My LinkedIn Year-2015 Posts.

Hello Readers:

Year 2015, I did not post any. But I did write on LinkedIN. They are not book reviews, but some of my views on something specific I have experienced in my career.

I have given the links of the four posts I have made last year.

Design Debt:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/design-debt-from-eugene-euthanasia-madhu-parthasarathy?trk=pulse_spock-articles

Design Alternatives:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/design-alternatives-madhu-parthasarathy?trk=mp-author-card

Prototyping Scenarios

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/prototyping-scenarios-madhu-parthasarathy?trk=mp-author-card

TT Quotient (Trust and Transparency Quotient)

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tt-quotient-madhu-parthasarathy?trk=mp-author-card

As always comments are welcome. Thanks for taking efforts to go and see there!

regards,
madhu

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End– Dr Atul Gawande

GUEST POST by N.R.Ramesh

For those who are not familiar with Atul Gawande, a short introduction is probably in order. He is a surgeon, lives and works in the US at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and has been writing quite extensively. He is a staff writer for the ‘The New Yorker’ magazine, and has published three books earlier, ‘Complications’, ‘Better’ and ‘The Checklist Manifesto’. These books deal with the challenges of practicing medicine, starting from the dilemmas doctors face when they have to treat with incomplete information to running hospitals better and how to make the medical practice safer.

In this book, Dr. Gawande has taken a critical look at how modern society is dealing with the end of life care. He starts by emphasizing that our bodies eventually start failing and the end eventually happens due to the cumulative effects of all the changes due to ageing, starting with cellular degeneration to structural changes to our anatomy. Next he traces a little bit of history of how end of life care has changed from what were called the ‘poor houses’ in the US to the modern day ‘nursing homes’. He also explores the differences between different societies and finds that as the overall economic situation improves, most societies around the globe follow a similar path in terms of dealing with the evening of one’s life.

He vividly describes how the current average nursing home or assisted living communities in the US, and probably in most other developed economies are more designed to be places where one is kept “safe”, and “medically alive” at the cost of everything else that may matter for the resident. He has interviewed several residents, care givers, geriatricians and finds that the routine in such homes are designed for the overall efficiency of the staff and care givers and do not have any flexibility that the residents desire. He highlights this to be one of the first things that people who move into such places miss and makes them feel that they are no longer in their “homes”. The regulations that govern such communities are also only focused on the physical safety of the residents and hardly anything else. Regulations have certainly helped to improve the general hygiene and comfort levels from the days of the “poor houses”, but have not addressed the wholesome needs of the residents. He also gives a good account of hospice care which is getting popular under which one is able to maintain a decent quality of life staying in their own homes.

Dr. Gawande has also interviewed and visited some of the communities that have been trying to fix this issue and have tried to make the residents lives more meaningful. He talks about the community that tried to collocate close to a school with kids visiting them during their breaks or where the residents can watch the kids play, and another one where they tried bringing in pets like birds to keep the residents engaged. It seems that having something meaningful to do, however little it may be due to one’s physical limitations does a world of good to the resident’s mental state and it rubs off into their physical well-being as well.

He then talks about the difficult choices one has to make when faced with terminal illnesses. He illustrates this with a few patients he has followed, primarily those facing terminal cancers and the difficult choices one has to make with respect to the treatment regimens, especially when the outcomes predicted are not very rosy. Quality of life seems to be taking a big hit for some who opt for these treatment regimens and the last few weeks of their life is spent secluded in an Intensive Care Unit, away from their family and friends, and often with multiple tubes into their bodies to keep them “alive”. He suggests that when we know the end is inevitable and fairly close, it may be worth considering what is really important for the individual and allow them to make those choices. He also feels that the medical community, especially Doctors need to be better trained to have these conversations when the person is fully conscious and aware, and help them make the right choices. One of the persons described is his own father who is diagnosed with cancer and how he chose to decline some treatment options towards the end, and decided to stay at home with hospice care.

Overall, a very good book that really takes a critical view of the current state of affairs for those in the evening of their lives, and he has dealt with this subject as candidly as possible. The core message of the book, if I have to sum it up in a single line is that the individual should have a say in how they want to spend their last living days and the medical community and family need to try and make that possible as best as we can.

How will you measure your life? By Clay Christensen et'al

How will you measure your life? Finding fulfillment using lessons from some of the world's greatest businesses By Clayton M Christensen, James Allworth & Karen Dillion

This book is an eclectic one– a dose of management, bit of philosophy and a theory driven prediction all thrown in for a good measure. Main author, Harvard Business School Prof Clayton M Christensen had a brush with mortality [1]and hence his life lessons are firsthand experience which makes it really compelling. Also, as a writer he is a very accomplished author. His books Innovator dilemma and Innovator’s solution are well known classics. His Harvard Business Review articles have won McKinsey award many times.

