Random Thoughts

Kobayashi Maru

2010-06-22T15:26:00.000-07:00

I actually had to endure the Kobayashi Maru test in my first job interview in 1992. This was for a sales job selling computers back home in India. The company was known for its aggressive sales tactics. So the test was as follows.

“You are in front of the customer. This is a big deal. You have been told by your management that you will lose your job if you lose the deal. Also you will lose your job if you agree to an un-approved discount on the price. You are in a meeting with the customer and your competitor is waiting outside. The customer says that he is going to decide only on price and that the competitor is going to give a discount he is looking for and he is going to make a decision immediately. He asks you to make a decision on the discount immediately. And BTW, you can’t call your management on the cell phone or use the customer phone to call your boss”. I did pass the test and got the job…

The answer to the sales test.
A few assumptions.

I am going to assume that my competitor cannot offer un-approved discounts either to make the game fair.
Another assumption is that I am purely selling a commodity and the customer cares only about price.
I have had some sales people say that they will offer something which is an intangible extra which cannot be measured and so are having and developing personal relationships whatever that means.
I am also assuming that the customer can delay the decision.
The customer is going to make the decisions purely on price.

Given that, here is the solution. The only way out here is to extend the end game and have the customer delay the decision making. The customer is being offered a discount by your competitor. What you can do to extend the end game is to offer a bigger discount than your competitor but at the same time request more time to get approvals. Since the customer is buying a commodity and is going to make a decision purely based on price, then the bigger discount you are offering should be attractive enough for the customer to delay the decision and for you to go get the approvals. You can then go back to your management to get the bigger discount and make the sale and keep your job. Another benefit of this strategy is that you will have an idea of what discounts that your competitors are offering to their customers which is valuable information for sales management. It would be even better if the customer documented that expectation instead of a verbal statement. The bigger discount you are offering should carry that caveat of documenting the price expectation by the customer which could benefit your management.

You would make a good “agent” for the “principal” by finding that discount percentage in a careful manner by calibrating it down slowly instead of doing it steeply. You can then get some kind of commitment that the customer will cease negotiations and make the deal happen and not play a “Race to the Bottom”.

I did get the job…

As I go back in time in the Spring of 92, the answer was more by instinct, intuition and gut feel than an analysis as described above and Nash was on the verge of receiving the Nobel Prize.

Tutu Thoughts

2010-06-22T13:29:00.000-07:00

A friend just came back from South Africa and we were talking about it. One of South Africa's greatest personalities (other than Nelson Mandela of course) is Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The Bishop had a unique perspective which can be felt in his quotes. One quote that moved me was his quote on humanity. The quote reads, "We are bound by our humanity, for we can only be human together". The Bishop correctly recognized that Apartheid was not an issue of discrimination but a rejection of humanity. The rejection is the root cause, the discrimination is the effect. The Bishop worked hard to change the perspective peacefully as he recognized that any improvement was going to come by recognizing this. Any oppression or discrimination results from this core fact and for this insight we salute Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Haiku

2010-05-27T11:18:00.001-07:00

Nobel Sayings

2010-04-29T10:22:00.000-07:00

The University of Chicago has one of the best economics departments in the world. Their school of business is right there too. Their Gleacher Center in downtown Chicago has a nice lounge and a bunch of quotes from the Nobel Laureates who taught at Chicago. It is really interetsing.

The main purpose of economics is to understand and help alleviate poverty, and there is an intimate and transparent relation between investments in human capital and the alleviation of poverty.
Gary S. Becker

Mathematics has no symbols for confused ideas.
George J. Stigler

If you torture the data long enough, nature will confess.
Ronald H. Coase

When I first discovered options, I became very excited about the possibility that there was a contract that enabled you to only be able to take the upside of the return and not the downside. And that being able to take the upside only had value-and that was really exciting.
Myron S. Scholes

When one contemplates the powerful impact of sustained economic growth on human welfare, it is hard to think about anything else.
Robert E. Lucas Jr.

By investing in themselves, people can enlarge the range of choices available to them. It is one way free men can enhance their welfare.
Theodore W. Schultz

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
Milton Friedman.

