Use programs like Google internship to develop your knowledge

Read this news in TOI of 25 April 2012

Seventeen students have been selected by Google for the internship with its program called ' Google summer of code ( GSoC). GSoC program was initiated in 2005 to offer post secondary students beyond 18 years to write software code for various open software projects. Selected participants are paired with mentors for a project. The idea is to give students exposure to real world software development scenarios. 

These kind of live projects, with real problems, are very useful in applying the learned concepts in real world. This is what converts information into knowledge. If you have read the process of converting data to information to knowledge you will understand the impact of such live projects. This is what Howard Garnder calls 'Understanding something'. 

Look at what students in the above program are doing.  Smit Patel, a student for 3rd year BTech who has got selected in GSoC program, plans to integrate a 'bibliography engine' to the software which is missing until now in an open source software suite called Callligra Suite ( which is similar to licensed Microsoft office). This internship is for 3 months, typically starting from May and ending in July. More importantly, in GSoC, the student can talk with a expert mentor to ask any questions and clarify doubts. 

Out of the 17 students who have been admitted in Google internship program, one is from first-year , 4 are from second year, 9 from third year and 3 from the final year of B Tech ICT program. In other words, a student can join this Google internship program at any stage of his education. One need not be a master or an expert in something. One can use these live projects to apply the concepts into a real world scenario and deepen one's understanding at any stage of the education. 

These kind of live projects help a student in understanding all the various concepts in a subject, connect them together to solve a problem, and therefore build it into a 'knowledge' that can be re-utilised later. The student is forced to move from 'rote' learning to 'real' learning. A live project like this also enables the student to 'gain' the confidence in accomplishing some useful output. And more importantly, he also gets a straight entry in corporate world if he does the project well. Success or failure of project is not important; it is the student's ability to handle the real-world constraints that are tested in such a project.

There is an additional bonus in doing such a live project. A student's future education path is automatically selected after a project work. If he likes the work after GSoC, such as software, he continues on the same path. Even if he does not like the work, he knows what he does not want to do in the future. As we have seen in this blog, shifting from software work-path to domain work-path is difficult. So if you come to know that you do not like software, you prevent lot of future misery.  Therefore in both the cases, it is helpful.

Google internship program is just one example of doing a live project in software area. But every engineer, chartered accountant and other graduate student gets a chance to do a live project scenario in the final year; which imparts the same benefits: development of knowledge and the accompanying gaining of confidence. If you are working in a town like Pune or Nashik, you can even find a company who is willing to do a project for its own use and pay for it. For example, GSoC pays US $ 5000 to work on a 3-month project ! Be it in software, electronics, civil, hotel management, journalism or any other area, student must find a live project scenario to work on. There is no better way to develop knowledge. This is also the benefit of interdependency, which we discussed in the blog.

Do not glamorise passion in your life

I read an article on Sunday TOI about how it is important to live life by Passion. Example of Sachin Tendulkar has been quoted profusely to show how his passion of cricket has helped him break records in cricket. However, in my short career of coaching of about 5-6 years, I have met many individuals like Manik who could not generate 'passion'.

Manik has been acting since she was 12. She won several Gold medals in Acting at State Level drama competitions. She joined commercial drama Group in Mumbai at the age of 26, very competent in her acting abilities and mature in her outlook. In three years, she left drama, after working with several theater groups, because she could not 'adjust' with the unprofessional practices of commercial drama. She cited many instances such as drinking habits of main actors even before the act, disliked the way supporting cast was treated 'inhumanly', cringed at the abuse that was thrown at women actresses. Her engagement with the real word life of drama showed her that her 'principles of living life' were flouted in the drama world. She tried to adjust with the real-world of drama valiantly, but eventually left the field in which she had invested more than 18 years of her life.

