Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The Milagrow Morning Ritual

Monday to Friday, when the clock strikes nine, I here some voices around me… come for the ritual. Long time, since I actually worshipped God in the morning… but this isn’t about God and idol-worshipping..!!

A few weeks ago, in one of our internal meetings, we decided that we would follow a ritual. A practice to recite the company’s vision, mission, values & culture, To speak out loud the company’s ten commandments and ten imperatives.

The first thought that struck my mind was… “Oh great, I’d not have to cram these sentences now and would be able to learn them easily in this manner.”

Of course this thought had a reason… Till date, I have no idea about the vision and the mission of the company where I did my summer training. I don’t even remember the number of values they had. No wonder they took some steps to make us learn those… like putting them on posters all around the office, pinning a paper at each desk… but who would have cared to have a look at those.

Once when my colleague was asked about the company’s values, I quietly glanced at the poster in front of me, so that I can speak them out, in case the next turn was mine. Poor chap could not glance at the poster and received a round of verbal bash.

Even during the corporate presentations during my days at management school, I was really bugged when these slides appeared on the screen. My mind used to shout… “I need to complete my assignments and projects. Why don’t these guys quickly move on to the relevant part of the presentation?”

Well, this being my views about corporate vision and mission, the announcement about the morning ritual at Milagrow was a relief. I thought, “This time definitely I’ll be able to learn these.”

Then, the next day onwards, the practice began. In the presence of just half the total number of employees, the ritual was initiated. This being the first day, we opened the corporate presentation on my laptop and read out the slides.

I probably didn’t give much attention to the meaning of each and every word because all I was doing was reading the slides loud.

The next three days, I was out in Mumbai for a client meeting and could not participate in the ritual. On the fifth day, the same practice of reading out the slides repeated. Finally & thankfully, the essence of the practice was checked on the sixth day. When asked as to how many remembered any of the vision, mission, values, culture, etc. not even a single hand was raised. No doubts, the practice had become meaningless.

So, for the next morning, all of us were then told that each and everything should be learnt by-heart and known to every individual. Finally, I learnt them before the next dawn.

Next morning, we all met again. As expected, everyone had learnt everything. But it still didn’t change my views about these things. They were still some English statements, which companies put on papers to show that they work with a strategy.

The practice has now continued for another 2 weeks. I don’t know how, but things have changed entirely in the last 14 days.

Now, every morning when I hear the vision, mission, values and culture, and speak them in my heart, my mind tells me, “Now you know what you are working for..!! What are you expected to do..?? Did you do something which is not aligned to the corporate values..??” A strange change, but probably the essence of the ritual was to achieve the same. When I sit back and think, what brought this change in just 14 days, I feel it was a mix of too many factors.

Firstly, and probably the most important one, the corporate values are aligned to my personal values. It’s just that in the last 25 years of my life, I never cared to list them and think how I am following them in my daily routine. Only when they were repeated daily, I realized that actually this is what I do in professional as well as personal life. However, now since these are listed down precisely, the chances on missing out on any of these in daily life becomes negligible.

Secondly, now whenever I am stuck somewhere in my work and am confused as to what should I do, these act as a handbook. Just a quick reference to the values and the culture, and somehow I get to see the way forward. For example, earlier I used to just finish of the tasks that were given to me. All I used to check was whether my job is done or not. But now, when I speak out daily that “Entrepreneurial thinking is a way of life,” my attitude has changed. Now I no longer check if my job is done, but I foresee that is my work productive? Have I been able to achieve something in the day?

Then during the reciting of the Ten Commandments and the ten imperatives, my mind keeps on checking whether I did it or not. Is there anything that has been left out? In fact a couple of times, during the ritual itself, I signalled my colleague that we have missed out on that point and we need to finish that right after this. Certainly, he was also thinking the same and I could observe a similar reaction from his side too.

It feels great to realize that with a simple practice, I have found a structure in my way of working. And the best thing that I feel is that I and my colleagues have some common things now - the reason for which we are working and our attitude towards our work.