It is a rare public policy that promotes fairness and social justice and, at the same time, promotes productivity in the economy.
James J. Heckman

One cannot understand current political and ethical trends, or properly forecast future economic developments, without understanding the cycles in religious feelings in American history and the social, economic and political movements that they have generated.
Robert W. Fogel

What counts is what you do with your money, not where it came from.
Merton H. Miller

System Performance

2010-04-29T08:09:00.000-07:00

Over my career, I have focused on Oracle Performance and System Performance in general. I worked at Hotsos which was one of the best companies in the world on the topic of Oracle performance. Hotsos pioneered a product around Workload Characterization which was a mainframe approach and Method-R pioneered by Cary Millsap.

At Hotsos, I came up with this approach for System Performance and hope this helps.

Workload Characterization:

Workload characterization is the process of logging and tracking work done in the database by users and its associated computing costs. This data than can be studied to understand the nature of the workload and its overall impact.

Workload can be handled in one of five ways.
Eliminate – Clearly the easiest option to pursue due to the minimal effort involved and simple procedures needed to accomplish this step. We estimate that 25-50% of workload in any system is waste and can be easily eliminated and processes put in place to avoid the recurrence of the workload

Tune – If the workload is a useful workload (i.e. work is accomplished by the user), we can then assess if it needs to be tuned by using Method R. This usually involves tuning of SQL statements to consume less Logical I/O’s and computing resources like parsing etc. If the resource consumption of computing is still high, an assessment needs to be made on whether the complexity of the business requirement is worth the cost of the computing necessary to accomplish this workload. This is a hard business question and needs to be answered keeping all the stakeholders interest in mind.

Train – We find that well tuned programs can suffer from runaway workload by improper desktop procedures or user not trained to use the functionality of the software to efficiently accomplish their work. This is true in Order Management where a blind search for Orders and Customers can potentially take down the database with its demand of resources.

Reschedule – Sometimes, large batch workload runs during peak hours creating a competition for resources and slows all the workload on the system. In this case, this workload will need to be rescheduled to a non-peak time. This can be difficult in global system where there are no non-peak windows except for a small time on the weekend.

Relocate – Ad-Hoc Reports and Batch reports can be potentially made to run on a copy of the production database thereby offloading the workload demand off to the reporting database. This can significantly reduce the competition for resources and improve overall workload throughput.

The order in which to approach it economically is

1.) Eliminate

2.) Train

3.) Re-schedule

4.) Tune/Optimize Code

5.) Re-locate

Thanks
Mahesh

Aggie

2010-03-31T08:37:00.000-07:00

I am an Aggie which means an alumnus of Texas A&M University. Texas A&M or A&M or Aggieland as it is known has its main campus at College Station. In Texas, you will see car signs by native Texans which say "Texan by Birth, Aggie by the grace of God". It is funny and nice. I am however Indian by birth and I chose to live in Texas since I came to the US in 1993. I am an Aggie as I went to Texas A&M. I am a US citizen now. I came up with a slight twist.

"Indian by Birth,
Texan by Choice,
Aggie by the grace of god".

Mahesh

This day, that age - Feb. 11

2010-02-11T21:03:00.000-08:00

Growing up in South India, the newspaper, "The Hindu" was the paper of choice. They used to have a small section called, "This day, that age" and would highlight what happened 50 years ago. I thought it was very cool. In the same spirit, I would like to bring attention to what happened on Feb.11, 1861. Lincoln had been elected President and was heading to Washington leaving behind friends in Springfield, Illinois. A moving speech called "The Farewell Address" was delivered by Lincoln, Read and enjoy.

My friends, no one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of the Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.

A child's education

2009-09-30T14:40:00.000-07:00

I have a daughter Sanjana. She is three and a half years old. She is a joy . Anyway she goes to a montessori. We started noticing that she was not focusing when she was doing her ABC's or her 123's. So my wife started spending time with her after school and she is now doing really well.

It is funny and weird because Nimmi (my wife) and I strongly believe that education of children is parent's responsibility first and the teacher/school's second. We had kind of not focused on her as we thought that since she was going to a Montessori, we did not have to worry. This was a wake-up call for us.

Mohana Chandrasekharan National English School

2009-09-21T10:09:00.000-07:00

I went to National English School in Gopalapuram, Chennai/Madras from my kindergarten until my 6th grade. It was one of the best things that ever happened in my life. I remembered something in my 5th standard recently and I thought I would blog about it.