When I met Manik 6 years back, I presumed that it was Manik's fault that she could not 'adjust' with the principles of Drama world. But as I met others during my last few years of coaching, I realised that Manik is not an exception. In Po Bronson's book, where he interviewed unusual people and wrote stories of about 50 individuals, I read a case of a gynaceological doctor** who left medicine after spending 30 years of her life getting through a toughest course.

Mary ( a fictional name) always wanted to do medicine because her father was a doctor. But no sooner did she start working as a doctor, she understood that she had a flaw she could not rectify. She lacked an 'Off button', as she says. She carried her patient's pain and concerns to her home. She was unable to separate her professional work from her personal life. She could not live her life, so to say. As she told Po Bronson, the journalist, she was forced to leave Medical profession.

Do you think Mary and Manik lack something which Sachin has? 

As you would have guessed, they did nothing wrong. Only after engaging with the work in the real-world of their work, did they find that 'passion' could not be generated because of some incompatibility. Manik's incompatability was due to her 'principles', while Mary's incompatability was due to her 'off switch'. No one could have predicted that this would happen. Sachin was simply lucky to have found his passion in the activity he engaged, playing cricket. While, Manik and Mary, despite investing huge effort in gaining the necessary skills, could not find their passion when they engaged in the real work of drama and medicine respectively!

Many writers of self-help books wrongly presume that 'passion can be discovered' just by introspecting. Vinita Nangia in the TOI blog, for instance, suggests that if you ask yourself what you are happy doing, you will find it. Infact many self-help books claim that successful people chose their careers through 'passion'. But this is like putting 'cart before horse'. Unless one engages with the real work, one cannot find one's passion. So how can one select one's career through passion? This suggestion of selecting career through passion, though wonderful, is impractical. Please read this blog on how passion develops.

Many authors claim that unless you work with passion, you will not truly discover yourself. This is true, but it is also a statement that is guaranteed to induce guilt in everyone. Since  there is no method to find a work that will generate passion before-hand, one can simply listen to this statement and feel 'awful'about oneself. 

Another homily is 'Unless you work with passion, you will generate mediocre work.'. This is not fully true. Passion does generate excellent work, but not always. For instance, Sachin's cricket passion has enabled him to break records at personal level, but it did not help him to 'lead' Indian team successfully, because captaining a team requires a different skill. Even his passion of cricket was not enough to help him learn the skill of 'captaining'. 

So let us not 'glamorise' passion. For us, who make our careers instead of writing how careers should be made, let us understand passion with all its limitations. When it happens to us, let us exploit the benefit. But when it does not happen to us, do not blame Luck and try to find passion desperately. 

Errors of omission are more critical than errors of commission in your life

An error of commission occurs when an individual does something that he should not have done. For instance, when an individual fails to complete an assigned task satisfactorily, or when an individual makes an error in submitting his plan.

An error of omission occurs when an individual fails to do something that he should have done. For instance, when an individual fails to ask his boss ' how his task performance is going to be measured' before commencing the task, or when an individual fails to ask ' how is his plan going to be rated' before making his plan.

Errors of omission happen when a person misses an opportunity by failing to do something. When a chartered accountant (CA) does not find a way to use his accounting knowledge in a software company, he is missing opportunity of utilising his knowledge. This error of omission is difficult to spot. But when the CA leaves the company because he is dissatisfied after few years of working in a software company, he is blamed for the wrong decision. This error of commission is easy to pick.

In career, the errors of omission are more difficult to catch, because they are caused when a person has not taken preventive steps. In contrast, errors of commission are easy to catch because they are major causes of distress and frustration. When a student fails to choose the right career-path and instead follows a career-path that everyone is following, the student rarely notices the error he/she is making. But when he/she gets poor marks, everyone notices his/her error of choosing career-path. When a graduate fails to take actions that will maximise his/her advantages of joining a science, commerce or engineering stream, the student is not blamed. He is instead blamed when he fails to find a job, which is an error of commission.

