Yearly Archives: 2019

Front End

I was recently roped in as a volunteer to be in charge of a Registrations Desk at an event in which close to 700 people were expected to attend. Being in the organizing team since the very beginning, I was supposed to also take care of the help-desk part at registrations because we had anticipated some anomalies and grievances. To make it interesting, we had kept a goodie box in which there were a number of small items like a customized with name keychain, a small plastic bag, a phone popper, etc. I also had the same items as loose in case some of the attendees who hadn’t registered, showed up at last moment.

Majority of the folks had registered in advance and they got their registrations verification done easily. They received customized goodie boxes and moved on. But to make it more interesting, we also decided to hand over food & drinks coupons to everyone when they came for registrations. Now, somehow the number of coupons I had weren’t enough to cater to 700 folks. To make it furthermore interesting, the event was a 2-day affair and there were different kinds of food coupons: Day 1 Lunch, Day 1 Dinner, Day 1 Drinks (soft), Day 1 Drinks (Liquor), Day 2 Lunch, Day 2 Hi-Tea. And to top everything up, not all had registered for both the days and even the Day 1 dinner. I had to keep referring to an excel sheet and then hand over loose items/goodies which also got over soon. Then there were also some issues with wrong food coupons given to wrong folks. Later, some people came back as their customized goodies had names of someone else.

All in all, despite the event being a major success and nobody getting hurt, the task of handling so many registrations was a major challenge. I had the support of various other volunteers who didn’t break a sweat and we eventually got through but at times, the exercise became a headache for everyone. For some, it would have surely ruined the experience of the event because it was the first thing they encountered. Hopefully, they also realized that we had all just volunteered and nobody had any bad intentions but just the circumstances.

No soup for you
I didn’t have the liberty of becoming the Soup-Nazi to do crowd-control either.

I also recently attended a training called ‘Design Thinking’. The crux of the training is to develop a solution or a service by thinking about the end user in mind. This might sound very easy but it takes a painstaking number of hours to come up with possible permutations and combinations of what end-user will go through and get satisfaction.

Some learnings from all of the above:

Design Thinking is a great concept to have when you have to act in a public facing job. We all know and have faced the humiliation at Bank, Transport Offices, Post Offices and other places in which we have to line up and wait for our turn, sometimes in unbearable conditions, facing atrocious services. Only if, the person who is in charge of designing this can think of themselves as the end user, the process would improve. That is the reason great companies are great because they think of their products/services in the hands of the users and how they are going to perceive it.

Whenever you have to make something for someone, not only consider what you want to deliver, also think about how the user is going to take it. Front-End of every product and every service can make or break an experience.

Featured Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

So I recently watched: Avengers Endgame

Goosebumps!

Rarely it happens that I am this excited to watch a movie. But the hype was spilling over the brim and the wait had become way too much longer. I watched the movie on Tuesday after it had already earned billions of dollars at the BO. And then when you hear, the once dreaded and termed forgettable, Avengers Theme Music… BOOM!

I have in fact watched only 16 of 22 movies (73%) of all the MCU movies. But I have followed them with much more excitement since last 2-3 years. That is also due to the utter disappointment caused by DCEU even if Wonder Woman and Shazam were good. But MCU movies have made a place of their own in terms of sheer entertainment value they have provided. The cameos by Stan the man Lee to top them all.

There have been several very popular videos on how Avengers (or MCU movies) are not much memorable, their video doesn’t have any definite color grading which makes them like a TV movie, or not much emotional connect, or not having much depth and so on. But nobody would have anticipated as to what 22 MCU movies over a period of 12 years would culminate to. Amazing!

This sort of fest-like-hype has not really happened for any movie I know of. When probably the only ‘Universe’ kind of movie franchise, Star Wars had its Episode 1 getting released in the late 90s, the Internet hadn’t flourished that much. So the younger generation (worldwide) had not experienced the hype which generates nowadays due to the bombardment of information from all directions.

