Building for Bharat

I grew up in a city that for most part of it was privately managed, i.e., a private organisation was managing most of the day to day running of the city. In the neighbourhood we had a 'Dispensary', a Community Clinic which is somewhat modelled in 'Mohalla Clinics' of Delhi.

For most of the daily ailments, pretty much 100% of the locality just walked upto the dispensary to get first level medical care.

As kids, if we bruised our knees when we played we went to the Dispensary for primary dressing and care. If someone in the family got fever, cough, cold or anything else - the first stop was to be this clinic. If the nurses or registered medical practitioners (RMP) in those clinics felt that we needed specialised care, they would either refer us to the hospital in case of emergency, or they will ask us to come by Doctor's schedule.

A Delhi Community Clinic - idinsight.org

What this solved was two of India's core problems:

1) Accessibility - It made primary care easily accessible for most of the people at a stone's throw away. 

2) Capacity - It also ensured that the specialised doctors and hospitals were not overly stretched by capacity.

The key tenet here? By way of right trainings and enablements, nurses/RMPs were able to do a little more than what otherwise their inherent skills would have allowed - looking at the symptoms, and doing the primary diagnosis to identify whether you needed specialised care or not. And then decentralised the model by bringing it at the community door steps.

Over the time the model went Kaput (was planned for revamp in 2017). Well trained Nurses and RMPs are a specialised skill now-a-days, and they could only do so much along with piles of administrative work that comes along.

- -

If we had to scale the model today and make it work - what do we do? How can technology and product play a role here? If you answered - "we can take the rudimentary stuff out of the R&R of medical care workers and automate those", then you couldn't be more wrong.

We don't need technology to make the nurse more productivity and clear more files. If we had to scale the model today - we would need to augment the skills of otherwise untrained staff to take over the day-to-day administrative work, that can free up the capacity of nurses/RMPs trained to deliver medical care and enable them to do more of it.

Building for Bharat requires a different perspective. India has a unique problem of over-capacity as well as under-capacity. While we have a large number of employable young who may be unemployed or looking for job, on the other hand we have our skilled group which is significantly stretched - engineers, doctors, nurses, judges etc.

One of the major reason for such a divide to exist is that a large majority of our working population are literate only upto primary level (~57.8%, incl. 32% non-literate) and merely 5% have gone up to receive professional qualification. Everything else - middle, secondary, matriculation, diploma etc. are spread in the middle at abysmally low numbers independently.

Where this impact is also easily reflected is in the employment - 99.4% of India's MSME are micro enterprises and more than three-fourth of those are run by <2 people. These are self employed people - who run Kiranas, Auto Repair, Salons etc. largely because of two reasons - (1) there are not enough jobs for the under-skilled, (2) it's not easy to get access to the jobs and resources out there to grow.

Thus the problem for India is whole lot different.

- -

The problem for India is not the after-effect of technology adoption and digitisation, where the need is for next level optimisation - take the productivity from X to nX (the 80-100 optimisation problem).

The problem for India is that technology adoption is fairly nascent, or may not even have been built in many cases, to make the population do what they couldn't otherwise (0-80 enablement problem).

So, if we solve for the former 80-100 problem, i.e., optimise for productivity, then we may be solving the wrong problem. Because, the 0-80 journey, i.e., enablement, hasn't happened in many cases.

And, even for that we cannot take the model and path that high-income economies have taken decades ago and simply replicate it. Our problems need more creative solutions. Think traditional banking from the West which just couldn't viably work for Kenya and the creative innovation of M-Pesa just changed the way people banked and sent money home in Kenya.

Digitization & Automation - India's problem and opportunity space vs. high income economies

So, the problem statement is pretty simple - can we build technology that can augment the capability of a large under-skilled population such that:

1. It can open up or create a new market for better paying and more productive work
2. It can destress the specialised population by enabling under-skilled workers through technology to take over some of the non-specialised and administrative work, making the system overall multifold effective than what it is today
3. It can provide access to tools and resources that can enable Individuals and Micro Enterprises to productively scale-up to the next tier, and create a lot more jobs in the process
4. It can bring societal development and upliftment equally across the rural and urban areas

A lot of them are doing that, but only transactionally.

- - 

When your online order for Fashion or Grocery is delivered next time, there is a high probability that a local Kirana or Micro entrepreneur has been enabled through technology to do last-mile logistics. Last mile logistics for ecommerce was fairly complicated, challenging, expensive and corner stone for customer experience once. However, technology led process simplification over time enabled an otherwise under-skilled worker to pick and deliver products to the end customer in an experience enhancing way.

