Switch - A Book Review

Sanku - Thanks for recommending this one. A must read book for anybody who wishes to "Change" anything in life especially (as the title  says) when "Change is Hard". Seems like a good complement to "Speed of Trust" focusing more on the dynamics of change and how to make it happen. This is also a slightly different version of "Tipping Point" where it talks about how certain small changes  make a big impact.

The authors (Chip and Dan Heath) have a very light style of narrating their "concepts" making it an easy read with full of interesting and practical perspective. It is a fairly simple "framework" comprising of only 3 components - Elephant, Rider and the Path. The Rider is the Logical / Rational aspect, the Elephant -  the Emotional side and the Path is the environment in which Change needs to happen. The process is "simple" too - Direct the Rider, Motivate the Elephant and Shape the Path. Quite easy eh!! Have taken a few excerpts from the book which I found to be most appealing.

Direct The Rider

"Find and Follow the Bright Spots" - In any challenging  situation, they claim that there will be a few bright spots which stand apart from the crowd. Those bright spots need not be earth shattering. It could be as simple as tossing in tiny shrimp and crabs in the rice (to avoid malnutrition in kids in Vietnam). Once you find the bright spots follow them to identify the trends and clone them over and over and over.  "Don't obsess about failures. Instead investigate and clone the successes."

Quite often we get into a challenge where the solution doesn't seem to be anywhere near the horizon. A simple question to ask - "What was different the last time it worked?" (where we know it worked).

A very strong (and true) statement made - "We're all loop-hole exploiting lawyers when it comes to our own self-control." How many times have we "justified" ourselves on actions that we do. 

Here's another "eye-opener" - "One reason we're able to believe that we are better than average leaders and drivers and spouses and team players is that we are defining those terms in ways that flatter us." 

Motivate the Elephant

By "motivating" the elephant they mean reaching out to the emotional aspect of the stakeholders involved in that Change. One interesting concept is to create a "burning platform". "To create a burning platform is to paint such a gloomy picture of the current state of things that employees can't help but jump into the fiery sea." And hence be "forced" to Change.

One of the main detrimental factors to change is the fear of the magnitude (sometimes unknown) of the change. Their idea is to "Shrink the Change" to make it more palatable to the Elephant. Few years ago one of my client bosses constantly said "Do not try to eat the whole elephant. Eat it in chunks." Now I totally understand what he meant. ;-)  Another technique is to create an "impression" that you are not starting from scratch. "People find it more motivating to be partly finished with a long journey than to be at the starting gate of a shorter one." The key is to identify a quick win and win it. "You need quick wins to get fired up. And getting fired up is super important."

Shape the Path

Read about an interesting psychological concept "Fundamental Attribution Error" which states "The error lies in our inclination to attribute the behaviour to the way they are rather than the situation they are in." They claim "What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem. And no matter what your role is you've got (some) control over the situation." So the important question they ask is "How can I set up a situation that brings out the good in these people." Easier said than done eh!!

Talking about the Path, we often worry too much and try to get every piece of the puzzle in order along the path. "When you are at the beginning, don't obsess about the middle because the middle is going to look different once you get there. Just look for a strong beginning and a strong ending and GET MOVING".

This review by no means does any justice to the book. This is more of a reminder for myself for future reference.

More information on this is available at http://www.heathbrothers.com/switch/

Happy Switching!!

C

Holidays 2011

HOLIDAYS 2011 - It was a huge one for us. Can't remember the last time I had a few days with absolutely no plan. It started from the eve of christmas eve when the office closed earlier than usual. We had a lunch hosted at our place and had to prepare for it. Saturday was a bit hectic with guests coming over for lunch, but it ended at about 3 PM. From that point it has been a very relaxing holiday (so far!!). We had prepared enough food that lasted us for 2 days. 

After a long time we were able to take the kids to the park nearby. On 26th  we had lunch at my uncle's place in Sydney. A nice spread with a mix of south and north indian delicacies. For a change we were actually on time for lunch and we didn't even have to rush. Thus began our holiday...

Post lunch we left Sydney at around 3 PM and headed out to Coffs Harbour where we had planned our stopover enroute to Brisbane. The drive was quite smooth all along. We were warned about a lot of hold ups due to road work and traffic. Luckily we did not face any hurdles. We did pretty good time and reached Coffs Harbour by 9.45 PM inspite of 2-3 breaks inbetween. Highways in NSW had some unique features compared to a freeway in US. 

