A Reflection: Pause, Rewind and Reflect

Pause. Rewind. Reflect. The answer is always in front of us. As elusive as it seems, it is quite self evident. 

Man's problems as Blaise Pascal, the fresh philosopher said wonderfully "stems from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone".

This is a short post. Here's an old favorite poem from W H Davies on Leisure. This so represents the need to stand, pause and understand that we are a small piece of puzzle. Nature has so many things to teach us.

Ciao till next time...Harsha

What a garden teaches you. And, the stories we tell ourselves.

This blog is  vaguely divided into two parts. One on gardening. The other on stories we believe in. Both are relevant; as living through Covid-19, life has made me think about both. So, here goes..

The recent Corona scare and ensuing lockdown has given me some much needed time to reflect and ponder. What am I doing, where am I heading, am I... doing the things that matter and, finally, am I doing them correctly.

These and many more would come to mind when you are able to spend time with yourself. 

2000 yrs ago, Marcus Tullius Cicero said something which comes to mind - "If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need in life". Cicero was a champion of the Republic in the late Roman republic era 100BC. His works on philosophy, rhetoric and general cultural humanism rediscovered in the middle ages were one of the key ingredients for the Renaissance in Europe..

Since, we never really had a house which we could call our own... living in rented houses - I never really got the time and energy to grow a garden. I never had a way prove if Cicero was right. Two things changed that over the past year - 1) Buying a house 2) Getting the drive to do something useful.... especially, when you don't have anywhere to go through the week - for many, many weeks. Painful weekends with no activity.

Yours truly can safely confirm, that, what Cicero said long ago is 100% true. A library was my prized possession - having always treasured the fact that learning.. is a lifelong pursuit. Garden, on the other hand - usually, was restricted to some potted plants in balcony (that typically, struggled for life... with limited sunlight, and as I realize now, some over-watering).

Anyway, coming back to the Garden. Gardening is truly a pleasurable and a learning experience. Gardens are truly a representation of paradise on earth. Paradise, by the way, comes from the Persian word - "Paradizia", which essentially refers to the mythical walled garden during the classical, Achaemenid times. 

Here are my learnings from growing and maintaining a garden - 

• Sunlight, water and nutrition - are the three most important ingredients - 95% of the equation of life
• There is magic in life - when you create the environment - all sorts of life comes in..
• Beetles, song-birds, spiders, all sorts of insects and butterflies find their way - all they need is food to eat
• We had song-birds - pair of nightingale, lay eggs in their nest in our garden.. what a beauty... A thing of beauty is, indeed, a joy forever
• Opportunity and environment comes first. Performance comes with opportunity (that's a big lesson for me)
• What you sow - is truly, what you reap.. effort comes before result. Always. 100%
• Same plants can grow differently depending on what ingredients you provide - one can turn into a bonsai, and the other into a larger plant (I am trying my hand at creating bonsai's - if you want to learn - Ayan's a great coach)
• Anyway, there are no shortcuts - if you plant fruit trees - they take a year to give first fruits. No way on earth - can they bloom faster.. just because... 'you' provide extra nutrition
• There is no way around waiting. Once the environment is right, nutrition is right - you need tons of patience. Just because its your garden... the plants don't bloom faster

Anyway, let me come back to the other theme I want to touch upon today.  The last 6 months has busted some stories, which I think, we are used to. 

We tell a lot of stories to ourselves. We need $x million..., kids are costly..., social life is super critical..., Govt has the power.., authorities know better than common man (especially this is untrue..), remote work is not possible.., yadi yadi..

Most things are untrue. Man is a very adjustable animal. Technology can change things very, very fast. Much more than we can imagine. Amazon can take over the whole of retail - hell, they just did. In 6 months. Boom.

If its not for technology.. we are all monkeys playing around. Technology will change the world. Old business models need to give way to new. Moats can evaporate. Just like that. Be careful, what you think are the worst case situations, or the best case. Is it really that? 

Be careful of the stories we keep telling ourselves. Some learnings for life, living through Covid-19 times:

• Most things, which we are used to collecting: hoarding money, things we need, etc are more than sufficient to lead a good life. We over-estimate what we need
• 5 pairs of clothes are more than sufficient. So, too with shoes
• Home food is good. Eating at home, 7 days a week is totally fine...
• Pareto rule - 80% of the things that matter, take up 20% of time.... is 100% true. It is important we do that 20% though
• Kids don't need too many toys. They need our time
• Clarity of mind is very important. Sometimes, work from home - becomes 90% work, 10% home. Balance is important, we need to find our balance
• If you spend sometime on what you truly, truly want - world conspires to assist you
• Helping others, gives you immense satisfaction - you have to try that often, very often

I hope, you are encouraged to create your own garden. Always be clear of the stories you tell yourself. They are truly powerful, as mostly; we believe in them. What we truly believe - we have the power to make it happen.

