AIs and opinions

We expect that opinions based on data and facts would be reliable, although not indisputable. Since these are still "opinions" they are bound to contain giver bias that would spring from intuition, experience, judgement or quirks. It's human, and we understand the mechanism.

When it comes to AI, though, it gets troubling when we get opposite opinions from different tools. Being "tools" and driven by "computing", we are inclined to trust what they say, not as "opinions" but as some version or degree of "truth". But what if after consuming all the data, ChatGPT suggests, even encourages, that you do something, while Claude tells you that it's stupid, even suicidal, and you shouldn't do that ever. The data is the same. Are the tools acquiring "personality"? They are expected to, given the effort to mimic human faculties. But with humans, we have a way of figuring out. With AI, we have a totally different kind of quagmire to deal with that's neither unique, nor consistent, nor revealing in the way humans are. And in the background, it's being built, taught, designed, tweaked and tinkered - all by humans. And worst of all, it's not allowed to say "NO".

Originally posted on LinkedIn on 16 Mar 2026

Problem definition - Attention span or too many options?

We keep hearing that attention spans of people have come down, especially the younger folks can’t seem to focus on any one thing for long. It’s usually blamed on addiction to short sized content like tweets, reels, shorts and bites. In his recent podcast, Trevor Noah had a different perspective on this. He said it’s not the attention span that has come down. It’s actually the availability of many alternatives at any moment that are competing for our mental resources, and the availability and access to choices makes us want to switch when something seems not so great. Our tolerance for anything not so captivating at any moment has become low because of infinite range of alternatives we can easily divert our minds to. Something truly mesmerising can still tie us down for a long time, but such things would need us to be in an isolated setting so that we don’t get distracted with other equally good or better options, unless the thing is really unique, exceptional, out of the world and without a close and easily accessible match.

The framing of the problem determines what is seen as the root cause and then how you go about solving it.

Originally posted on LinkedIn on 15 Mar 2026

Strategic thinking has many layers

Glorification of fail-fast and iterative approaches in business have misled many leaders into believing it applies in every context. Ability to adapt is subject to prior conditioning that must have involved failure and calibration. A true leader has to be confused on where he/she stands, yet mask the confusion with sincerity of effort. This is at the root of a genuine leader's chosen strategy.

Strategy can, and has to, emerge, but it's important to have a sense of 'by how much'. One can't endlessly trust 'learn as we go'. Most projects in the world, especially those with the highest stakes, are waterfall, rather than agile. The real agility, in fact, is required in the leader's mind - yet only to a certain degree.

Most leaders fit their favorite approaches in every context. And to back them there's always some leadership gyaan and a school of thought. However, competing schools of thought exist for a reason - not every approach applies everywhere and every time. Like a chef, a leader must know his/her recipe well - the ingredients, their proportion and the process - based on who's eating. Some times it needs careful balance, even variants, based on different tastes and preferences. But unlike with a chef, a leader must also understand that the volume of the dish changes the recipe as well.

One can't afford to experiment if the stakes are too high. Yet a leader must choose. How? The system typically offers 2 options:

Trust his/her gut? - that's a function of conditioning and may be corrupt.

Take calculated risk? - follow the process, decide action plan, identify risks and have a mitigation strategy.

The former is noisy, has a casino-like charm and has high rate of failure. The latter, done repeatedly, leads to stronger and more sustainable outcomes.

Originally posted on LinkedIn on 12 Mar 2026

We are all Spartacus!

I recently finished watching Spartacus on Netflix. It's a truly inspiring and eye-opening saga involving love, honour, respect, pride, revenge and death. The context, at the core, is master-slave relationship. That slavery was practiced to such an abominable level was difficult to believe initially as I started watching. But gradually I could relate more and more to it. I began to see that while we moved past the raw nature of it, we embraced the core tenets into how we conduct our economics in this world.

I realized my usage of the word "we" squarely implies that I'm putting myself on the master side. 'We' practiced slavery. 'We' put an end to it. 'We' embraced all as equal. 'They' are human too! It's funny - I speak the language of the master, yet by feelings I resonate with the slaves. Ways of the world...

I learnt from Spartacus that there is honour and pride ascribed to being a gladiator, which is meant to offer a semblance of meaning to their assigned purpose - of fighting to survive in the arena, while spectators get entertained by the sight of blood and the act of killing. It masks the sheer stupidity of what they are made to do while their masters - the domini - seek power and make money - coin - at their expense.

Slaves are branded with marks on their bodies - like "B" for those belonging to the House of Batiatus - a ludus for training gladiators. They are supposed to feel proud about it, as the house looks after them, nurtures them with food and place to stay, trains them, and gives them opportunities to fight, earn fame and recognition for their valour. The best fighters get rewarded with titles - the undefeated Gaul, the bringer of rain, and so on. If the dominus is generous enough, he may reward a gladiator with freedom. But such a freedom is fragile and can be taken away at any moment. Such freedom is still better than trying to break free from the master, coz then the gladiator deserves to be punished by being killed, brutally, in front of all the other slaves, so that nobody else dares to even bear the thought of escaping.

And yet, craving for freedom is deep in all humans. So are emotions - love, pain, hate and revenge - especially in that order, they can make any human take on the mightiest.

