On Community Management

Running a community is like flying a kite. You start with small, repetitive efforts and keep doing the same thing, until you are really in the sky. Then, you soar. 

Would you evict an unhappy customer?

 So, came across yet another instance of this: 

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/a-grandmother-and-her-6-year-old-granddaughter-were-kicked-out-of-a-georgia-hotel-in-their-pajamas-after-leaving-a-3-star-review-a-report-says/ar-AAR4UpT?ocid=msedgntp

https://www.wyndhamhotels.com/baymont/marietta-georgia/baymont-inn-and-suites-marietta-atlanta-north/overview

This was the hotel in question. 

1. Has this ever happened with you? That a hospitality provider asked you to leave in the middle of your service because of a bad review? 

2. Would you do this? Why or why not? 

PS: It has happened to me once. And since then, I always ensure that i rate anonymously and honestly. I depend on honest reviews by other travellers and owe them the same honesty. 

On setting up an organisation

Let's say you are a leader looking to start a new firm. You have resources, the mandate, and the authority. You also have that manana from heaven - a clean slate. 

Here is one recommended approach to putting your organisation together, if you have the resources.

Organisation Structure

Obviously, one of the first things you will think about is Organisation Structure. 

This part outlines the steps to create an organisation structure that will actually work. 

But first, lets talk about the things that DON'T work. 

• The Structure is led by the leader, not the consultant 

A therapist knows the right behavioural elements, but they don't tell you what to do. Instead, they do the frustrating job of pestering you with questions until you realise what you want to do. There are two kinds of consultants you can bring on board - the first, will do what a therapist does, bring the org structure from within you, because you have to live with that structure, not them. 

The second kind will come in and tell you how you should operate, and put 15 analysts on the job. 

Get the first kind. With one key difference. When they see you doing something that is obviously not going to work, they tell you that upfront. If there is enough trust in the relationship, this leads to mutual learning and saves time. If not, the consultant will have to use the option of asking questions until you realise what is going to work for you. 

Here is why the leader is the key decision maker on culture. 

In Nov 2020, the new CEO, Thierry Delaporte, completely overhauled the org structure of the company. This is the email that he wrote to employees then: 

https://www.cnbctv18.com/information-technology/wipro-ceo-thierry-delaporte-writes-mail-to-employees-highlights-organisational-changes-full-text-7469451.htm

Less than a year later, Wipro had changed its story completely. 

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/a-frenchman-sitting-in-paris-turns-wipro-around/articleshow/87091176.cms

How was a behemoth like Wipro transformed in under a year? 

The leader created an org structure that allowed them to monitor the business in a way that worked for them, and then appointed people they trust in key roles. 

THAT is the power of leader led org structures. 

• There is no such thing as Industry Standard or Industry Best Practice 

The only thing that matters is common sense and alignment. Some industries have to do some things more than some other things. We take inputs on that, sure, we understand what others are doing and how its working for them. But we do not make those practices our goalposts. Not in anything, and certainly not in strategic things like Org Structure or Business Planning. 

In an emerging industry, we have the luxury of defining the industry standard. In legacy industries, that bandwidth may be a little lesser, but its there. 

In the early 2000s, all Indian IT companies moved to this grid structure - Verticals and Horizontals - Industry * Geography. It was this matrix structure that was dismantled by Thierry Delaporte. 

What Works aka How to define an Org Structure 

A. Define your first line. 

How do you want to view your business. If you had to get 5 key things about your business on your fingertips and have 6 people on a hotline, what would those numbers be and what would be those 6 roles? 

That's the first step - to define your first line. 

B. After that, do a culture workshop. 

A Culture Workshop is the most important thing that you will do in the Org Structure journey. Write out the 6 words that reflect the culture that you want. 

A CEO I worked with recently was insistent that the word he wanted was "family". Even in a competitive industry like IT, he did not want to create a culture focused on competition or personal excellence alone. When thinking of work, he wanted people to think of the office as a family they belong to. 