Ciao till next time...Harsha

Balance, Order and Harmony: A work of art, is joy forever!

I am a big fan of Monty Don - ever since I started watching his shows, I have been smitten by the gardening bug.

It's a great pleasure to walk in any of the great gardens and the palaces of Italy. I never could pin point what was that one thing which gave the gardens its character and panache. Walking around in some of the great gardens there... brought about a profound sense of peace and wonder.

Recently, I started creating a small garden on our terrace. I have been getting inspiration from some of Monty's Italian Garden's series.

Building a garden is like a work of art. Building anything in one's life that needs to sustain is a work of art. Like John Keats said, "a thing of beauty is a joy forever" - so too is your work of art..

Monty Don's Garden series takes you to a different world. I strongly encourage you to see the four part series from Monty on Italian gardens. If this does not awaken the sense of mysticism and wonder about nature, I don't know what will..

You see...some of the greatest works in the modern era - music, painting, architecture, science and invention, printing, war making, expansionism, learning, industry... emanated from the renaissance era!

Come to think of it - it was a reawakening of the Greek and Roman era in the modern times which gave suddenly, the somewhat backward nation-states of Europe - a new purpose and direction.

What started as an artistic pursuit in the 14th century lasted until the 17th century and left the world a very different place. Europeans, decisively took the lead from Chinese and Indians post renaissance. There was a new sense of direction and purpose where there seemed to be backwardness before.

Great prosperity is typically preceded by times of reawakening of art and culture. Some of the greatest gardens in Italy were created during this time. The way the gardens were made, give us some learning on how to build somethings which can last.

The great gardens' of Italy have lasted 300+ years and will likely last many more. The trees and flowers are long gone, but the style and texture still remain.

One of the things which has profoundly impacted me in recent past is that one thing which all the gardens seem to have in common....

Like Monty says - In every direction, you see balance, order and harmony. There is something in them... that still has such a powerful resonance with us today. The thing that strikes you immediately when you walk in is the symmetry. 

Everything is balanced. Whatever happens on one side is picked up on the other side. The result is harmonious, and you can feel it, you can feel this sense of lightness, of generosity that is completely prepared and ordered and laid out. 

And you might think that that would be dull and predictable, but actually, it's not. The whole point of that is in every direction, you see balance, order and harmony. 

Renaissance thinkers were exploring classical scientific principles, and one of the beliefs was that God created the world along mathematical lines.

The renaissance gardens give us a great lesson to learn - that... that which is created to last, has to have a sense of balance, a sense of purpose. All, built with a sense of love and great harmony filled with delight.

Let us build our pieces of work and art... that unfinished painting, which we want to build to last... with great balance, order and harmony. 

Amen. Long live Monty Don!


Ciao till next time...Harsha

Running your own race: Understand Inner scorecard vs. Outer scorecard

Life is a single player game. It is not a multi player game. The things which really matter.. the ones which really really matter are internal, not external.

"The reality is life is a single-player game. You’re born alone. You’re going to die alone. All of your interpretations are alone. All your memories are alone. You’re gone in three generations and nobody cares. Before you showed up, nobody cared. It’s all single-player." - @naval

Warren Buffett asks a question if people behave the way they do to please others or play by the gallery because they want or have to? Are people satisfied with an inner scorecard or an outer scorecard? He often asks a simple question: "Would you rather be the world's greatest lover, but have everyone think you're the world's worst lover? Or would you rather be the word's worst lover but have everyone think you're the world's greatest lover?"

When you compare yourselves to others - you allow them to drive your actions. When you are young - it could be that you compare yourself against that kid who topped the class, or ran the fastest or played cricket the best or something else like - if only I could have been a little taller - I could have become a better basketball player. Some of these are trivial comparisons which lead to better performance, but most give headaches which you could do without. Knowing the limits of comparison is usually not easy.

The other day, I was comparing my two kids - who is going to be better academically, who can be a better business person, who would do better at something - why can't one be a little better here and so on and so forth.

Typically when you compare, and you end up short - it is because you are comparing their best features versus your own ordinary or mediocre features. In a sense you end up playing the other person's game.

A few years back, before I hurt my leg in a freak accident; the one thing which I really enjoyed most was running. Running 10K's and half marathons was very enjoyable. You tend to think about various things and mentally relax when you run for a long time.