A bunch of other social commerce organisations willingly or unwillingly have created massive number of localised entrepreneurs who otherwise were home-makers and had under-utilised capacity which was harnessed.

But, the rate of churn of Kiranas or Home-Makers from these platforms is a reflection of transactional nature of the augmentation. Apart from technology enablement to do this one thing - these semi-skilled players of the system don't get access to a whole lot of stuff that may be required to grow from there and beyond. 

To deliver the real value the change needs to be sustainable.

The augmentation needs to not just enable a semi-skilled or under-skilled person to do something new, but also enhance the capacity and bring access to growth levers.

Simply put - the real value will come when a micro entrepreneur selling Puja items in Motihari, is easily able to reach to it's customers in Delhi and eventually outside of India; and is able to grow into other local or non-local specialities through right access of knowledge, resources, network, capital and support - all enabled through technology; and in process creates a lot more jobs than he otherwise could have. 

The real value will come when a semi-skilled person is augmented by technology to run day-to-day operations of a mohalla clinic, or secondary school, in rural or semi-urban India while freeing up the nurses/doctors and teachers to deliver specialised services through tele-consultation or live online classes. And, by also bringing access to right set of resources and tools for the individual to grow from one clinic to more, or from one school to more.

And, many more.

- -

So, are you building for Bharat? If yes, hit me up with what you have been upto. Would love to connect and learn. :-)

And, if the topic excites you and you want to dig deeper on this, would highly recommend the brilliant book - Bridgital Nation: Solving Technology's People Problem.

On the Book Shelf - 2020

I like listening to podcasts. I like watching docs. I feel the most effective way to learn to is to learn from experts - that takes you from 0-80 really quickly (more on that on another essay). 

But, I've never been a great book reader. I always wanted to. But, was never able to cultivate and build that habit. So, for 2020 I took a modest goal - one book a month; 12 books in the year (I was able to do 16 - not bad huh!)

And, it has been phenomenal. I've read quite a bit, and I've learnt quite a bit. My most prominent learnings:

• if I'm unable to read first 50+ pages of the book in one sitting, I won't be able to complete it

• if the books is over 250-300 pages, there's a high probability that I won't be able to complete it

• i like biographies & memoirs, and life & philosophies way more than any other genre

So, here's my 2020 reading list (the one's I could complete to a reasonable extent by no. of pages 80+% - the ones' I couldn't complete, I wouldn't recommend anyways):

Biographies & Memoirs

1. The Promise of a Pencil by Adam Braun *

2. The Ride of Lifetime by Robert Iger *

3. I Love Capitalism by Ken Langone 

4. Leaving Microsoft to Change the World by John Wood

Life and Philosophy

5. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom *

6. Ikigai by Hector Garcia

Leadership, Team and People

7. Build an A-Team by Whitney Johnson *

8. No Rules Rules by Hastings and Meyer *

9. The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhuo

10. Handling Difficult People by Jon P Bloch

11. The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins

Non Fiction

12. Rework by David Heinemeier Hansson *

13. God's Own Kitchen by Rashmi Bansal * 

14. Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie *

15. The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam *

16. Bottle of Lies by Katherine Eban 

* ~ Recommended 

Product Managers - Are You Building Features or Driving P&L and Business Strategy?

A couple of months ago I was having a conversation with some of the students of a leading B-School of India. They were part of the Strategy Club at the institute and wanted me to take a strategy session for the students.

When I proposed I would like to focus on Product Strategy, the energy in the room fell sharply. I could sense that. Offline I reached out to one of the students, and called it out. I got a counter proposal. They would connect me to the IT Club of the institute who would be better positioned to take Product Strategy.

I don't blame them.

During my early years of Product Management, we had a new Head of Product (SC) joining to lead the function. After settling in for the first few months, the entire product team met at an offsite. We were 10-15 odd PMs spread across multiple products.

First thing SC did was to pick up a Red Marker and write YoY target revenue numbers for the current and next 2 years followed by a big question mark on the White Board. He was asking his team - how do we do that?

Each PM got the opportunity to speak - and some of the interesting features and functionalities came to fore. But, SC wasn't happy and asked us to be more creative. More features and functionalities flew across the room.

This went on for a few more rounds. Finally he said - "Why can't we just market the hell out? Why can't we just focus on Operations and give the customers best operating experience? Why can't we just focus on the existing relationships?"