I am not going to review the movie because my excitement will overrule my judgement. But I liked it very much. It has everything one could ask for, and more. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of Endgame. I might watch it again in IMAX.

Bookstores of Bangalore

Did I tell you, I always wanted to own a Stationary Shop which also sold books?

I have always wanted to read more and more books. But like everyone else, I end up reading less and less. There are some phases when I do read 2-3 books in very less time. But those times come like Halley’s Comet if people still remember that thing. Not digressing, this post is about book stores. It is not an exhaustive post about Bangalore’s Book Stores but just a few pictures of the bookstores I have been to.

Disclaimer: I own a Kindle since last few years. And that has rather helped me read more. But still, there is a charm in real printed books and book shops. Whenever I get a chance, I do visit book stores and get a feel of reality (and feel intellectual). Also, I am a keen observer of Book Covers. I don’t usually buy books but I always feel the guilt that I should.

So last weekend, I was roaming around on Church Street, Bengaluru. As many folks would know, it is famous for the Blossoms Book Store. I found another one very next to it called The Bookworm. Very close by, on MG Road, there is Higginbothams’ too. Do visit.

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So as they say, when you desire something, you do get signs. So, I found this today. Please watch this. This post was mostly written to share this video.

Watch your Watch

Let’s start with my self. If I don’t reach somewhere I am needed or I want to be on time or at least 5 minutes before, my internal system go for a toss. Unless it is totally out of my control like a traffic jam happening 5 KMs ahead, I don’t get late. In fact, the trick is very simple: Start a bit early and respect the clock.

However, many people around me don’t think the way I do. I have tried in all possible ways to make them understand how one should respect other’s time, mostly in vain. So, time and again, I give up and provide them a bit of leeway and act leniently to let it be, only adding to my own grievances. I am still constantly looking for a way to convince others to watch the watch.

Seth Godin wrote something brilliant about respecting time in his blog recently. That if one usually gets late and misses some opportunity, they tend to blame the punctual party. But if one misses a bus, or a train or things which usually start on time, they blame themselves.


You might notice that things that leave on time (commuter trains, airplanes, live TV shows etc) almost never have a crowd of people showing up five or ten minutes late cursing out the system. For those things, the things that are known to leave on time, they manage to show up. That’s because their good intentions are not welcome here.

Seth Godin

I will try to continue to be the things that start and end on time. I’ve got my conviction.

Featured Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Humbleness isn’t Hard

Millennials in India must be familiar with Roadies, the MTV Reality Show in which one has to go through a brutal and rigorous interview process to enter the contest. Needless to say, the show isn’t in sync with my point of view.

I recently came across a Twitter thread by someone who faced a brutal interview in which the interviewer hurled abuses and tried to pressurize the candidate just to test the ability of tolerance and keeping cool.

The candidate eventually got the offer but she declined it and stated her arguments via some tweets that to test someone is fine but to grill someone just to see how they perform is not the best way.

We often hear about the grueling interview processes in which the interviewer tries various techniques to confuse or intimidate or even abuse the interviewer, just to test them. Rarely, that is part of the job (like in Hospitality industry where the clients can really take all their life’s frustrations out on the bellboy who did a minor mistake). But most jobs don’t require that. Even the most popular public facing jobs which deal with people from all walks of life interacting with the employees (like banks or transport department) don’t necessitate regular humiliation.

We need to get rid of this misconception that the interviewee needs to be very strict or abusive. I was given a chance recently to Interview College Grads as well as people of experience of a decade. Although my job isn’t public facing, however, there can be pressures which can end your days badly. I feel that the way to judge a person’s ability to handle pressure cannot be tested in an hour’s interview and that can be seen only over a period of time. In fact, I can prepare myself to be humiliated during an interview and still feel alright. Although, I might not be able to deal with pressure situations for a longer duration of time, say a couple of months because everyone will have a breaking point.

We can still stay humble and welcoming while dealing with new people or those who are seeking something from us. It isn’t that hard.

