The Ohio State University sends out a daily news update to its students and faculty. For Valentine’s day, one of the articles they shared in the daily mail was on how to take better care of your heart – or as they put it “4 simple steps to a healthy heart”
It struck me how appropriate this advice – useful for any person, is particularly relevant to entrepreneurs – who all too often – skip meals, and even if they don’t skip meals end up snacking unhealthily, run around in a high state of stress and all too often are desk-bound and sedentary. If that’s you (it certainly was me), that’s not a really good way to take care of your heart and health.
The four simple ways to take better care of your heart they recommend are:
eating healthy in my case this began by becoming conscious of what it is I put in my mouth – my meetings seemed to be accompanied with drinking endless cups of tea or coffee (with large doses of sugar in them) and snacking on cookies (or biscuits). Simply replacing such snacking with a water or green tea made a huge difference. I’ve written elsewhere how eating healthy also helped me drop 15 kgs (33 lbs) elsewhere.
being active I’ve begun using a simple 15-45 minute (Pomodoro) timer on my laptop and mobile phone so that I don’t spend 3 or 4 hours sitting on a chair. Additionally, I try to put in between 2-4 miles of walking a day – usually sneaking away at lunch time. Try holding at least some of your 2-person meetings as a walking meeting, in a nearby park – you get some exercise and mind find your meetings go way better.
managing stress many of us when younger were like “What me stress?” But whether we feel stressed or not, the every day pulls and pressures of our jobs and lives do cause us stress. Conscious deep breathing, when you take that 5-minute break, walking around, mindfulness exercises or good old exercise are all good ways to manage stress. Of course, one key indicator for me personally is when my snacking desire increases, it’s usually a good indicator of being stressed.
avoiding tobacco here’s the good news – eating well, exercising and managing stress are all good ways to overcome habits, that you’d like to lose. Not having been a smoker, I’m hardly an expert in this area. But do what you can to avoid tobacco or seek help to quit smoking.
In 1988 just as I was about to finish up my Ph.D. and finally graduate, a good friend Murali arranged for me to interview with his group at Intel. My father, who was visiting, insisted on driving down with me to Santa Clara, as he was bored out of his mind hanging around my apartment. I dropped my dad at the Marriott, I think, around the corner and went on to my interview with Intel.
It did not go well.
I recall Murali’s boss asking me about how a PN junction works and being greatly offended mostly because I flubbed the answer. I don’t recall how the rest of the meeting went, safe to say not too well. In an ego-protecting move, my brain seems to have blanked it out completely. Needless to say, I never heard back from them.
It stops you from beingcomplacent I realized that I’d just not prepared for my interview. I’m not sure what I’d thought – that I was a Berkeley grad or that I could answer anything on the fly. The interview that day made me face, how clueless and complacent I was.
It makes you better prepared It was not easy to admit to myself, the assumptions I’d made had made me complacent in the first place. Challenging the assumptions was a start but not sufficient. I realized being better prepared was the answer. Of course it took me more than one screw up, to learn this lesson and even today I find I could always be better prepared.
It leaves you open for better opportunities Little did I realize that flubbing the Intel interview was not a bad thing, for that’s how I ended up at National Semiconductor. Intel’s enormous success stemmed from their relentless and singular focus on what needed to be accomplished – this translated to new graduates often having to work on a reasonably narrow scope of things, for a good deal of time. That is not a bad thing! In fact, it’s a good thing to focus and go deep but just wasn’t my thing. Guess my inability to do one thing at a time is not a recent phenomenon.
At National, they just threw you at a problem, often a big one, and let you go at it – not pretty or efficient, but enormously educational. And if you were interested in something and prepared to put in the hours they were happy to hand it to you. Of course, this may explain their meanderings and lack of profitability the first five years I was there, but talk about learning on the job. Over the last 20 years, many of my successes and particularly my problem-solving expertise was built in those early years at National. They also spent a great deal on educating me on things that I felt then, as unrelated to my job role. This is something that I’m immensely grateful for, particularly to my managers and colleagues who guided me with great patience and fortitude.
