Disconnected connections

Last week while reading Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, I read about the rule of 150 or neocortex ratio. Stating why a group/ team when exceeds 150 starts losing the effectiveness or the relationship starts dipping, the reasoning was an average human mind cannot effectively map people beyond 150. For the same reason, in military the units don't have men beyond 200, despite advancement in communication technology.

This thought made me to start looking at my 250+ contact on mobile, 300 odd friends on Facebook and about the same number on Linkedin. Though there is nothing wrong in having a large connections/contacts, when in an opportunity or situation, whom did I contact or thought off, what was the top of the mind recall? It was again the same contacts or friends, it was never those rarely called/contacted numbers.

So I started mentally classifying my contacts on social network, as

1 Replying/commenting on their status

2 Enjoyed/looked forward to reading their posting

3 Glanced through their status

4 Ignored their status or posting, and scrolled to next

5 Removed status updates from few.

Over 50% of my connections fell in category 3, and it didn't bother me (nor them, I guess) as I haven't replied/commented on their status for a long time, they are just there. Another 10% fell in type 4, as the information from them was irrelevant or was of not much use to me, and these (type 4) connections over a period moved to type 5. It was actually only that about 40% of my connections I was able to follow, which clearly came down to about 120+, thus approving neocortex ratio.

This rule has worked for me, but I have friends who have connections crossing 500 and some 1500, I really want to know if same rule applies to them. Let me know.

Startups stand to gain

Microsoft buys Skype for 8.5 billion, 3 times of its market price.. it surely goes to say, the kind of impact small startups have. EBay also had bought Skype couple of years back and weren't sure as to what to do, never the less in all these transactions it was Skype which clearly won.

Start ups which get taken over for huge fortunes, gives individuals/startups a hope to keep perusing what they love, to innovate. Like minded people, leaving aside their qualifications, ego and house address, bring in ideas, which get implemented in short time, thus getting on the wave at the right time. While the big companies can't, as they aren't agile due to their rigid hierarchy and process, in spite of having the right skill and funds. Just that small and big firms come with their own plus and minus, forces the big firms to keep a close watch on small ones.

Not all startups end up with big names, and they continue doing what they enjoy. Either way startups stand to gain.

Calm and cup go together...

Of many qualities a leader should possess, one of them is, being able to absorb the pressure and not pass it on to the team. And this quality was very well demonstrated by Dhoni during the recent world cup matches. Even the billions of Indians and cricket followers would agree, the way the high pressure matches were handled with ease.

A team under pressure cannot perform at its best, be it scope change, revised schedule or reduced resources, the team is always exposed to pressure situations every moment during the life of a project. It is true that every team member should be aware of such changes and should be able to adapt to such situation. But how? Well! That depends on the action of the leader. How a leader reacts to such situations, is seen in team's performance.

I have experienced working under leaders who kept a calm face even during the time of crisis, but at the same time being firm in their decisions. This has helped the team in completing the task at much faster rate and with less rework. On other hand, working under leaders who would pass on the stress/tension to the team right down to the last man, this made the team members less confident in solving the problem and feeling inferior to others. Thus, neither solving the problem nor making better/confident team members.

These less confident members, when they take up such leadership position pass on the same to their teams (alas, we have more of such leaders around...). If the leaders want to see the success, they need to learn the art of absorbing the pressure...only then the team will push the leader to lift the cup...

The world cup was no doubt very entertaining, but it also demonstrated calm leaders and confident team...

Right Corporate Culture to Succeed

Culture is unwritten rules/guidelines followed by all the staff members in a given situation. A corporate culture determines how people respond, react or act in any given situation. The situations would vary from smallest transaction like greeting one another, calling by the first name, responding to emails, conducting meetings or dealing with clients.

The culture creates a binding amongst the staff, as they all think and act alike in a given situation. This as a great employee retention technique, once a employee is comfortable with the culture, would rarely try to move out of this comfort zone. The onus of incorporating the culture into every employee begins from the top, the CEO. To given an instance, if the CEO reschedules/misses any appointment with any of his staff even on a smallest topic couple of times, the staff accepts this as a norm. The same is practiced by others with their peers or junior staff, thus setting a unwritten culture of missing appointments. This get noticed only during interaction with external stakeholders.

To remove bad practises and bring in good cultures, the organisation needs to have feedbacks by staffs from all levels, create forums to allow staff post their views/suggestion, take formal feedback from new employees on what they like and dislike and senior management has to keep evaluating its every smallest action.

This may be acceptable for some or tolerated by few, but this would start showing up in our life, personal and professional.