1) There were more rest areas to stop and "Revive". The motto being "Stop, Revive & Survive". 

2) The speed limits were variable based on weather conditions. A zone where you could drive at 110 km/hr changes to 80 km/hr when it rains.

3) They had slots to actually turn around in the highway without having to take an exit.

There were quite a few cops around busy earning bonus revenue for the state during the "silly season". 

The motel in Coffs Harbour was just right for a night's stop over. After a long time I slept under a ceiling fan. Coffs Harbour apparently is considered in one of the best ambience in terms of temperature across the world. No complaints there. 

Left early next morning and reached Brisbane at around 2 pm. Thanks to the early start there wasn't much traffic either. They have made some newer roads that our GPS was not updated with. It took us on a "scenic" deviation at some point and rejoined us back on the highway. After a while the GPS tried to do it again, but my 3rd sense told me not to follow it. As we continued on the highway I could see the GPS thoroughly confused with the new roads. Clearly time to update the maps. 

Time in Brisbane was very relaxed. We jumped into the pool right after lunch. The swimming pool was the key "enticing factor" to make Nandhitha leave her "comfort zone" and go a on a long drive. The next day we had a Brioche french toast for breakfast. Brioche is a French bread variety which tastes exactly like a Croissant but not flaky. Later in the evening took my neices out for bowling. Had a decent start with 100 points in the first game, but droped to 80 by the third round. Luckily called it quits by then. Nandhitha had a blast by having her own turn in the lane compared to having a turn here and there when the the adults bowled. 

Did a day trip to a water park nearby called Wet and Wild. Reached there around noon and got our tummys filled up first before we headed to the waters. All of us had a good time. Nandha increased my "adventure" factor even in the most adventureless rides. Holding a revolting toddler on a tube float is not a fun thing to do. Please attempt at your own risk. :-) To my surprise Nandhitha actually made it on the tall water slide. Luckily she was just a tad over the minimum height limit. The best part of this water park was what they called as "Splash Cash". I was given a water proof wrist band which had a bar code. I was able to load with money and the entire day I used it as an "e-wallet" whenever we had to buy something to eat / drink. It was very convenient not to carry around the wallet or risk missing it in some place. Am pretty sure this feature must be available in most water park these days. Just that it has been a while since I had been to one. 

Brisbane has a nice "CBD". We did a few "mistakes" going around thanks to driving without a clear address. Eventually reached the spot where we wanted to be. They had a nice park. The kids play area was a quite unique and modern. We "stumbled" across the artificial beach created in the park. Had to convince Nandhitha that I will "think about it" if she finishes her lunch properly. Had a good chinese lunch and went back to the "beach". Reached back home just in time for a dinner at a desi restaurant. Apparently it had a nice water front view, but we couldn't enjoy at night.

Started back from Brisbane at around 8 AM Sydney time (Brisbane is an hour behind during summer) on our 14 hour drive home. Enroute we took a short deviation to Gold Coast to have a quick peek. The weather was not very supportive and hence we didn't bother to get out of the car. Had a leisurely lunch at Coffs Harbour. None of the restaurants were open except for a small cafe and it turned out to be an excellent choice. Reached home at around 11 PM, just in time to catch the famous fireworks on the Sydney Harbour Bridge - on TV.

New Year was quite hectic with a temple visit followed by a party. Nandhitha did an ex-tempo dance number for "Daddy Mummy veetil illa..". She had originally "practiced" for a Punnagai Mannan song (Kaalam kaalamaaga....) but the request did not reach the DJ on time. Hence switched to something that was readily available. She did a good job actually without fussing about the song that she knew. She had a blast!!

2011 was wonderful. It had quite a few ups and downs. The year ended on a good note with me being awarded with the best project manager for last quarter. 2012 seems quite interesting in many many ways. Let's see how it goes...

Have A Good Year Ahead!!

C

Sydney Stories - Week 98

Hello,

It is a rather odd time for me to write the Sydney Story at 8 AM on Sunday morning - but if I don't do it now I will never get a chance again. So here it comes...