He went on to write names of the three of our largest believers (clients) and said - "if we could just make sure these three clients are happy - they alone will give us more than the targeted revenue. Why do we need new bells & whistles?"

He was right.

• • •

PMs need to look beyond Technology. We need to understand P&L. We need to understand that tech is not the only lever Product can play with. We have (or should have) lot more at our disposal than we think we do.

Product Management is about Maximising Impact to the Mission while Achieving everything through Others - Finance, Legal, Engineering, Support, Operations, Marketing, Sales et. al.

And, an effective product manager knows when to leverage which levers to drive maximum impact for the business and the organisation as a whole.

To expand this understanding a bit - Product Management and Strategy at an abstract level is about - Ideate & Conceptualise, Secure Investment, Build, Take it to Market, Manage the P&L, and Scale.

 

Organisations, incl. its leaders, and many a times us PMs think about a PM role as tech representative and not business representative. In actuality PMs can only be effective and deliver their worth if they are seen as true business enablers, and are closely mapped to business strategy/function.

What this means is that product first or product led organisations must hold Product Function responsible (better if accountable) for the P&L.

• • •

Does that mean that all PMs are P&L owners? Yes and No.

P&L accountability can be clearly demarcated in case of tangible products, e.g., consumer durable; where each product can be represented as a stock-keeping-unit and the PM would be concerned with landed costs, contribution margins, sales forecast, pricing, marketing plan etc.

However, it's slightly harder in case of technology products - SaaS, Consumer Internet or Apps. Product teams are generally organised such that each team focusses on one aspect of a collectively larger offering. For example - for a SaaS offering a PM and her team might just be focussing on the client onboarding journey.

The way a product leader navigates this challenge is by leading with context, not control. She drives P&L accountability to her team by organising the team around a set of proxy metrics (KPIs) that closely represent the P&L such that -

1. She is able to effectively communicate the business priorities, and ensure that effort of every PM in her team are aligned to the business strategy
2. She's able to identify which PMs are making right decisions, and true progress towards executing the Business Strategy

The product leader defines the KPIs and priorities for each PM or PM teams, and the teams then work towards achieving those goals.

Profitability or Revenue may very well be one of those KPIs. But, more commonly so it would be - increasing growth, reducing churn, driving engagement, increasing user adoption, driving ARPU, increasing wallet share etc.

And this doesn't necessarily have a technology solve all the time, or doesn't mean that the PM team is spending 99% of the time building features. Infact it's actually opposite.

A mid-senior PM, or a product leader, is generally heads-down solving for some of the common product strategy problems -

1. New Product Introduction / Investment - Market Potential, GTM Strategy, Optimal Price, Business Case - Financial Model, Brand Architecture, Name
2. Industry Landscape, Competitor Dynamics - Whether or not it is an attractive industry to enter, ramp-up or potentially exit
3. Pricing Optimisation / Strategy - How to structure commercials and set the price to attain certain goals, e.g., profitability, growth, penetration, skimming, sustainability, recurring revenue etc. 
4. Market Entry or Expansion - Expand or enter a new market - new geographical region or customer segment
5. Sustainability/Profitability Optimisations - Identify sources of declining (projected to decline) profit and plan to reverse/obviate it
6. Growth Plan / Strategy - Growing a certain product's sales, growing in certain geography, increase in total sales etc.

And some 'not so common' strategy problems - incorporation or legal aspects of setting up the org., and M&A/JV to - widen product portfolio, increase market share, takeout competition etc.

• • •

Back then when SC joined, our teams were transitioning from Tech PM to P&L responsibilities. On one of the flights with him I asked — “what does it mean when you say we need to manage P&L?”

He said — “You’ll figure it out. Everyone does.”

• • •

So, what have you and your PM teams been upto in your current or previous organisations? Did you solve tech or business problems?

Did you 'build a flying saucer feature that would potentially make customer love the product', or did you 'tangibly move a business KPI / drive P&L impact'?

• • •

If you loved the content, do share. Also published on Medium and LinkedIn

Becoming an Effective Product Manager

Product Management is one of the most chaotic disciplines within and across organisation, industries, continents. The expectation from a PM changes depending upon multitude of factors, e.g.,

• type of product - revenue or non-revenue

• type of industry - tech, i.e., hardware, software, digital etc. or non-tech etc

• size of organisation - 0-10 people, 10-50 people, 50-250 people etc

• structure and processes of the organisation - where does product management sit in the organisation - CEO, CTO, COO; what's the process of understanding the customer

• where in the globe is role based out of - Valley with mature PM ecosystem vs Berlin where PM ecosystem is pretty nascent

Young PMs get confused as to what really does the roles expect from them, esp. when they switch organisations. Or, if they tap into their network to understand how it's done in their networks' organisation.