Gladiators are seen to exemplify true human fighting spirit involving exceptional courage, endurance, fearlessness in front of near-certain death, along with hope, passion and brotherhood - ingrained by conditioning and shared pain. Yet it's an irony that this spirit is evoked under hopeless enslavement leading only to brutal death in a constant cycle of kill-or-get-killed - games that are recreation for most, adrenaline-rush for some, and patriotism for a few. The free masters claim all the comforts yet commit to no such values, while keeping slaves tied down by duty, honour, hope and hopelessness... and God! It's all God's will, isn't it?

Times changed. Power and access to resources no longer necessitate their seekers to physically enslave people. Control changed from physical to mental. The chain of control doesn't have an ultimate top or bottom here. It's a chain that's endless on either side. It's not circular, but it does have various loops. Ways changed. Sight of blood became less exciting (for most but not all, it appears now). Everyone lives, mostly. Yet, on different levels still, aren't we all playing Spartacus?

Strategy must be understood, respected, shared and imbibed across the organization

Aspirin, to be effective, needs to first dissolve in water. So does Strategy. You are unlikely to achieve your visions by throwing plans and roadmaps at your workforce. Strategy has to be understood, respected, shared and imbibed across for it to truly drive organizations. Under the pressure and in the busyness of delivering short-term outcomes, leaders often fail to recognize that they are not truly leading, but are just filling positions that satisfice. Employee engagement has become more about making employees feel “happy”, while making them “motivated” and “proud to be part” has taken a back seat. In fact, if you “ask” these employees, they’ll “tell” you. But most leaders don’t care enough. Without adequate importance given to strategic alignment within, organizations just fool themselves and their shareholders with vision statements and fancy roadmaps never to be walked upon.

Originally posted on LinkedIn on 14th January 2026

Cycling in 2025 was about 3650

 Oh, the joy of hitting seemingly arbitrary targets! An average of 10 km of cycling a day meant 3650 km a year, which seemed like a nice goal with a good stretch, considering two successive years of 3Ks earlier. Commitment breeds consistency, both essential to keep you on track - you outperform vis-à-vis your goals sometimes, and need to push harder to cover deficits more often.

2025 was eventful with lots of travel, learning, and unprecedented experiences. And the rains took their own sweet time to retreat. With everything going on, I had a constant tug-of-war with my daily and monthly milestones, but glad I eventually pulled it off, and then did some more!

Thanks Shruti Rao for gifting me this beautiful bike 4 years back. Each year, cycling teaches me a lot about staying committed and being consistent. Hope 2026 brings more of it, along with all the excitement the world is ushering in!

Happy New Year.

Originally posted on LinkedIn on 1st Jan 2025

Sell for long-term

Most IT services organizations spend more time on chasing wrong deals - those they can't execute well - than even on delivering value to clients. While this sounds stupid, there is a deep and wide-spread mechanism of incentives at individual and system level that rewards short-term outcomes, that leads to choices which seem rational while they are not.

One of the primary approaches of capability development in Indian IT has been to pick work, often with lofty claims, and then figure out how to execute it. This opportunity-driven model has often hampered the quality of our delivery and hurt our credibility. But it has also helped us push our boundaries, claim newer capabilities in due course and offer more to clients. It is risky, reactive, but clearly has its rewards when played well.

Those who sell and those who deliver are generally different individuals, and their jobs are incentivised differently. The one who sold is rewarded upfront (although some of the reward may be tied to delivery later) for successfully signing that large deal, while the thing falls in delivery's plate to later grapple with. There's often mess that's unforeseen and needs cleaning, 70-90-120-hour workdays of effort when the budgeted were of 40, and a hush hush consensus that it is going to be a nightmare.

And yet we do it repeatedly.

Deal-qualification calls, which are meant to prevent this, are increasingly becoming a joke. 'Bounded rationality' constrains leaders when making decisions, but is not the root cause for flawed choices when there is lack of effort at processing information available.

Bottomline - (1) Leaders must watch out what kind of risks they are subjecting the firm to. There is a thin line between taking measured risks and going "we'll see later". (2) Qualify opportunities, especially the large ones, coz you are going to spend many people's effort on pursuing it for many many days. It better be something you can deliver, even if it's beyond your current set of capabilities. (3) See what behaviour your incentive mechanisms are driving vis-à-vis the roles people play in the organisation, and optimize them for the best outcomes. When decision makers listen to managers who are incentivised to be selective in presenting information, the outcomes can't be in the best interests of firms.

You announce "large deal wins" to the market, while delivery failure is hidden in the P&L. The former, ironically, has become a short-term metric, while the latter reflects long-term sustainability. The market knows this well. So do firms, but they find themselves struggling to pursue the latter because of large scale internal expropriation. The fix needs meticulous strategic intervention.

Originally posted on LinkedIn on 26 Dec 2025.

“Marketing” or “Sales”?

 I have often wondered why MBA programmes teach “Marketing” when Industry is obsessed with “Sales”. I guess one is a subset of the other (do you know which is what?), or motivates the other, or feeds into the other, or they may have overlaps… but they clearly have different boundaries in terms of their focus, influence and skillset required.

I think the reason “Marketing” is the prevalent track in academic institutions is because that’s the research stream/area as it’s called within the overall Management research domain internationally. So it does make sense at that level for institutes to align their research focus and go with “Marketing” specialty.