Prof Clay advocates to develop “theory” which in turn can predict, so much so, he distills that thought “I don’t have an opinion but my theory has”. In the chapter which is attractively titled as “Just because you have feathers”, he observes that, there is a strong correlation between able to fly and having feathers and wings – what the would-be believed that allowed the birds to soar. But, the would-be aviators didn't understand the causal mechanisms – what actually causes something to fly? They could have seen some warning signs: Ostriches have wings and feathers but they can’t fly: Bats have wings but no feathers but they are great fliers and flying squirrels have neither wings nor feather but they get by. The real breakthrough came later when the concept of lift was explained by the Dutch mathematician David Bernoulli. So author claims, from then on we moved from correlation to causation thereby making giant strides in aviation. Fair enough. But, I have a trouble in subscribing to it fully. We are in an era where correlation would often over power the causation. For very complex systems, the causation factors are so many it is nearly impossible to develop a theory or formula to make a robust prediction. Surprisingly, correlation proves good enough in most cases in this ephemeral world.

Saint Augustine articulated long back that, total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation. Clay echoes similar approach when it comes to adhering to one’s beliefs/values – don’t give an excuse “only for this time”. I would totally agree since every time could be unique and therefore demand an exception. He gives his own example. He does not play on Sundays which is Sabbath day as a matter of principle. When the finals basketball tournament came on Sunday he told his coach he will not play. Coach was incredulous. Thankfully his team won. He also strongly advocates that principle of sacrifice deepens the commitment – be it job, marriage or friendships.

I liked his distinction between bad capital and good capital. He refers to Prof Amid Bhide, whose research suggests that 93% of the companies had to abandon the original idea before they became successful. In other words, winners became so because after the original idea failed they had some cash left to try another one. When winning strategy is not clear, we should be patient for growth and impatient for profits. Once clear we should be impatient for growth and patient for profits. Capital which is in that order is good capital and the other way is bad capital.

Clay’s caution on outsourcing is poignant. He talks about the Greek tragedy of outsourcing by DELL computers. Initially, the business model was disruptive  as they pioneered made to order model rather than standardized builds.   It was also very modular. Each sub system can be picked by the buyer based on needs.This transition was nicely aided by Taiwanese company called AZUS. First they did a very small manufacturing services to DELL.Then,

slowly moved on to make mother boards and later everything for DELL except the branding part. It eventually robbed DELL of some critical capabilities that would be required in future. He suggests a framework (Resources-Process-Priorities) to avoid the danger of outsourcing ones way to mediocrity. It is like Theseus ship where every part of the ship got replaced over time leaving one to wonder can it still be considered as Theseus’s ship?

It is a small book but worth the read many times.

Thanks for reading this far.

Regards

madhu

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

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[1]http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0314/features-clayton-christensen-health-care-cancer-survivor.html

What Money can’t buy by Michael Sandel

Economist E.F. Schumacher talks about two types of problems from a conceptual level. One is “convergent” problem where more one iterates, chances of arriving at an appropriate solution increases and the other “divergent” problem where more effort only increases the options and differences. He cites bicycle wheel design as an example of convergent and how to teach children as an example of divergent which has been in debate for the last 100 years if not more.

Clearly, this book's author has embarked on a pesky divergent problem. He discusses the moral limits of the markets. We all intuitively know that there are limits to what money can buy. But when you read this kind of work, you worry that the number of such things may be minuscule. I am tempted to agree briefly with Malcolm Forbes, who famously said, “those who say, money can’t buy happiness are shopping in the wrong places”.

The strength of this book comes from the examples. They are well thought out and convincing for me. However, in the end, author does not provide a final verdict and leaves it all to us. He leaves a philosophical framework for us to ponder. Let us look at some examples.

Black Rhinos and Walrus Hunting: Black Rhinos were on the brink of extinction. From 20,000 it fell to 600. Then market solution appears in the form of eco-tourism with a twist – Pay $150K for hunting one Rhino. Good news is that, the money brought back Rhinos from the brink. Still to me, it appeared like a Faustian bargain because it is depressing to kill them for a payment. Author concurs saying, it is like saving the ancient redwood forests by allowing the wealthy donors the right to carve their names/initials in the same trees. Even more sober story for Atlantic Walrus. They are valued for meat, skin, and oil. They are completely defenseless as well as harmless. In 1928, Canadian government banned Walrus hunting with an exception for aborigines Inuit group which has been depending on it for the last few thousand years. By 1990, they approached Canadian government with proposal to sell their rights to wealthy hunters and was given the go-ahead. Inuit people now guide the killing for a fee of $6-$7K.  Walrus move so slowly, hunters come very near and shoot. Since Walrus hunting is banned hunters can’t even carry back anything as memento. In terms of actual challenge it is next to nothing. As NY times puts it “a long boat ride to shoot a large bean bag chair”. Author discusses nuanced points about fine and fee. I thought, I knew the difference but I am not so sure now.