The story continues further. When a professional takes up a job without understanding what 'he can do' in the job, this error is rarely noticed. But when he complains that he is stuck up in a job because he cannot grow further, he is blamed because it is an error of commission. When a person marries without knowing 'what challenges are involved in sustaining a marriage', this error is not even noticed. But when the same person complains about his marital discord, his error of commission is immediately noticed.

At the age of 45, when a successful executive is not able to find anything meaningful in life, everyone notices the error of commission. But when the same executive did not take enough actions early in his life to find meaning in life, this error of omission was not even noticed.

As you would have noticed from the above examples, the errors of omission can be avoided only when you take help from a mentor or coach, before the event: either before marriage, or while taking up the job, or before you are successful. On the other hand, you will find individuals who will take help from the mentors or coaches only after the event: when they have failed after a marriage, or when they are dissatisfied in the job, or when they have failed. In short, in career, if you focus on avoiding errors of omission, you will gain more than if you focus on avoiding errors of commission.

What can you do to avoid errors of omission? Here are three suggestions:

1. Find coach/mentor when you are taking up anything new: be it joining a new stream like engineering or commerce after 12th class, or taking up a new job, or finding someone to marry, or relocating to a new place. And find this mentor before the new event is going to happen. Because this gives you enough time to equip yourself with the skills, if required.

2. Find coach/mentor when you are succeeding. Because success gives you time to pause and learn, knowing what has caused success is very useful in time of 'failure', because in failure you have very little time to maneuver. This helps you to focus on prevention, rather than cure.This is a smarter strategy.

3. Focus on avoiding error of omission in the core activity. For instance, focus on 'how to improve the performance' in your core job, course or activity. If you fail to do so, you are forced to focus on how to 'avoid blame' of poor performance later. In the earlier blog, we saw that if we avoid taking feedback on performance to improve our performance, we naturally depend on perceptions to avoid the blame of poor performance.

If you are committing errors of commission, it is the sign that you are constantly doing the catch-up in your life. It is time that you focus on errors of omission. Which strategy are you using to avoid errors of omission?

Whose approach is right - Gambhir's or Dhoni's?

Gambhir had said that Dhoni should have ended the second one-day match with Australia early ( played in the current Commonwealth series) and should not have waited till the last over, when he had to hit a six.

Dhoni in response to this comment replied, "It's different when you are playing in the middle. If you see his innings today ( after Gambhir played the next innings against Sri Lanka) , he also found it difficult to rotate the strike consistently, and once you are in that situation it is very difficult to play a big shot. You can easily play big shots, but the difference is it always has to pay off. So I am never in a hurry to finish it in the 48th over or 47th over. Even if it goes to the 49th or 50th over, I am quite happy".

Whose approach is right? Dhoni's or Gambhir's? What do you think?

In cricket, it is the bowler who makes the 'first move', so to say. Like white pieces in the chess, who make the first move, decide the course of the game, so it is with cricket. It is the bowler who determines the course of the game. If the bowler therefore is bowling beautifully, it is more likely that the big shot will not 'pay off'. And if it does not 'pay off', the team goes behind further. As the 'big shot' is predetermined, it is more than likely that one will also lose a wicket. This increases the 'risk' further. Not only deliveries are lost, but a new batsman has to take even 'higher risks', which is unlikely to pay off. Hitting a predetermined big shot to end the match early is less likely to produce the desired 'result' because one is ignoring the situational context of the game. (Gambhir's approach)

Given the nature of the cricket game, it is therefore prudent to 'wait' for the 'right delivery' of the bowler and play a big shot only on a 'loose delivery' ( which is Dhoni's approach) and keep on playing 'safely' until then. And if the bowlers are bowling well, ( if you remember that match, Jadeja got out in the 49th over) one may have to wait till the 50th over to play the 'high risk' shot. Although this approach may seem 'risky', you will realise, that it 'safer bet' than trying to play the high risk shot early.