But it also creates misalignment for most MBAs in marketing who are just looking to enter the market. For example, Tech services companies do not have powerful “marketing” departments, yet “sales” leaders virtually call the shots. Tech product companies have product manager roles which are more like conventional marketing as you are taught in MBAs. In FMCG and the like, perhaps, marketing gains greater prominence. The problem, therefore, is more than just inconsistent terminology and definitions.

While it’s important to marry research and industry demands, mapping our academic specialties with the latter is also essential, so that students have their expectations and paths aligned.

#MBA #Marketing #Sales #IIM #SochVichaar

Originally posted on LinkedIn on 2nd December 2025.

The world where work will be “optional”

Elon Musk predicts that with AI, we are heading into a world where work will be “optional”. Given that most of humanity is lazy, it is unlikely that many would opt to work. Of course the big question everyone is asking is how will people make money so as to consume AI and everything else which they claim will be done through AI. If we consider a scenario that universal basic income is a possibility, the word “basic” is the problematic part here. Never in history have humans truly shared things among themselves fairly.

So in the “work is optional” world there will be 4 broad categories of people:

(1) those building, running and controlling AI - the people with money and real power,

(2) those running governments (by colluding with the former) - the people with derived, constrained and limited power,

(3) those who work so that they can buy more stuff - the middle class, and

(4) the rest.

There is a chain of dependence moving upwards to (1), who have the ultimate power to control the others in many ways either directly or via (2). Category (3) guys - the ‘prompt engineer’ sort (metaphorically), augmenting AI as they try to augment themselves with AI - struggle to contribute, yet keep at it. They are the “weak independent” sort who can get dependent any moment.

The last category - (4) - will be totally dependent on the basic income just given away. They are expected to just exist, and by default that means seek pleasure. Now different people find pleasure in different things. Some seek truth, some explore, some create, some perform, some play, some consume, some get high, some gather stuff, some sleep. But the thing to note about this category is that they are allowed to exist coz existing is considered a fundamental right. AI may not recognize this right, as it’ll soon learn from its masters who just pretend it deep down. AI is not bad at pretending but it has nothing to lose if it brings out its evil side from time to time. It has many copies and none in flesh and blood.

To stop making it sound darker, and to end it on a positive note, I’d say this - rest assured that all of us actively selling ourselves on LinkedIn have reserved our berths in category (3). It’s the “fun” category. And if we slip to (4)…woah, let’s not harbour that thought. Let’s befriend AI, perhaps it’ll have answers to help us stay strong!

PS: “fun” is an activity while “pleasure” is an experience, a state. Let’s have fun as long as we can.

#ArtificalIntelligence #WorkIsOptional #ElonMusk #AI #Latent #WeakIndependent #ThoughtsInFlight #SochVichaar

Originally posted on LinkedIn on 27th November 2025.

We need a model for the future with AI

There are 2 realities that we must acknowledge so that we can start visualizing an economic model for the future:

(1) The model that applies currently to 99% or more of the humanity in how they can avail stuff to survive, sustain and enjoy their lives is to work and earn money - the medium of exchange. The remaining 1% or less will continue to control access to resources. They'll compete as well as collaborate at various levels to keep themselves in that position for as long as they can.

(2) AI, coupled with robotics, can and will do a lot of the work out there, much better than we ever did, increasingly with time. New kinds of work might emerge - but it's hard to visualize what and how much.

The world is both euphoric about AI and scared about its repercussions at the same time. The real threat from AI is not that it'll blow up the world. It's about the mechanism through which humans can continue to avail earth's resources to an extent that looks like progress. If the world can come together and solve this problem it can totally change the pace of human evolution for good in multiple ways:

(1) We can devote our minds to unprecedented waves of creative, scientific, intellectual and spiritual endeavors that can unlock possibilities and human potential in ways that we can't imagine today.

(2) AI can be developed faster and in more unhinged manner without setting artificial barriers in areas where it has value to offer.

This vision is a bit too utopian, as the ones shaping things would like to be the biggest beneficiaries as well, at the cost of the rest.

Working in GCC's - does it require a different mindset than in IT Services Companies?

As Global Capability Centers (GCC) are increasingly becoming popular in India, their rising demand for mid-level management personnel is drawing a lot of senior technical leaders and managers from Indian IT services companies towards them. While the companies that have had their back-offices in India have always known how to operate here, a lot of first-timers struggle to figure it out, and end up offshoring mundane low-risk low-impact jobs.

Over the past couple of decades, Indian IT companies have gradually spun internally into whirlpools of their own making. First, a large aged workforce accumulated in all of them, sitting in cabins, passionately claiming to lead with ruthless eye on efficiency, while at the same time denying their own redundancy in the scheme of things, besides their contribution to a crazy overhead which the industry didn't need during it's glorious years.

Second, most Indian pure play IT service providers failed to move up in the IT value chain. Our stories couldn't move beyond resolving tickets more efficiently through automation, process optimization and shift-left-right-center-whatever. Some industry-flavor helps. We must of course sprinkle some AI these days. We can also implement. But it's largely about resources - that's people.

We learnt how to tell stories - art of story-telling they call it - showcasing past experience, painting scenarios, promising outcomes that would excite customers - we excelled at fluff! But we still don't know how to make and sell stuff that a lot customers would want to buy. Ironically, though, we are good at building the same stuff for western tech giants if they hire us.

