early education

Came across this NY Times article – Study Rethinks Importance of Kindergarten Teachers. Quotes from it:-

Students who had learned much more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college than students with otherwise similar backgrounds. Students who learned more were also less likely to become single parents. As adults, they were more likely to be saving for retirement. Perhaps most striking, they were earning more.

Good early education can impart skills that last a lifetime — patience, discipline, manners, perseverance.

Some teachers are highly effective. Some are not. And the differences can affect students for years to come.

My daughter is in preschool now. My thought was – there are a lot of under advantaged children who never go to kindergarten, so are they losing out even before they start school?

I see our community reach effort which is to go to a school and distribute notebooks – while doing anything is better than doing nothing, what could make more real impact on improving the level of education? I am interested to learn what is going on in education – like Teach for India.

what motivates us

Once upon a time when there was a drumbeat about motivating employees, I used to be sick of the term motivation. But of late, I was getting interested in motivation. Maybe it is a sign of me getting absorbed into The Matrix, but I think I am interested in it to satisfy my curiosity about what motivates certain people and keeps them going. I started reading Dan Pink’s Drive: Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us just before returning from onsite – I had to return it at library, will try to finish it some time. Couple of days back I saw two related Motivational Theories in a comment in a HR blog.


Theory X and Theory Y – X says that employees are inherently lazy and managers should monitor/control work. Y states that employees maybe self motivated, ambitious and can exercise self-control. It is interesting to see how many managers think theory X is correct vs. theory Y. As usual, most might fall between both.

Two Factor Theory – states that there are two sets of factors – one of which gives job satisfaction (challenge, recognition, responsibility) and other is hygiene (job, security, salary) lack of which can lead to job dissatisfaction. One interesting thing there for me is, it says improvement in hygiene doesn’t lead to increasing job satisfaction, but only reduces job dissatisfaction – that the factors act independently. Basically that means we should address hygiene and then move on to address other set of factors.

The book, Drive, so far said two things that were interesting:- one is that you need not work up through the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (pyramid with basic human need at bottom to self realization/actualization at top), but you can satisfy multiple needs simultaneously (like a struggling actor giving quality performance). Second is that carrot/stick works to an extent beyond which only autonomy, mastery of work and purpose drives people.

Lastly – another interesting thing was Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) – let people have their way with where/when/how they work, but it only matters whether the intended result was achieved.

Creating a culture in a large organization would be tough (especially with things like ROWE), but it will be interesting to understand what motivates different people and work on creating the best environment possible for them.

advices

‘Clutch is your friend’ – for an amateur stick shift driver (first week of driving to office), that is a good advice. Whenever in doubt, press the clutch – comes to use for me often, gives me a moment to think which gear to use and what to do.

Another good advice was to ‘just take the car and drive, don’t think it will take a month of observation before you start’ – if you are by someone’s side, you will always be wondering how they manage to drive without getting hit or hitting someone, but if you are in that seat, you will figure it out. Of course it is only after some driving classes and 5+ years of driving automatic gear, but I wouldn’t have ventured out so soon if it weren’t for that advice.

Third advice was a story that someone thought everybody was driving like they were mad and drunk, so he also drove like mad and drunk and it all worked out at the end. I don’t intend to drive like mad or drunk, but it helped to figure out that expect no courtesy and if you are too courteous, you will be late to office.

I remember some people solely because of some of these nuggets. Like a friend who said only one thing after our daughter was born – he said ‘remember always that you are not the first parents in this world and your case is probably not going to be unique’. Came to use in numerous situations when we panic for silliest of reasons or get stressed out due to lack of sleep..

winning

For me, world cup is dead – my two teams (England because of Rooney/Gerrard and Argentina because of Tevez) are out of it. I have been thinking about management lessons in football – for some time now, especially with coaches like Arsene Wenger and Alex Ferguson – on why they are able to maintain quality and control for so long (apart from the fact that they are managing rich clubs). Anyway here is some pseudo psychological pseudo management theory in no particular sequence – in the lines of Tom Peters et al (just finished The Little Big Things by Tom Peters) –

1.   Team that wants the ball more, goes after it, chases it, intercepts rather than waiting for it – wins. From my frustration of England giving away ball and then passively running after it.

2.   There is some sense of purpose, larger goal (defending honor as best team, underdogs on a run, pride / national glory, utter loyalty to boss, reputation as a fighter, history etc) behind winning teams. Irony is that you need to create a larger goal/story, but if you manufacture one you automatically fail. You need to believe in the story, live it and don’t even realize that you are creating the story. England did not have one and Argentina had one, but now it seems hollow.

3.   There is extra confidence, extra ability, and creativity in a team that is winning. Winning follows more winning.

4.   Winning manager is defending his team every step of the way – not barking at them. I don’t understand why Capello should continue.

5.   Respect should be there – whether that is because of ability or an iron hand will make the difference. If there is no respect, they are doomed anyway.

6.   When any one player starts to think it is okay to break rules, chaos starts. Recovery from that is difficult, often leads to the player leaving the team, which is best. Covering up problems never works (like when a player openly criticizes tactics and later says he shouldn’t have – he is clearly feeling it to the extent of opening up in public, that means something is badly broken already). Ferguson is master in this – he could let go of Beckham, Nistelrooy, Ronaldo and Tevez and still win Premier League – it takes tremendous belief in his own principles to make such a decision to let go of your star player to save the team.

7.   A player who looks frustrated game after game shows a failing manager – he couldn’t address the problem or doesn’t know/didn’t see/ignoring/trivializing. Again with Capello and Rooney in mind.

