Insecurity Work

Re-Posted from my blog Business CoFounder

Insecurity work

I read a very interesting post the other day by Tony Schwartz, founder of the Energy Project, called ‘Take back your life in seven Simple Steps.’ First of all, let me say that the steps look simple, but implementing them is anything but simple.
The part that stood out to me was the description of what he called ‘Insecurity Work.’ Insecurity work is the ‘check in’ work we do everything every day - work that gives us an instant sense of progress, but does not contribute to the achievement of our goals. Examples:

 - Check email - wow, 7 new messages. I must be important!

 - Check Klout score - man, I am super influential

 - Check Google Analytics - wow, 30% increase in day over day hits on my blog

This work needs to get done. But it need not interrupt us all the time. The video below has some excellent tips by Scott Belsky, the creator of the term, and author of ‘Making Ideas Happen.’ Simply be aware of when you are doing it, compartmentalize it, and batch it so that you are doing all this work together, in a 30-minute time when your energy is too low to do other, more productive work.
Sounds simple - but isn’t. It is much easier to do work that provides instant gratification, and much harder to put it off. But being aware of when it happens, and working slowly in the direction of changing things is a start.

I am personally working on this with the use of tools such as StayFocusd and LeechBlock that automatically block, or limit activities such as Facebook, personal email checks etc. So wish me luck!

Relentless resourcefulness: the What, Why and How

 Reposted from my new Blog, The Business Co-Founder

The most important quality of an Entrepreneur is relentless resourcefulness; even Paul Graham agrees. In this post, I will cover
1. What is relentless resourcefulness?
2. Why is it important?
3. How do you build it?
So let’s start.

What is relentless resourcefulness?
The dictionary defines resourceful as ‘Able to act effectively or imaginatively, especially in difficult situations.’ Relentless resourcefulness is simply resourcefulness + perseverance - or applying resourcefulness continuously, without giving up.

Why is it important for Entrepreneurs?
In startups, you will continuously come across situations that pose novel, difficult problems, for which there is no easy, obvious solution, and which force most people to give up. Only if you are relentlessly resourceful will you overcome these challenges, and not give up. This might take various forms e.g., your funding round did not come through - how do you become creative and bootstrap for another three months? OR your customer development interviews showed that your target market has no need for your product - how and where do you pivot?

How do you build it?
This Life Hacker article gave me the following equation, that makes complete sense
Resourcefulness = Necessity + Creativity + Persistence
So the only way to build resourcefulness is to build each of the constituent qualities.

Necessity
Though not a quality, necessity signifies that you are most resourceful when you need to. This is why people often tell Entrepreneurs to quit their job; when you have no fallback, you become more resourceful.

Creativity
You might not consider yourself very creative, but there is a big difference in the different kinds of creativity. As a blog post I wrote a while ago, Conceptual Creativity is what you need to be successful in Business. There are several interesting books you can read on this topic (list below). But here are my favorite tactics:

• Question everything - try to look at the underlying assumptions and see what happens if you reverse them
• Look for outliers and anomalies
• When generating ideas, start with one idea - any idea, no matter how stupid. That gets your mind going
• Think of ideas alone before and group sessions - group sessions encourage group think
• Have fun and believe that you are creative

Persistence
While there are several ways to be persistent (and tons of articles and Quora Answers on persistence/perseverance), I believe in one way more than any other way: Invest in the process, not the Outcome. No matter how much we believe in our qualities, our ability to change the world, the truth of the matter is that several circumstances are outside our control. ‘Luck’ plays a part - a huge part - in the success or failure of any endeavor. Market dynamics change, unforeseen things happen. The idea is the be emotionally tied to the process, and not the outcome. That way, you will not give up when you are faced with obstacles, because you did the best you could, and be truly, persistently, persistence


Further Reading: Creativity
The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators
Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity
The Riddle: Where Ideas Come From and How to Have Better Ones
Further Reading: Persistence
Are You Ready to Succeed? Unconventional Strategies to Achieving Personal Mastery in Business and Life

5 ways to listen better - Julian Treasure

Here are the 5 ways?