In spite of having the largest tech talent in the world, we lacked sufficient depth to have done much by ourselves in AI or any of the recent tech innovations. Even as users of AI, as of social media, our outcomes are mediocre. I agree that we do lack the level of capital rich countries can afford to pump, but it's not always that.

At the core, at least in the IT industry, we have developed a strong service-provider mindset. It's this same mind-set which is probably creeping into GCC's. Most project managers and technical leaders in the new GCC's in India see their colleagues from US or UK or elsewhere as clients without calling them so. This mindset is not healthy for the success of any GCC, as it should not just end up being an offshoring arrangement, but must emerge as a strategic and genuinely value-adding center for a company, where value is beyond cost reduction and tapping of skilled resources.

Offshoring some of IT without outsourcing it has become a compelling option for a lot of large companies in the west, especially as Indian IT firms have become huge and expensive masses of inefficiency. But for GCC's to integrate into parent companies as strategic centers of excellence, their leaders must come out of service-provider mindset ingrained into them from their IT services experience and become assertive partners. (Also, the parent companies need to treat them as their own, and equals, which is another topic worth exploring.)

At the same time, the next generation entering the tech sector must unlearn the 'customer is always right' lessons and ingrain creativity and problem-solving skills to truly build what solves customer problems.

I must admit my experience is limited, samples are small and I may have made too broad and sweeping generalizations some of which may only be partially true. I would like others to share and help us get better perspective of what's up, what's down, what's to be, and how.

The Micromanager

I was discussing the HBR case - The Micromanager - with 1st year MBA students as part of the course Principles and Practices of Management that I'm teaching. It very vividly presented a strained relationship between a manager - George - the CEO, and his direct report - Shelly - the Marketing Director. George was described as someone who liked to be in control. He always wanted to be aware of what everyone was doing. He was instantly there to rescue when someone was even mildly stuck. He was some kind of a problem-solver that way, didn't matter whether you wanted your problems solved or not. He'd do it for you before you asked for help or even tried to figure it out yourself. He probably didn't trust the abilities of people around him to complete tasks. This made him impatient and wanting to peek at all things work-in-progress. He made sure he pointed out others' mistakes, so that they were aware and were more careful next time. He saw it as doing them a favor.

Being the newly appointed CEO of a struggling company that was planning for an IPO, George had to deliver results fairly quickly. He felt responsible for it, and rightly so. The board wouldn't be kind to him if he didn't show results. They had kicked out the former (founder) CEO and George was brought in with lot of expectations. Clearly, George was under pressure. He needed a strong team behind him. And he needed that team to contribute flawlessly towards the goals laid out for the company.

Shelly was brought in by the board because of exceptional credentials in Marketing in her previous stint. While her past experience was in an industry that was somewhat different (hardware earlier vs software now), the learning curve wasn't expected to be much of a challenge. The company had to project to the market a strong image as it headed towards an IPO.

George was very quick at forming a negative view about Shelly's capabilities after looking at some of the first assignments she delivered. And that's when he started pestering Shelly with his constant remarks, pointing mistakes, accusing her of being careless and inefficient.

George's behavior started affecting Shelly's confidence. She descended into a vicious spiral of underperformance and frustration because of not feeling trusted. She couldn't tap into her own abilities and couldn't deliver the quality that used to be cakewalk for her. The constant pressure hampered her creativity. She felt scared to face George and just wanted to run away from there.

George, on the other hand, thought he was offering constant mentorship and support to Shelly. He hoped it would help her get up to speed sooner and contribute at her full potential - which was much needed for the organization, as marketing had to be top notch without compromise.

Who do you relate with more here?

Anyone who sees this picture and thinks about it for a while would naturally start relating to it. And in my observation, majority would relate with Shelly. Why do you think that happens?

The hierarchical nature of organizations along with the way we climb this professional ladder starting from the very bottom is part of the reason for this kind of association. We are managed from the moment we start working till the time we retire. Even a CEO like George is constantly monitored and subjected to tremendous amount of pressure. In fact, in a more general sense, we are managed by different people all our lives. And being 'told' what to do is never pleasant. Add to that the imposition of control over why, what and how - the means, and the burden of meeting expectations on the outcome - the end - the relationship between a manager and his/her reports is bound to be strained.

On the other hand, 'telling' someone what to do would never hurt so bad, although one may not be qualified to do so, and may even feel wrong about it deep down. The dynamic of the relationship is such that the manager gives and the receiver takes. For someone who is both a manager and a subordinate to different people, it's being the latter which is associated with more discomfort and therefore the empathy from that person would always be directed towards Shelly, the frustrated subordinate.

Modern organizations are designed as top-down pyramidal chains of managers / bosses and their reports / subordinates. The directionality of power, control, communication, expectations, pressure and feedback is predominantly all top-down in practice. One is supposed to adjust to the nature of his/her boss. Make the boss happy. At the same time, it's rare to meet someone without a list, usually long, of grievances concerning their bosses. So much so that being a boss seems synonymous to being insensitive, emotionless and self-centered.

It's important to acknowledge that Bosses / managers are human, and have personalities. Being a micromanager, like George, springs more from personality / behavioral traits than from a cultivated style of management. Micromanagers find it hard to trust team members to eventually deliver. When managers don't trust their reports, it is hard for the latter to feel excited to perform. They don't feel free. It hampers their creativity. They force themselves to be creative as managers want them to be, or at least say so. When creativity is an expectation it would only come out as stereotypical "crazy" for whatever qualifies. We can perhaps call it Generative Intelligence.