More importantly, one has to be careful to ensure that one does not evaluate the two approaches based on the desired 'result'. That is called hindsight bias - in hindsight any approach can be justified based on the 'result'. Sometimes Dhoni's approach may work, sometimes Gambhir's approach may work. (Overall, Dhoni's approach will always give a higher average.) But the 'specific' result does not determine the 'rightness of approach'. That is a wrong way of evaluating an approach. The approach has to evaluated  from the 'strategic' and the 'risk' angle, given the nature of the game and the situational constraints. ( as-is reality)

More importantly, your approach has to be evaluated on the fundamental principle of success, that 'your efforts alone do not produce the desired result'. This is true in game as it is true in life. Gambhir's approach is wrong, because he believes that 'his unidirectional predetermined effort' can determine the 'result' of the game. He forgets that it is the 'bowler's delivery' which gives him the 'workable options', not the other way round. ( Just because his approach works sometimes, it does not mean that it is right). Dhoni's approach is right, because it is based on the 'reality' that his options are limited by the bowler, and if one respects the as-is reality, one is more than likely to produce the desired outcome ! Dhoni's seemingly easy success is based on very sound principles !

In other words, your pre-determined unidirectional effort does not produce the 'desired' result; it is your 'appropriate' effort , based on the situational constraints, which determines whether the 'desired result' will emerge. In the language of systems thinking, 'result' is the emergent property of the system, not the property determined by you alone!

Please remember this basic principle when you are giving CAT exam of management, aptitude test of a company, an interview of a company, or getting a performance rating from your boss for your last year's efforts. Your unidirectional effort does not determine the result; it is your 'appropriate' effort based on the given constraints of the situation. One has to be smart like Dhoni to find the appropriate effort, and not do what others think is right. If you are not smart like Dhoni, you can learn it through systems thinking !

By the way, there is another cricketer in the Indian team, who believes in Gambhir's approach. Do you know who he is? I will give you a hint. If he had used Dhoni's approach, he would have broken many more records ! 

Three must-nots that one should avoid at any cost

More than knowing, what to do in the life to build your career or talent, it is sometimes more beneficial to know what one should never do in one's career.

As i said before the important step for you after graduating is to 'chose your talent zone'. And, as we have discussed before, it is not important that you be accurate and focused on some 'narrow' area of skill such as selling software, or selling financial solutions. One has to however prioritise and chose a 'zone' that is large enough, but not so large that one will divert one's resources on too many activities. For instance, it is important to chose 'sales' as a function and 'telecom' as a domain, if you are a E&TC engineer. But if this is choice is getting delayed for some reason or another, one should at least avoid situations that will create additional problems. I can enumerate three instances which should be avoided at any cost.

1. Be sensitive to Type 1 thinking on crucial decisions like job changes and other matters. Slow down oneself, override Type 1 mind and let Type 2 take over for a time being. Such decisions taken by Type 1 create more damage that require additional effort in damage control. When one gets handcuffed in a situation because of type 1 decision ( CA getting stuck with the situation!), one loses more time in undoing it, rather than doing something new to set one's life on new course. In my coaching experience, i have spend considerable time with coachees in undoing their past, instead of 'recreating' their future. 
2. Do not pursue acquisition of virtues and traits like honesty and confidence. This is one of the favourite goal-pursuits most of the graduates engage in. Every year, at the New year time, they make a list of new goals that they want to pursue that year. As we discussed earlier, these are 'emergent' traits that cannot be acquired by left-brain pursuits.Avoid them not because it wastes time and effort, but more importantly, one should avoid them because it gives an illusion of doing something and misleading you. 
3. Do not lock yourself in a tight compartment: Graduates, who tend to be with themselves, are most prone to wrong decisions, incompatible beliefs and incorrect conclusions, because they shut themselves from the world either by sitting infront of the computer all the time, or immersing themselves in some hobby, or doing more and more courses to occupy themselves. We need friends who can 'challenge' our cherished beliefs once in a while, who can question our habits, and who can show our insularity when we tend to become too one-dimensional. 

