good evening ladies and gentlemen I’m
here today to
share with you my journey my journey as
an educator my journey as a person who’s
been in the corporate for a while I’ve
been an educator for a long time
18 years okay I have taught MBA students
in various institutions and I thoroughly
enjoyed the process of being a
passionate teacher it comes naturally to
me and then something happened after in
18 years when my kids were very small
the school where I was teaching moved
away far from the city it went into the
outskirts and I had to take a decision I
had to take a decision of a career move
and fortunately by circumstances I was
pushed into the corporate world so at
the age of 40 for the first time I got a
corporate break I got a corporate break
as a product manager in an IT company
till then I was just used to teaching
product management from a textbook
alright and here I was thrown into a
situation of being a real-time product
manager and the designation much to my
agony was technical product manager I
had a BA in economics and MBA and PhD in
marketing I was hardly technical so I
didn’t know what I was getting into when
I went into the corporate world the
person who recruited me okay
unfortunately for me went into a heart
surgery when I joined the company and I
had no one to guide me on what I was
supposed to do as a technical product
manager and the word Technicolor was
always there behind me and I was
wondering how I’m going to deal with
that word technical I was put onto a
project manager who was supposed to give
me an orientation of what I’m supposed
to do and the first question this guy
asked me when I entered the corporate
world on the first day is so do you have
experience in product management and I’m
like no so he does a shrug and he walks
away ok so that makes my job a little
more tough a week after that I was
introduced to a product manager
sitting in the US this is a
multinational company that I’m talking
about so this product manager gave me a
download of the product to which I would
be attached to it was a HR applications
product and he gave me what was known as
a functional specification document and
he’s told me you play around with the
application and you look at the
functional specification document and
you kind of figure out what this
application will do for the clients and
we can take it forward from there so I
started this journey of mine all alone
sitting in a cubicle a teacher for 18
years a student now okay and a student
without a teacher so all I needed to do
was to systematically look at the
functional specification which kind of
details how the application will work
and also look at the URL that he gave me
where I look at the application and see
if there is a sync between the
functional specification and the app
much to my agony again I found that what
the things were very different okay
this functional specification defined
how the application should work but when
I went and started to look at the
application the application was doing
something else
I got jittery so I turn back and look at
this man the project manager who’s been
in the company for nine years
and I asked him can you please explain
this to me and he says I don’t know so
what do I do
so what do I do so I wait the whole day
because it’s a multinational and my core
product manager is sitting in the US I
had to wait till late in the night to
get to connect with him to find out why
there is no sync between the functional
specification doc and the application so
I am bluntly told by this day well
that’s part of your job you’re supposed
to update the spec I said based on what
I don’t have any client interaction I
don’t know what the customer wants how
am I supposed to update a spec without a
customer interaction he said that’s not
part of your job your job is only to
update the spec someone gave me an idea
they say
go to the application there’s a question
mark on the right hand side corner
it’s the help the help will tell you
what the implication supposed to do so I
went to the question mark I clicked on
it and it didn’t tell me anything so
then I said who created this question
mark then they said there’s a bunch of
guys sitting in that corner they call
the tech writers those guys create the
help who asked them so I walked up to
the lady there and I said can you please
tell me your hell is not helping me so
she said what do you mean I said
go ahead click on it so she clicks on it
and it only tells me ok from here you
will go there from there you will go
there but after going there what happens
there is not said so I asked her how am
I to know how the application is
supposed to behave she said well that’s
all this the what and what is the basis
on which you wrote the help she said the
spec which is the functional
specification document so here I am in a
situation as a new employee in an
organization in a new culture with the
average age of my colleagues be 25 and
I’m 40 and they calling me by my first
name
all 18 years I’ve been ma’am I’ve been
professor have been doctored and here
are this 25 year old or guys calling me
refuge’ I am like give me a break
you’re as old as my son okay so I’m in
an alien culture I am in an alien
industry I am an alien with an alien
team okay it’s a do die situation for me
I learn and move on or I back off and
I’m not going to back off I’m going to
move on so I wait the whole day and then
I see what unfolds after 6:00 in the
night what I saw that day astounded me
there this bunch of developers who are
talking with the product manager sitting
in the US over the telephone call taking
the client requirements noting it on the
piece of paper next day morning when the
coders come in they give that piece of
paper to the coders the coders develop
the app
crumple the paper and show it away how
will the functional specifications dark
which is a dark used by testers coders
technical writers ever be updated
how will it ever be updated how will a
new recruiting like me ever know what
the application is supposed to do so I
started to learn as a student all over
again from each one of my teachers who
were 25 years 23 years probably 22 years
also sometimes after a few months passed
the client managers were talked directly
to me asking for requirements in the
application for example there would be a
