11 Top Tips for New Age Tech Product Companies

 So, this is how a story unfolded: 

We use a cloud-based tech product for a specific part of our work. 

Of late, we have not been using them much. 

We started getting automated CRM messages like, "You have not visited us for a while" etc. But it really wasn't their fault. Our work had changed and our need for their product was less than it used to be. 

But last week, I needed to use the platform once again. Logged in and tried to do something I'd done hundreds of times earlier. 

There was an error message - "<field name> should be at least 30 minutes in the future." I looked for the field. It wasn't there. Which means this was a backend field that was somehow populated by some script running on the page. But I had no idea how to debug for this! 

Looked for a support channel. The only option was to initiate a callback if the knowledge base has no answer to your query. 

I did. 

The callback came. To their credit, in 15-20 minutes. 

I explained the problem. 

Support Desk: Why don't you make a new page and enter the whole information again? 

Me: I don't want to make a new page. I want to reuse this page. Why am I not able to do that? 

Support: Can you send me a screenshot or a screen recording? 

Me: I have given you the text of the error and the point at which this error is getting triggered. You have my cust id. Why do you need a screenshot to replicate the error? Take the record to your test server and do the transaction there, then debug! 

Support: Can you send me a screenshot? 

Me: No. 

But that's not all. After that, I got 2 emails a day with the following text: 

"Dear Customer: 

This is wrt the ticket that you raised. We hope that it was closed to your satisfaction. Please close the ticket if your issue is resolved" 

- with NO link to close the ticket. No email id on which to confirm whether or not the issue was resolved. Nothing. Just a plain text message from an automated sender. There is also no ticketin dashboard for me as a customer after logging in. 

With this, I got to thinking of the other reasons one has left Tech products behind. And here are some pointers 

Zero Defect Product is not an achievement. It is a MVP. 

If you want to run the marathon, make zero defect your DNA. 

************** 

Dear Tech Product Firms: 

• It is not the customer's job to help you debug your product. It is your job to ensure that a zero-bug product reaches the market. Zero tolerance for production bugs needs to be in your DNA if you are a tech product. Those tech bugs come back with big bites. Ask the graveyard of tech firms. 
• Minimise the customer's experience with the error. Have SoPs in place that tell the support person what exactly they need from the user and then get them cracking. 
• Have an accessible support. It goes a long way in increasing NPS, even from attriting customers. 
• Have a brilliant L1 support team. Half the user's issues can be solved by a well-informed L1 Helpdesk. Don't scrooge on them. 
• There are two quotes related to customers: 

                Steve Jobs: The customer doesn't know what it wants, until you show it to him. 

                David Ogilvy: The customer is not an idiot. She is your wife. 

                Trust Ogilvy. 

• Don't give the customer stupid workarounds. The customer is more ingenious than you when it comes to workarounds. You are being called to solve the problem. 
• "I am trying" means nothing to a retail customer. It means less than nothing to an enterprise customer. The correct response format is, "This will be done by <time>. If we are not able to resolve this by then, we will do <Plan B> to get your business in place." 
• Have product managers spend at least one day a month on L1 support desk. Have L1 support desks attend your sprint planning voting on stories on rotational basis. 
• If you have a wishlist, don't make it a Treasure hunt for the user. Have a simple link that takes a signed in user to the feature wishlist. That feature wishlist is your goldmine. 
• If you do have a wishlist, also add the small feature of "+1" in it, so customers who have similar needs can just upvote a story/feature ask instead of typing out the same thing over and over again. 
• Security is not an afterthought. 

The Gap between when we learn and when we need it

My son started learning meditation when he was 7-8 years old. 

Why? 

Because at that age, the child does not have to do any unlearning. We can start with simple things like deep breathing and guide the child to the format of meditation that works for them. It can be dhyana, it can be Bhakti. It can be focus based or love based. 

The second important reason is that with an early initiation into meditation, the child grows up with a strong inner calm, and more importantly, a technique that they can use to center themselves when needed. 

Children don't need these skills until much later - the High school is perhaps the first time that a child feels exam or peer stress and needs a relaxation or centering technique. But by that time, the child has already had years of practice and slips right in, avoiding the trauma of teenage hormones.  