In the two years since then, we have done 3 employee dipsticks and family comes right on top when people talk about what their culture is. Trust comes a close second. :) 

C. Then, write the JDs and hire the right people 

JDs are important, esp for your direct line of reporting. Hire the right people. People who bring their own functional expertise, and more importantly, share the same keywords for culture. 

Trust has two components - Intention, and Action 

The first is about shared values. The second is about delivering results. Trust is a biped, it needs both to walk the talk. Ensure you bring people who share the values, but can also deliver business results in a foreseeable time frame. That is the only way that their teams and your stakeholders will trust you. 

C.1 The Compensation 

Do have numbers in mind, but be flexible. This is the only place where "industry standard" almost trumps "What we bring to the table." 

D. The Org Structure guidelines

The next step is to create guidelines for an org structure. You can decide lean and efficient, or gig workers preferred, or diversity first - anything works. But do have a small set of guidelines that you communicate clearly to your first line of command. 

E. Let them make their own organisations 

After this, let them make their own organisations. In fact, have this as a key interview question - as a department head, how would you like to structure your organisation. 

Making it Run

A. Involve your own HR team as early as possible. The longer you let consultants run the show, the harder the KT. 

B. Put HR processes in place. Follow an HR Portfolio management approach. Don't go piecemeal. 

C. Invest in human process excellence. Don't think of the function as paper pushers. Give them aggressive talent targets and give them the teeth to bite. For instance, if a manager loses more than x% of their team over a period, they should be able to highlight that as an organisational process. If they find it hard to fill a position for more than x weeks, either they complain or you complain "We are trying our best" or "Market is tough" is not acceptable response. 

D. Hold your HR accountable. Typically, HR tends to enter the room with reasons like "Business needs". But there will be no business without people. Their core job is to marry business needs with talent aspirations. That is literally their job description. If you bring a numbers based approach to HR, you will find that it is hard to hire the right HR talent, but once in, they will LOVE working with you. 

E. Do NOT compromise on values and culture. It never pays. Its very short term, and it guarantees failure. Even if the values route appears to be longer, more painful and far more expensive, remember that markets can stay volatile a lot longer than economies can stay solvent. So, responding to volatility with volatility-supporting behaviour does not guarantee success. 

Afternoon Thoughts

 

Infosec is to Fintech what HSE is to Oil and Gas.

#AfternoonThoughts 

 

Just like OIl and Gas depends on security to keep its engines running, Fintech depends on Info security. One incident, and everything comes tumbling down and grinds to a halt. Coverup is a short term solution and perhaps the instinctive reaction, but as the oil and gas industry will tell you, its a poor strategy, and what's worse, doesn't work. 

The only good thing to do is to approach infosec like the Oil and Gas Industry approaches HSE - have transparent standards, invest in a clear security policy and ensure that every member of team is educated and compliant. Report transparently and periodically. Most importantly, learn from EVERY mistake. Each one of those recovered mistakes is going to save you from a larger disaster, and make no mistake, there will be larger incidents. Oh, and don't forget the Incident Management System. 

 

What are the skills a journalist needs in 2021?

 

1. A journalist needs a good memory more than ever before. I am aware of entire documents and statistics changing online. Most ppl today get their content from online sources, which, by definition, can be altered, a la 1984, much, much faster.
2. A hunger for information. A real, inborn hunger. Not a learnt one.
3. Ability to see both sides of view. Ability to start with the assumption that every story has more than one side and all sides must be heard, and reported, accurately.
4. Ability to put people at ease. Very important.
5. A journalist must remember that the word journaling means - Recording. it does not mean - interpreting, Opining, taking sides.
6. This is the hardest - to keep one’s biases out of one’s writing like one keeps one’s hair out of one’s eyes.
7. The ability to say NO when temptation is offered, because it will be offered.
8. The ability to capture a 15000 word story in under 500 words.

Why is reading newspapers the best habit for children?

 These are the top FIVE reasons why every child needs to read a children’s newspaper every day.