There are something people don’t do for money and when that aspect is brought in, things take a different twist as in case of nuclear dump in Switzerland. 51% of citizens in a Swiss village said they would OK the nuclear dump site because their sense of civic duty outweighed safety concerns. Subsequently, when a sweetener was added declaring that government would offer some financial compensation, acceptance dropped to 25%. Then quantum of compensation was increased only to learn that acceptance dropped even further. Remember the advertisement “There are something money can’t buy. For everything else, there is a Master Card”. Looks like nuclear dump permission is not Master card friendly!

Author explains that there are two kinds of goods. The things like friends, Nobel prizes that money can’t buy. Things like kidneys, Children which money can buy but arguably shouldn’t. He confesses the distinction is less clear than it appears. His main point is that, we have seamlessly digressed from market economy to market society where almost everything is up for sale. Good grief for Credit cards of the world. In the introduction he gives some stunning examples. He also discusses the scary case of viaticals. His observation is when fully driven by market, it breeds inequality, and hence market reasoning is incomplete without moral reasoning.

Author talks about insurance as one of the moot areas. His profound remarks are thus: “Life insurance has always been two things in one. A pooling of risk for mutual security and grim wager, a hedge against death. The two aspects always co-existed as an uneasy combo. In the absence of moral and legal restraints, the wagering aspect threatens to swamp the social purpose that justifies the insurance in the first place. When the social purpose is lost or obscured, fragile lines separating insurance, investments and gambling come undone”. To get the full import of this one has to understand viaticals deeply.

He talks about advertisement in police cars and other public utilities which are worth a serious thought. I liked his view points on advertisements in schools / educational institutions. I am also weary of such marketing spins inside such locations. To quote him “Advertising encourages people to want things to satisfy desires. Education encourages people to critically examine their desires and restrain or elevate them. The purpose of advertisement is to recruit customers and purpose of education is to cultivate citizens”. It reminds us of the paradox “liberty and equality”. As we all know, when the liberty (freedom) goes unhindered, albeit it appears to be a virtue, breeds inequality in the long run. Similarly, if we focus too much on equality (again a virtue by itself), it will result in too much of restriction or lack of freedom over the long run. Hence, the slogan Liberty-Equality-Fraternity, the 3^rd higher force which hopefully regulates the first two virtues for a healthy balance.

I closed this book saying to myself, toughest non-technical problems in this world are not solved - they are merely grappled with. It is not without reason data base guru Jim Gary said “May all your problems be technical”.

Thanks for reading this far.

Regards

madhu

Biomimicry by Janine M Benyus

This book was with me for too long and I must confess I took a while to complete. It is a dense book with solid examples.

Biomimicry is all about how to see Nature as model, mentor as well as measure. Author’s gripe is that, we have gone too far in linear extract-and-dump model – we should move from “brown” to “green”. Even in places where we have done a good job of emulating nature as in the case of airplane, we have started misusing it. To quote her, “We flew like a bird in 1903 and by 1914 we were dropping bombs from the sky.”

It is written with an unmitigated awe about nature and her creations. I see many wrinkles when you write a science book or scientific sounding book with such a disposition. May be awe would suit for other genres like novel etc. Some of the comparisons seems unfair when nature had eternity (4 billion years is eternity for humans) to improvise her designs and we have barely started by that standard. Author has met many accomplished people and their introductions makes for interesting reading like a good novel. Her information harvest and analogies from each expert are impressive.

I will summarize some of the points that grabbed my attention as well as taking one chapter and examining it in a bit more detail.

1.       Don’t use non-renewable faster than you can develop substitutes

2.       Don’t use renewable faster than nature can re-generate

3.       Technologies that produces by-products that society cannot use are essentially failed technologies

4.       In natural systems “cooperation” is as vital as “competition”

5.       Moderation of usage in materials and energy is the key in production

6.       Manufacture only when you need and only the quantity you require so that you don’t worry about storage or leakage – “Snake Venom law” (Poisonous snakes does this all the time)

7.       Nature does not commute to work.

About Nature: (each point made has poignant examples)

1.       It runs on sunlight and uses the energy it needs and no more

2.       It fits form to function, recycles everything, rewards cooperation

3.       It banks on diversity and demands local expertise

4.       It curbs the excesses from within and taps the power of limits

I am picking Chapter-6, “How will we store what we learn?” where she talks about molecular computing like the way cells compute. It start with famous “The library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges. It is such a library of all possible books with every combination of letters, punctuation marks and spaces. Most of the books then, would be a trash. But, in the near infinite library of books, there would be actual books that are readable. I assume, if a new word is added or invented (like in Shakespeare days) accordingly library strength will swell. I would love to visit such a library because, I will know if ever I will write a book. 