He learnt Speed Reading in 2019, when he was 12 years old. We fought. 

"I don't need this." he stormed. 

"Yes, right now you don't. But when you do need it, you won't have time to spend on learning it, nor the time to practice. To use it effectively then, you will have to learn it now and practice it pointlessly till then." I countered, "Just trust me on this." 

Reluctantly, he did. He completed a 5 week course in a single sitting, going from 200+ words per minute to a top speed of 1400 words per minute. 

After that, I encouraged him to speed read at least some of the times, and while he wasn't all gung-ho, he complied. 

Then came Grade 9. And he was able to read fast enough to complete reading and find time to play. 

He learnt Speed Maths from the ages of 8 - 10. 

This Speed Maths was created by me at the age of 11 to deal with my own maths issues. So, it covered only the things that we needed as students - prime nos, multiplication of prime nos, squares, cubes and cube roots, basic identities, multiplication and division. 

Same story. 

"I don't need this!" 

"Not right now, but in a few years, you will." 

"No i won't." 

"When high school maths hits, what kills you is not the concepts. The concepts are easy enough to get. It is the laborious calculations - 13 * 17 *19. But you learn that right now. Just trust me on this." 

And he did. 

We did not use practice sheets. We just practised with number plates of vehicles around us as we drove, or randomly while watching TV, or in the middle of unrelated fights. "Why is 1729 a special number?"  Because it is 7*13*19! And 1728? That's 12 cube. 

Come Grade 7,  the child was looking at those long calculations and finally benefiting from what he learnt years ago and had practised for years before needing it. He slipped right in. I got that Thank you. 

He learnt self expression through theater at the age of 18 months.. we covered the Navarasa to understand and express exactly what we were feeling. We practised through books, and over a period of time, with situations that came up around us. He learnt to identify and express the real emotion. It took some struggling, but the core navarasas helped a lot. As soon as he learnt to talk, he learnt to talk about emotions too. I didn't know then, whether he was going to be an introvert, but I did know that the ability to identify and express exactly what you are feeling is a priceless skill, and hard to acquire later. It must begin with the acquisition of core language skills. 

As he grew up, I heard a lot of "Boys don't express themselves." But thankfully, was spared the experience. He and I had been identifying and articulating for many years before teenage and other difficult times struck. When the time came, we had already practised. 

He was taught logic puzzles from the age of 6 or so. When he was 8, I tried to do a logic puzzles class for other children, but found few takers. Any case, we kept at it at home. He had to solve logic puzzles with me, albeit reluctantly. This year, we did GMAT Critical Reasoning (he is 15). There were 35 practice questions. He got all 35 right. In his first attempt. He didn't even think it was a big deal. Indian students score lowest on the CR section of every test, because logic is not a part of our school curriculum at all. 

Before the age of 3, he had heard 6-7 languages inside the house. I spoke them deliberately, sometimes mixing words from 2 languages in the same sentence! Everyone called me crazy, but I just kept doing it. Today, he understands those 5-6 languages to a reasonable degree. He has never needed them - yet. 

So, what is the point? 

The point is, that the age at which children are best suited to learn a few things, and the age at which they need to use those things, are very far apart. The time at which we teach our children these skills, is years before they see any real need of them. But at the right time, they find that they are able to manage just fine. That is neither automatic nor a coincidence. It is because two vital things have happened: 

A. The child has acquired the skill when their brains were growing the fastest - the first 3 years are the fastest stage of growth, then 5 years, then 8, and then, the growth slows till the age of 18 or thereabouts. We do learn after the age of 18, but compared to our potential in the early years, it is much lesser. 

B. The child has had years of slow but consistent practice. In a peaceful, non-stressful way. There really is no substitute for slow, consistent, fun practice. Even if you remember once a year that 2197 is the cube of 13, that is important. And it will come to you, almost automatically, when the need arises - 10 years later, when you are prepping for entrance exams. 

So, we, as parents, need to understand that some of these skills, which go on to form part of our IQ, EQ, and SQ, start much before the child actually needs them. And as enrichment educators at TCP, we need to find a way to teach that to other parents. 