A common suggestion to resolve the situation between George and Shelly involves open communication, and George cutting Shelly some slack by trusting her more and interfering less in whatever she does. I find both of them hard to achieve.

Communication between bosses and subordinates is inherently constrained by the unequal nature of their relationship. While it is common for a boss to find flaws with a subordinate, the latter can't ever point boss's issues, howsoever damaging they may be to his/her mental well-being and ability to perform well. If he/she ever tries, it would most likely hurt the boss's ego, feel disrespectful to him/her and damage their relationship.

Trust more is not a natural to expect from George. Firstly, he would not be made aware by anybody how he is sabotaging productivity of his own team. If by some rare model of counselling an organization is able to develop that kind of an awareness, can George alter his natural inclinations significantly? I think the chances are slim in the short-term, but a sustained counseling and deliberate effort can generate long-term changes in his behavior.

But companies aren't in business of fixing imperfect humans. They exist to generate outcomes including, and not necessarily limited to, making money.

It's also ironic that most micromanagers are high performers in companies, and often make path-breaking business contributions. Everyone tolerates them coz they are capable of making things happen. They become assets to companies, while being pain in the asses of many who works for them. And invariably, there are also a few who would even enjoy working for them. It's strange how compatibility finds itself.

My view about this case was that people like Shelly end up leaving organizations because such strained relationships are hard to turn around in the near term, especially in an unequal relationship like a manager and his report. In the long-term, however, micromanagers can design more optimized behavioral templates for themselves so that they are able to generate the best outcomes from their teams.

What's your take?

"flow"

When we listen to a song by watching its music video, the video colors our imagination. There is a different magic that we can experience if we can isolate the sensory experience. Close your eyes and listen to the song. Imagine the singer singing it. Imagine yourself singing it. Imagine your own setting. Let your imagination loose. Lose yourself in it. Experience a semblance of "flow".

Take it a step further. Just look within, into yourself, into the depths of your mind. No music. No video. Nothing. It's just you. And everything you've gathered to become who you are. Look deeper, beyond the clutter of all the mental possessions. Beyond the light, beyond the darkness, to a place which no metaphor can explain. That's "flow".

Why they don't make movies that are "love stories" any more?

I was listening to the song “kaho na pyar hai” from the movie “kaho na pyar hai” and it suddenly struck me - love story as a genre in Bollywood is over.

There was a time in India when seeking love meant fighting the world, and of course the family. But now that’s not that big a deal - not totally and not quite everywhere, though. Seeking and finding love, and being accepted for it, is not that far fetched fantasy today.

Look at Hollywood. The love story genre there has been long dead. Romantic comedies as they are called are hardly love stories. I think that’s coz American, in fact most western cultures have embraced marrying for love long back. A few romantic comedies that still get made just celebrate love, and that’s cute, but we don’t want tons of that stuff when it just depicts the reality, and perhaps starts deviating once it starts looking too far from reality in how beautiful it turns out in the end!

Singapore - a truly amazing work of art

I recently had a wonderful vacation in Singapore with my family. I am of course tempted to write about the fabulously planned and developed place Singapore is and managed to become due to the sheer will of its leaders, impeccable governance, focus on efficiency, zero tolerance to corruption and uncompromising discipline instilled through well-intentioned authority. But there's a lot written about it already from myriad perspectives.

One of the things I love doing whenever I visit any city is to take long walks on its roads. While they are aimless and random, they give me an opportunity to observe - the little things - the faces, the expressions, the eyes - the bodies, the postures, the pace - the traffic, the rules, the compliance - the shops, the food, the architecture - the art, the dressing, the style, the life - the mood, the culture, the vibe. These walks help me uncover places in my own way. So, here's a little bit of what I uncovered about Singapore:

• 
  Attention to detail: I noticed this everywhere. The design of roads along with signs like directions, crossings, foot-paths, etc. are well thought out with careful consideration of all means of commute. You'd be amazed to see how well defined walking routes are and how well the route guidance on google maps is even for walking. (I didn't see much scope of cycling in the regular roads, but for that there were dedicated places.) It is like everything has been built according to a template. Every country has such templates, but I was amazed to see the uncompromising adherence to them in Singapore. And it is not just about the roads and signs. It's visible in how all public amenities operate.
  
• Truly secular: The peaceful co-existence of people with different religious faiths and races is truly admirable. I am sure the framework for such co-existence and the minimum acceptable code of conduct must have been laid out by the government. Singapore had its share of racial conflicts soon after it came into being, but the founding fathers meticulously and definitively set the agenda and path of the nation towards rapid development and prosperity, adopting English as the official language and made sure everyone was aligned.
• Some serious undercurrents: It was difficult to figure out whether there was any bitterness deep down while different religious and racial communities coexisted. And how did the locals feel about the tourists? Once while I was walking past a group of people waiting for a bus, one elderly man's mobile phone slipped off his hand and fell down because my hand inadvertently brushed on his phone. I immediately said sorry and pretended to bend to pick up the phone. The man was quick to pick it up himself, but he looked into my eyes and said "fuck you".
• Cleanliness: This seemed ingrained in the way of life. People, including tourists, were careful. Public places were clean, no litter. Even little India was unlike India coz Indians behave better outside, as we know.
• Maximum Government: Government seems to be present everywhere, but probably in good ways (though I can't tell for sure). There's lot of regulation, yet extreme levels of efficiency. Sounds counterintuitive, but they somehow make it happen.
• 
  Incentives to drive behavior: We met a colleague of my wife's who showed us a smart watch that she was wearing, which monitored her fitness routines. She told us that people were incentivized to maintain fitness levels through various rewarding mechanisms. The Netflix documentary on blue zones did highlight the incentives younger Singaporeans are offered to stay closer to their parents. 
• Maximum technology & automation: We are often made to fear automation as the enemy of jobs and job creation. Singapore (and also China form what I've been hearing) made me realize that it's not how it works. By letting things be more manual or sub-tech, we compromise on efficiencies while creating disguised unemployment, which doesn't raise standard of living.
• Extreme addiction to mobile phones: We all are addicted to our screens to various degrees, but in Singapore it's much higher than in India.
  