I realize that this ritual would have significance if the employees believe in reaching out to its essence, but for some ignorant species like what I was, it was an eye & mind-opener. This was one of my first corporate learning, which taught me the significance and use of the vision, mission, values and culture of a company.

With me writing so much about it and you wondering what actually has got a change in me, let me simply pen down what I work for at my office.

Vision: We are Venture Catalysts. We Nurture Ideas and Enable Growth Seeking Enterprises to attain Ethical, Sustainable and Profitable Growth

Mission: Become ‘The Destination’ for Micro, Small and Medium Businesses. To partner with aspiring enterprises as a Venture Catalyst and build ‘best in class’ managerial and organizational capabilities in them. We shall a) Nurture Shared Values, b) Develop Relevant Knowledge & Competence and c) Create and Sustain Entrepreneurial Culture

Values: a) Commitment – Own everything we do

b) Ethics – Integrity, Honesty and Transparency in what we do

c) Respect – All Stake Holders

d) Trust – Believe in People

Culture:

* Entrepreneurial thinking is a way of life
* Belief in Youth
* Equal Opportunities to all
* Thirst for Knowledge
* Respect and Recognition for Expertise
* Accessible & Straight forward
* Collaborative approach
* Making things happen
* Passionate and Professional at the same time



Ten Commandments:

1. Have I cleaned my workplace today?
2. Have I updated my schedule on the shared calendar?(All client related, external facing and time bound, time consuming tasks must be on it)
3. Did I reconfirm all my appointments for today?
4. Have I prepared myself for my meetings today?
5. How will I delight my customers today?
6. Have I helped my internal customers today?
7. Did I make a call to my family/friends today?
8. Did I create/capture new knowledge for myself today? Did I blog today?
9. Did I reply to all my emails today?
10. Did I make my HML for tomorrow? (Do the biggest impact and external facing things first)‏



Ten Imperatives:

1. Follow the company templates on external and internal communication
2. All external communication which commits the company to doing a thing must be checked by a peer or superior
3. Record notes of all external meetings and important internal decisions must be made in written and circulated to all concerned within 24 hours
4. Minutes of Client meetings must go out in 24 hours after approval from superiors
5. Weekly Client reports are a must before weekend
6. Monthly Client reports must be printed before the 5th of next month
7. Company nomenclature and numbering system must be followed for all files and folders
8. Google groups must be hosted on every important initiative
9. Open source project management and IT tools must be learnt and followed
10. Always log on to 'Milagrow Chat' unless in meetings

Monday, June 8, 2009

Right to Information

Currently, we are building up a Right to Information Help Desk on our upcoming SME portal which aims to facilitate Small and Medium Enterprises and Individuals to seek information and get justice from the right corridors.

To enable this Help Desk, I am trying to build linkages with RTI Activists across the country so that we can route the queries to respective state’s activists. The portal would act as a platform for bringing together RTI activists present across India for the social good for SMEs and helping them in getting easy access to information.

In this process, I have been talking to various activists across states and am quite motivated and enthusiastic to see how passionate they are about RTI Act and its implementation. Here, I would like to mention that most of them do it voluntarily after their office hours and take out time to bring awareness and keep the RTI flame burning.

For example, today I talked to Mr.Vikram Simha who is quite active in spreading RTI movement in Karnataka. He along with his two colleagues had set up Sakshi Trust which conducts Training Programmes on RTI for enterprises to make them aware about its magical effects.