  

She makes eight points comparing the way we compute using computers and our brain as well as the way our cells compute. At this point, it seems correct mainly because computing is 4000 years old (you can double it if you want) compared to nature’s 4 Billion years. For instance, she complains about computers not doing stuff in parallel. But, such computers are well on their way. What one learns after observing computers is that, if one can do some stuff with near 100% precision for almost all the time, eventually that can overcome the well known challenges and comprehensively beat that. Chess Programs are classic examples. It is very likely 50 years from now, even world champions cannot win the computer programs and computer programs would win most of the times. Never mind, the eight points are written with awe!

Brain is made of carbon – not silicon. And that is one of her key points. Carbon is more versatile both from computing and memory standpoint. Perhaps, it is like switching from carbon filament to Tungsten in electric bulb. It would evolve and we need not be so defensive. She makes a good case for molecular computing.

Reading this book in some ways was a unique experience for me. I enjoyed it for its sheer number of anecdotes. But as I weighed more, there was less I could agree.

I am reminded of Sir Francis Bacon's observation: “Reading not to contradict or confute nor to take it for granted, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, some to be chewed and digested, some books to be read in parts and some few to be read wholly with diligence and attention”. All right, in the end, it appears to be “part read” for me, but then, until I finished it fully, I did not know which parts. 

Thanks for reading this far.

Regards

madhu

Scarcity by Sendhil Mullainathan & Eldar Shafir

The Title reads “Scarcity: why having too little means so much?”, It is amazing so much can be written about one single word!. I would say it is moderately researched since it is a new domain. The episodes are carefully chosen. A few new terms like bandwidth scarcity, focus dividend are introduced to drive certain concepts. There are some inevitable repetitions, but I surmise, it would have to happen when you try to explain a new frontier.

Let me summarize the points that strike me well: It may sound far too obvious, not even in retrospect but right away – yet, the value comes from understanding them all over again from Scarcity standpoint with poignant examples they give along the way with some empirical data.

Before embarking on the task,let me cite one case study (not from this book). APSRTC (Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation) had some of the highest fatal accidents. APSRTC at the time of case study had 23000 buses, 12 million Passengers, and 820Kms/day average. They did one simple thing that resulted in the accident rate dropping from 0.13/Km to 0.09/Km – not a small improvement for such a scale. All they did was to mandate the driver to place the photograph of the driver’s family above the dash board. Come to think of it - It is not that driver is completely oblivious of his/her family. Yet, a gentle reminder at the right time seems to instill a much better and safer driving habit. Authors’ examples would be on similar lines – obvious after it has been told.  I liked all of them!

Now on to some specific points.

1.When a deadline approaches, you concentrate so much at the expense of other priorities and get it done/accomplished. This is called focus dividend. Of course, there is a perverse outcome too – you tend to ignore something that matters to you over the long run.

2.  Carefully crafted incentives can yield disproportionate returns. They cite rural poor who were willing to show up for vaccinations just for free lentils, where absenteeism otherwise was very high.

3. Bad news: You cannot fake scarcity. So if you have lot of time before the deadline, you tend to waste a lot of time before you hit the red button and make it happen. Early abundance encourages waste. 

4. Buffers are extremely critical be it time or money or any other resource. Lack of buffers almost always results in less than optimal and even rational behavior. Buffers are the bulwarks against such risks.

5. Except poverty of real poor, most of the scarcity can be well managed. It is because one cannot simply wish away or take vacation from poverty.

6. Scarcity reduces the bandwidth which in turn can affect the quality of decisions and hence the outcomes

  Note:Point 3 and 4 may seem like a contradiction, but when you read the book fully you can appreciate the contexts better.

Now on to some examples in a very short version - hopefully it has not drained the magic.

1.   St John Hospital was perpetually running over time in operation theaters. Staff were over worked and frequent rescheduling of non-emergency operations owing to sudden inflow of emergencies created havoc. It caused a lot of heart burn and disappointments.When an Operations Research specialist analyzed the problem, he recommended a simple solution. Leave one operating room always free for emergencies.This may fly in face of the apparent load, But it worked very well. Emergencies are broadly predictable and having a buffer to accommodate made improving efficiency very easy.