Of course, if I’d paid attention in school and actually learned how a darn P-N junction worked, I might have learned just as much or even more at Intel, but I suspect given my own personality I wouldn’t have. So despite the disappointment, I felt that day driving back – with my father trying to assure me that he was sure I’d done well in the interview – it all turned out well.
And I’ve learned since then rejection need not be bad always.
As I’ve heard my wife say often to our daughters, when one door closes, God opens another. This has been my experience and I’m grateful for it.
“I’m terrible at making small talk! I have no problem talking to people one-on-one but put me in a roomful of people, I just freeze and don’t know what to say!” A fellow member of our ToastMaster club shared this tale of how his father was great at making small talk but the skill seemed to have somehow eluded him. He finally decided that not only would he learn how to be a better conversationalist, one capable of making small talk but would actually deliver a speech to our club. And so he did. As the assigned evaluator that evening, I took rapid notes as he spoke and as I glanced through the notes later that evening I realized these were indeed very good advice for all of us – whether we were looking to be better conversationalists or just better listeners. So here are his insights
Observe Look at the most effective person in a room – the one who’s surrounded by others and is most engaging. Walk up to them and observe, how they initiative conversation, and how they sustain it. What works for them may not work for you – and even if it did, adapt it to your style.
Be a good listener This seems counterintuitive, at least initially. To be a good conversationalist you need to be a good – active – listener. One way to do that is to ask questions – questions that acknowledge what they said, or clarify – open-ended questions so that they can drive the conversation. Observe how they respond. Rinse and repeat.
Reverse Questions Often people may start conversations by asking you questions. All of us have met folks who’ve walked up to us and asked questions such as “What is it you do?” or “How do you know the Samuels?” One technique my friend shared was to respond in kind – “That’s an interesting question. I was, in fact, going to ask you the same. What is it that you do?” Of course done right, this will not seem so much a deflection, but an expression of interest.
Body Language Conversation isn’t just verbal. When I first came to the US as a grad student, I was lucky enough to have a good friend Marcel (from the Netherlands) who pointed out to me that I tended to not only invade folks private space, but also reach out and touch them, literally. “Not a good idea,” as he put it. Observe people’s body language – of both speakers and listeners, when it’s done right and others respond positively and when it isn’t.
Listening while speaking Even when you are the designated speaker, when the floor has been ceded to you, confine your speaking to a finite amount (my friend recommended 30% – not sure there’s a magic number) and get your audience to engage by getting them to speak, whether through questions, responses or other forms of participation. In other words, even when you are “speaking” you are getting others to speak and you get to listen.
Prepare Nothing makes you a good conversationalist (or even a listener) as being prepared. Preparation here is not so much a speech you give – as much as having trivia or fun facts handy – be it about the weather (always safe), a sports team, food, pets or current events. I’d hazard into politics or the election only if you know the folks and even then if you want to be invited back I’d stick with safer topics.
Be Authentic Nothing kills a conversation faster than being a phony. Evince keen interest in what the other person is saying – this is part of being a good listener but stay authentic. If you are being bored, don’t try to hang in there bravely – your body will announce your disinterest louder than your words. Even if you disagree, you don’t have to argue nor do you have to silently agree. In short be authentic.
Almost three years ago, I shared how I’d lost nearly 35lbs (16kgs) over the previous six months. Whilst that particular piece of good news on the health front, was a result of a diabetes scare, little did I realize what lay ahead. Six months later, I took a sabbatical, started a gaming studio and moved, rather unplanned, half-way across the world. It was the last part that was stressful – of course doing a gaming startup was no walk in the park either.
My normal coping mechanism for handling stress is snacking – maybe even binge-snacking at times. So having worked so hard to lose all that weight, I wasn’t going to let two adolescents, a major move that might put the kibosh on my startup and all the uncertainty that came with it, undo it all. While losing the weight proved I had some measure of discipline and self-control, this did not extend very far.
