What is your signature worth-some musings as a professional

Recently, I was reading a book by Parag Saigaonkar wherein the below passage struck me-it relates to the author being asked to certify homework completion of his son, and his asking to see the homework before certifying. The author muses that

Reflecting on this incident, I realized that I do sign off on a lot of other things as well, especially at work – one of the responsibilities I have as a principal in the firm. As a firm signatory, I have the ‘privilege’ of signing a lot of important documents …… at least they look impressive. What does it mean to lend my signature to business-critical documents? What weight does my signature bear? What are the consequences of not reading in detail every legal word? What value do I put on my signature?

SAIGAONKAR, PARAG. THE PERFECT STORM (Kindle Locations 1682-1685). Westland. Kindle Edition.

As finance professionals, whether it is signing an audit report, letter of representation, approving an expense, greenlighting a project etc, we often need to rely extensively on work done by others.  For this, we need to ensure we are through in every aspect and review the critical points, to avoid devaluing our signature. 
At the same time, we should remember our role as internal consultants and not be bureaucratic in holding up decisions because we want to tick all the boxes all the time. 

As Vaibhav Manek puts it in his BCAS presentation on 'Aligning Human Capital-people as strategic assets'
http://www.bcasonline.org/files/res_material/resfiles/PPT-Aligning%20HumanCapital_%20VaibhavManek.pdf

1. “We exist because of our clients; The customer is not an interruption of our work; he’s the purpose of it”- Mahatma Gandhi 
2. Professionals must have “a connect” with the client • To win a client’s confidence, give him the chance to talk to you, person to person, about his needs and his expectations • Make it easy and comfortable for the clients to share his secrets • 
3. Professionals must adapt a mindset of joint problem solving, instead of trying to win or prevail
4. People with different views must learn from each other
5.  Make effective decisions, conform to an execution framework, focus on priorities, have a growth orientation, think with a solution mindset and multitask between production and management. 
6. Technically brilliant people should be respectful to their peers and must share their knowledge and expertise 
7. Sharing of ones’ knowledge is critical to have the team come up to terms with the thought process of the team leader 
8. Team members must have a constant quest for learning and upgrading themselves

Points 3-8 are especially relevant to facilitating smooth reviews of work. Works should be done diligently as per approved checklists with self review, and once done this way, review would be smooth. Yet, one should not lose alertness and be blindsided by a black swan.

Does mandatory continual professional development/education really lead to lifelong learning?

I am a voracious reader and while most of that goes into fiction, a good chunk also goes into reading non fiction. In fact, my passion for finance is largely due to my vicariously living through various books and finance fiction novels of Stephen Fry etc. Having switched gears to commerce later than most people, one of the main reasons I could catch up was having read extensively, and therefore often knowing more than my peers. Even during the admission interviews for IIM Ahmedabad & IIM Bangalore, and beyond, I could impress the interviewers with my knowledge beyond 'bean counting'/'mere CA curriculum knowledge'. largely because I'd read multiple books, blogs, magazines, textbooks etc. Anyways, this post is not hagiographic so enough of my story and back to the topic! 

Be it the institute of chartered accountants, management accountants, chartered secretaries, CFAs, FRMs, doctors, actuaries and so on, every established profession imposes certain mandatory knowledge updation hours for their members. This is often more stringent for members in public practice, than for those in employment. Usually, self declarations are allowed and even the mode of fulfilling hours are flexible, with options available to professionals to achieve their target in the least possible monetary investment and time. However, i have the following issues with this process

1) Why impose different requirements for those in public practice and those in service? The competency requirements from both should not differ, and in fact those in service may be more 'specialized' and 'frogs in the well' than their counterparts in public practice. Hence, there is no rationale distinction for this, except that members in service often retain their membership with much cajoling, so making more requirements for them may drive more of them away from retaining their membership-and which organization does not need fee paying members? Members in practice have their bread and butter contingent on their profession bestowed certificate of practice, but those in service do not have those constraints. 

2) Process driven to ensure more attendance in institute organized seminars-Even though professional institute organized programs are inexpensive(around Rs 1000-2000 per day for ICAI/ICSI/ICWAI), professionals often do not want to devote an entire day to content they would rather read in a hour or two.

3) Inflexible enough to suit needs-Even though bodies do allow for 'unstructured professional development' in terms of crosswords, reading, peer group discussions; there is still a long way to go.  

4) Compliance driven process does not foster willing compliance-I have seen professionals send their interns/other employees to attend programs and fill attendance slips on their behalf. This is because 

5) Commercial interests often result in regulatory capture-When private sector is allowed to deliver programs with CPD credits as done in UK/USA etc, those private sector bodies have an incentive to lobby for more stringent CPD requirements for their programs/speciality. 