NES as it was known then was very rigorous with monthly exams to test learning and knowledge etc. I was an OK student in my class until my 4th grade. And 5th grade came. In my first monthly exam, I had failed in all my classes. That was not a good thing. My mom totally freaked out.

Mohana Chandrasekharan was the principal of the school and was a strong willed woman who ran the school very well. My mom came to school and check on me with the principal and the teachers. I got called in to the principal room which was not a good thing.

I go in and see my mom with all my teachers and the principal. The principal then asks me to open my notebooks and sure enough I don't have anything written down. She then asks one teacher each day to monitor me while I catch up with my notes and make sure that I was reading and studying what I was writing down after classes.

This went on for a month and every day a teacher would stay with me while I caught up after classes.

I was monitored for a couple of more months. The habit of taking down notes, reading and studying them helped and by end of the year in my annual/final exams, I was fifth in my class. From the bottom of the barrel to the top 5 in a class of 40 was nice indeed. I surprised a whole bunch of people with that.

That practice helped me throught my academic life from NES to CIT and to Texas A&M.

Thanks Mrs. Chandrasekharan.

Mahesh

Effective or Efficient

2009-08-14T07:54:00.000-07:00

A lot of times, we hear people talk about efficiency. Let us say it takes 2 hours to produce a widget. Let us say by cutting corners, you get it down to an hour and 48 minutes. You have achieved an efficiency of 10% not which is not bad. What if "you think out of the box" and figure out an innovative way of making the same widget in 30 minutes. That is a 75% improvement which is much better.

When you hear people talk about efficiency, it always helps to take a step back and look at the task in question and ask whether there is a more effective way of doing it. The quest for efficiency does not necessarily have to preclude an option for effectiveness. In fact, it should be a first check.

Making an ineffective process efficient is like masking the symptom of a problem.

Go forth and be effective and efficiency will follow.

Doing what you love

2009-07-17T09:21:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, I met a friend in Houston who was working for a firm. The money was good, the work was OK and there was travel. We were talking and it turns out he was miserable. We followed the discussion thread to its logical conclusion and I asked him the following. "What would you rather do than leave the comfort of your home and your family? In other words, what motivates you to get out of the comfort of your bed, your home, your loved ones and do something else?". He said he did not know.

Figuring the answer to the question would go a long way in doing what you really care about or your heart or your passion as the case the maybe.

Of course, we all have to make a living which is one big motivator but it is an economic motivator not a personal fulfilling motivator.

People who are very happy tend to find a happy medium between these two motivators.

So go forth and find your passion and find a balance between these two powerful motivators.

Mahesh

Short Term/Long Term/Tactical/Strategic

2009-06-23T12:15:00.000-07:00

One of the ways I like to think and act is to use the following quadrant. On some kind of interval basis, usally a week or a month, I look and categorize the things that I did and put them in the quadrant.

If I find myself most of the time in the lower left quadrant (i.e. short term tactical), then I know I need to step back and focus on other quadrants as well. Since I am in middle management, I don't get to focus in the upper right quadrant all the time(i.e. long term strategic).

The key is to operate in all qudrants over a period of time so things are not lost.
Depending on your role and charter, you will have to see where you need to spend your time.

People who are stressed out most of the time tend to stayin the short term tactical quadrant. People who do the big picture and nothing else tend to float in the long term strategic quadrant.

But the key point is for you to spend time in all quadrants consummate to your role for long term career growth.

Procrastination

2009-05-31T17:21:00.000-07:00

Procrastination is a sin,
the reason for grief and sorrow,
I know I will stop,
I think I will start tomorrow.

Mahesh

Great Expectations or Expectation Ping Pong

2009-05-31T17:17:00.000-07:00

I worked in consulting for 8 years at Oracle and consulting is more of an expectation management game than anything else. If you are a consultant, odds are you play this game every day. Here are some basic pointers.

1.) Understand the expectation
2.) Define the expectation (state your understanding)
3.) Confirm the expectation (confirm with the person your understanding and definition of the expectation) including time and cost.
4.) Deliver to that expectation

Remember, the easiest way to get setup for failure is
1.) Don’t define an expectation.
2.) Have it change on you all the time

If you work for somebody who is changing the expectation on you all the time, it is time to look for a new job.