So when I got on a plane in Bangalore 250 days ago, I wasn’t exactly confident how I’d do. Today I’m happy to report, for the first time in my adult life, I’ve gone through 250 days – the better part of a year – without as much as a sniffle or a sneeze (both common in Bangalore’s allergy-prone environs) nor an upset stomach, cold, cough or the flu. And at a particularly stress-filled time of my life with a great deal of uncertainty and free time to ponder on it. Here’s how I did it.
Daily walks – for 40 minutes – is what I started with, so as to not lose the health gains I’d made. Most days – the wife and I managed to sneak in an additional 30 minutes in the evenings. When I walked by myself I did a sub-15 minute mile, however, the wife and I together did a far more leisurely 18-20 minute mile.
I was lucky enough to read my former colleague and friend Troy Erstling‘s humbly-titled post My Epic Daily Routine – which acted as a great inspiration – I adopted several elements and adapted others to fit my own idiosyncracies. So here’s my own daily routine that’s led to my 250-day streak.
The Short Version
regular water drinking, starting first thing in the morning
daily exercise (walking) and sun salutations
eating whole foods, cut and prepared lovingly each day
portion control, and 5-6 small meals with mostly vegetables and fruits
The Gory Details
Two or more glasses of water – soon as I wake up. I go to bed with my 700-ml water bottle next to me and take a swig the moment I wake up. Have also taken to lugging around the water bottle all day and consume 1.5L of water on a typical day.
Morning ablutions – use the bathroom usually right after I get out of bed – occasionally in this season of Trump, have fallen into the bad habit of reading election news on my phone while in the bathroom. This is a new source of stress, so trying to lose it.
Mindfulness practice aka vegetable-cutting Starting with slicing (yep, slicing) ginger for our morning tea, I spend between 10-20 minute cutting (slicing, dicing, at times pounding) vegetables and fruits for both our morning smoothie and later meals – this is the best stress-buster, a truly meditative and mindfulness exercise I’ve found. Shades of OCD in how small (and near-perfect cubes or parallelepiped shapes that I cut and the color combinations I strive for. But both my wife and I are happy that I do it.
Pic Credit: Hope’s Yoga
Sun Salutations Troy’s link to this chart, helped me get off my duff to do daily sun salutations, which makes sure that I stretch myself and get a bit limber. The first one is always a little stiff, but after four or five months getting a whole lot better. Anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes.
Morning tea – I’ve always nursed my tea (with crushed cardamom and sliced ginger). Use this time to plan my day – at least the burning things that I can no longer avoid.
Morning walk – Barring a few days in a month, every day we’ve walked in the woods for not less than 30 minutes but most days 40 mins and cover between 2-2.5 miles in that time. Most importantly for the first time in the 25 years of being married, my wife and I walk together – so it’s done wonders for our communication, creativity, and our waistlines.
Eating Right As adherents of Dr. Ronesh Sinha and Rujuta Diwekar dietary principles, we’ve been enormously disciplined in terms of what we eat, which I believe is the primary cause of our present good health. We’ve gone to a very low-grain diet, with quinoa being our primary grain – with vegetables being the largest share of our diet, be it in smoothies (veggies + fruits), soups, chutneys, or sauteed dishes. We’ve been consciously consuming more nuts, fruits (low-glycemic) and snacking healthy with practically no commercially prepared foods. We do consume milk, yoghurt and soy-milk mostly with our tea and smoothies. A lot of grandma’s recipes have been resuscitated with coconut and ghee having returned to our diet, in finite quantities. Our diet (and recipes) deserve their own posts. The only other thing to note here is that we’ve stuck with 5-to-6 small meals in a day – breakfast, morning snack, lunch, evening snack and dinner (usually before 7pm).
