to your sports center to inquire. Its wonderful to meet new people - we are far too bucketed in the midst of people in similar jobs / roles / age. Learning a new sport gets you to meet with interesting people in different walks of life.

I took this to heart. I recently started learning golf. I met this wonderful Gujarati old man who came to the US 30 years back. He was learning the sport too, we were joking about our inability to play golf not thinking you are hitting a cricket ball. He happened to own the two Marriott's I was passing by on way to work at San Jose. He seemed to have some interesting life advise that I could not get otherwise. The 3-hours on Saturdays was well spent.

3) Is your time getting divided too much? Maybe eliminating or reducing certain distractions help.



We all have a limited amount of time and talent and we have to allocate it in a way so it will work better for us. Learning to say "no" sometimes can be liberating in life. We have become too much of "yes" men to keep us in our limits of mediocrity. At the end - the idea should be to let people do what they're best at and you do what you're best at. The rest is all crap. Really.

At the core of trying to get some focus in our lives - its important to realize that a majority of life's errors are caused by forgetting what one is really trying to do. Let's get back to basics.

Ciao till next time...Harsha

Monday, April 24, 2017

Altruism: Helping others with no expectation in return


A recent incident made me think deeply about this. I was on the receiving side of a wonderful gesture by my landlord recently when we were moving out. We had to move into a new place which would be an easier commute for my wife with better schools for kids. 

My landlord graciously offered to give half the month's rent (since we left mid-way during the month) - above and beyond what the contract stated. The gesture left me thankful and recipient of a wonderful gesture that left me thinking.

In this competitive world - when do we pause to reflect and give something to someone with absolutely no expectation whatsoever in return? We are constantly thinking about "ourselves". The selfish gene knowingly or unknowingly gains upper hand in our actions.

This one small gesture made me realize that there's more to human nature than just cause and effect. Maybe there are things that can truly bring us happiness by just giving.

This is just a note to me as much as for you. Help forward. Our blessings are too many to count. The world needs more good men.

Ciao till next time...Harsha

Sunday, February 26, 2017

The Importance of Second Level Thinking

The biggest task for us when we moved to our new house was to get everything in order. Now, my main task was to get my books in order - have a library created (and create a rudimentary catalog for books I have). In my garb of buying books that seem interesting, I have now the unenviable task of reading 30+ books that are unread for the year..(I am making a mental note not to buy more until I clear most of unfinished ones.. I know I am going to fail this one).

Anyway - I just started re-reading the wonderful book by Howard Marks - "The Most Important Thing". The beauty of reading old ones you know, like and concur is like watching that old favorite movie of yours... you know whats going to come; but sometimes, just sometimes something new pops-up. You realize that you never thought about that before..


Second Level Thinking:



Let me give you some thoughts regarding this. First level thinking is when you take a first dab at anything.. Simplistic, almost superficial and usually not going to turn out the way you thought in complex situations.

Example: Oil prices are too high (flashback 2007), so they will continue to go up.. (we have reached a stage of peak-oil) or oil prices have fallen down (now in 2016 or 2017) and they will continue to go down or stay there... not really knowing the dynamics behind why the prices reached there in the first place (shale oil, horizontal drilling / fracking; geo-politics of trying to bleed Russia with low oil prices).

Now, any layman can have a "opinion" about any event that will or can happen. This is classic first level thinking.

However - second level thinking is more deliberate and something which takes more in-depth study of subject. For the example above on oil prices or commodity price behavior - one can learn a lot by reading about Shale revolution (read - The Green and The Black), geo-politics in middle east (I recommend books on - 6 Days War, Saddam Hussein - Debriefing the President, OPEC: the failing giant, among others) and biography of John D Rockefeller (the original robber baron :-)). Once someone has a understanding of the background, and understand the dynamics of what's happening - you can take a balanced view on topics where complex variables are involved.


Predicting Complex Events and a Look at Alternate History:

Most such situations are too hard to predict anyway even after understanding the dynamics at a high level (there is always a range of outcomes that are possible for any situation with probabilities for each outcome). Sometimes if the variables are limited - one can take a calculated guess at the outcome, in few others its too difficult to predict one single outcome.

So, this train of thoughts led me to have a look at what I would call as "alternate history". What could have happened if the roll of dice or favorable set of conditions existed for something that has happened in history. As an example: for the World War II aficionados, its generally agreed that Hitler's defeat was sealed when he attacked Russia in the June of 1941 (Operation Barbarossa). What is not usually known is that he had the right ingredients to succeed - and how close he came to succeed.

When the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union, they were received as liberators by the common people. The Ukrainians considered Hitler as the savior of Europe. The Bielorussians were eager to fight on the German side. Many regiments of Cossacs deserted to their enemy while Georgians, Armenians, Turkomans, Tartars and Uzbeks surrendered en masse. As Erich Kern an NCO in the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler wrote in 1948 ("Dance of Death"), "All over the city there were people waiting on the streets ready to cheers and welcome us..... Never before had I seen such sudden transformation…. Of Bolshevism there was no more."

At that point, Hitler only needed to cooperate with the Ukrainians and others and make the necessary political alliances to conquer the Soviet Union.

But Hitler had become intoxicated with power and by then disregarded this and forged ahead expecting that the Soviet Union would collapse as France and other countries had. Then, after the Wehrmacht overran the western Soviet Union, Himmler and his assassins started roaming the territories under control, murdering people - Jews and others left and right. This made the various nations within the Soviet Union realize that the Germans were not so interested in destroying Bolshevism, but to enslave them. They then changed their hatred for Stalin and channeled it into a holy war, and saw their sole duty to defend the Soviet Union in what was viewed and characterized as a "Patriotic War".

So - there goes our alternate history. So near if you look at it from this angle. Anyway - a learning for you and me is that things are not so straight-forward as they seem to be when you look at the rear-view mirror.

Things are always easier to justify when its in the past.


What Will Work? How to Look at Things?

Superior thinking is never easy. Nothing is black or white. Everything in life is in shades of gray. Some darker than others. Most things in real world depend on either - "superior skills that can be quantified" or "superior insights"

In the end superior decisions and well thought out approaches can add more positives over the long run. But - even that can be hardly perfect. The best you can hope for is that you will be more often right than wrong and successful decisions add more than mistakes subtract.

At the end - its important to develop a sense of "being humble" and "ability to learn from our mistakes and those of others" as you will realize that you "don't completely own your successes" and a lot sometimes is dependent on a range of factors.

Ciao till next time...Harsha