The other day I was watching few videos on RTI and was surprised to know that the bribe business is worth 21 million rupees in India. To make people aware of RTI, a “Drive against Bribe” campaign was run across 55 cities with 1500 trained volunteers, 8 media partners and more than 700 civil society groups in July 2006. A lot of cases were solved successfully during this campaign. Representatives from Parivartan went on to the streets of East Delhi and made the citizens understand about their rights to seek information as to how their tax money is being spent, where the government is at fault and how they are being cheated. Also around 5 villages of Uttar Pradesh were benefited through RTI campaign by Kabir, an RTI Activist group. Many of the villagers problems regarding discrepancies in providing basic infrastructural facilities like ration, school uniforms, roads, etc. got resolved by filing RTI applications which forced the concerned authorities respond on the irregularities in the system. The campaign had a huge impact and villagers won the battle against the corrupt authorities and now are very well aware of the weapon called RTI.

Several cases related to land disputes, IT returns, passport irregularities, pensions, etc. where government authorities make unnecessary delays and ask for bribes can be resolved by putting the concerned departments in the dock and questioned about the irregularities in the system. It is high time that SMEs too, understand the power of RTI and use it as a tool to avoid exploitation from government bodies and public offices. RTI guarantees a person to get access to all the information and inspect any government correspondence or document, etc. until and unless there are very strong reasons to deny it. Right To Information gives its citizens a legal power to question the way of government functioning and attack the institutional impediments to openness and accountability that are still very dominant in many of the government departments.

Citing lot of discrepancies and loopholes in the operations of govt. authorities, I believe Milagrow’s RTI Help Desk would be a great tool for SMEs to get their voices heard and seek information from the concerned authorities. It is very premature to say how RTI Help Desk would fair in future but one thing is for sure that RTI Movement has to spread its wings and reach to wider audience who could use this powerful tool for their benefit. Milagrow would continue its efforts in making this movement popular and accessible to all SMEs and individuals but we would be requiring equal participation from SMEs to be more active and not hesitate to approach us for filing an RTI.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Learning……. As an Experience

---Contributed by Divya Bhalla
My third week in Milagrow …… and each day has been better than the previous one.

Milagrow is a workplace of everyday learning, which doesn’t necessarily mean formal training or being a trainer to provide people with learning toolbars of their respective roles.

We get trained and impart training on various spectrums of learning by working as a team.

Hence, my interface with learning has been:

To be constantly conscience of our new strength

To identify opportunities and increase our speed of actions

To implement what we think immediately

To be assertive

To be committed

Our management Gurus say… that people of an organization learn the most when they are motivated and are emotionally committed to their roles.

Though it may sound difficult to inculcate learning into someone, but we can definitely ensure ways and environment that encourages this process.

I would conclude my experience of learning with what – Nelson Mandela said in his Inaugural speech in 1994:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate but our deepest fears are that we are powerful beyond measure”.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Open Source – A trend for the SMBs

Any business, be it small or large is because of People, Project, Process and Technology. Earlier the organization had more focus on People and Projects. People were hired and put into the projects. But today “technology” plays a vital role in the development of any business. This is because technology is applied onto a project to keep track on the processes and activities which in turn helps the people of the organization to achieve goals and success.

But today, so much has been spent on technology that there is a need to set up a secure, cost effective and at the same time productive IT infrastructure. Big brands like HP, Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle and many others who have created the tech market, also are leaving a big hole in our pockets. So where should the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) look in for technology? The answer being simple is difficult for many to digest is “Open Source”.

According to opensource.org “Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process.” Let us understand what actually the above statement means.

Free Redistribution of license, distribution of original or modified source code under the same terms and conditions, the license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time, license must not restrict other software or be specific to a product.

Let us take an example, today when we buy Microsoft Office; we get the software license for usage for around Rs. 20,000 or more. This is renewable license but each up gradation of license would cost extra every year. If you do not renew then your software will expire and after that you would be using pirated software which is not legal.

At that time open source “Open Office 3.0” comes into picture wherein you get the license once you download. After this you have the power to use the software for as much time as you want and for no cost at all. You can also distribute the product for free in compliance with the terms and conditions. If the software has newer versions, all you have to do is download the latest version or update your existing patch code with new patch code.