Sleeping (early) For most of my adult life I was up till midnight before I got to bed. Been consciously working that towards 10pm – not there yet. But trying to put an end to electronic stuff by 930-10pm and read – usually a book before knocking off by 11pm. Again Mr. Trump really tested this routine, as I began watching the TV news – if we can call it that – somewhat obsessively around the debates or when I wanted to avoid doing taxes. Anyway, this is an ongoing effort, but am sleeping early and surprise, surprise, getting up earlier, despite Fall being here and the days getting colder.
What’s ahead (or things that have not worked)
meditation (10-30 minutes)
regular writing (3/days a week) – work on my book
pull ups (haven’t been able to do 1 yet, though gotten pushups to 30-40)
Haven’t you found yourself wondering this in more than one situation? In my experience, the single most critical skill that leaders in general and startup founders in particular need is that of being a good communicator. While most of us find it easy to talk and some of us may actually listen, it doesn’t make us a good communicator.
How many of the meetings you attend seem not only interminable but often indecipherable? If this were a problem with just meetings, you could excuse yourself and read the meeting minutes. But alas meeting minutes, like many emails or other forms of written communication seem to only add to the confusion.
“What is this person trying to tell me?”
All of us are just as guilty as we dash off memos, texts, and presentations, sowing confusion at best and mayhem at worst. Here are three steps to help us communicate better. Try them and let me know how they work for you.
Single central message Whether a 3-line email or a 6-page white paper, your communication should have a SINGLE central message – what our English composition teachers tried to tell us – the theme sentence! This answers the question “What is this person trying to tell me?” So whether it’s the personal — “You need to spend less money on eating out” (that’s to my daughter), “We need to re-do the In-app Purchase (IAP) in this game (the professional)” or “We need to ensure ________ is not elected this year” (the national) or “We need a new nuclear disarmament treaty (the global) we need to communicate a single central message and no more in each of our communications.
Short as possible but long as needed This is one I’m yet to master and often undermines my own communication effectiveness. Even when I have a single central message if I wrap it with too many words, my message is lost. This could be emotional content (especially with my daughters), or excess justification (social or business context) or plain verbosity. Yet, in a corporate context, major changes require context setting, such as environmental factors at play, why this course of action and options considered – alternates considered and discarded and potential outcomes of actions taken or not. So the 3-sentence email one of my friends insists on writing may not always do the job, but ask yourself, does your presentation require 48 pages or can you say it any shorter?
Choose your medium carefully Sure writing email is easy – heck texting someone is even easier. But just as most folks agree, breaking up with your girlfriend (or significant other) over text is not cool, there is such a thing as an appropriate medium for any given communication. I’d say easier a missive is to send, the more likely it’s to sow confusion. Sure there are exceptions, but in general, it’s a good idea, to take a moment, before you send that text or email, to ask yourself, is this the best medium to communicate this message. I find often after having written a draft email, that picking up the phone or walking down the corridor to talk to the person a much more effective way to communicate. Similarly, even when presenting to a group of folks, few words on a slide or a graph to accompany your verbal communication or a handout might be more effective.
In summary, these 3 steps will help us take the first steps to being better communicators
What is my single central message?
Am I saying it as concisely as possible with adequate context?
What is the best medium to communicate this in?
An earlier draft of this article appeared in LinkedIn
The entire company, probably little over 50 people, was in the room. It was the 9th of December 2005 and we’d gathered to discuss the news that we were seriously considering an offer to buy the company. Nearly twenty people in the room had been with us more than five years – through two major pay cuts and one minor layoff – another 20 with us over the last two years, when it was certain we were no longer going to die. So the topic of the meeting and its consequences were not merely financial or professional but deeply emotional. If we chose to be acquired, our success largely lay in the hands of the folks in that room, in their willing participation and agreement to the decision to sell. Early in the meeting, we posed the question what would be your biggest fear or concern, should we sell the company.
As you can easily imagine when you pose such a question, to a large group of people, none of whom were at a startup because they were shy or retiring, things could easily degenerate into a free-for-all. Also while we had planned to take half a day for the meeting, there was a lot of ground to cover. So the challenge we were posed with was, how do we get the team to not only have their say, but to get them to converge on a few important things, such that the biggest concerns not only get aired, but acknowledged and ideally even addressed in the meeting.