The past few weeks post PR has been quite interesting. Amongst other things I was able to buy a cell phone on post paid connection. Got a Samsung Galaxy - SII,  supposedly the latest in Androids. The first week of of SII was quite intimidating. On the positive side, of course there are many many cool features. I am finally now into the "app" scene and don't feel left out at work when people discuss - Oh I have THAT app to do THIS. The best feature that is unique to Samsung compared to many other phones including the Iphone is the SWYPE technology. SWYPE is where you don't have to punch the letters on the phone, you just slide your finger around the letters you need to type. It has "intelligence" built to figure out the right word even if you made some rather vague swipes. The best part is when I swipe my last name it suggests both "Natarajan" and "Natarajhan". Wonder where it picked it up from!! Nandhitha and I are now officially fans of the "Angry Bird". In fact Nandhitha taught me a few tricks (which she has learnt playing on my friend's phones in the past). It is sooo addictive that it has made a serious impact to my reading habit in the train. On the negative side, one most annoying thing is not being able to close an application easily. Until I learnt a few tricks I had so many applications running which obviously drains out the battery pretty quickly. 

Last week we had a visitor from Salem. An exporter who started life from a pretty low point and kept growing up. He doesn't speak English - can read slowly adding one alphabet after the other. He is out here down under all alone doing "market study" of what sells in this country. Apparently he can export pretty much anything from India and he does a lot of business in Malaysia so far. With a few contacts here and there he managed to spend a few weeks here in Melbourne and Sydney going around Indian shops. In Sydney I took him around a few suburbs which has a decent Indian population. He immediately "made friends" with one of the store owners where he spent a lot of time understanding the business here. Truly enterprising!!!

Here's the grand finale for this week. We had a bowling championship as part of the sports club we are part of. Uma and I were on the same team and I was the "captain" of the team as well. My first memory of bowling goes back to Genting Highlands - back in '89. Still remember rolling a ball that I could not even lift. After that I've had a lot of opportunities in Bangalore and in US. Haven't had many chances after we came to Australia. Am pretty sure the committee wanted to encourage "new comers" and hence made me a captain because nobody has ever seen me bowl. In the past I remember averaging about 80 points. Yesterday I averaged at 110 in 3 games. By my standards - not bad at all. :-)  Guess what - our team came runners up against 12 other teams. We were in fact leading the pack in every round by a good margin. In the final round some of our key strikers got exhausted. Nevertheless it was good team work where everybody pitched in to keep the scores at a steady rate. It was quite a close competition in the finals across 3 teams with score differences in single digits. Had dinner at 1 AM at a Pakistani/Indian restaurant in Granville. Apparently they are open till 2 AM every day. Very unique by Sydney standards.

Oki doki. Have a good rest of the weekend and have a great week ahead.

C

Misson Accomplished @ Down Under

Last week marks a very important milestone. 14th of November 2011 - the day we were granted our permanent residency in this country. I have written enough about the woes of not being a permanent resident in Australia. Right from the atrocities of not being able to get proper health care to getting a simple driving licence. Now all of that has become a matter of the past. The relief this brings - one has to experience life as a 457 (temporary work visa holder) before being a permanent resident. Coming directly as a PR - one misses out on all the "fun".

It was a long drawn process as well. As with anything every step of this process had its own hurdles. All the way till the end when the case officer fell sick and had to be transferred to another person. The "thought to reality" took about 2 years to complete. Actual "work" started sometime in May and fortunately got this done just in time before Nandhitha goes to school next January. As much there were hurdles there were many people  who played their part in making this happen as well. THANKS to all of them.

Now I am a "consultant" for one of my friends here who is also going through this same nightmare. I hope he does not repeat the same mistakes I made. :-) Life is much different with a new sense of "freedom" in many many ways. 

Went to the Helensburgh temple for "Thanksgiving". I was explaining the various gods and their vehicle of choice. Vishnu - Garudan, Siva - Nandhi, Pillaiyar (Ganesh) - ????? Anybody any clues? What is Ganesh's mouse's name? Of course with this question not answered she didn't bother to go to Murugan's Mayil's name. I told her I will get back to her - am yet to find an answer. I see some references to "Mushika" is that the one?

Alrighty...have a great week ahead.

For those in the US of A - Have a Happy Turkey Day!!

C

Sydney Updates

Hello,

It's been a while since I could sit down and write about the happenings. Not that nothing happened...way too much happened. Things that I could write about and things that I couldn't as well. It's all good though...

Let me start with a recent visit to a "hairdresser" - note this is no barber shop. This weekend had to get a "hairdo" done before I left on my trip. I couldn't make time to visit my usual one (Chinese/Vietenamese ??)in Parramatta.  Ended up at an Italian place close to home. I think I've seen this in some movie before, but the hair dresser's place seem to be some sort of rejuvenation spot for people. There was this lady who seemed to be pouring her heart out to her hair stylist. Couldn't quite catch the conversation but her facial expressions were quite animated that she would be going out with reduced hair and stress. The guy who "worked" on me was quite good too. He made some "calculated" judgement of what size I should trim my hair to. Of course he started striking a convesation with me. I think the standard is with "Where do you live" and goes on to "What do you do for work?". By then he strikes some common thread to extend the conversation. This experience is different from the Chinese guy. He does the job without a word except for a "looking sumaart eh" at the end.

