Last month, PSVillage organized a networking event for senior professional services executives. It was a huge success. The following people were on the panel:
Steve Martello, Senior Vice President of Client Services, Interwoven Keith Costello, Senior Vice President of Professional Services, SAP Americas Anna Mok, Strategic Relationship Partner, Deloitte Touche LLP Cindy Warner, Senior Vice President, Global Integration Services, Salesforce.com Jason Blessing, Regional Vice President, Oracle Consulting
As the year is ending, I am sure many of you are reflecting on what happened in your life this year.
Last time I spoke to a group of young people, one student asked me a question – “How do we measure our own progress in this year? What are the metrics?”
The question made me think. As you can imagine, there is no one right answer or one right approach to this. I came up with two questions that I thought will nail this a bit. Thinking back, I will stick to the same questions today. Here are those two questions:
“What are your significant contributions to the world this year?”
“By how much has your ability to make a difference in the world increased as compared to the last year?”
I hope you all had a great year and are looking forward to the next one.
I think there are some questions for which it is hard to find “good enough” answers. These, for me, are questions to wonder about. I am not suggesting that you should not think about them (if those areas are of your interest) or avoid them. You do what you choose to do based on your priorities in your life. My only advice is that if you are getting carried away by these questions during your prime time, please be aware that you are knowingly engaging in this activity.
Here are some sample questions:
1. Is there GOD?
2. How was the universe born?
3. What is success?
4. Is there life after death? (an oxymoron there)
5. What could have been different in <<pick something way back in history>>?
6. What would I have done differently if I were the <<president or choose some power position of that order>>?
7. How could I have solve the <<choose a long running global problem>>?
You get the idea and I am sure you have your own favorite questions in this category. If life is a software there is only one version of it for every one of us. You get tweak it here and there but there is no version 2.0 at least in this incarnation. Since nobody really knows what questions are running in your mind all the time, you can be the only judge and decision maker on which questions you decide to find answers to.
Over the years, one philosophy that has served me well is that “you can’t lose what you don’t have.” It seems simple but it works like magic. Whenever I want to make that call or take a difficult step, I just think about this for a second and go ahead with my plan. Before I embark on it, I didn’t have what I wanted. If I don’t get it, I won’t be worse off than before – meaning I can’t lose what I don’t have
Of course, you can’t take it to an extreme.
Mark Twain talked about this long ago in this fashion.
“Dance like nobody’s watching; love like you’ve never been hurt. Sing like nobody’s listening; live like it’s heaven on earth.” – Mark Twain
On a lighter note – Now, for my friends outside India (Indians would have watched this multiple times) here is a short (5 minutes) video clip if you want to hear it in the form of a song. For the curious few who want to know the stars, the lead actors are Shah Rukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan and the actress is Preity Zinta.
My hero Seth Godin answers this question brilliantly. If you were thinking about when is the right time to start that project you have been putting off for a long time, please don’t miss this one.
I was at the monthly dinner meeting for Band of Angels last night. I have to say that it was a humbling experience. Almost everyone I met there had a series of valued accomplishments and not surprisingly everyone was extremely nice. It was a great evening for me. I had an opportunity to listen to one of the long-time band members David Burwen. Burwen’s talk was titled “The Path Less Traveled” about his circuitous route to the Band, lessons learned from angel investing, and his interest in traveling and social entrepreneurship. Burwen is a respected Angel in the valley and his story was inspirational not only in terms of his success stories in business. His philanthropic activities (such as adopting a village in Nepal and running a school there) touched my heart.
At the end of the talk, Burwen put up a quote that is sums up a great strategy for young professionals
“When deciding among opportunities, choose the most difficult path”
- Buddhist quote
Seems counter-intuitive at first. But think about it. When you are young, you have all the energy in the world. Wouldn’t you want to put it work and extract the maximum out of yourself and “become” something? Everyone knows that experience matters and the experience that you get with the difficult path will make you better than a person who has taken the initial few years nice and easy.
Enjoy the Friday!
Thanks to David Burwen for making my evening extra special.
Most people think that they will be happy if they are successful (in their own terms) but Carnegie explains beautifully that happiness comes from wanting what you aleady have. In fact, you can be happy right now with what you have. Doesn’t mean that you should not aspire for more but the logic of equating happiness to success is flawed a bit.
“Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get”
I read between 50-80 books every year. Add another 100 books that I start reading but won’t complete reading it – just because the book runs out of steam by the time I reach the middle of the book. Rarely does a book come across that I want to read, re-read and re-read again. Rarely does a book comes across that is simple and profound. Rarely does a book come across that will remind me of the Niagara Factor.
I met with Dr. Posner recently and heard that their (Jim and Barry) new book was out and I had no option but to rush to the bookstore right after that meeting. I think I DID a good thing by doing that. The book is called “A Leader’s Legacy” and it is a fascinating read.
I won’t reveal much from the book but if the following snippets peek your interest, then you know what is in store
1. Success in leadership is not measured only in numbers. Being a leader brings with it a responsibility to do something of significance that makes families, communities, work organizations, nations, the environment, and the world better places than they are today. Not all things can be quantified [from Leaders serve and sacrifice]
2. Our teachers continue to teach us as we go on to tell their stories [from The Best Leaders Are Teachers]
3. The question for each of us, then, is not Do I matter? but How do I matter? [from You Are The Most Important Leader In Your Organization]
4. There are very few things in life that we can claim to have accomplished without the help of others. In leadership, nothing that we achieve is singular. Nothing. [from No One Likes To Be An Assumption]
You know I can go on and on. I am sure this will be on my desk for some time to come. If you are a leader or want to be one, don’t miss this one.