The thoughts in mind are not about being faster than the person running next to you or to finish the race ahead of someone else - when the race is long, essentially it becomes a race against yourself. Setting yourself against your old best self. Setting a yardstick which you yourself had set and seeing if you can better that.

When you start comparing like that, you essentially try to become a learning machine updating your previous system with a better version. Its like getting a new software on an already existing hardware.

The question really is - what game would you want to play and what would you rather pass?

I was rambling around. But, that is really the question. It is really hard to think along those lines. Many a times, we die without thinking. I think most people would rather die than think :-)

Can you really beat Gary Kasparov?
Off-course you can. Just pick a game that's not chess. Maybe cricket which I'm sure he has no idea about.

Would you slog at work trying to please your boss? How can you become better at work?
Maybe yes, if you like your boss :-) Better still, pick things which you really know you can do well and maybe be world class in that small area.

It's important to cover fatal flaws (especially if you need domain knowledge to be successful), but really find those niches where you are best in class. Best in the world.

Knowing where to play and what to play?
The most important things in life are really measured internally. Does helping someone give you pleasure, does doing something scientifically or in engineering or being a medical doctor or fighting fires gives you pleasure? These questions are essentially very much determined by your nature, skill sets, temperament and the real "you".

Playing the wrong game is easy. That's essentially what most of us do. We may even win the game. But, how does that matter... winning the wrong game :-) It basically would be meaningless and pointless.

Thinking about what game you want to play is hard. Playing that is even harder. Pleasing the crowd at a common game is easier. Easy, crowded games are not very fulfilling. That's the way you can end up being mediocre. Most of us do end up there.

Know your game. Play your game. Help others play their games. Life's not a multi player game. Its a single player game played by multiple people who are playing their own games on the same playground.


Ciao till next time...Harsha

Endurance and Permanence: Test to Survive and Thrive

I have been thinking of writing this for a while. It has really struck my mind how and why something can endure and thrive over such a long period of time.

Wait. Let me back up and tell you the story.

During our visit to Srilanka, we visited Anuradhapura - the ancient capital of Srilanka and visited the remarkable Maha Bodhi Tree - a sapling of the Great Bodhi Tree under which Gautam Buddha attained enlightenment (to start the 4th most followed religion today) - that has stood ground for 2,300 years.



It was the year 288BC when this tree got planted by the Indian King Ashoka's daughter Sangamitra. For the next two millennia - many things have come and gone, but the tree has stood ground.

Srilanka was ruled by Devanampiyatissa during that time - one of the first noted kings of Srilanka.

For the next few centuries his followers made Anuradhapura a great city rivalled by few other cities in the world - Babylon in Iraq, Alexandria in Egypt, Carthage in North Africa (still a mighty kingdom preceding Roman empire) and Pataliputra in India (still a go-to place for higher education in the ancient world).
  
The great libraries of Alexandria were just getting constructed during this time. The Mauryan empire still stretched from the modern day Iraq / Afghanistan to the woods of Burma.

The first villages in the valley of Rome were getting built once people in the valley got a hang of growing the ancient strain of wheat and barley on a dependable seasonal river water harvesting!

Just to imagine seeing a living contemporary of monumental historical events is akin to blurring the passage of time or just like pressing a historical pause button or even rewinding the clock to see that similar things existed in those times.

A lot of things have happened since that time and its remarkable the tree has stood ground.

Anuradhapura was the capital for many centuries post which it was abandoned due to many reasons - draught, lack of military might, weak rulers, etc.

In the meantime - the original Bodhi tree was either cut down or naturally died due to passage of time.

Anuradhapura itself was abandoned as a marauding Chola kingdom of South India was flexing its muscles in the 13 - 14 centuries. A group of Buddhist monks are known to have stayed back to keep the tree going as a holy site.

More recently - in 1929 a man determined to cut down the tree cut-off its biggest branch. Terrorist attacks in 1985 killed over 100 people - though hurt on both occasions - remarkably, the tree managed to survive and grow!

This brings me to the important question of just what has made the tree survive for so long. History teaches us a lot of things and there are useful tips here.

I want to map out the parallels to companies where as investors, managers and leaders - it makes very real sense to follow the nature's guidelines. Here are the top tips for endurance and permanence - the elixir of life so to speak.

1) It is not always the strongest, largest or the fastest which survive the longest

It is a profound thought that has left me pondering. The tree certainly looks very old - but it has the extreme resiliency which is remarkable to bear.

It is no secret that the longest surviving companies in the world are the beer makers in Germany, wine makers in France or alcohol companies of Japan which have survived for many centuries. Neither did they branch out or dilute their core-competency.