Needless to say, same goes for my opinion about ragging in educational institutes. What are we trying to prove?

Bringing out the Wild Animal in You

Have you ever seen any animal get really very happy or really sad or really angry? Maybe occasionally your pets do display such emotions but not for long, right? Humans, on the other hand, cling on to joy or sadness for a longer time. Our emotions have more inertia and they sustain for a while.

Is it possible for us to learn from the wild animals to be more stoic? Is it possible for us to celebrate but in moderation, to feel depressed but move on, to get angry but forgiving?

I believe, if we can learn to contain ourselves and not hold on to the feelings as if they’re extremely precious, we can do much better. For that to happen, we must consider sadness and joy equal. I think that’s possible, isn’t it?

The Curse of Knowledge

In 1990, there was an experiment done in Stanford University by Dr. Elizabeth Newton for her Ph.D. In the experiment, she assigned 2 groups of people with 2 roles: Tappers & Listeners. (Hat tip to Made to Stick)

Tappers received a list of well-known songs and were asked to pick a song and tap out the rhythm to a listener by knocking on a table. The listener’s job was to guess the song, based on the rhythm being tapped.

Out of 120 times the songs were tapped, only 3 times the listeners got it right. Tappers had predicted in the beginning that at least 50% guesses would be correct.

What actually happens here is that, when I am tapping, the song is playing in my head. Happy-birthday-to-you. But it is not being played in your heads. As a listener, you don’t have the knowledge which I already have i.e. the rhythm of the song. When I tap, I assume that you should be able to guess easily, but that doesn’t really happen.

This, my friends, is called “The Curse of Knowledge”. It happens when having prior knowledge prohibits us from delivering the message across to the other party in a manner in which is not fully understood. Through my speech, I will attempt to indulge you in the practice of trying to make your message clearer and understandable.

Most often we mistake communication as a one-sided activity. We assume that if we have done our part of imparting the knowledge, the receiving party has understood everything. For example, when an engineer tries to explain some simple technology to a layman. We have all been through there, haven’t we? Have you ever tried to make your parents understand something you find very easy? Say using Instagram or installing Dropbox or even sending voice note on WhatsApp? Wasn’t there a struggle?

Lesson 1 of Communication, therefore, is when you communicate, get to the level of the person/audience you are speaking to.

Aaron Beverly, the 1st Runner Up of World Championship of Public Speaking 2016, had a 57-word title. 57-word title! And when he came up on the stage, all he said was “Just because you say more, it doesn’t mean that people will remember what you said.” It simply means that when we are giving some information to others, giving a lot of information won’t do any good. A 1000 word speech might not make the same impact as a 100-word speech. What you speak counts, not the amount you speak.

Lesson 2 of Communication, therefore, is when you communicate, don’t assume that more information means more understanding.

I will share a very small story to illustrate Lesson 3.

When World War 2 was towards its fag end around mid-1945, after victory in Europe, the Allied leaders Truman, Churchill, Stalin, and Chiang Kai-Shek called for Japan’s unconditional surrender. When Japanese Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki was asked by reporters about the surrender, he uttered a single word, “Mokusatsu.”  Depending on context, mokusatsu has several meanings. Prime minister meant “No comment.” But, the meaning which was translated back to the Allies was “Not worthy of comment”. We all know what happened next.

Lesson 3 of Communication, therefore, is when you communicate, try to pay attention to the context.

In business, in work, in a relationship, we all suffer from the curse of knowledge. We often communicate in a way, which makes our message either diluted or exaggerated. We suffer from the knowledge imbalance like the Tappers and Listener.

Whenever next time you are talking to someone, or giving a presentation, or giving a speech in a Toastmasters Club, try to not get into the trap of ‘The Curse of Knowledge’. Rather, try to avoid it by remembering these 3 lessons of Communication which I have shared today.

One, understand your audience.

Two, don’t assume things.

Three, Context matters.

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The above was my speech at Toastmasters Club Meeting on Jan 10, 2019. It went pretty well.