So when one asks “how do I come to know about the open source alternative of a software”, I reply- with little knowledge, eagerness to learn and an Internet connection one can simply browse to learn the alternatives. Because they are easy to learn with available “help menu” and save you from piracy of software. Apart from this, open source awareness has led to online demo of many types of software on the net.

To actually help you understand, how open source would be benefiting you in terms of cost and usage, let us look at the comparison below along with available options:

S. No

Commercial S/w

Price (Rs.)

Open Source S/w

1.

MS Outlook

5,000/user

Zimbra

2.

Tally

36,000

GNU Cash

3.

MS Office

13,824/user

Open Office

4.

Adobe Reader

8000

PDF Creator

5.

Adobe Photoshop

5000

Gimp

6.

Video Uploading on your website

Kaltura

7.

Web Conferencing tool

Save travel cost

DimDim

8.

MS Proj

OpenProj

9.

Sales Force

3250/ user/month

SugarCRM

10.

Mc Afee/ Norton

2000+/user/year

ClamWin

11.

WinZip

1500

7 zip

12.

Nero

3200

InfraRecorder

13.

MySAP HR

OrangeHRM

14.

Windows XP

6500/desktop

Linux-ubuntu

15.

SAP ERP

10- 25 Lakh

OpenBravo

So you can actually total up your cost of commercial software and save that much amount by using open source model! For SMBs, this can be one suite for their organization IT infrastructure with which they can “develop relevant knowledge and sustain themselves with open source in these recessionary times”.

For more details on open source, watch the space on upcoming SME Portal- IT Solutions.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Five Days @ Passport Office

---Contributed by Neha Bhatia

The scene of the office of our worldwide identity proof is unbelievable and hard to imagine for anyone who has never been to any government body and has got the work done. I had to go to get the “additional” booklet and I was made to run from pillar to post for 5 days which ideally, is the time you get your fresh passport under tatkal scheme.

With very little knowledge of timings I went on the first day at 3pm. As soon as I entered I saw more than 100 people (some in queue and some fighting claiming to be in the queue). The scene was nothing less than a vegetable market. There were around 15 counters all having a board “This counter is not for general information”. All counters just had one thing written on a blue board “tatkal/ general”

With this I asked around 5 to 6 counters about “where can I get additional booklet” and the responses were counter 6 hall 1, counter 4 hall 2 and many more except the exact information. With hardly any hope to get any answer from inside the passport office, I went to the watchman and asked him the procedure. He said “madam kal line mein lagna subah 9:30 baje, token lena aur fir andar aana”. I asked “ye line kaha hoti hai, kaun se counter par” and that person responded “counter nahi madam, wo toh building ke peeche ek line lagti hai”.

Second day the line for token starts at 9:30 am I reached at 8 am and found atleast 30 people standing in front of me. And by 9:30 am there were around 150 people behind me. Some made their touts stand so that work gets finished faster and paying Rs. 6500 than paying regular Rs. 2500. So I asked someone in front me in the line why there are more than 2 people at the same position so the person said “ye India hai sab jugad hota hai”. I got the token at 10 am and then the passport authority refused to accept the token because I was not getting passport for myself which was violating the rule in tatkal scheme even if I had authority letter. So all my energy, time of standing in the line since 8 to 11 am got wasted or I must say, I had an experience of nothing…

Third day reached around 7am in order to get the work done and still saw 5 people ahead of me. And I thought people are crazy but they were like me who were fed up of the system and just wanted to get the work done as soon as possible. I got the token and I went inside. We (the passport holder and I) got the work done in 15 minutes paid the tatkal fees Rs. 3000, got the date of receiving the passport and left the place. But during this time we also found something strange inside the passport office. They were like “shoes on the table of one of the employees”, “passports and files lying idle” like if they get lost then it is not at all their responsibility because they would say “madam apki file incomplete thi”.

Fourth and fifth day were again just to receive the passport as on the fourth day, not all the passport could be made and we required additional passport of jumbo size. So fifth day again we stood at the gate at 10 am, received the passport (after requesting senior official to give on time because we had a meeting to attend at the office). At the same time I just said “Hope I never come back here”.