Nandhitha is dressing up as Mother Teresa for her Tamil school annual day. We did as much as possible to re-create a "Missionaries of Charity" costume with a dhoti with 3 blue stripes at the end. Her dialogue is "மற்றவர்களுக்காக வாழாத வாழ்கை வாழ்கையே அல்ல" (A life not lived for others is not a life). She seems quite confident with the words. Got to see how it goes at the function. Must appreciate her tamil teacher. She has put in a lot of effort training these pre-schoolers. After Vivekananda set the stage with "Arise and Awake..." now it is Mother Teresa. ;-) Wonder how I still remember some traces of that. I think I even remember the toy that I got as the prize.

Emirates - my first experience with them this time. AMAZING is the word. My loyalty towards Singapore airlines is now being questioned - big time. I flew a Boeing 777-300ER (ER = Extended Range). This bird is supposed to fly long hauls upto 14594 Kms. Their inflight touch screen entertainment system is state-of-the-art. It even has a front and bottom camera. Supposedly we can see exactly what the pilot sees and don't have to worry if you did not get a window seat. I didn't see this in Airbus 380. Of course the moment it takes off it is nothing but a grey screen. ;-) The interior deco is quite cool. Very pleasing seat colours and patterns. The best part was the ceiling that lit up after the lights went off. There were scattered white lights attempting to give a feel of a starry night cloud. The flight from Sydney to Dubai was quite empty. I had my entire 3-seat row for myself to stretch.

The restroom in the flight was quite unique. It had different warning messages in different languages in various places. Too different eh!! It was!! For instance the instruction to wipe the toilet seat was in Arabic, Hindi, Punjabi (seemed like it), Kannada (or Telugu) and probably some other script (Chinese / Japanese). However not in English. The sign for not smoking was in English, Arabic etc and had Russian which was not found anywhere else. Almost seemed to target specific customers from specific origins. The complimentary toileteries was also given in a very decent bag. 

Listened to Vivaldi 4 Seasons after a long long time. A good start for a 14 hour+ long journey. Watched Dhobi Ghat - something that was in my "To See" list for a long time. A very different movie of course. Even though it seemed to end with some logical conclusion leaves it open for interpretation big time. 

That's all for now. To continue later after I manage to kill the remaining 6 hours in Dubai airport.

Have A Great Weekend!!

C

Life of Pi - A Book Review

After a bout of non-fiction books finally laid eyes on Fiction. Here's a story about a story about a story. I circled around this book several times contemplating, re-contemplating over and over. Somehow some of the elements of the book did not sound quite compelling to pick up at the first instance. The word (??) Pi was the first distraction. Do I really want to read a book about 22/7?? Of course on reviewing the cover it sounded something else. It was then about a boy stranded in the ocean with a bunch of animals. Not really an animals guy. So it took at least 3 attempts to get to start reading this.

The rest is of course "Pi Story". The story line is simple - a boy gets marooned on a life boat with a bunch of animals in the middle of the pacific ocean. What happens before and after that is what makes the Life of Pi.

This book is unique in many ways. In spite of the fact that this is an out and out fiction with some story line taken from some other Mexican novel, the author gives a feel of almost an autobiography. If I did not read about the author it would've been hard to believe that this was written by a Canadian. It simply reflects a typical South Indian life with a good play of English. The part that impressed me most was the reference to "Arun Ice Cream". It just took me back to the days. Guess that really shows the amount of research the author had put in to understand the culture of the land.

Of course as I proceed further I realize that this book is not for everybody. Especially not for those who are vegetarian at heart (not necessarily by diet). So you are sufficiently warned!! It has a very funny ending. The humour and writing style is just - different. I would rather not reveal the suspense.

2 people I spoke about this have already started reading and 1 has also finished it. Reviews have been quite positive so far.

Happy Reading
C

First Australian Road Trip

Hello,

Hope you all had a great weekend. Mine was fabulous with a fairly quiet ending.

