Presentation skills are much like ETL process.

One of the regular routines of any IT delivery team is to have meetings and presentations. There are meetings to discuss about projects, plans, blockers and almost all aspects of delivery life cycle. In fact we seem to be so fond of having meetings that sometimes we arrange meeting to decide what future meetings we should arrange. But do these meetings really serve any purpose?

The answer to the question cannot be categorised as either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. Some meetings or some parts of the meetings turn out to be really fruitful in deciding the future course of actions with identified action owners and due dates whereas sometimes or some parts of meetings just prove to be a lengthy rhapsody of good sounding but practically meaningless technical jargons. Haven’t you ever come across a meeting wherein the presenter just seemed to be blabbering about some weird stuff and you were thinking about your upcoming vacation plans while you pretended to smile and look interested? You even make an effort to pick on some real fancy jargon and make a note of it to pose a question during the Q&A section of the meeting, just to provide a re-assuring affirmation to all that you were listening. If this has ever happened to you, then there is no need to feel bad about yourself. There is no problem with your attentiveness; rather the fault lies with the focus area and presentation skill of the presenter. 

It is often taken as a joke when people say ‘Oh, making PowerPoint presentation is a real skill’, but to be honest, it really is. Not only in terms of making the presentation presentable, but it is also a skill when it comes to the core content and how the information is transferred from one mind to a set of minds. An idea in itself could be real genius, but it would serve no purpose at all unless it is shared across easily and simplistically with those who are supposed to be working on materialising that idea. 

Look at the Google homepage interface, how simple, easy to use and intuitive it is, and then just think about what goes in the background when you make a simple search. Even the most complex of things could be presented in a way that it is grasped by a good majority, if not all. Our meetings, technical meetings specially, are not the platforms for us to showcase our linguistic skills and boast about our own knowledge set. That fact has been established by the very fact that we have been bestowed with the responsibility of putting up a presentation together for that subject matter. The very basic underlying requirement of any technical meeting is to spread and share information with all relevant parties. Think of it as a simple ETL job. Extract, Transform and Load, 3 simple steps and an interface has been created between 2 non-communicating systems. 

When you are working on the first part i.e. Extract, you can put your idea on paper in any manner you like or feel comfortable with. You can bullet your points; you can draw diagrams or simply make sketches. You are free to follow your own instincts at this stage as it is your information just for you. No other party has yet been involved.

The next part i.e. Transform is the key. Once you have gathered every piece of information in your most comfortable format, you have a universal set which you want to convey. Now all you need to do is to translate/transform that information in a way so that it makes sense for all or most of your target audience. So that binary tree you drew looks so fun and simple to you, but guess what, it means just gibberish drawing to someone you might be presenting it to. It doesn’t always come down to representing your thoughts in tangible ways. Sometimes you might find yourself restricted due to certain constraints you just can’t overcome. But even in such situations, a basic thought should be given to the process of making things as simple as they can possibly get. Basically avoid using α-D-glucopyranosyl-(1→2)-β-D-fructofuranoside where the word ‘Sugar’ could be used, or if it is absolutely necessary to use the difficult technical language then at least make an effort to provide less complex understandable substitutes as well.

The next step i.e. Load primarily stresses on your creative abilities. So once you have your information documented and transformed, it is time for you to make it as presentable and easy to look at. It is a combination of what you write on your slides and what notes you prepare to talk about that slide. I can draw an elephant on a slide and either say ‘It is an elephant’ or can provide the reasoning behind putting that elephant on that slide. The intention should be to load the information in the minds of your target audience.

It might look uncanny, but good presentation relates quite well to the concept of the ETL. If you are willing to give it a try to the basics of preparing a pack for your meetings, you might end up seeing some observable positive results in terms of your audience attention and retention.

Are We using the right Appraisal Systems??

 

Appraisal season is just around the corner. All job holders, especially the ones in IT industry, wait with bated breath for their ratings to be announced, depending on which presumably their salary revisions, bonuses and promotions will be decided, well, at least that is the established norm. What I believe to be the real causal effect of the ratings though, is a few bitching sessions with peers, a few short lived revolts and at the max the invention of a few new technical matrices for the next year’s modified appraisal system.

With so much competition and clients turning highly demanding, the only profit making avenue that seem to be working for the big IT giants is the ‘Over Commitment’ i.e. sell beyond your producing capacity. What it often results in is the over burdening and setting exceedingly high expectations for their employees. This huge pressure of delivery and the myriad of trackers and matrices to be maintained throughout the year, leaves employees with virtually no (or reduced) personal time and space.