In the next blog, we will see the indirect ways of finding our talent zone. 

Do you also feel that Laxman should be dropped?

I read the news that Laxman will be the first senior to be dropped from the Indian team in the next match with Australia in the current cricket series. Do you also agree with his judgement?

If you understand your two minds, the automatic mind Type 1 and the deliberate mind Type 2, you will realise that such intuitive judgments are undertaken by your fast automatic mind, not by by your slow deliberate mind. And as is the practice of automatic mind, it always take such fast decisions based on 'reference points', 'coherency' and 'available evidence', not by formal and comprehensive analysis. .

For instance, Laxman and others like Dhoni and Gambhir have fared equally badly in Australia. But why do we judge Laxman poorly than others? Because, we do not judge based on 'absolute performance', but on the basis of reference point that we have set for the person. For Laxman we have a 'reference point' of  say, 80 runs, while the same reference score for Gambhir is lower, say 30. That is why, we evaluate Laxman's performance as 'poorer' than Laxman, although both have fared equally poorly.

Why have we set higher reference point for Laxman? It is because he has been a savviour in many matches in the past. If your Type 2 mind is analysing, it will understand that when other batsman have fared badly, Laxman has fared better than them. In other words, Laxman has performed better than base-rate performance in the same match, which is even a better indicator of his comparative ability. But Type 1 mind does not take the effort of understanding this, it just increases 'reference point' further. And paradoxically, we use that higher reference point to judge Laxman's performance as poorer than Gambhir !

Observe how 'coherency' of Type 1 mind works. When i told my friend that even Gambhir can be removed because of his poor performance, my friend defended Gambhir, by saying that ' All batsman have fared poorly. How can we remove Gambhir alone?' His Type 1 mind does not realise that he is not using the same yardstick for Laxman! Why cannot Dhoni be removed, despite his poor performance, I asked him. Because Dhoni is 'not a specialist batsman', my friend said.  Why cannot Sehwag be dropped from the next match? He had an interesting reason 'Sehwag is a dashing batsman. We cannot penalise him for his dashing batting'. Did you observe the functioning of Type 1 mind? It creates a 'coherent story' with all loopholes plugged in and conveniently ignoring the inconvenient ones. Type 1 mind uses all the ideas and tricks to make the story coherent.

More importantly, Type 1 mind uses only the 'available evidence' without seeing the quality of the evidence. Instead of finding 'evidence' to judge Laxman's performance ( such as his 'above base-rate performance' in the past) it finds only the available evidence. We have seen countless number of times that Gambhir, Dhoni and the new stars lack the 'competency' to tackle the balls in outside conditions, but Type 1 mind will ignore this ready evidence. We do not have 'real evidence' that Laxman is batting poorly in nets, or that his feet are not moving well, or that his reaction times have decreased because of age. But Type 1 mind does not even 'bother' to wait for this evidence !

If you read some of the articles floating on the web on this hot subject of 'Should Laxman be dropped', you will be surprised that it is not only layman like us, but even experts are prone to Type 1 over-reliance. Infact their stories are more coherent than us!

How does our intuitive judgement of event/situation impacts our talent building?

Can you imagine how the same three characteristics of Type 1 mind - resetting reference points, creating a coherent story, and using available evidence only - can also impact your life directly?

• For instance, when you take take up the first job you are happy that you have got a 'good job'. After six months, you 'reference point' changes. Then you feel that you are 'dissatisfied' with the job, because you are evaluating with higher reference point. Our reference points constantly change in life. That is how our goals also change constantly. And that is why goals are useful only for a short time ! 
• When you change jobs, and take on new job, you are relying only on 'available evidence' about the new job. But you are evaluating your current job with more 'comprehensive evidence'. That is why, your Type 1 mind always feels that 'New job is better than current job'. If you rely on Type 1 mind alone for such decisions, you are likely to commit gross errors. 
• When you listen to a story of a successful programmer, or a career, or a researcher, please remember that the story is made 'coherent' by closing the visible loopholes and ignoring other not-so-obvious one's. Your Type 1 mind loves 'coherence' and forgets to check the 'entire story'. If you are not careful about it, these stories create in you unrealistic aspirations, mistaken beliefs and incorrect thumb rules that drive your life's decisions !  