1. Three minutes of silence a day

2. Mixer -  how many channels of sounds can I hear in a noisy place

3. Savoring -  enjoy mundane sounds your dryer, the fan of your computer

4. Listening positions-  You can listen in different ways - active vs. passive, reductive vs. expansive, empathetic vs. critical

5. RASA (i.e., juice in Sanskrit) - Receive (pay attention to the other person), Appreciate (via little sounds), Summarize, Ask

Lessons I learned in Business School

I recently read a blog post by Rob Go of Next View Ventures called My Top 3 Lessons learned in Business School. The post inspired me to reflect and write about my own top 3 B-School lessons.

Lesson 1: What Strategy is

Before Business school, strategy was this buzzword that I saw used around me all the time. The phrase "What's your strategy for getting the Milk from the fridge?" might be an exaggeration, but not a big exaggeration. At Kellogg, I learned a lot of tools that help understand industries dynamics and judge whether a firm strategy would be successful or not. Most of all, it helped me get a simplified, clear cut definition of strategy. Strategy, according to me, has 3 steps:

1. Decide what you will stand out for? What will you differentiate in?

2. Validate that customers value your point of differentiation

3. Allocate resources to achieving the point of differentiation

Let's take an example. Zappos - known for customer service, not shoes. So their resource allocation is in culture and in giving people in the call centers leeway to make customers very happy. Do they have the lowest prices always? Not quite - if you look hard enough, you can find the same shoe for cheaper elsewhere. But while buying something like a shoe, which you can't make a decision on until you wear it, would you rather find the cheapest upfront price, or rely on a retailer like Zappos, that will take your shoes back, no questions asked?

Another example is Apple - known for innovation and design, not low cost and operational efficiency. They do happen to have a very efficient supply chain, but key decisions are not made with Supply Chain being the determining factor. Case in point - when Steve Jobs decided to make iMacs of different colors, it created havoc for their supply chain. What if you wanted your iMac in pink, and the store had it only in blue? Now the store had to carry multiple colors per iMac. But it didn't matter - Steve realized that your computer was becoming a fashion statement; having colors was more important than supply chain efficiency.

Lesson 2: The "Soft stuff" can be learned

Before Business School , my vision of an ideal leader was charismatic, outgoing, and visionary. Through case studies, class exercises and observing speakers and my classmates, I realized that the "soft stuff" can be learned. This includes leadership, teamwork, negotiation, influencing others etc.

The fact of the matter is that the soft stuff was the most valuable part of Business School. I began to understand what were my leaderships strengths and weaknesses, what company culture actually meant, and how simple things such as where you sit in a room mattered. 

A simple story - one of the first classes we had in Business School was called Leadership in Organizations. Shortly after this class ended, I went to compete in the MIT Sloan Sales Competition. My first case was individual - selling investment services to a rich individual. I prepared hard, established rapport, listened to the client etc., but I think the one thing I did mattered more than anything was choosing where to sit. You see, when you sit on the opposite sides of the table from each other, its like you are having a face-off. If you sit on the same side of the table, it's like you are solving a problem jointly. In order to be able to sit on the same side, I actually made sure that the proposal I was presenting was not printed. Instead I had to drag my chair over on to the same side, sit next to the person who I was selling to, and walk him through the proposal on the laptop. The result - 2nd place in that round :)

That was one example. Another major leadership lesson was on leadership styles. We all think that we have one leadership style, but the fact is that we all have a combination of multiple leadership styles inherent within us, and we can change how much of each we use depending on the situation. 

Lesson 3: Mindset, not skill-set

This was not a lesson per se, but a revelation. People often ask me what skills I picked up during my MBA that is useful in my consulting job, in startups etc. I can hardly point to one or two skills that are super crucial; instead, it is more of a change in mindset; in how I analyze any issue, business or otherwise. Things such as approaching problems with a hypothesis, quickly figuring out how the hypothesis can be proven or disproven, digging deep into understanding the root cause of most issues, and being able to take a much broader view of the different aspects of the issue.

If this sounds vague, it probably is; I do feel that there has been a marked change in the way I think about things.

The ROI

Now let me tack on to the post and answer this very important question that I get asked all the time - what is the ROI of an MBA? Is it worth the financial trouble? Is there a ROI analysis that shows that?