But later I realized should I have said that or I just wanted things here to be sorted? Actually I wanted privatization of the passport office so that no common madams (as they called) or anyone would have the same experience as I had there.

But before I end, everyone reading this blog please read below in case you have to get new passport or change of information or additional booklet.

1. Download the form from the website http://passport.gov.in/ for your requirements.
2. Fill and attach supporting documents
3. Go to the passport office next day morning around 7:30 am to get the token.
4. After taking the token, go to the counter mentioned on the token.
5. Specify your need and they would send you to the actual counter
6. Get your forms checked and submit to the official.
7. Pay Rs. 1000 for fresh passport in general scheme which would take 1 month or pay Rs. 1500 for fresh passport in tatkal scheme which would take less than 10 days. Incase of additional booklet charges are extra which is mentioned at the counter.
8. Get the receipt after payment which mentions date of collection.
9. For collection of passports timing is between 5 – 6 pm everyday behind the passport office building at the same place where you collected your token. In other cases sometime they tell you to go to the counters also.
10. Last but not the least “DO NO PAY THE TOUTS”. This can be one experience and also you would save Rs. 4000 by doing your work yourself.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Stepping Again in the Professional World

As we are in the era of globalization it is important to be target and goal oriented, focused, have a creative mind set to bring about turnaround for one’s respective organization and also for one’s own professional growth.

All the efficiencies and endeavors we possess should guide us to evolve our competencies.

The goals we must set for ourselves should necessarily be rationale: they should be within the parameters of our competence, capabilities and abilities. A goal without an emotional quotient becomes a task and a task is always heavy.

All this is in context to what I have learnt today in my new organization MILAGROW.

It has been a very important day for me today as I have made a comeback in the world of professionalism and Milagrow has provided me with a comeback platform for which I am highly thankful to the epitome of this prestigious organization, Mr. Rajeev Karwal.

In a span of six hours I have learn’t so much. The team here is a bundle of zeal and passion and most importantly they possesses a sense of ownership in whatever they do.

It is an honor and pleasure to be a part of this enriching team

“There are always new opportunities, either you or your competitor will find it”. This is what we all need to keep in mind.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

My First Day as an Entrepreneur...

- By e-mail from Veera Mavalwala

A Day in the Life of an Entrepreneur....

Dear Friends

My first day as an Entrepreneur indeed has been very satisfying! I woke up as usual at 7.00 am - thought I would go back to sleep so set the alarm for 8.00 am - but couldnt sleep so was up by 7.30 am. Read the newspaper back to back (not just glancing through it as I would normally do), had a bath and was ready (make-up and all) at 10.00 am when my Partner Mona came over. I requested her that I would like to say a Prayer and light a diya before we started our first day together. She agreed and I read out a "Mushkil Aasan" prayer which I normal say on Tuesdays and Fridays. We ate the Prasad of channa and elaichidana and started working around 11.00 am on our Presentation for our "NAVROZE ACADEMY - The Finishing School for Business & Admin Professionals". We continued till 1.00 pm when I took half an hour off to prepare lunch - Dal, Rice and Zeera Aaloo. We had lunch and continued with the Presentation. In the meanwhile, Mona got an e-mail for a "Train the Trainer", Training Programme. We liked the contents of the course and after a bit of bargaining (Thanks Rajeev for the tips!) enrolled ourselves for the 3-day Programme from 12-14 Feb 09. Also, made some calls to fix some meetings for tomorrow.

We completed the Presentation by 5.45 pm and Mona just left. I have mailed it to my friend for help and am now sitting to write about my first day as an ENTREPRENEUR!

All in all a VERY POSITIVE start and I loved being at home and working and having lunch with Farokh - he too was happy as he didnt have to just have a sandwich or soup alone. Am now going to prepare dinner.

Best wishes
Veera

"Success doesn't come to you, you go to it" .....Marva Collins