28 December 2019

Interesting coffee place

Rode the motorbike up to Ballground, GA and found a nearby coffee place with an interesting name – Barrel House Coffee Company. Once inside, got to meet the owner – Ryan, who explained the name to me. He ages the coffee beans in bourbon barrels for a month to two months and then roasts them. Tried out a cappuccino. Tasted pretty nice.

Presently, Rakesh, who was also out and about in his motorbike, joined me there. It was a good ride and some very interesting coffee!

Category: Motorbiking | 1 Comment on Interesting coffee place
25 December 2019

Lessons learnt as a CEO – part two of three

If last week was about the childhood sea-saw, this week is all about teenager years. Specifically calculus! Yes, calculus!!

Lesson 2: Don’t forget your derivatives from the calculus class in high school

To quote the much hackneyed statement – change is a constant. As a leader, your worry is not change per se. Whether you like it or not, change will happen. Even if you or your company desire not to change, the market will, technology will, customers will and competition will. You simply have no option.

And chances are that as a CEO everywhere you look, you can see the writing on the wall about the changes that you need to bring or would like to bring. That is given.

Change of status is a first order algebraic equation. One of the lessons I have learnt as a CEO is to get a deeper understanding of the first derivative. What is the “right pace of bringing in change”? The rate of change, if you will. (First derivative, if you remember your calculus)

You cannot ride a speedboat like you are steering a ship. You will lose out on the potential progress and fun you could have had. On the other hand, you cannot steer a ship like you are riding a speedboat. A couple of hard turns and you are going to break the ship into pieces.

Setting the direction (change required) is relative easy. You can hire one of those management consulting firms and they will wax eloquent on what change you need. Figuring out at what pace you want to turn the ship and what is the speed you can push the organization to but no more requires a deep understanding of the company and its culture.

As a CEO, this can often be very frustrating. You know what you want and have a rough idea how to even get there. But you cannot dictate the speed. Turning organizations has as much angular momentum as rectilinear momentum. You do not want to spin it out of control – but you want to keep the force on.

You have to apply the right throttle and the right steering. All the while, trying to change the culture, re-equipping the talent inhouse to be able to deal with a little more throttle and a little faster steering.

You will not get all changes right all the time. That is okay. Going back to the ship metaphor – you will pivot and change directions multiple times. But if you pushed the ship beyond its limit of handling change and broke it in two pieces (or even some major component of it), that is irreversible. You will have no chance to pivot any more. Or make anymore forward progress, for that matter.

So, the key lesson is, it is not about the change. It is about the “rate of change”. Not the “delta”. The “d – d – t”, in your teenager math speak.

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24 December 2019

Reached the milestone of ten thousand miles

10,000 miles in just under two years. It has been a great journey… with a few scares no doubt. Ever indebted to Magesh, Danny, Avi and Rakesh without whose encouragement and support, I would have never reached here. It is still scary but thoroughly enjoyable. Nothing beats the feel of the wind on you in the lonely, rural roads – especially if you are going as a group!

How about this as a coincidence? After finishing my ride today, went to the Apple store to pick up something for Nikita. Guess who I ran into? Rakesh!! He was picking up something for his daughter too. Told him about my milestone today.

Without any further delay we shimmied to the bar next door to celebrate!!

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22 December 2019

Book Review: “Strength in Stillness”

This book gets a big thumbs down from me. The title “The Power of Transcendental Meditation” made me believe that it will give an idea about what Transcendental Meditation is and how it works. In reality other than talking about there is a “mantra”, all the author does is gives quotes from others and examples of others. The quotes come from very big names like Oprah and Seinfeld and all that. The whole book could have been summarized in couple of pages – “See all these big guys have benefited from this. So can you”.

When it gets to actually talking about how to do it, the book only offers that you get yourself a teacher. Otherwise you cannot learn it. Almost made me feel like I paid twelve dollars to buy me some kind of marketing materials.

This does not mean that Transcendental Meditation does not work or that getting a teacher is not the right thing to do – just that it was not worth spending the time and money to read a book of other people’s quotes and any analysis (if that is even the word I am looking for) that shallow, in my opinion.

I have personally found books by Eckhart Tolle and Jon Kabat-Zinn to be much more thought provoking and insightful.

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22 December 2019

One holiday puzzle

One of those letters for digits… with a twist.

Look at the long multiplication below. As you see, a three digit number DEB is being multiplied by a two digit number DG to give a four digit number AECE. Each letter stands for a digit.

Here is the twist though: A letter above the black line (in red color) if also found below the black line (blue color) is not going to have the same value but will be off by one from each other. Of course, above the black line, any letter, if found twice will have the exact same value. Likewise below the black line. The twist comes only if the same letter comes both above and below the line.

As an example, the two D’s will have exactly the same value since they are both red. But the red G and the blue G are going to be off from each other by one since they have different colors. (If one is 6, the other can be 5 or 7).

The only digits used in this problem are 0,2,3,5,6,8 and 9.

Can you find out what the letters stand for above the black line and below the black line?

Category: Puzzles | 6 Comments on One holiday puzzle