If you take on a job that pays more than your pre-MBA job, and stick there for a while, you will have a clear justification; especially if you intended to just stick in your old job if you did not go to school. If you have a zig-zag career path - which is the norm, not the exception - you might never be able to clearly explain with an excel model how your career path would have been different. What if you had quit your job and started a company which sold for a billion dollars? There are so many options, and too much variability.

But if you come out a changed person, and think and act differently - now we're talking. That might be more than worth the financial trouble. Of course, the tons of fun and the number of friendships you build during Business School helps :) I had an amazing time at Kellogg, and would not give up the experience for anything.

Happiness: Flow

I recently started reading a pretty famous book called Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Even within the first 30 pages or so, the book has been very thought provoking, especially on one of the most complex topics in human psyche: happiness. Specifically, the book has made me think of the link between happiness and money.

Ever since I have been a student money has been tight - we have skimped on buying gadgets, going on more vacations, fancy dinners, clothes, gifts etc. But to be honest, I do not miss things as much. Even within these uses of discretionary money, there are certain things that bring more joy to me than others. Most of them being experiences; a vacation which allows me to relax and rejuvenate, a massage that fixes my back, a memorable dinner. 'Things' on the other hand bring much less joy - unless of course, the thing is a book, which is a different category altogether.

While money has been tight, learning and friends have been plentiful. Kellogg has just been an awesome place to meet new people, make friends and acquaintances, and at the same time, learn a lot from both peers and professors. I find it hard to find anything else that could replicate that experience.

So what will happen when I do go back to work? I definitely have a list of gadgets I want to buy - a kindle, an iPad , Apple/Google TV, a larger television. I am sure they will bring some element of happiness. But hopefully, I will keep this learning in mind and instead spend on other items: like on vacations, and on building a large savings balance so that I can at some point afford to start my own business. Hopefully I will not forget the lessons of the cash-crunch of student life.

Almost a month at McKinsey

It's almost been a month since I started at McKinsey as a Summer Associate. I thought this was an appropriate time to reflect (by blogging, of course). There have been quite a few surprises for me on joining the firm. But first, let's start at the items that went as expected:

1. My colleagues are very talented, motivated and overall outstanding individuals. Which is expected, given how much thought goes into evaluating each person in the hiring process. As someone suggested 'There are no hiring mistakes here.'

2. It's been fun! My summer class is a lot of fun, and we have a lot of get-togethers in NYC.


But then were were some surprises:

1. It is amazing to see how much thought goes into every consultant's development. A major reason reasons why consultants do tend to do a large variety of projects early on is to get a vast variety of experiences and build up one's consulting toolkit.projects assigned to me.

2. Contrary to popular opinion, most new hires are not necessarily MBAs. McKinsey hires from other masters and PhD programs, as well as hires several experienced people from the industry. There are a surprisingly high number of MDs in the firm, which is something I did not expect at all.

3. Working at McKinsey (or any top consulting firm) would give you a great brand on your resume and open several doors. But as several people have told me, its wrong to assume that it is a passport to any job you might want. In fact, you might get pigeonholed into strategy roles, and glamorous as that may seem, for several sectors, that is just a limited set of opportunities. It is often not easy to just move over the general management roles.

4. While McKinsey might help you learn several great skills, one thing will still be missing: you wouldn't learn how to manage 'normal' people. The theory behind this is that most people at the firm are very driven, and you do not have to motivate them to work hard and produce top quality results. This will not be true in most industry roles, hence that is something one should build through other experiences.

5. Management consulting is not just strategy consulting; in fact, the 'classic strategy projects' form a small part of revenue of most consulting firms. Instead there is a huge mix of projects, including sales and marketing, operations, innovation, growth, new market entry, cost-cutting etc.

6. As I meet different partners and directors, I notice the various qualities that might have helped them reach that position. And they all seem to be very different from each other; some are outgoing, friendly people who thrive on building relationships. Others are just pure intellect; well respect for their knowledge and thought process.


It's hard to believe that a month has already passed. Another six weeks to go, and I will be done - and back to Kellogg! What happens after that? Back at McKinsey, or go some other route? That still remains to be seen.....