How do we deal with Identity and Access Management for moonlighting employees?

Whether we like it or not, moonlighting is here to stay. The causes of the moonlighting effect are easy to understand: 

A. We now know that when the going gets tough, organisations can and do fire employees with no warning whatsoever. 

B. When the profits are good, the executives get the fattest bonus checks, but when there are losses, employees get the pink slips, not the managers who are responsible for PnL. 

Therefore, we arrive at the following axioms: 

A. Loyalty as a concept does not apply to the employer - employee relationship. It is a work for pay contract. 

B. An employee cannot rely on their employer for financial stability. They have to ensure it themselves. 

C. For a mid-level employee, the only resource they can deploy to earn the secondary income is their own skill. 

So, moonlighting is a legitimate response to conditions created by myopic employers. Because it makes common sense, it is here to stay. 

How do organisations prepare for moonlighting? 

Contrary to what we might think, moonlighting is not that dramatic a phenomenon. Our part time employees and freelancers have always been doing this - offering their skills and expertise for a limited time per day and getting paid for it. 

So, on the HR side, we have finally been able to create a policy guideline that will allow organisations to offer moonlighting as a legit business and employment practice (happy to share that if you'd like). 

But, what do we do about Identity and Access Management? 

And this is where it gets really tricky. A moonlighting employee presents a potential incident and data leakage vulnerability. 

How do we, as organisations, proactively create policies that will allow employees to use technology to remain productive, while managing the organisation's risk? 

How are you doing this? 

Morning Thoughts from the EJ program

 The politician benefits less from our ignorance, and more from our indifference.

It is ok to not know. It is not ok to not care.

Even if, our future does not include this country.

Our genes always will.

We will always be known as Indian Origin.
There will always be people back home celebrating our every win.

Things being an entrepreneur has taught me

 1. Kindness - I now know how hard it is to get from one day to the next, and how lonely. So, when interacting with a solopreneur business, I am kinder as a customer. 

2. Bias - I have always bought from smaller businesses. Now i do that even more consciously. 

3. 

Haq, Halaal, and Haraam.. what this means for livelihood

A Gurdas Mann song has this chorus line - 

Roti Haq di khaiye ji, paanve boot polishaan kariye 

What does haq di roti mean? 

Haq means right. 

Haq di roti means livelihood earned through honest means, to which one has legitimate right. 

Halaal and haraam are two words that are also extensively used in North Indian conversations. 

Halaal ka paisa is money earned through honest means, by doing hard work. On this money, one has Haq. 

Haraam means earning through dishonest means, by doing wrong things. 

One of the things that we heard often at home, from everyone was: 

The money earned through someone's tears is only spent on the hospital and the crematorium. 

This means that if someone does manage to amass a lot of wealth by unfair means, that wealth will not bring happiness to the acquirer. Karma will find a way, such that the money will be spent on illness and death. This means that either the person, or their family, will suffer ill health that has recurrent costs. 

Over the years, I have found this saying come true sometimes and not so much at other times. 

But the advice does exist and is given as a warning to growing children, so they may be inspired to earn their money through honest means. 

On Panchatantra

"The Panchatantra is a collection of children's stories, like Aesop's fables." 

This statement is false. 

Neither in its original design and intent, nor in its structure, is Panchatantra a set of children's stories. 

Panchatantra is a treatise on statecraft that uses animal stories as pedagogy. 

The animals are used as metaphors of human characteristics. 

The stories are neither childlike nor non violent. They encompass every element of human emotions and interactions. There is deceit, violence, death, flattery, coercion, persuasion, betrayal, et al. 

The Panchatantra should be read to understand statecraft. 

If that holistic view is of any use to you, the National Book Trust has a book that has all the stories of Panchatantra, in order, with the lesson attached to each. 

There is also another book that just lists the suktis or sutras in order. You can also refer that one. (Different publisher). 

None of the sutras is useful by itself. It has to be viewed in context. Which is why, when I tried to read only the sutras book, it was not as useful. But read with the context of the stories, they made a lot of sense.