1. Vocabulary - Books around us do not have the vocabulary that kids need. In our paper, we are covering the SAT word list. A child who starts reading at Grade 4 will be done with SAT vocabulary by Grade 8 and they will not even realise it. All children’s papers are doing something similar.
2. GK - This is the main reason why parents want kids to read newspapers. They may not remember everything from the paper on a day to day basis, but they will need that consolidated information at some point and it WILL come back to them when they need it. Its not just current affairs, but general awareness about various topics too. most children’s papers combine current affairs with other GK too.
3. Interest in various things - The best way for a child to learn about many different domains of knowledge is the newspaper. A newspaper covers everything from puzzles to literature and science to history. The child might read some items carefully and gloss over the others, but there really is no other way to ensure that the child gets this diverse exposure on a daily basis.
4. Logic Puzzles - Indian students perform badly in the Critical Reasoning section of most aptitude tests. The reason is that logic puzzles are not a part of their growing up. It is not that Indian children cannot analyse or do critical reasoning. it is that they have never been taught how to. A children’s paper brings them bite -sized, fun puzzles and before they know it, they are ready for Critical Reasoning. This is a tried and tested formula. My aunt ensured that I do logic puzzles as a child and after growing up, when i aced CR, i understood the importance of what she had done.
5. Imagery - Imagery, or visualisation, is one of the most critical adult skills. But it can only be developed in a child’s mind. As a child consumes text input, its brain automatically converts the words to pictures. This ability is called imagery or visualisation. These are the people who, when they grow up, are able to visualise complex scenarios, do wireframing, and other critical tasks for success. Children who are only given visual inputs cannot develop this ability. A newspaper, therefore, and not news channels or online games. Chapter books and not graphic novels. Illustrated books, but not videos. Newspaper is one of the BEST ways to develop the visualisation skill in a child because it is consistent and happens EVERY DAY.

How to do good fact check online

 

1. Go straight to the source. Yesterday, while fact checking a story on new type of neurons discovered behind the retina, we read the university press release, and other articles about the discovery. Then, we clicked on the journal where the paper was published. Then, we clicked on the supplementary information submitted by the study authors. That is where we realised that the study was conducted on mice, not humans. Nowhere, not in the press release, not in the articles, nowhere was it mentioned that the study is only at the first stage (mice). That is how painful fact check is and how obfuscating even supposedly scientific articles are.
2. When reporting on indices, ranks, etc., go and check what is the methodology of the study or how is the index compiled. Don’t trust any rank or index until you understand how the number was derived.
3. When reading about a contentious issue, always read publications that give both sides of the story. For Lakshadweep, the major news channels reported that the locals are being tormented by the administration. But when I read the official records and the small publications that had dared to publish the other side of the story (and Quora), i realised that the real story was actually quite different. For Delhi’s pollution, we blame the parali or the crackers, but Delhi has as many as 3 thermal power plants within its territory and arguably Asia’s largest informal e waste recycling industry which burns the phones in open air. No one tells you that.
4. Trust nothing that is “proposed” or “will be done”. That is not news. That is fortune telling. After it is done and operational, it becomes news.

Secrets of Pixabay

As most readers might know, pixabay.com, pexels.com, unsplash.com etc are websites where photographers share their work. This work is available for free commercial reuse without attribution. 

I am a regular contributor to pixabay.com. While all my images are selected for publication, I was rather sad to note that they had 0 views and 0 downloads. I put that down to the poor quality of my photography. 

2 weeks ago, I was looking for a free image of mehndi or henna. There was NOTHING available on all 3 free websites. So, had to use a Wikimedia image. 

However, last night, on a lark, i decided to search for all images related to a label that is not very frequent and applies to a few of my submitted images. Then, scrolled to the end, and realised, much to my surprise, that though my images were tagged with those keywords, they did not come up in the search results for those keywords, even till the end. 

This means that Pixabay keeps some published images away from users even if they are approved and published. 

Pixabay calls this the differentiation between featured (in search results) and just published. There is no count of the number of images that are published but not featured, but as a user, it appears strange that a published image should not be searchable. What's the point, then? 

How does one deal with this? 

I found that if you follow an individual contributor, that might help. Look for images and when you see an interesting one, follow that contributor. That way, you can see their images in your network.