Before I started my first company in 2000, I was involved in implementing customer relationship management solutions for large enterprises in United States and Europe. I had an opportunity to watch people support their customers up close and personal. A big problem with support is that customers don’t tell everything that they have done that leads up to the current problem. If you want an analogy, think that the customer is only explaining the last 15 minutes or the climax. The support person is now in a suspense and wants to know what really led to the climax. Sometimes it would take more than thirty minutes for the support personnel to get to the bottom of the issue. Things become simple when the support person CAN access the user’s computer remotely and see what exactly is happening. The life of support people became simple once they had access to tools that would help them remotely access their customer’s computer.
Think about it – this problem is not restricted only to support centers. There is need for these kinds of tools for the common man too. You want to help your non-geek friends, parents or anyone who is not very familiar with all the nuances of hardware and software, a simple remote access software is valuable.
So I was really excited when I came across CrossLoop which exactly does what I mentioned above. This was fascinating for me as it is also demonstrates the power of Open Source (I was one of the co-founders of CIGNEX, a leader in open source content management solutions) Crossloop builds on an open source software called TightVNC. TightVNC is great but you need to be at least a part-geek, part-human to use that software. Crossloop has stripped the “geek requirements” and has made it extremely simple to use and it is available for free.
To see how simple it is to use, please see the section – how it works. It is the shortest “How it works” section I have seen
After installing CrossLoop, you will see a welcome screen with two tabs. Select the Join tab if you would like to connect and control a friend’s PC. Select the Host tab if you would like to temporarily share access to your PC.
It is one of those ideas where after you see it, you will think “I wonder why anyone did not come up with this before” It sounds too obvious. I am always interested in getting to know the roots of a company because most of the time it is extremely interesting.
1) Think eBay – started when Pierre Omidyar wanted to help his girl-friend with Pez dispenser collection
2) Think Netflix - started when Reed Hastings was REALLY tired of paying late fees for video rental stores.
Now, here is the story behind Crossloop
CrossLoop came about when Tom Rolander’s father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He needed a VERY simple and easy piece of technology that enabled him to reach into his parents PC over the Internet and drive various applications like photo slide shows to help his father with his memory, free communication tools powered with webcams like Skype to communicate visually and visit with him regularly. This would then also empower the entire family to always be ‘in front’ of the father even though all were geographically many miles away. Hence with CrossLoop, there is no learning curve or knowledge of technology required. With one click – one can securely and privately share screens!
Since this is closely related to several areas of my interests – open source, startups and customer support I went deeper and asked a few more questions. Here are the responses from Mrinal Desai, who wears many hats over there including that of Business Development.
RS: Mrinal, Crossloop looks great and the story of its founding is fascinating and heart-warming. First, I want to wish the very best for Tom’s Dad. Now, coming back to the business of Crossloop, what makes this a viable business? The features that you offer will be sufficient for 95% of the market. Out of the remaining 5%, how many do you think will pay and for what features?
MD:Rajesh, one of CrossLoop’s core values is relationships – relationship was its genesis and we want to see all our users being empowered similarly. We are here to empower our users and in order to do so, we are geared to listening and interacting with them. We love people.
Having said that and since we do not know it all, we are hoping to get a lot of feedback from our users over time in what brings success and smiles for them. We call this collateral success internally – if we make our users successful, we believe we can grow to continuously support and bring them things they care about. We intend to build features that our users value and want to pay for it. What and how much is too early to tell for such a young company – if your readers have thoughts or suggestions, they can contact me directly at mrinald@crossloop.com
RS: If Crossloop is wildly successful, what kind of company would it be?
MD: I believe we are already very successful Rajesh since we first define success as having fun in what we do and making a difference in people’s lives. We are emailed some of these stories and some are on sites like Digg, for example. We are living it now and we are enjoying the journey. CrossLoop, as a company, is focused on people – employees and users – and having fun at what we do with a lot of passion.
RS: What are the biggest risks for your business as you see them?
MD: Our biggest challenge today is creating awareness and disclosing this “best kept secret” to users worldwide – in developed countries as well as villages and remote towns to enable them to harness the Internet. One of our favorite quotes is “Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you will feed him for life.” We want to empower millions to teach millions how to make the most of the Internet!
RS: Last question – about yourself. With this venture, you have demonstrated the power of investing in long-term relationships. Can you please comment on that?
MD: Sure – I met Lee Lorenzen, our key investor and a serial entrepreneur, in about 2000 when he was a guest speaker at one of my classes in B-School at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. He said a lot then that echoed with my personal core values and I knew there and then that I was going to make an effort to make him my mentor – my first from the “real world”. I was fortunate that Lee invested time in me as well over time and now 6 years later, here we are working on something very exciting as a team. Neither knew this was going to happen.
There is nothing more enriching than a trusted relationship for life – personally, professionally and with customers! Suddenly, the journey is so engaging and you are “busy being born” – a good destination is guaranteed!
Recently my friend Phil Gerbyshak interviewed me on various topics including why I blog and the lessons I have learnt. It is published today on his blog. Here is the link: Make It Great – Beyond Code: You could win a free book!
At the end of the interview, you have an opportunity to share your story and/or a lesson that you want to share with others. The five stories that touch Phil’s heart will win a free copies of my autographed book “Beyond Code”
So I was really excited when I came across 
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