To be effective at anything requires crystal clear understanding of the expectation, and being able to focus on that. In case of PM - it means having a very clear understanding of the expectation that the organisation have for the role and you is the first step to being effective.

But, one should be able to apply first principles to the PM role definition and abstract it (abstraction - key tactical skill for a PM) well enough to know what is expected from you, and hence - prioritise right, build right skills, and become an effective PM.

What does a Product Manager do?

Fundamentally, an effective PM does three things - and does them really really well.

1. Define the Vision/Strategy - Problem Identification

2. Evangelise, Plan and Prioritise the execution - Solution, Planning and Communication

3. Execute for Success - Get Sh*t Done

A great PM is probably two-parts of #1 and eight-parts of #2 and #3.

That's it. That's what is expected from a PM. And, an effective PM does all of these. And, does them really really well to ensure the success of the product.

What are some of Product Management Skills?

While the above defines the expectation from a PM, one will need a bunch of tactical general management skills to be effective - starting with Skill #1 - Problem Identification.

If you are great at problem identification, you should be able to identify problems that are blocking or stopping you from delivering a good outcome for 1, 2 and 3 above.

Vision/Strategy - Do you need more insights into P&L or Org. Strategy to build your product strategy?

• How can you evangelise and drive relationships to get these informations - Skill #2 - Stakeholder Management

Evangelise - Are you finding it difficult to get investment buy-in for your vision/strategy from a leader who holds the purse string?

• Can you excite one of the P&L owners in the organisation to fund your experiment? Skill #3 - Storytelling

• Can you build a strong and convincing business-case for the leadership? Skill #4 Business Finance

Planning - Are you able to get dedicated set of resources, or your own tiger team for developing on your strategy?

• Can you define the structure of the team that you believe should be able to drive results? Skills needed for individuals? Skill #5 - Team Building

• Can you identify and influence rock-star individuals to bet on your vision? Skill #3 - Storytelling

Execution - How are you doing against commitments and timelines? Consistent delays - why?

• Are you expecting something, and what gets delivered is something else? Are you giving the right context to the builders? Skill #6 - Communication

• Can you modify the overall process such that context transfer becomes easier, faster, better with early feedback loops? Skill #7 - Organisation and Process Design

• Or, do you feel the team is not driving with right ownership? Can you drive motivation and accountability to teams and individuals? Skill #8 - People Management

The list is absolutely endless. There is no dearth of skills that a PM should't have to be an effective PM.

So, how do I become an effective PM?

Since there is so much that a PM needs to know, practice and do to be effective, the only things one can do it to be able to Self Manage and be an Infinite Learner. 

KEEP LEARNING - The only rule to becoming an effective PM

A PMs role is narrow enough, i.e., focus on the success of product, and it's also broad enough, i.e., focus on success of business. One needs to do everything and anything to achieve that.

Become an Infinite Learner

• Dig into learning resources - books, articles, expert blogs, podcasts, videos

• Tap into network of other PMs in similar or other organisations. Look inside (be self-aware), and identify the gaps. Ask your network if they have faced something similar and how did they solve it. Ask them if they can recommend a resource to check and learn from.

• See if you can find a mentor in the leaders you are working with, worked with or someone outside your network who you can reach out to for guidance (happy to help!)

• Work with your manager to identify areas of development, and ensure you spend atleast some portion of your time doing stuffs that can help you develop yourself in those areas. 

And, keep applying what you learn. Learn from outcome. Iterate.

To summarise

A Product Manager (PM) is an effective PM if he does three things really really well - Identify right problems, Define and Communicate right solution Definition, and Gett Sh*t Done.

And, the only way to do this well is to Keep Learning: Learn - Apply - Identify - Iterate ...

--

A version of above is also published on Medium.

We make our fortunes, and we call them fate

Is everything in life based on luck? Yes. Only if you build your character such that luck finds you. Many people think being successful is all about luck. No. It isn’t. It is about becoming the kind of person that becomes successful.

In his book — Chase, Chance and Creativity, Dr. James Austin outlines his theory of the four kinds of luck, which he prefers calling chance. As he explains in the book:

The [four] varieties of chance also involve distinctive personality traits and differ in the way one particular individual influences them.

