What is an education?

Education is not a collection of facts, it is not intelligence either, which tells you how to apply the knowledge. Education is finding the way, when confronted with life’s challenges. Education is the light which shows the way when there is a darkness all around. Education is not literacy, which enables you to read books. Education is the understanding of life, how the world works. The most important Education is the knowledge of how you (yourself) work?

Unfortunately, most schools only teach literacy, which enables you to pass exams and to an extent read, explore and discover ideas of famous thinkers. Schools don’t teach you to innovate, they don’t teach you how to find the way in life when you are stuck. Then why do we go school to receive education? We don’t go to schools for literacy, we go to schools for getting challenged, for thinking beyond our limitations when we are posed with tough problem. In that way, we receive education. Schools don’t last with us for a lifetime, education does.

In everyday, we get a chance daily to solve problems, get challenged, find solutions, go beyond our comfortable limits. The challenges comes in various forms: to someone who is trying to code a new feature the challenge is how to write the code effectively so that it integrates well into the system and problem gets solved accurately using minimal resources, to a struggling mother, the challenge is how to make her a 7 years daughter more responsible. Each day, each one us receives an education in a school called life, whether we choose to accept the challenges of life or not depends on how willing we are to learn, to get challenged and persistent in face of uncertainty. Education is not simply applying solutions where the problem is already defined, it is defining the problem and finding the solution to a new problem, each day.

Education is a way of life. It is an inspiration to live, a guiding force, which propels us towards success. So, are you a literate or educated?

Courage!

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Are we courageous enough to take risk with our products?
Does fear of failure continuously haunt us to create anything new?
Can we produce a truly original idea and stand with it when no one else is there with us?
Are we a fearless product manager?

Think, but most importantly ACT!

The wrong way to interview a product manager

Recently, I gave interviews for a product manager and I realized most of the heads of organizations don’t understand what is going to the role of a product manager. I am not going to provide full disclosure here but only the wrong way in which a product manager is interviewed in internet or mobile company in India.

Once, you clear the HR, Tech round, then phone interview happens and once you clear that, you have face to face meeting at company’s office.

All goes fine till here. Now, from here onward blunder starts.

The organization heads don’t know that ‘product manager marketing’ and ‘product manager development’ are two different roles. In tech companies, Product manager – development roles are in demand, however, department heads seem to confuse these roles. During interview, Interviewers expect the product manager to have a deep understanding of the user of their domains, which is fine as long as people from competition apply to their company. In most of the cases, they will end up in interviewing someone who is not from competition but has good exposure to other domains. So, their focus should be on how this person understands the products, what are his previous achievements and can this person deliver the results? Instead, what they ask – we are trying to build feature X, what’s your take on this? Product Manager, who is from another domain answers this question to best of his abilities, but no matter how hard he tries, he can’t understand users from other domains unless he has developed products for them and understood the user needs closely. At the best, the answer given at this point of time is full of assumptions. It can be right of wrong.

The right question should be this one – We have Y set of users with these characteristics/demographics/life styles and developing feature X, why do you think this feature will be best suited for this set of users?

Next, they want instant solutions to their products. Interviewer may ask you, what could be the new product/feature for us? Again, you give the answer based on your experience. It could be right or wrong. They hardly test, what you already know about your domain and your methodology to come up with solutions, the innovations you can bring.

Though, my point is not to criticize anyone for their hiring skills but the point is, why test a candidate for the newer areas? Why not test the candidate for the areas where he/she is good and give some challenging assignment around that? Won’t that help evaluation better?

Solving the Original Problem

Isn’t this invention a WOW ?

This invention has opened up new frontiers in levitation. Imagine a friction-less transportation system, a friction less machinery. It would lead saving of fuel, energy and increase in efficiency by over 1,000 times.

So, what?

The idea is – are you solving the original problem with your product or just producing me-too products? Will your product truly create a long-lasting value in the whole ecosystem or it will die after few months or a year?

Solving Original problems takes time. The first step is identifying the original problem. That needs a paradigm shift. Standing with the new idea is risky, you may fail but the rewards are excellent. Are you willing to risk the trend to create something original, which will last for years to come? Can you forego the investors and listen to your heart instead? Can you convince a team to work on original product?

Often, we choose the easy way over the tough one, but can you make an exception this time? There is no guarantee, there is a leap of faith. Can you be the next Einstein? Next Newton? Why not dare to dream? Why not live your dream one more time?

What the heck is with job title?

Why are we so obsessed with job title, be it CEO, Product Manager, Director, VP… and so on? Have we not invented all this title crap to just exercise the control mentality. A CEO has the maximum power and office peon has the least power. It is all power structure at work. A power structure will almost always create a less powerful products, unless the CEO is someone like Steve Jobs, who has a Vision about the product. Any organization with titles is made to kill productivity and creativity. Some suggest that titles denote the area of influence, nothing can be further from the truth. Go to any organization, informal authority is what gets the work done. Isn’t it? Why we need titles? To earn more money in the organization. To have better lifestyle than juniors. A senior job title allows you more time for yourself, be more creative, supposedly more responsible for others work.  What a collective sham we live in!

A truly creative organization will allow people to pick up the titles based on the value they want to bring in. An organization is build by the people, for the people inside and outside the organization. The idea should be to chuck out the titles and give a way to value, which can be directly linked to customer satisfaction and brilliance or creativity in solution provided.

Why to live in 20th century anymore? Lets grow up to new realities and accept the way people work in the new world.