request saying that I need to generate
reports from the application and the
report should come in the form of a PDF
format with a borderline all right now I
am not technically right I don’t know
what it entails in terms of cost for
creating a borderline in the pot so I go
to the coder and say hey can you do this
they say yes we can do it
how long will it take for you ten days
of nyjah 10 days the client was once
within a couple of days so when you are
non-technical you’ve got a bunch of kids
playing to the four-year-old it’s going
to be a little tricky okay so what I
could do is kind of believe them and you
know cost a bill the client for ten days
or do the learning on my own and I chose
to do the learning on my own I would
walk to another project where similar
work was being done where the kids
wouldn’t be from this project and I’d
ask them if some what to do this someone
were to do this borderline how much time
would it take so that guy will say it’ll
take about two days so I come back to
the game I put two days in the project
management sheet and they say how we
said ten days you put two days I said I
know I’m learning all right so this
attitude I think is very critical for
students for anyone who in who has to
eat as where it has become a norm for
you
to move from industry to industry much
faster than what our generation width so
every time you move into new industry
there’s new learning and unless new
learning you have to be student all over
again
all right is the blue cutter I don’t
know I can’t see all right I am assuming
it is there so can we see the pictures
please so when I talk about being a
student in my personal life to have been
a student alright and I continue to be a
student I live in a plot of land where I
have a small house I have a neighbor who
has built a multi-storied complex out of
which three stories are unauthorized
okay my soul tells me to grow a patch of
garden with flowers and I was never able
to accomplish that thanks to my neighbor
there’s no morning sunlight coming into
my house and Nature doesn’t like that
kind of an environment all right so I
became a student once again how do I
grow my patch of garden how do i cure
what I’m enduring all right what cannot
be cured must be endured as whatever
start but I said I’m going to cure this
so I learnt through trial and error
through experimentation through
perseverance as a student of gardening
to grow my own small garden and I have
accomplished this after 10 years this is
my bloom of last summer
I’ve also been a student of my own can
we see the next slide of painting okay
in life when you go through ups and
downs there are periods of highs and
periods of lows and during those periods
period of Louis your childhood habits
your childhood what do you say
activities that you took up as a child
which gave you a lot of pressure come
back to you and in the process of that I
started to relearn how to paint on my
own we can see some more of those I do a
lot of Spade painting with my and I
enjoy the process so I strongly believe
all of us should be students for life
both professionally and personally no
matter what happens
[Applause]
here today to
share with you my journey my journey as
an educator my journey as a person who’s
been in the corporate for a while I’ve
been an educator for a long time
18 years okay I have taught MBA students
in various institutions and I thoroughly
enjoyed the process of being a
passionate teacher it comes naturally to
me and then something happened after in
18 years when my kids were very small
the school where I was teaching moved
away far from the city it went into the
outskirts and I had to take a decision I
had to take a decision of a career move
and fortunately by circumstances I was
pushed into the corporate world so at
the age of 40 for the first time I got a
corporate break I got a corporate break
as a product manager in an IT company
till then I was just used to teaching
product management from a textbook
alright and here I was thrown into a
situation of being a real-time product
manager and the designation much to my
agony was technical product manager I
had a BA in economics and MBA and PhD in
marketing I was hardly technical so I
didn’t know what I was getting into when
I went into the corporate world the
person who recruited me okay
unfortunately for me went into a heart
surgery when I joined the company and I
had no one to guide me on what I was
supposed to do as a technical product
manager and the word Technicolor was
always there behind me and I was
wondering how I’m going to deal with
that word technical I was put onto a
project manager who was supposed to give
me an orientation of what I’m supposed
to do and the first question this guy
asked me when I entered the corporate
world on the first day is so do you have
experience in product management and I’m
like no so he does a shrug and he walks
away ok so that makes my job a little
more tough a week after that I was
introduced to a product manager
sitting in the US this is a
multinational company that I’m talking
about so this product manager gave me a
download of the product to which I would
be attached to it was a HR applications
product and he gave me what was known as
a functional specification document and
he’s told me you play around with the
application and you look at the
functional specification document and
you kind of figure out what this
application will do for the clients and
we can take it forward from there so I
started this journey of mine all alone
sitting in a cubicle a teacher for 18
years a student now okay and a student
without a teacher so all I needed to do
was to systematically look at the
functional specification which kind of
details how the application will work
and also look at the URL that he gave me
where I look at the application and see
if there is a sync between the
functional specification and the app
much to my agony again I found that what
the things were very different okay
this functional specification defined
how the application should work but when
I went and started to look at the
application the application was doing
something else
I got jittery so I turn back and look at
this man the project manager who’s been
in the company for nine years
and I asked him can you please explain
this to me and he says I don’t know so