Amazingly the 50+ people were able to converge on their three primary concerns and were unanimous with their first concern – “What would happen to our culture, if we are acquired?” thanks to a technique called Nominal Group Technique. And were able to do it within 15 minutes. This is a technique that I’ve had the opportunity to use repeatedly in groups, as small as 8 people to as big as 55, – to get rapid convergence – often from a standing start – of even what the key problems were that we needed to solve and what are the top 3 or 5 things to do to solve them. The technique requires that I write a whole another blog post dedicated to it to explain the manner in which we’ve used it, adapting it for different groups not just across countries but across age groups, and different socio-economic backgrounds. This morning I read about the a technique called Indaba, that was used at the recent climate conference (COP21) to get nearly 200 nations to sign-off to a binding agreement.
Negotiations are difficult by nature. Managing negotiations between 195 countries in order to arrive at a legally binding agreement, on the other hand, is nearly impossible. This was the problem that United Nations officials faced over two weeks at this month’s climate-change summit in Paris. To solve it, they brought in a unique management strategy.
The trick to getting through an over-complicated negotiation comes from the Zulu and Xhosa people of southern Africa. It’s called an “indaba” (pronounced IN-DAR-BAH), and is used to simplify discussions between many parties. Read the full article here.
If you reckoned negotiating with one party was hard, be it with an employee wanting to leave or customer or partner wanting more for less, negotiating with more than one party is incredibly more complicated. Luckily there are proven techniques that can help you do so successfully. It would be good to get acquainted with them, well before you’ll actually need to use them. Better yet, try ’em out today!
I’ve written about negotiating before here and conflict resolution here.
Like nearly every family WhatsApp group, mine if often filled with all kinds of forwards – that I tend to largely ignore or quickly glance and not dwell too long on. This morning my sister shared this piece on WhatsApp and it made me stop & think. It’s always sobering to see oneself in the mirror.
As entrepreneurs, there are a million things that frustrate us, tick us off and many times we want to scream at someone – some of us do, others keep it inside and the rest try to drink it off I assume. But this little story or parable brings home the message of “responding and not reacting” – to recognize our reactions stem from what’s inside us and not things that happen outside of us. Enjoy.
A monk decides to meditate alone, away from his monastery. He takes his boat out to the middle of the lake, moors it there, closes his eyes and begins his meditation. After a few hours of undisturbed silence, he suddenly feels the bump of another boat colliding with his own. With his eyes still closed, he senses his anger rising, and by the time he opens his eyes, he is ready to scream at the boatman who dared disturb his meditation. But when he opens his eyes, he sees it’s an empty boat that had probably got untethered and floated to the middle of the lake. At that moment, the monk achieves self-realization, and understands that the anger is within him; it merely needs the bump of an external object to provoke it out of him. From then on, when he comes across someone who irritates him or provokes him to anger, he reminds himself, “The other person is merely an empty boat. The anger is within me.
“How can I be as successful as ….?” This is a question, that not just my daughters ask, but many of the young people I meet. Of course, this gives rise to the question “What is success?” No two people define success the same way.
While I’ve read and heard a variety of definitions, I feel, VR Ferose, the former Managing Director of SAP India said it best. Success is personal and often about yourself. To the young man who is the first in his family to have attended or graduated from college, that is a success. To the security guard at his company who’s the first, from his village, to have landed a city job that’s success. To the young woman who became the CEO of a tech firm, success is attaining that post.
So doctors, engineers, lawyers, politicians all believe various things that they have achieved or seek to achieve as their success. But is success even the right metric for our lives?
I’d argue, as Feroze did that day, that impact, what impact are we having or will have on others lives is a far better metric. Unlike success, where the focus is on you and your accomplishments, impact is about other people. “She’s created over 200 jobs, as an entrepreneur” or “He’s helped 30 kids graduate from college.”