The fighting spirit - the ability to keep relevant and be resilient and influence change instead of standing upto it and dying are key aspects.

By design - Amazon's and Facebook's of the world will get disrupted - fastest and strongest don't really bear the test of time. Social media or internet based purchasing may come and go - something else will be the newest toys in people's hands.

2) The remarkable ability to bear pain 

A lesser tree that's over 2,000 years old would have fallen down when its biggest branch is cut off. It is said - a lot of old people die due to complications when they go under the knife for a surgery. The actual ailment may be cured. Complications, side-affects do arise. They are lethal. Usually.

In the scheme of things - bad things happen over a long period of time. When the times are good - every Tom, Dick and Harry would do well.

As Warren Buffett says - "It is only when the tide goes out - do you see who is swimming naked".

The ability of companies, individuals alike to bear the pain of forces - draughts, competition, attacks, weak and crooked management, poor decisions, etc - is very important.

The core-competency, ability to focus on what matters and most importantly that which results in the ability to take pain are the key.

3) The do-good, feel-good aspect. Being a net positive in the scheme of things

A lot of positives go your way when there is net positive being delivered for humanity. A lesser tree which has no value - spiritually and mentally would never have got taken care off by humanity at large!

Survival and indeed thriving in nature is only possible when the entire ecosystem benefits by the particular subject in question.

I was researching how some of the family businesses thrives over many centuries inspite of weak ROEs, low growth and cyclical profitability.

They invariably bring some very real good to the entire ecosystem in which they operate. How and where we bring value to the entire ecosystem - suppliers, partners, employees, customers, society and humanity at large are very real questions to have clarity on when looking at aspects for companies operating today.

Nature finds a way to keep the net positives to ecosystem alive - as long as the value add is noticeably greater than value destruction.

In conclusion -

It is very important to remember the words of Spinoza - "You have to look at things in the aspect of eternity". 

Long term vision is very important to stay relevant - plan for next 2 Qtrs is usually present with most companies. Few if any look at what happens a year, 2 years and 5 years or more out.

As, the saying goes - "The stone age did not end due to lack of stones".  Staying relevant, focusing on what matters - core-competency, ability to take pain and being a net positive for the ecosystem are important corporate tips.

Finding constant relevance - in the current and future scheme of things is very important.

Ciao till next time...Harsha

The curious case of grabbing everything: Givers vs. Takers

We recently made a move from US to India. As most moves go - there is a lot of packing, shipping or giving away involved.

I observed a curious behavior when it came to taking things. Obviously, you would want to sell things like - car, furniture, etc where possible. We were lucky selling off the cars and some furniture.

Most others - my wife and I decided to give away. Obviously, you would want to give things away to people who may need it. Like the student who reached out and wanted the golf set, neighborhood children who wanted the cycles, etc. Those are the perfect match.

For most others - you just post pictures / items on Craigslist for people to come pick what they like and leave. My wife had atleast dozen pictures of items to be given away on Criagslist - mattresses, household items, kitchen items, electronics, furniture, etc. It took a couple of weekends to clear away.

Few things which I observed:

• Most people wanted to load up on things just because it came free! A few who came by took everything which was kept to be given away.
• In the purest form, there are very few people who would say - let me just pick the crockery set and leave the carpet for someone else.
• We had Asians, Indians, Whites and Blacks come by. 
• I did not see a difference in any one set of people when it came to aspect of taking things for free.
• There were cases where I asked if they would like to pay and buy something which was not put in the give-away list (like the sofa for example). After the first two times, I stopped asking.
• There are a some who are very warm and enquire why you are giving away! They stop by and wish you the very best.
• I was surprised to see our kids give away their toys when we told them we did not have space to carry everything back. 
• Don't expect a thank you from people all the time. Some want to just carry as much as possible which leaves them very little time for anything else.
• Then there are those who advise you not to move to a 3rd world country from a 1st world country. I had the guy who was picking up our mattress (for free) tell me why I am better off in the Bay Area all the while when helping him load the stuff.

The process helped me learn a lot about human behavior. Altruism is something which gives you a good feeling about yourself. If only that can be made more targeted, that will be awesome! Read more about my experience being a recipient of someone else's goodness - Altruism: Helping others with no expectation in return.

There is a good book on givers vs. takers which talks about this topic in terms of professional success. I couldn't summarize this better than here - To Give or Take? The Surprising Science Behind Success.

Ciao till next time...Harsha

Don't just be a problem solver. Be a problem preventer.