what do I do
so what do I do so I wait the whole day
because it’s a multinational and my core
product manager is sitting in the US I
had to wait till late in the night to
get to connect with him to find out why
there is no sync between the functional
specification doc and the application so
I am bluntly told by this day well
that’s part of your job you’re supposed
to update the spec I said based on what
I don’t have any client interaction I
don’t know what the customer wants how
am I supposed to update a spec without a
customer interaction he said that’s not
part of your job your job is only to
update the spec someone gave me an idea
they say
go to the application there’s a question
mark on the right hand side corner
it’s the help the help will tell you
what the implication supposed to do so I
went to the question mark I clicked on
it and it didn’t tell me anything so
then I said who created this question
mark then they said there’s a bunch of
guys sitting in that corner they call
the tech writers those guys create the
help who asked them so I walked up to
the lady there and I said can you please
tell me your hell is not helping me so
she said what do you mean I said
go ahead click on it so she clicks on it
and it only tells me ok from here you
will go there from there you will go
there but after going there what happens
there is not said so I asked her how am
I to know how the application is
supposed to behave she said well that’s
all this the what and what is the basis
on which you wrote the help she said the
spec which is the functional
specification document so here I am in a
situation as a new employee in an
organization in a new culture with the
average age of my colleagues be 25 and
I’m 40 and they calling me by my first
name
all 18 years I’ve been ma’am I’ve been
professor have been doctored and here
are this 25 year old or guys calling me
refuge’ I am like give me a break
you’re as old as my son okay so I’m in
an alien culture I am in an alien
industry I am an alien with an alien
team okay it’s a do die situation for me
I learn and move on or I back off and
I’m not going to back off I’m going to
move on so I wait the whole day and then
I see what unfolds after 6:00 in the
night what I saw that day astounded me
there this bunch of developers who are
talking with the product manager sitting
in the US over the telephone call taking
the client requirements noting it on the
piece of paper next day morning when the
coders come in they give that piece of
paper to the coders the coders develop
the app
crumple the paper and show it away how
will the functional specifications dark
which is a dark used by testers coders
technical writers ever be updated
how will it ever be updated how will a
new recruiting like me ever know what
the application is supposed to do so I
started to learn as a student all over
again from each one of my teachers who
were 25 years 23 years probably 22 years
also sometimes after a few months passed
the client managers were talked directly
to me asking for requirements in the
application for example there would be a
request saying that I need to generate
reports from the application and the
report should come in the form of a PDF
format with a borderline all right now I
am not technically right I don’t know
what it entails in terms of cost for
creating a borderline in the pot so I go
to the coder and say hey can you do this
they say yes we can do it
how long will it take for you ten days
of nyjah 10 days the client was once
within a couple of days so when you are
non-technical you’ve got a bunch of kids
playing to the four-year-old it’s going
to be a little tricky okay so what I
could do is kind of believe them and you
know cost a bill the client for ten days
or do the learning on my own and I chose
to do the learning on my own I would
walk to another project where similar
work was being done where the kids
wouldn’t be from this project and I’d
ask them if some what to do this someone
were to do this borderline how much time
would it take so that guy will say it’ll
take about two days so I come back to
the game I put two days in the project
management sheet and they say how we
said ten days you put two days I said I
know I’m learning all right so this
attitude I think is very critical for
students for anyone who in who has to
eat as where it has become a norm for
you
to move from industry to industry much
faster than what our generation width so
every time you move into new industry
there’s new learning and unless new
learning you have to be student all over
again
all right is the blue cutter I don’t
know I can’t see all right I am assuming
it is there so can we see the pictures
please so when I talk about being a
student in my personal life to have been
a student alright and I continue to be a
student I live in a plot of land where I
have a small house I have a neighbor who
has built a multi-storied complex out of
which three stories are unauthorized
okay my soul tells me to grow a patch of
garden with flowers and I was never able
to accomplish that thanks to my neighbor
there’s no morning sunlight coming into
my house and Nature doesn’t like that
kind of an environment all right so I
became a student once again how do I
grow my patch of garden how do i cure
what I’m enduring all right what cannot
be cured must be endured as whatever
start but I said I’m going to cure this
so I learnt through trial and error
through experimentation through
perseverance as a student of gardening
to grow my own small garden and I have
accomplished this after 10 years this is
my bloom of last summer
I’ve also been a student of my own can
we see the next slide of painting okay
in life when you go through ups and
downs there are periods of highs and
periods of lows and during those periods
period of Louis your childhood habits
your childhood what do you say
activities that you took up as a child
which gave you a lot of pressure come
back to you and in the process of that I
started to relearn how to paint on my
own we can see some more of those I do a
lot of Spade painting with my and I
enjoy the process so I strongly believe
all of us should be students for life
both professionally and personally no
matter what happens
[Applause]
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