And, so the four kinds of luck are:

• Blind Luck or Dumb Luck
• Active Luck or Luck from hustling
• Planned luck or Luck from preparation
• Unique luck, i.e., Luck from your unique character

Blind luck or Dumb luck

What we all most commonly refers to as luck, i.e., where you get lucky just because something completely out of your own control happens. Basically, fortune or fate. This is like finding a $100 bill while crossing the street.

Dr. Austin explains in his book:

..the good luck that occurs is completely accidental. It is pure blind luck that comes with no effort on our part.

If you listen to How I Built This by Guy Raz, Guy asks this question to his celebrity entrepreneur guests towards the end of the talk — ‘How much of your success is luck, and how much of it is due to your hard-work’. When Guy asked this to Michael Dell, the Founder of Dell Inc., Mr. Dell said -

“I feel like I was really lucky to be born in the United States. … because, I think in United States when you are 20 years old and you show up and you wanna sell something to somebody they don’t look at you too funny. So, I think that was my biggest stroke of luck — to be born in the United States.”

That’s kind of articulation of blind luck.

Active luck or Luck from hustling

This luck comes through hard-work, persistence, hustle.

It’s getting something out of chaos, the chaos of continuously trying one thing or the other. So, the more you work, stir things around and get things in motion, the more opportunities you generate to land up with a breakthrough.

Naval Ravikant, founder of Angellist, suggests this about luck from hustling on his podcast - How to get Rich (without getting lucky):

“Which is when you’re running around creating lots of opportunities, you’re generating a lot of energy, you’re doing a lot of things, lots of things will get stirred up in the dust.”

Planned luck or Luck from preparation

This is when you become very good at spotting luck, i.e., opportunities, trends etc. As Dr. Austin explains in his book-

Chance presents only a faint clue, the potential opportunity exists, but it will be overlooked except by that one person uniquely equipped to observe it, visualize it conceptually, and fully grasp its significance. .. involves a special receptivity, discernment, and intuitive grasp of significance unique to one particular recipient.

When consumers started getting comfortable with putting their credit-card details on a website and transacting online, some entrepreneurs spotted the window of opportunity and created eCommerce. With eCommerce, some others spotted opportunities and created massive logistics companies catering to these new way of shopping.

Basically, experience will help you spotting those lucky breakthroughs and with more and more experience you can actually direct your energy to even creating those.

The other way of looking at it is, if you are very skilled and interested in a certain area, you will be more attuned to spotting those opportunities where these lucky breaks are happening. So, knowledge, work and skill makes you more sensitive to this type of luck.

Dr. Austin explains through an example, the example of Sir Alexander Fleming discovering Penicillin by chance —

He was at his work bench in the laboratory, made an observation, and his mental sequences then went something like this: (a) I see that a mold has fallen by accident into my culture dish; (2) the staphylococcal colonies residing near it failed to grow; (3) therefore, the mold must have secreted something that killed the bacteria; (4) this reminds me of a similar experience I had once before; (5) maybe this new “something” from the mold could be used to kill staphylococci that cause human infections. 

Unique luck, i.e., luck from your unique character

When you build unique skillset and character, and thus reputation or a unique brand, you draw the luck towards you. This is the hardest kind, and needs a lot of work. This is where you create your own luck.

Dr. Austin goes on to explain this as —

..comes to you, unsought, because of who you are and how you behave. .. favors those with distinctive, if not eccentric hobbies, personal lifestyles, and motor behaviors.

Naval Ravikant, in his podcast gives a good example to explain Unique Luck. He says, let’s say you are very skilled as deep seat diving. And, someone through sheer blind luck discovered a chest of treasure buried deep under the sea. But, they come to you to help them extract the same, and spilt that 50:50. This is absolute creation of luck.

A few other quotes to substantiate the argument for the Unique Luck:

“extreme people get extreme results.” — Sam Altman

“you can’t be normal and expect abnormal returns.” — Jeffrey Pfeffer

So, basically this translates to — Build your character in a way so luck becomes deterministic.

Summarising

Marc Andreessen summarises this beautifully in one of his blogs through questions that you should be asking yourselves —

• How energetic are you?
• How curious are you?
• How flexible and aggressive are you at synthesising?
• How uniquely are you developing a personal point of view — a personal approach?

So, being lucky is all about building your character in a way so luck becomes deterministic. And, that on the other hand is all about how we live our lives as creators in any field.

-

Also published on Medium and LinkedIn