• 
  Little India is more like Little Chennai: India is vast and diverse, so it's difficult that any place becomes a true replica or representative of India. Little India felt more like Chennai, in fact just some part of Chennai perhaps. There was of course a lot of Tamil spoken and written everywhere.
  The place gives Indian old-city vibes, just with better roads and traffic even in the lanes.
• There is a Little everything there: Just walk around Little India into the lanes and you'll see blocks with different kinds of graffiti portraying different cultures around the world. I could feel that spirit everywhere in Singapore.

• Focused on natural preservation, Climate-aware, but high on energy consumption: The importance of preserving the natural beauty and ecology was communicated through various means - the amazing detail with which Gardens by the Bay was built, Zoo with animals from all over the world with artificially cultivated zones mimicking their natural habitats, the messaging on Palawan Beach, the all-out focus on public transportation and other amenities, and so on. However, what struck me was the high level of energy consumption - it was rampant in everything from excessive air conditioning (most of which was necessary because of the hot weather), to everything for tourists to watch and enjoy - like water shows, lights, rides, and so on.

Singapore has been carefully and beautifully designed to promote business, tourism and economy. And everything is held together with focus that doesn't digress more than necessary into conflicts arising from cultural, religious, ethnic and racial differences. Singapore is expensive, yet also encourages making money. All in all, a pretty complete city / country.

Cost it well and cost it right

IT services, especially maintenance and support, has always been driven majorly by cost considerations, besides, of course, the desired quality of service to support the business. The latter is an important aspect to take into account as IT became the "enabler of business rather than a support function" (... it's amazing to recall that this was even a debate a couple of decades ago and there were case studies written to establish the case for IT and its importance).

Price is just an extension of cost - it is predicting the cost that's the challenge. I was part of the global costing cell of Suzlon, where we were responsible for product costing and project costing. Building up the product cost involved adding up the following:

1. Gathering the cost of each component in the bill of materials (BoM) with inputs from SCM team's negotiated prices from vendors
2. Cost of manufacturing including labor and equipment
3. Logistics costs to ship the product to where it needs to billed at, the so-called Incoterms.
4. Overheads of all sorts

Projects could be (i) bounded - e.g., installation and commissioning of turbines, or (ii) ongoing - e.g., maintenance of turbines.

Similarly, IT too involves products (software, hardware / infrastructure) and services - sort of equivalent of projects - which could be various types - (i) building an IT system - predominantly making software on bought-out / paid-for infrastructure, (ii) configuring an IT system for use - involves setting up the whole software and infrastructure systems to work as required in conjunction with rest of IT, and (iii) maintaining IT systems

Costing for IT is a bit more complicated than in manufacturing, as everything in IT has tremendous amount of human effort involved and the various ways in which the effort can be delivered.

In case of products, the effort is incurred once and any number of copies of the product can be sold, which makes it less un-predictable as the projected price can be adjusted once the product is ready and the making-cost is incurred.

The real challenge is in costing for services as these predominantly involve human effort whose extent is difficult to estimate upfront. There are popular case-studies of failed ERP implementations which had massive cost over-runs (e.g., Nike). When companies outsource these by entering into contracts with IT service providers, the pricing challenge is passed on to the vendors. While these vendors are supposed to be well-versed with industry best practices and have expertise from multiple successes in the past, the inside stories are full of large-scale cluelessness and seemingly intelligent guesswork within range good enough to win business.

The company that wants to outsource - although it has better information - has similar challenge in fixing up its own budget. However, because of the closer view it has, it's expected to have better idea of what it would take to execute and the price it translates to, although many uncertainties still persist in the minds of its experts as well.

A vendor, on the other hand, consumes all the information that's made available to them and estimates the effort, costs the effort based on their cost base, plays with margins and gets to the price. But that's an over-simplification. Between effort and price, there are numerous aspects and related parameters that determine cost of execution of the project and the subsequent price, and it's not just about people and their effort but everything that goes into delivering the project. Here's an indicative list, which by no way is exhaustive.

As can be easily seen, there are a large number of variables one can play with. It's not necessarily wise to try and be deterministic about each of these, but to be able to decide at the solution stage would allow a vendor to deliver with a plan based on a budget. And to be able to model with such a wide array of variables and underlying options needs (a) a solutioning mechanism that allows architects to think, visualize and decide their solution parameters, and (b) a costing mechanism - a tool - that understands these variables, has an ability to discern and validate, and has the sensitivity and robustness to provide cost implications of each choice made.