What makes things worse is the fact that instead of simplifying things, the planners and innovators keep coming up with more complex formula and calculation matrices each year. All this is done in guise of technological simplification of course, but it eventually turns out to be a nightmarish feat for the poor, innocent employees who just look forward to their efforts getting deserved recognition. With the appraisal systems having number of input parameters possibly greater than Large Hadron Collider, it becomes impossible to keep track of one’s own performance highlights. There is an individual scale based score for everything ranging from number of billable hours to number of hours spent on bench, number of white papers published to number of patents filed, number of successful deliveries managed to number of dollars earned for the company. Then there is weighted score for all such individual components. There is cross functional and cross technological score and then there is career enhancement and learning score. And as if all of this wasn’t enough, there happens to be factors such as behavioural skills, personal skills, soft skills and N number of other less relevant (or irrelevant) skills too. The capturing of these parameters itself is a tiring and time consuming task, but the real nightmare is experienced when you are expected to score big on all these factors and are supposed to keep doing so throughout the elapsed year and justify that at the end.

It takes some refresher courses and trainings to understand these complex systems first. Then it takes an enormous effort to effectively comply with the requirements. Quite often this becomes an additional burden for employees to cope up with these systems given the amount of load they already deal with in their day to day lives.

What it results in is the unfair distribution of perks based on the skills that might not be relevant at all in the first place, yes, a person skilled enough to portray his/her image positively through these complex appraisal systems eventually turns out to be the winner, irrespective of the quality of work he/she had done, whereas a person prioritising his/her day to day work over these futile, non-productive exercises loses.

What comes as an outcome is a deep sense of remorse, lack of motivation and feeling of detachment. When the appraisal systems are supposed to be working in favour of the hard working and committed employees, it often turns out to be just the opposite. The question that the big IT giants need to ask themselves is that ‘Is it really worth it?’

What I didn't like about Dangal??

 

It wasn’t very long ago when our nation or at least a section of our society was seemingly infuriated by some comments on intolerance made by Mr. Aamir Khan, the Bollywood superstar. Posts doing the rounds on social media appealed to one and all to boycott any upcoming movies starring Mr. Khan and people were even predicting his yet to be released movie ‘Dangal’ would face the wrath of angry population. Well, contrary to all those predictions ‘Dangal’ not only managed to do well, it also turned out to be the highest grosser in the history of Indian cinema.

What went wrong?

Why an intolerant nation, influenced by full blow of fascism suddenly turned so accepting, kind hearted and communal?

Well, I don’t have answers to such questions, but what I observed and what I am about to reveal is way more contradicting than the argument posed above.

In the realm of cinematic art form, Dangal might be considered as a masterpiece, but looking at it as a film promoting the social cause of women empowerment would certainly be delusional. The film depicts the journey of a high headed man looking forward to get his unrealized dream of getting a Gold medal for the country in wrestling fulfilled through his offspring. This single point agenda of his life makes his craving to have a boy child stronger. Unfortunately enough, his wife keeps on giving births to girls one after the other, distressing the man with each birth.

The one paragraph above alone describes the immense hypocrisy that this film carries throughout, unless we, as a society, really find it Ok to burden our innocent kids with the baggage of our own unfulfilled goals and desires, let alone the explicitly depicted craving to have a boy child.

Later on after his daughters bash up some local boys, the man realises that his daughters could have the potential of becoming professional wrestlers if they are properly trained. A slight silver lining in the cloud propels the man’s enthusiasm to start his endeavours towards realising his dream, which he at one point had given up, however his enthusiasm would result in depriving his daughters of their deserved childhood pampering has been portrayed as some futile thought which no one should give a damn about because the next few minutes of the screenplay render some harsh and brutal impositions on children in the funniest of ways.

Again, as a cinema, all this should be fine because it is funny and entertaining but is this something we would want our kids to go through?

Now, the girls resist to their core to avoid the strict exercise schedule, but the cunning man plans all their trivial attempts to fail. The transition shows the man to go from a man wanting to have a boy child to a man fighting the society to advocate girls’ rights, Noble right? But why doesn’t the man transitions from being a goal driven apathetic father to someone more concerned and empathetic?

The reluctant girls were nearly on the verge of turning rebellious when the moment of epiphany strikes them at their friend’s wedding where they realise that in the region they reside it is almost customary for parents to get their daughters married at a tender age, and if amidst such social conditions these girls are getting an opportunity to do something then they must not complain, rather they must consider themselves fortunate enough and start worshipping the one person they considered their archenemy. Noble?

The scene cuts and the seed of sincerity seem to have planted in the girls for they now start sharing the same dream with their father.

Among other contradictions, the movie also kind of promotes the idea that wrestlers can’t do without meat. It isn’t Ok for the girls to have occasional ‘Pani Puri’ but the chicken must be cooked in fried onions full of oil because it gives the required proteins for God’s sake.

The other half of the movie is also full of controversial cinematic liberties that the makers took such as showing the National Coach in a very poor taste. Mixing up a bit of ‘Chak De’ flavour to show the strategy making session of the father, who for some reason knows better than National Coach and his gut instincts works for the best 100% of the time.

I enjoyed the movie a lot, and found it entertaining and my intension behind this post is not to discourage anyone who hasn’t seen the movie yet, I am only writing as to highlight the hypocritical contradictions shown in the movie which I would best regard as a work of fiction rather as something to draw any inspiration from.