6) Little focus on organization sponsorship that ensures peer learning, networking and applying what you learn One reason why executive education programs are so popular, is their organization context, which helps executives to learn from their peers in other functions, while immediately applying their learnings on the job often in the timespan between sessions. This organization driven sponsorship is quite helpful, but often in a misconceived wish to subsidize individual members, organization sponsored fees are often higher than self sponsored one(the ICSI Mumbai scheme at CCRT being a notable exception which allows bulk corporate members) since they are felt to have deep pockets! Yet, this approach is short sighted. 

In this information overload era where we are plugged into the digital world of laptop-smartphone-TV-tablet, it is difficult to make time for self development amidst challenging careers. Indeed, mastering subjects one has not learnt at all formally earlier(imagine the plight of chartered accountants who learnt IFRS from scratch when it was introduced!) often takes much more time than say 40hrs/year, and devoting the bare minimum mandated time might give one the illusion of comfort, while actually one may be falling behind technically and technologically compared to the next few batch(es) of professionals educated under updated curriculums/delivery mechanisms. 

Knowledge workers in the service sector-some musings

Its been 15 months since I joined Airtel, since then I've been lucky to work in a company which is (nearly equal parts) an utility, consumer goods, services and products company. Also, Airtel's outsourcing the 'core' operations of network and IT made it to global Bschool case studies-for example http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=33647 In recent times, the top leadership rejig may lead one to think that Airtel is now a consumer products company. After all, with the CEO, CFO, CMO etc from HUL(Indian arm of Unilever and a CXO factory), one may be forgiven for thinking thats the case. However, things can't be more different. For example, a channel manager in FMCG must manage physical inventory/branding/availability without customization, while his telecom counterpart manages zero inventory, and can often customize the recharge plan etc. This is just the tip of the ice berg, but this post is on service sector in general, not just Airtel, so I return to the topic.

I was reading a research paper on TRIZ in service sector(http://www.realinnovation.com/archives/2003/12/d/04.pdf) where it explained that Service development is differentiated from physical product development because of the unique characteristics of service products, such as customer participation, simultaneity, heterogeneity, intangibility and perishability, etc

1. tighter coupling between marketing and operations aspects. Service Operations integrates customer experience management involving customer service, operations, marketing etc
2. Since end product is intangible, the soft skills matter a lot in front end roles, so this percolates into the (otherwise) non client facing roles too like finance.
3. Inventory does not exist in service sector-so this is both a boon(less logistics hassle) and also a nightmare(manpower utilization)

Also, knowledge work does not happen only in services sector, even the service/support functions in manufacturing/agriculture can add a lot of value, however since there are unique issues in the service sector, thought to comment on them in the blog

 

You can be a data scientist for big data just using Excel and Access

Just google 'Big Data' and watch the explosion of results. Some herald it as the next big thing, others peddle their consulting services/software/systems as the magic recipe for companies to mine gold from their (till now) ignored legacy data sets. However, as I've realized from a customer service project during the past few weeks, spreadsheets can do the trick equally well, provided you follow a few basic ground rules

1. Understand the underlying data, its fields/formats and the limitations. This may need visiting the field/POS/scanners/call centres to get a feel for the source data, but can do wonders in understanding what can be relied upon and what can't. After all, all the number crunching in the world even using 500 columns is useless if the underlying data is not reliable
2. Frame hypotheses(even though they may seem 'obvious') and look for data to validate and disprove them. For example, if you think that customers recently added on the network will face more issues with their bill delivery, then choose data fields that can help you validate that hypothesis. A few fields well chosen can really reduce the time used for import/export of data. 
3. Use subject matter experts to review the findings and offer their views. often, if a finding challenges their conventional wisdom, they can offer alternate reasons for the same. 
4. Creatively think of dimensions like time, space, temperature to analyze data sets. Often, these physical variables are ignored but are available in the system. Using the existing data is far cheaper than trying to get it from scratch. 
5. Data mining for social networks, stock trading data and other massive data volumes would obviously need some automation via neural networks, crawlers, AI etc. But for everything else, one can use spreadsheets to squeeze out that last drop of insight from existing data sets
6. Understand the import/export features of spreadsheet/database software like Excel/MS Access etc. If  your data set with some tweaking can fall in that range(like below 1million odd rows etc), then using those standardized tools may be faster and efficient. Also, no need to call expensive data conversion experts, you can do the job yourself(for example importing .txt files to Excel)
7. Don't be afraid to google any trouble areas. Often, excellent solutions available online(for instance, how to export more than 65,436 rows from MS Access to Excel-the online solutions include exporting w/o formatting, or using OCDBC)

Bottomline:- Don't be awed by big data sets. Use pivot tables etc to summarize the data and get a feel for it, then slice and dice it the way you can using Excel/Access. Often, those quick wins may win you a justification for a bigger data mining project

Getting the most out of conferences-without actually attending them!