As Daniel Kahneman and Keith Stanovich ( the two psychologists who have done extraordinary work on this concept in last 10 years) say, our Type 2 mind is a cognitive miser. It refuses to increase cognitive workload and instead prefers to rely on Type 1 mind all the time. Unless we consciously learn to 'override' Type 1 at times, we are at the mercy of chance. Type 1 is also useful though. It is therefore important to get the right balance between Type 1 and 2 mind, if you want to achieve anything in your life !

If you want to learn more about the functioning of Type 1 and 2 mind, go ahead and read Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking fast and slow, or revert to this blog for more.

First step of talent unfolding has to negotiated quickly

If you see my earlier blog on three steps on unfolding the talent , you will understand that the first step of 'choosing the talent zone' has to be negotiated quickly. Talent zone is your zone of 'skill set' which matches with your interest plus abilities that you have acquired during graduation plus domain ( be it telecom, automobiles, or software).

Ideally, this preparation of choosing a talent zone should be over by the time you graduate, so that you waste little time. But like Anshuman in the earlier case, who took 4 years to choose 'corporate training' after he graduated ( and then later dropped after investing 5 years of effort in acquiring the skill), most of the graduates do not prepare themselves for choosing of their talent zone. And consequently they choose whatever comes their 'way', and then drop it later because it was not compatible for them.

As we have seen in the blog of choosing the talent zone, the risks in choosing the talent zone are limited and lower than arts and sports professionals. Unlike arts and sports professionals who chose their talent zone by the age of 10, you can chose your talent zone at the age of 23. So what makes it so difficult to chose the talent zone even after 5 years after graduation?

Having coached several graduates in the experience range of 1-5 years, here are the four bottlenecks that i have observed the most:

1. Lack of information of what skills are required for a position: Many professionals cannot see the Job description of a position, convert that into 'task list' and then deduce the 'skill+domain+interest' required to perform the tasks. And remember some of the skills required are 'hard' skills like logical skills, while some are soft skills like 'People management'.

2. Understanding of skill market: Like a product has its market, every skill has its own 'skill market' which determines the 'money' you can get for that skill in the market. Some market conditions are fluctuating, some are almost static. For instance, 'remuneration' for 'software' jobs have increased because of the good market conditions. On the other hand, remuneration of 'front end jobs' like sales will always remain higher than 'back end jobs' because these positions are perceived to be contributing more to the organisation's revenue and profits.

3. Inadequate understanding of one's own interest/abilities: Even if money in 'software' domain is high, it is of no use to you, if your own abilities do not match. Many graduates do not have the elementary tool set to 'understand' their selves or understand that 'virtues like honesty and confidence' are not the targets to pursue. More importantly, they lack the basic understanding of how our mind works. For instance, they are not aware that ability-gap can be bridged by forceful application of Will, but interest-gap cannot be bridged forcibly. They are also unaware that if they have to find their interest in 'software' without working in software, they have to 'engage' with 'software' in different innovative ways !

4. Incomplete understanding of unfolding process of talent: Because of incomplete understanding of process of how the talent unfolds, graduates are clueless and lack any coherent direction. They are therefore not aware that even if they cannot choose a 'core skill' like training or programming after graduation, they can still chose to develop complementary skills as fall-back options. Complementary skills are those skills that are required irrespective of which core skill you choose. For example, interpersonal skill is required to work in a company. One can choose to focus on this skill, if one is unable to chose the core skill. And remember, interpersonal skill is not about learning to 'talk beautifully' or 'crack jokes' or 'give short speeches at birthday parties'.

Which of the above four bottlenecks you are encountering in your life?