Mahesh

Garland of Eternal Victory www.maalaflowergarlands.com

2009-05-31T16:58:00.000-07:00

In Hindu mythology, when the gods and the demons churned the ocean of milk, Lakshmi came out of it holding a garland aptly named Vyjayanthi(meaning a garland of eternal victory). It was her intent to give it to the most eligible being present and Vishnu was right there. Lakshmi garlands him. Hindu mythology and garlands have a lot of synergy. Devotion is usually expressed by presenting the deity with a garland of flowers.

My friend Jaya has started a web site and a service where she can deliver garlands of high quality for expressing your devotion or if you are getting married just as Lakshmi married Vishnu by presenting him with a garland.

Check out http://www.maalaflowergarlands.com/ for garlands and express your devotion or love.

Mahesh

4 C's of Life

2008-12-29T14:08:00.000-08:00

The choices that we make on where we live etc. led me to formulate these 4 C's.

Career - Clearly one of the primary reason where we decide to live.

Cost of Living - This is a secondary influence

Community - This has two pieces depending on what point in your life you are in. If you are young, you want to party and have fun. You will probably prefer a city or a downtown kind of life. As you age and have kids, a suburb becomes a preferable choice due to obvious reasons.

Commute - Once these are figured out, then commute comes to play.

In this 4 dimensional space of the C's, we have to make the fifth C. The fifth C is choice.

Have fun C'ing in this 4 dimensional C space.

Thanks
Mahesh

SCRUM

2008-12-20T11:16:00.001-08:00

A few weeks ago, I came across this term called SCRUM. You can find a definition of course at Wikipedia. SCRUM

SCRUM is a rugby term where the players move the ball back and forth and across to the other side. It is now used in Agile Programming where a product is built incrementally by a team with small pieces of functionality and improved over and over again into a usable product.

SCRUM projects have two kinds of members.

They are the "Pigs" whose bacon/ham is on the line i.e. they stand to lose the most if the product does not work which is to say they are fully committed.

Then there are the "Chickens" whose egg is on the line i.e. they don't stand to lose much if things go wrong.

The point is that when you are in a project kick off meeting and you see that you are the only pig in the room and the rest are all chicken, you should have a higher sense of awareness in the project. The chicken will forget things or tell that they were not told to do certain things etc. And then you are toast err..bacon.

In any case, the next time you are in a room and you are the only pig, it is time to get serious...

Happy Oinking....

The Right Thing

2008-12-20T11:14:00.000-08:00

An year year ago I was talking to a mentor of mine and he said this which really impressed me.

Business and Life are about two basic questions.
1.) Are we doing things right?
2.) More importantly, are we doing the right thing?

The simplicity hit me. While we trod through life, career, relationships and projects it helps to keep these two questions in mind.

The story behind it is funny too. My mentor and his friend were at an airport to go to a business meeting. The friend's shirt lost some threads and buttons. This friend then goes to a room in the airport and tries to mend it with a needle and thread. This took about an hour. My mentor asked his friend why he did not take out a new shirt from the suitcase and wear it.

When in the middle of something difficult, keep these things in mind..

Alcohol Effect

2008-12-20T11:05:00.000-08:00

This is probably not a true story but is funny nevertheless. The 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Chandrasekar Venkatraman for his discovery named after him called the Raman Effect. The Raman Effect explains the phenomenon behind the scattering of light in general and more specifically in liquids.

At the Nobel ceremony, it is customary to drink a toast to the Prize Winner. As the toast was made, everybody including Raman lifted their glasses and Raman put his glass down and did not drink while everyone else did. Raman was teetotaller.

When the people asked him why he did not drink, he apparently quipped. "Ladies and Gentlemen, yesterday I explained to you the Raman Effect on alcohol, I don't want you to witness the alcohol effect on Raman".

Something to "Bragg" About

2008-12-20T10:16:00.000-08:00

The 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics was unique. The prize was awarded to William Lawrence Bragg who was the youngest Nobel Laureate at the tender age of 25. The other prize winner was the father William Henry Bragg. Nobel Prize in Physics 1915

Physicists will argue that the younger Bragg did not deserve the award.