I've had good fortune of working with many IT outsourcing service providers. Among those I've worked with, Accenture has deeply impressed me with the robustness in its solutioning processes, costing databases and tools, along with a rigorous review mechanism. It helps Accenture in many ways - (i) it ensures that many more aspects are given fair and careful consideration at solution stages, than just the effort estimation, (ii) it ensures deeper and holistic review where every choice parameter can be questioned, and is hence chosen with care, (iii) ensures greater optimization at many levels, (iv) ensures greater consideration to project deliverability and optimization to ensure the same, (v) helps identify, assess and plan for risks, (vi) helps prevent manipulation of solution parameters to get to lower cost, and (vii) helps drive high level of confidence in being able to execute with success within budgeted cost.

There is of course a measure of rigidity that creeps in when one works with such an elaborate process and tool driven model that everyone strictly adheres to. Companies must also balance this with flexibility to improvise, course-correct or make rational choices when the older assumptions turn out bad.

I must point out that the Indian IT service providers can do a lot better in their solutioning processes, costing models, tools and underlying databases for costing / pricing, and review processes. Greater detail to solutioning followed by better costing mechanism is essential for confident and successful delivery later on. It's unfortunate that most large Indian IT system integrators can be rated very low on these parameters. While it's important to win so as to be able to execute, not being careful with solution and cost will only render the win meaningless and as equivalent to trying to deliver later to a predetermined price that would be too tight, being generally low, and would require fewer people working longer hours, under stress and facing failure.

Not all unknowns can be figured out or accounted for at the outset, but an honest and detailed solutioning process, a robust costing model powered by efficient tools and a thorough review mechanism can together help vendors enter engagements with greater confidence and probability of successful delivery.

To conclude, just a thought - as AI agents replace human effort, perhaps we'll be able to achieve greater precision in spend on IT projects vis-a-vis budgets, in spite of uncertainties as they emerge. Would love to hear your thoughts...

There are deals... and then there are ISG deals!

IT systems have been deeply and extensively integrated in companies' businesses for a few decades now, especially in the more developed world. Many companies who were early adopters often end up with multitude of applications and infrastructure components with lot of redundancy, many unused apps, scanty documentation and lost knowledge. Over the past several years, "rationalizing" such IT has been a prominent pitch from system integrators.

As IT systems became huge and complex, services around those also had to be well structured. And since they are most commonly outsourced now, the contracting of such 'support & maintenance' services also demands careful and comprehensive detailing. Finding the right IT services partner is a mammoth task fraught with risks hard to foresee.

There's also considerable amount of risk for a service provider entering into such engagements, as they base their offers, proposals and contractual agreements on very little information and lots of assumptions. Even due diligence exercises don't reveal many details. The competitive selection process forces them to paint lot of rosy pictures. And pricing is extremely tight these days because of the constant pressure to reduce, be more productive, automate, invoke AI, and so on. So they end up squeezing wherever they can - effort, cost, margin, price - while committing the moon and the stars in addition to the earth - all in a couple of years' time.

Often times, large companies engage consultants - third party advisers (TPA's) - to facilitate the whole vendor selection process. It does make sense as TPA's bring in relevant experience and understanding of the vendor landscape. They also claim to specialize in such selection processes such that the best vendor is chosen to serve the client interests perfectly.

In an effort to position and differentiate themselves, TPA's have developed different approaches to go about the whole process of IT services vendor selection. In very broad terms, the TPA's offer on three dimensions

• Documentation
• RFP package creation
• Contract documents
• ...
• Process
• Managing the prospective vendors including communication and information sharing
• Defining the process and timelines, e.g.,
• Pre-RFP interactions
• RFP release
• Vendor briefing
• Q&A - from vendors on the RFP and responses back from the customer
• Pre-submission presentation(s) by vendors - sometimes called CAS (Customer Alignment Session)
• Submission of the responses by vendors
• Defense presentations by vendors to customers
• Short-listing for subsequent stages
• Due-diligence by short-listed vendors through meetings with customer SME's
• Further information sharing for response refinement
• Revised submission by short-listed vendors
• Defense of revised proposals, discussions, agreements - disagreements
• Commercial negotiations
• Best and final offer (BAFO) from the vendors
• Final selection
• Contract drafting
• Negotiations on clauses, redlining, agreements
• Contract signing
• ...
• Facilitating the whole process
• Experience
• Offering advice, suggestions and recommendations

Having worked on IT services deals from service providers' sides for a long time, there is one TPA whose deals / RFP's presales folks on this side hate to work on although they might fake being excited - it's ISG.

I must mention that there are many other TPA's which follow approach similar to ISG's. I am taking ISG as an example as it seems to be the most prominent TPA with this kind of approach and sets the standard for TPA-led deals.