Does this mean we should quit our jobs or not pursue “selfish” goals such as running a startup? No, absolutely not. But we should revisit how we measure what we do, what we believe as success in ourselves and others. Entrepreneurs are among the greatest contributors to society, whether simply as inspiration to others or in creating real impact on the ground it terms of wealth or job creation,
Does a Babajob, create new economic opportunities for those in the disorganized service sectors? Hell yeah! Does Vaatsalya enhance the quality of health care and life for folks in Tier 2 & 3 towns? Certainly. I’m sure you can think of many more. Of course, their being financially viable as a business is important to deliver the impact that they do. However, measuring or celebrating entrepreneurs and their companies as a success merely because they raised a round or their founders are cool is both limiting and unimaginative.
So what is the impact you and your organization are going to have today?
As the father of two teens, there are many moments when my children ask, even implore, me to “Just tell me what to do!”
As a parent, it’s hard not to TELL your kids what to do. Of course there are far more times when they don’t want to hear the things I’d like to share with them. Mentoring entrepreneurs in many ways not that different from raising teens – you’ve gotta resist the urge to tell them “the answer” even when they ask for it and you’d better get used to your advice not being adhered to or at times even heard.
That of course never stopped me as an entrepreneur, mentor or parent from sharing, lessons and insights that I never cease to learn. Even while urging kids or entrepreneurs to focus on impact and the journey, rather than “success” – the question of how does one get to be successful comes up all the time. Luckily better men than me have grappled with this issue and here’s a short (3.5 minute) video that answers this very question. For those that prefer to read over watching a video, however short, I have provided a short summary at the end.
The eight secrets are
Passion – be passionate about what you do (& the money will follow as Marsha Sinetar put it)
Work – work hard but have fun. As Richard St. John puts it, be a workafrolic and not a workaholic!
Focus – focus – on one thing is critical to being successful
Persist – persistence is an attribute that comes up consistently
Ideas – be creative and constantly come up with new ways to think & do
Good – practice, practice, practice – so that you get good at what you do
Push – you have to push yourself, past doubts & doubters, obstacles to be successful
Serve – be of service, whether with your business or product or in life
Last weekend, two men, neither of whom I knew personally, died in separate accidents in North America. Yet this morning, as I sit down to write I find the deaths of Dave Goldberg, CEO of Survey Monkey and Parag Parikh, value investor have impacted me in ways I’d not have guessed. Yes we live in a world, whether the earthquake in Nepal (7500+ dead), war in Yemen (1250+ dead) or Syria (200,000+ dead) which in many way inures us to the news of death if not death itself. Yet the death of both these men, one admired in the startup community – known to many as the spouse of Sheryl Sandburg of Facebook (and Lean In fame) and the other in India’s value investment community, should make every one of us in the entrepreneurial community stop and take stock.
As founders of startups and otherwise active members of the ecosystem, we get caught up with the chase – whether news of rounds raised or customers won or milestones made. Our startups are constantly faced with existential crises be they cash flow problems, key employee loss or co-founder shenanigans. Many of us make it a badge of honor that we don’t have time for personal lives or the long hours we put in or how we’ve spent days at the office with little or no sleep. What little time we have we spend poring over startup news, networking and hustling. Many of us who left the corporate “rat race” have only traded it for the startup roller coaster, without the perks and the sobering truth of what working for oneself really is. Almost every one of these things is what makes the start up life the exhilarating and infuriating ride that it is.
The sudden death of these two men in their prime only brought home the truth of what’s important in our lives – our families, our health and what we can contribute to our communities. All too easily our own time can be taken away – so don’t put away what’s important to another day – don’t wait for Mother’s Day or any other special day to call on a loved one, to read to your child, take a walk with your spouse or a long hike with friends.
Over the last several years, I have written about startups, entrepreneurship and business in general in the Hindu BizLine and Wall St. Journal. I have compiled these for easy access in the column below.
You must be logged in to post a comment.