All said and done, it is something to Bragg about..

Incidentally, the other youngest physicist awarded the Nobel Prize for independent research was Rudolf Ludwig Mössbauer who was awarded the prize at the age of 32.
Nobel Prize in Physics 1961

Knowns and UnKnowns

2008-12-18T20:56:00.000-08:00

I was looking at this posting on youtube and it is may sound funny but it makes a point.

Rumsfeld on Knowns and Uknknowns

Basically, there are four combinations of Knowns and Unknowns.

Donald Rumseld talks about three. Now Rumsfled is a smart guy. He is from Princeton and he was one of the youngest defense secretaries. He was Dick Cheny's mentor in the 70's. He was also an ardent fan of Milton Friedman.

Known Knowns:
There are things we know that we know.

Known unknowns.
That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know.

Unknown unknowns.
There are things we don't know we don't know.

There is one more thing that is missing which is the Unknown Knowns:
Unknown Knowns: That is to say that we don't know something that is already known. As consultants, we need to be cognizant of this.

An example would be something that is in the documentation that you don't know about. This may cause you to scramble to get this in the known task list once you find it or you may create an inelegant solution because you were not aware of it.

So be known....

Method and Methodology

2008-12-18T20:52:00.000-08:00

At the risk of being pedantic, I hear us using the words Method and Methodology interchangeably. AIM is a Method not a methodology. You ask what is the big deal.

The first page of the AIM book tells us it is a method and not a methodology.

The American Heritage Dictionary offers the following explanation.

"In recent years . . . “methodology” has been increasingly used as a pretentious substitute for “method” in scientific and technical contexts. The misuse of the word methodology obscures an important conceptual distinction between the tools of scientific investigation (properly “methods”) and the principles that determine how such tools are deployed and interpreted — a distinction that the scientific and scholarly communities, if not the wider public, should be expected to maintain".

AIM is a Method in the sense that it offers a specific set of steps for implementing Oracle Applications which we use on a regular basis. AIM Methodology would be something that would be the study of the method. Unless we are planning to study the method and the principles behind AIM and suggest modifications, we should stick to Method.

Also, the next time you hear somebody use it, you know they are trying to sound important without knowing the underlying context which you can use for leverage. I have a couple of times and it made the customer aware that I was being careful and not pedantic...

Accounting is a RAPARR

2008-12-13T21:00:00.000-08:00

As I was thinking about accounting and financials, I started thinking about how to structure and group activities within accounting and the following came to mind.RAPARRR -

R - Record. The first step in any accounting step (I am not considering setups) is to record transactions.

A - Approve. Once these transactions are recorded, they need to be approved.

P - Post. Once transactions are recorded and approved, they need to be posted.

A - Audit. Transaction that are recorded and approved need to be audited.

R - Rollup. After transactions are recorded, approved, posted and audited, they need to be rolled-up into appropriate categories.

R - Report. After rollups are performed, they need to be reported to the appropriate stakeholders.

One of these days, I will try to write a RAP song about it...:)

Mahesh

The three fundamental questions in sales

2008-12-13T19:58:00.000-08:00

I am not directly selling but I do a lot of assists in the sales process and I am around a lot of sales people. A lot of the stereo types about sales people is probably true. When I worked at Oracle from 1995-2004, we had our ups and down in sales. What we learnt over the years was that the biggest competition was not the competition but a lack of immediate imperative from the customer, and a tendency to procrastinate. The salesman is thinking at any given time as follows. "The customer needs to buy from us now".

Let us analyze this statement. "Needs to buy" is the verb or the action that the customer needs to perform. It begs the question as to why the customer needs to buy at all or do anything for that matter?

The next thing is the word "now". It begs the question why now. In other words, why should the customer act now if at all they have to act?

Assuming the customer actually needs to buy now, then the words "from us" becomes relevant. A lot of time you will find sales people answering the question "why buy from us" without even bothering to answer why buy and why now?

A good sales manager is somebody who recognizes this and ask the three fundamental question all the time to his sales people in that order.

"Why do anything at all?"
"Why now?"
"Why us?"

Happy Selling. These are tough times. Tough times do not last, Tough People do..

Mahesh