This weekend we celebrated the Labour Day in Australia well...in New South Wales. Labour Day is celebrated on different days in different states in Australia. In NSW it was celebrated this weekend. I am not sure if I should call it a coincidence to have it as the day after the National Rugby League ( NRL) Grand Finals.  Am sure a day off would help who had a beer or 2 to recuperate.

So...being a long weekend some of our friends planned to get on a short road trip to Canberra - the Capital city. We were 13 people (including 3 kids) in 3 cars. This happens to be our first Australian road trip. Road trip considering the fact we drove and stayed in some place. Have done longer drives, but they were more of day trips. Anyways....we set sail from Westmead at around 8 AM. Enroute we stopped at a Macca's (Mc'donald's) for breakfast at a village called Picton. From the freeway we saw signs for "food" and took the exit. Only then did we realize it was a 10 km deviation from the freeway. It seemed like an all Aussie village. I guess they might not have seen so many Indians at the same time.

From Picton our next stop was at Bowral. There was a tulip festival going on with approximately 100k tulips. There were some interesting colour combinations of tulips. The best that caught my eye was a simple light pink tulip. That is were the most dreaded thing happened - our camera battery went out of power and I knew I had left the charger at home. So if you are wondering why you are not seeing any photos here - this is the reason. Our first Aussie road trip sans the camera. It was such a bummer. Guess we will have to repeat the same trip again some other time. Hopefully I will have a good camera as well by then.

The next stop was at a rest / picnic area somewhere along the way. We had taken "kattu saadham" - typical south indian "picnic food" for lunch. Bisi Belebath, Cauliflower and Carrot poriyals (stir fried veggies) & Curd Rice. There was even Mysore Pak imported from India. It was a different experience having a picnic under a 10 deg C weather with decent wind factor as well (hence the bisi). After the re-fuelling session our next stop was at the Australian War Memorial. It was a nice museum I suppose with collections from the various wars that the Aussies participated. As I mentioned in an earlier story,  none of the wars were fought to either safe guard Australia or to avenge someone who hurt the Aussies. It was all to support the Queen Mother or Big Uncle Sam. But they did seem to have gone around the world for others. The view from the memorial was pretty good with the Aussie Parli (ament) at the other end.

After watching the closing down ceremony, we headed towards our cabin. It was more of an urban campsite. It was a cross between a campsite, an RV park and a motel. We had booked 2 cabins for our gang. After a bit of settling down we left for the night show at Floriade. That was the key highlight (supposedly) of the trip. Had a tough time finding a parking spot - was almost about to get my car into the water. The weather was so cold for us to enjoy the time there. We were prepared for the cold but probably not prepared enough. The kids were beginning to get quite uncomfortable and it was almost time to wrap up. Had whatever that was available and edible for dinner.

The next morning started with an in-situ breakfast in the cabins with scrambled eggs (mushrooms for the veggies) and toast.  We started with a visit to the Parliament house. It wasn't a huge structure compared to White House or for that matter our own Parliament. Not even as grand as Vidhana Soudha from the outside. Again, the view back from the Parliament house to the Memorial was nice. Being the first Parliament house I've ever been to not able to compare to anything else on the interiors. After the sights, had our lunch in the cafe there. Pretty good stuff for a parliament canteen. 

From the Parliament house we headed towards the Telstra towers. It have us a nice 360 degree view of Canberra from the viewing tower. We saw the storm coming from afar and before we could get out to our cars we had to get drenched. Time was running short as we had one last stop before we could head home. It was the miniature garden where they had replicas of some of world's monuments. For India, it was the Red Fort. Guess the red colour had washed way in the rain because it looked quite brown. Did a few rounds on the mini train. That's where I learnt "Chuga Chuga choo choo...chuga chuga choo choo Train Coming Through" from Nandhitha.

Headed back to Sydney with a pit stop at Goulburn at some "historic" cafe. This trip was quite memorable. Going on a road trip with 2 young ones can be quite "interesting" just by itself. Thankfully we went with a group of people who lent a helping hand many a times. It had all the expected routines of throwing up and cleaning up. We are now masters of handling those situations. After a long time listened to Tamil songs while driving. Nandhitha was co-ordinating a "dance show" where we had to dance seated in the car. Whenever a female voice sings it her turn to dance and if it is male then it is mine. At times she got confused when there was just music playing. We had a grand finale to the trip with a great dinner at Sri Annapurna - Liverpool.  After a looong time had parotta kurma - South Indian style (the veggie version).  Thanks to our trip "Manager" Gayathri for organizing this. :-)

Have A Great Week

C