8.   Be insanely and openly passionate and principled. Your sense of purpose, ownership, commitment, desire rubs off on team.

9.   Can you win with workman-like team with a practical mentality towards winning or with one that has quality and is driven/motivated due to some higher goal? Remains to be seen with Holland. 

lessons from worldcup

For me, world cup is dead – my two teams (England because of Rooney/Gerrard and Argentina because of Tevez) are out of it. I have been thinking about management lessons in football – for some time now, especially with coaches like Arsene Wenger and Alex Ferguson – on why they are able to maintain quality and control for so long (apart from the fact that they are managing rich clubs). Anyway here is some pseudo psychological pseudo management theory in no particular sequence – in the lines of Tom Peters et al (just finished The Little Big Things by Tom Peters) –

1.   Team that wants the ball more, goes after it, chases it, intercepts rather than waiting for it – wins. From my frustration of England giving away ball and then passively running after it.

2.   There is some sense of purpose, larger goal (defending honor as best team, underdogs on a run, pride / national glory, utter loyalty to boss, reputation as a fighter, history etc) behind winning teams. Irony is that you need to create a larger goal/story, but if you manufacture one you automatically fail. You need to believe in the story, live it and don’t even realize that you are creating the story. England did not have one and Argentina had one, but now it seems hollow.

3.   There is extra confidence, extra ability, and creativity in a team that is winning. Winning follows more winning.

4.   Winning manager is defending his team every step of the way – not barking at them. I don’t understand why Capello should continue.

5.   Respect should be there – whether that is because of ability or an iron hand will make the difference. If there is no respect, they are doomed anyway.

6.   When any one player starts to think it is okay to break rules, chaos starts. Recovery from that is difficult, often leads to the player leaving the team, which is best. Covering up problems never works (like when a player openly criticizes tactics and later says he shouldn’t have – he is clearly feeling it to the extent of opening up in public, that means something is badly broken already). Ferguson is master in this – he could let go of Beckham, Nistelrooy, Ronaldo and Tevez and still win Premier League – it takes tremendous belief in his own principles to make such a decision to let go of your star player to save the team.

7.   A player who looks frustrated game after game shows a failing manager – he couldn’t address the problem or doesn’t know/didn’t see/ignoring/trivializing. Again with Capello and Rooney in mind.

8.   Be insanely and openly passionate and principled. Your sense of purpose, ownership, commitment, desire rubs off on team.

9.   Can you win with workman-like team with a practical mentality towards winning or with one that has quality and is driven/motivated due to some higher goal? Remains to be seen with Holland. 

design an app like Turbo Tax

TurboTax Design FAIL « Scott Berkun 

I was thinking about exactly Turbo Tax example today evening and saw this post. Déjà Vu. We get software requirement for complex order processing applications saying "build me an app which is as easy as Turbo Tax". That application, built as easy as Turbo Tax, to do the processing in sequential steps with hints/questions and directions might work for simplest cases, but when it starts deviating from the normal happy path is when things will start getting complex. Slowly such an easy application will start getting complicated with multiple enhancements to handle more and more complex functions to the point it will start deteriorating. After a while it will go downhill when the original users who used it for the happy path will find it unbearably complex.

The trick is to remember why it was built in the first place and keep that balance through the numerous enhancement cycles. The face should still be recognizable through numerous nose jobs.

We used Turbo Tax this time around, had a tough time transferring tax credits from a previous year into this year, and had to spend hours on a simple tax return. In Turbo Tax's defense, other sites could not even handle that scenario.

reading list

My bathroom reading has picked up speed these days (or means longer bathroom breaks) and I am finishing more books. Most of the books completed recently were some that I was postponing for maybe years because I thought it was self-help or bit cheesy, but the nice thing is I liked most of them.

1. Good to great : why some companies make the leap, and others don't / Jim Collins

This was topping many of the reading lists and recommendations, but had postponed. But it was interesting read. I could use some of these advice when I start my company.

2. Tuesdays with Morrie : an old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson / Mitch Albom

Again one of those I keep seeing in top selling racks in supermarkets. But it was a good read. I only wished if I had a mentor whom I could be so close to talk so freely. This lead to whole series of day dreaming about playing mentor roles to young kids, which could be life changing for some not so blessed with educated parents or expensive schools.

3. The alchemist / Paulo Coelho

It is one of those books I was prejudiced against due to no specific reason. But I enjoyed reading this. I wish I knew exactly what I wanted and had the courage to follow that till the end.

4. Getting things done : the art of stress-free productivity / David Allen

I went through the latter parts of the book in minutes, but first part was interesting. I have an inbox with zero mails and trying to follow do / defer / delegate / delete for one week now.

5. Execution : the discipline of getting things done / Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan

More of getting things done - good read, bit more painstaking to finish though. One thing I noted was to never finish a meeting without clarifying the actions, seeing through to the end of something and staying committed.

6. Brave New World / Aldous Huxley

Another one that kept appearing in recommendations. Didn't like it much though, thought it was kind of dated.

7. A Tree Grows In Brooklyn / Betty Smith

This is one I felt could have been edited better. I felt the childhood was covered in authentic detail and was nostalgic, but remaining story seemed a bit hurried or disconnected somehow. I would still recommend it though, especially to those who loved to finish one book a day as a kid and getting lost in some strange world.

8. Watchmen / Alan Moore

My introduction to graphic novels. It is a great book and one I would have finished in one sitting if it was 10 years back when life was much less complicated. Need to find more of graphic novels.