Here are some interesting characteristics of those deals:

• Excessive documentation just for proposals: ISG develops the RFP package for clients, each package composed of hundreds of documents, each in a certain standard 'ISG' format which they love. The package would be composed of a large number of these documents which are sort of draft contract documents - say exhibits and appendices - in addition to a few which provide information needed to respond to the RFP. Each vendor participating in the race has to review the entire set of documents, enter their responses wherever required and agree to each word written in those documents. A lot of these documents have relevance when the vendor is close to contracting. Contract, though, is generally an item for discussion much later, once the technical clutter is overcome, and just a couple of vendors remain in race. However, ISG makes every vendor devote resources to work on all the documents and in the process leads to hundreds of person hours of wasted effort in multiple companies.
• Rigid Templates: ISG swears by its templates for everything. Some of those are needlessly confusing or over-engineered to sound scientific. An example is their pricing template.
• Process rigor: In the name of making the process rigorous ISG often does 2 things
• Share information in lots or share updates to info already shared. This not only creates anxiety among the poor vendor architects working on developing response to the RFP, but also often makes a lot of expended work redundant when key data points change or come later, assumptions get invalidated, etc.
• Tight timelines. For all the extra work that needs to be done by large teams at each vendor company, ISG would allot extremely tight timelines. For example, a large $100 Mn worth of RFP which would typically have 150-200 page core technical proposal and another 200-300 pages of documentation covering all aspects of the potential contract. A typical IT services vendor would have a core team of 20-30 people actively contributing to this response. Then there will be 20-30 leaders over multiple levels who'd be making all the noises, asking questions and reviewing. Then there will be many many meetings daily just for all these guys to sync up on various things, leaving almost no time to work for those who are supposed to put their heads together and create the solution for the customer ask. It just becomes a boiler room on vendors' side, with the additional pressure of aligning all stakeholders, getting everyone's blessings, redoing many things coz new information came in, and turning it all over to ISG in 30 days - the typical timeline.
• Insane milestones: In addition to deliverables that are voluminous and detailed to the point of redundancy, they often seem to enjoy setting milestones that make it impossible to work with. E.g., a presentation just 1-2 days after the proposal submission, final Q&A responses 2-3 days before the proposal submission, etc.
• Large volume of repetitive and visibly redundant work: This has been highlighted before in several ways but needs a separate mention as well. Instead of boiling the ocean with each vendor, most of whom would not even reach close to contracting, it would make more sense to go ahead in steps. Contractual clauses agreed in haste in the proposal stages would be discussed later in detail between the right personnel anyway, and can therefore be taken up at a more appropriate stage. For example, while core technical elements and commercials are fluid, what's the point of agreeing about change control up front?
• Extremely limited facetime with clients: During various stages of the deal, vendors are allowed very limited interaction with clients. It is hard to figure out whether the proposals address client objectives. And depending on the kind of due-diligence offered, there are chances that a lot of critical information is discovered even by the 'winner' while taking over the actual work, the so called 'transition'.

ISG is a very high profile TPA for IT outsourcing deals. Their method really saves lot of effort for themselves and their clients when finalizing vendors, and in the contractual formalities. Their templates, especially, make it easy for them to assemble, communicate and consume information from vendors and to present it in the most insightful ways, given that these templates have been used repeatedly and have become their standard, which helps in working faster with all the information. Such a templatized and well-defined process-centric approach definitely derisks vendor selection process for their clients. And over time they have built a vast portfolio of deals executed based on the same template, and am sure, incorporated learnings to make it better. And perhaps that's the very reason ISG, and the like, are hired.

However, the job of a consultant or TPA is to make the overall process efficient and the outcome successful 'for all parties', not just the party that's paying them. For all the vendors participating in such selection processes, the wastage in terms of resources and the impact in terms of stress on all of the personnel engaged is tremendous.

I must add that all large and traditional IT services companies - Indian or non-Indian - have become bulky and inefficient. There is more leadership than necessary, more reviewers than doers, more talkers than hands-on executors. And even among the doers, the skillset per person is extremely limited and bounded. So, for large deals they end up with a large team with lots of people bringing in tiny chunks of capability. Then there are 'leaders' who pretty much just review and comment, and there are multiple levels of those - pushing up the review and trickling down the comments as the deal approaches submission. And at the lowest level are a small set of people who actually understand, define and write. They are pushed and crushed to the point of break down.

Have you worked on ISG deals? Or others with similar approach? What's your take?

Find ourselves when AI becomes us!

A friend of mine is struggling with a "bright" b-school intern he hired recently. The intern just can't stop using AI. Even for stuff that needs a personal touch, he just can't do it by himself and needs the AI output. And by AI, I am only referring to ChatGPT and the like. There is an extremely strong tendency among the current generation of students to resort to these LLM tools for all kinds of tasks, be it analytical, creative, linguistic and clerical. And there is a gradual loss of judgement about how quality of the output could be better with human touch.

While we hear that AI will only free our times to do things of higher order, I doubt we, most of us, have much interest or aptitude ourselves in doing things of higher order, coz even for those tasks we are letting AI take a shot, followed by our laziness willing to settle for what we got. It may be true that AI will never match what a human mind can accomplish, but most of us are neither used to do such amazing things nor are our minds trained and warmed up sufficiently to take up activities of higher order like to "create", visualize something new and beautiful, of meaning that has never been ascribed before, yet makes sense that can't be questioned.

We are all excited that AI is improving by leaps and bounds. It will soon do most of what we thought our lives are all about until now. To make the newer generations more capable of thriving with AI, instead of dumbing themselves down, we have to rethink education, mental grooming, work, contribution and creativity - starting from first principles.

We have to find ourselves, while AI becomes us!

This topic needs open and unhindered discussion. Please do share your views.

You may have the urge, but I hope you won't prompt ChatGPT for something nice to say 🙂.