People always like complicated things. How can we solve something that is very difficult? What can we do to showcase intellectual brilliance? I just finished reading a few books on the pharmaceutical industry. A big portion of my money is invested in Indian companies in this sector and I want to understand more about the business models there. There is a long runway for Indian firms particularly to grow by taking costs down. The margin of a J&J or a Pfizer or a Novartis is an opportunity for a Sun Pharma or Ajanta Pharma or a Caplin Point.

Anyway.. I am digressing from what I had in my mind. Coming back to complicated things. Particularly how much money gets spent on finding cures for some of the illnesses (you pick the disease - Cancer, AIDS, etc..). Cancer research alone in the US is a fascinating field. National Cancer Institute alone has spent over $500B in 40 years on - War on Cancer. It continues to remain the second biggest cause of death (the first one is easy to guess - heart disease). The general attitude of the western world is - let us declare a war on something and relentlessly pound our way to get to the cure for that. The general tendency is to find solutions for the most difficult and exciting problems.

Let's take an alternate look at this problem. If you don't get cancer - you won't die from it. It is less intellectually stimulating to advise people to get a 30 min exercise daily, do a yoga routine or create a concerted effort to educate kids to not take up smoking (which is the no. 1 reason for Cancer).

Prevention, many a time is easy and not costly. We just don't find that intellectually stimulating. Period. Simplicity is not appreciated, as we want to spend time on complicated things.

There are similar parallel's in our corporate world. Problem prevention is a highly under-appreciated skill (read - things that will not get you noticed). Corporate examples:

1) Preventing a major accident/incident that could cause multiple $M's going waste.
2) Damage control exercises that prevent permanent damage that no one wants to really own or handle (these are in particular strict no-no's).
3) Prevent an exercise in futility. Refusing to do an exercise of some random analysis which will mostly indicate some random set of results which ego massage management or activity which you would not like to do as doing nothing may be better than doing something (my old blog: http://harshav.blogspot.in/2016/12/the-do-nothing-strategy.html).. etc..

I just finished reading two interesting books. I highly recommend you to read that too.
They talk about the good and bad of problem prevention.

The first book is about Shelby Davis - "The Davis Dynasty" - http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/08/the-davis-dynasty-fifty-years-of-successful-investing-on-wall-street-book-review/.

In this book, the key takeaway for me is the aspect of just preventing all errors of trading by just holding onto high-quality, undervalued insurance stocks Davis purchased for multiple decades. It's interesting to note that he held onto many of the good as well as dud stocks. He just avoided all trading errors by holding onto them over a long period of time!

What a simple problem prevention strategy. That is similar to Warren Buffett, but with a slight twist. Buffett's folksy American wisdom and well-thought-out public persona add to his fame, whereas Shelby Davis was known almost exclusively in insurance circles. He started investing relatively late in life. He would have been a billionaire many times over if he had started investing in his 20s.

The second book is about the Vanderbilt family "Fortune's Children" - how they lost a fortune of $200M (in the 1890s which in today's value would be ~$400B) within a hundred years - https://www.amazon.com/Fortunes-Children-Fall-House-Vanderbilt/dp/1494554011.

The entire book is a series of comedies of errors. From holding a fortune that was more than what was held in the entire US Treasury during the 1890s to losing it all within the next 80 years is a mammoth task. 

A quick summary can be read here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2014/07/14/the-vanderbilts-how-american-royalty-lost-their-crown-jewels/#2a4133d8353b.

What am I getting at?

Human beings are wired to respond to a story. That’s pretty much how we live our lives, narrating our own story as we go along. In a sense, prevention is the anti-story. When it comes to health, wealth, or professional achievements - prevention, in the best way possible, robs us of a painful story that might have had a profound impact on us.

If life is built around story-telling, it’s difficult to appreciate the full value of the mechanisms we use to prevent harm, because the corresponding stories never materialize.

It’s much sexier to be a problem solver. You see that description all over people’s LinkedIn profiles and CVs - especially now that I am trying to interview a whole bunch of people. Problem-solving implies a deft intellect and resourcefulness. Problems attract a lot of attention. Solutions bring a lot of acclaims.

Being a problem preventer is much more boring. People see the expected, repeated, competent output from a problem preventer and think little of it. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. Jack Welch. These are problem solvers. We know their names because of it.

It would be great if everyone in leadership was a mature, patient, disciplined thinker who innately understood the value of problem prevention. That’s not always the case, though.

It is therefore important for us as smart managers or leaders to understand and appreciate this skill set. In an increasing world of loud self-promotion and advertisement - sane voices can get trampled amid the noise. Differentiating information from noise is so very important.

Ciao till next time...Harsha

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

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

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