2.  US military was troubled by “Wheels up” crashes. After landing, pilots would retreat the wheels instead of flaps! To solve this problem, Lt Alfonse, Psychologist by training was brought in. Thankfully, he decided to look inside cockpits before looking inside pilots’ heads. Firstly, this problem was confined only to B-17 and B-25 bombers where the wheel controls and flap controls that are identical were side by side. Hence, it was too easy to make that mistake. Once the design flaw was detected it was easily resolved.

3.  MARS Orbiter Project: Well, it was not meant to make  major discoveries  but was designed to be a spearhead to collect data about MARS at a cost of $125 Million. It was designed to enter the stable orbit of MARS and collect data. Entering the orbit is an intricate business – you have to do it with extremely precise speed and angle. Enter too slow, gravity catches up and there would be a crash. Enter too fast, you will skate away from the orbit forever. Orbiter did not make it to the stable orbitL. Aftermath, scrutiny followed and it turned out the subcontractor for the module assumed the British system of units whereas rest of the system was in SI units. Owing to the last minute rush (time scarcity because you cannot change any celestial schedules!)  and so testing was overlooked), the whole project failed.

There are other good business examples related to Benihana Hotel Chains, Chevy’s restaurants and about FORD’s insight on productivity. My favorite is “Poor bees and rich wasps ”.

American Philosopher, Eric Hoffer observed, “The most gifted are at their creative best where they cannot have their way”. Not necessarily only the gifted. When pushed to the corner, most of us also can become creative provided scarcity is transient (poverty not included). Sometimes one has to evaluate by being resourceful rather than full of resources.

Thanks for reading this far…..

Regards,

madhu

The Borderless World by Kenichi Ohmae

Introduction:

If you were to watch a tennis match where wooden rackets are used, you will find it amusing , classical, slow, interesting and so on. But the basic concepts will be the same. I got a feeling similar to that when I read this classic. Basic concepts have remain unchanged – and it is without standard words like “internet” or “social media” etc – It was refreshing.

Author was a seasoned McKinsey consultant and was heading Japan geography. He was consulting with many leading companies and hence the breath of exposure is truly wide. Let me mention two interesting stories among many.

Five Finger Exercise: 

Yamaha became world leader in Pianos with about 40% market share. Alas, by that time, Piano market started declining at the rate of 10% annually. So, what do you do? What can you do? Piano hasn’t changed much since Mozart days. Making better pianos will not help and market for new pianos has a very limited absorbing capacity. Low end of the market is already taken up by South Korea.

Piano these days is more often an expensive piece of furniture that sits idle, collects dust and almost always un-tuned. Many don’t have time to learn piano. It takes a lot of effort and time to master it. Yamaha reasoned the only way to create value to the customer is to add value to the pianos that are already out there. There are already about 40 Million pianos in the field. Yamaha worked incredibly hard and developed an advanced product that can be added on to the current ones at a cost of $2500. It was a very sophisticated, advanced combination of optical and digital technologies that can distinguish between 92 different degrees of strength and speed of key touch from pianissimo to fortissimo. Since the recording is digital each key stroke can be reproduced and they can be stored in 3.5 inch floppy (remember it?).  With just one retrofit like this, you invite your friends and show case latest home entertainment. When Yamaha started selling it in 1989, sales rocketed.

Brewing Wisdom:

 One of the clients was trying to develop Coffee percolator. They started off bench marking against the current incumbent GE. Should it be larger, faster, Etc. Author urged them to ask “Why do people drink coffee at all?” Answer came: “Good taste!” Author would then pose a challenge asking what are the factors that drive good taste?Answers started pouring back - Beans Quality, Grain sizes, Water Quality and a host of other minor drivers. Among them water quality made the most difference and most of the designers assumed customers would use tap water. Hence, they went on to build an in-built de-chlorinating function which greatly added to the taste of Coffee.

This book deals with the then dominant markets, what author refers as triad – Western Europe, USA and Japan. Things have changed quite a bit since then. There are more additions to the triad. Author talks about globalization and other Forex aspects in detail  that make a nice read. When I read books that have extensive forecasts or some kind of “futuristic reports”, just for fun I try to track how much has happened. It turns out that, even the best & acclaimed folks have made forecast way off the mark. Author has studiously avoided any such strong forecasts.

Mark Twain once quipped, “A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read”. I wanted to say it is a classic but since it risks not being read at all, I would say good old book that ought to be read. Before taking this book, I was wondering if I should pick such old one but I am glad I did.

Thanks for reading this far.

Regards

madhu

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