Today, I was scheduled to attend a conference at Ahmedabad Management Association(just down the road from IIM-A), but some pressing commitments came in the way. However, I still wanted to learn about the topics in question. So I merely Googled the titles of the speaker sessions, and to my surprise, hundreds of search results(some very relevant) popped out from the wordwork. Now, I'm sure that reading on my own would take more time than attending the session. But for a birds eye view of the content, one just needs to know the search strings, and the program agenda provides this. For new areas(new to you), this method of learning could be especially useful, as it helps one focus on the relevant and somewhat controversial areas(if NOT controversial then usually no conference would feature that!).

Other ways to learn from conferences without attending them are

1. Request/Purchase/Download the presentation material/handouts:-This is often sold at a nominal price on CD/bound value(as done for AMA sessions) or uploaded freely on the website as done for WIRC-ICAI. 
2. Ask a friend/attendee to take notes and share them:-This is another mutually beneficial way. The person taking notes retains them in memory for a longer time, while the person with whom it is shared(in this case YOU!) gets the flavour of the session. 

How to ask better questions for an email interview

Recently, as part of my responsibilities of editing my club's finance magazine, I've had to write questions for sending to very busy people, who'll respond at their leisure. Now, that exercise is easier said that done. In a live interview, one can use the feedback to adjust the pace/nature of questions, or even improvise on the spot. But in a long distance interview, that is just not possible. You are stuck with the questions you sent. And godforbid, if they are cliched/very general/beyond the person's specialization, then the person may even decline to answer them. Therefore, the exercise is tricky and needs thought. Some pointers which I've found useful are

1. Understand your theme:-This is quite obvious but in case you were not involved in the brain storming sessions which led to the theme/concept behind the publication, then get a clear understanding of it from someone involved, so that you do not deviate too much
2. Understand WHY you asked that person/decide what you would like from him:-Some people are invited for their knowledge, others for their brands and yet others because they are easily available. Decide which category your interviewee is in, that will inform your other decisions.
3. Google is your saviour:-One has NO excuse to remain ignorant about people in this digital era..
4. But try not to duplicate content of publicly available data:-Remember you are not a reporter/friendly analyst just interested in filling space. Remember that you want good original content from that person. So try not to be too close to earlier interviews.
5. People like answering about their passions:-Whether it be distressed debt, economic cycles, corporate governance etc, people are usually passionate about one or more work related aspects(assuming we can't ask about hobbies in a serious publication). Try to find that
6. For academics, read their latest research/course outlines:-Academics's interests can be gauged by their research publications(remember these take months/years to create!) and by what they teach(assuming they have a fair level of choice/discretion in that). So questioning in those areas would probably produce a very good answer.
7. For those in industry, read up on their company/sector: Remember the person is daily focusing on that sector/company and literally lives it. So asking related to that, would ensure instant recognition and act as warm up for next. The research would also supply context to explain many of the answers.
8. Try asking open ended questions instead of those to which you know the answer:These are the most difficult questions but the most rewarding. Prefer 'what'/'why' over 'how'.
9. Try to sequence the questions in a logical flow:-That makes it easier for the person to get a birdseyeview of the questions, and to structure the answers accordingly

Prof Anil Gupta's ideas on pushing the frontier of education

I had blogged earlier about Prof Anil Gupta's innovative approach(http://iimaexperiences.blogspot.com/2011/10/prof-anil-gupta.html). As his electives on intellectual property and sustainable agriculture draw to and end, his approach is even more in evidence. For example

• Crowdsourcing of exams:-He invited 3 questions from each student, stating that he may modify and ask these good questions in the exams. He said that since his purpose was to increase the learning(not to assign a letter grade), he would be more than happy 
• Focus on learning by doing:-He gives higher grades for projects/reports which can be built into something rather than gather dust somewhere. For example, studying local waste management or making a small change locally, is valued highly by him.  
• Building on ideas built earlier:-He lamented that there was no repository of projects, and that each batch may end up reinventing the wheel without making any institutional progress towards knowledge. And to counter the concern of copying, he said that peer pressure/fear of being called out in public would stop people from copying, and also ensure that the topics are reasonably original. Actually, this is quite an obvious idea, but not done so far anywhere. He suggests having it on the intranet, and later on the internet for all and sundry. 
• Feedback on projects:-He uploads the project proposals on the blog, and gives credit for students giving useful projects on each other's projects.
• Student presentations given importance to:Despite his huge intellectual stature, he pays deep attention to student presentations and is free with compliments and suggestions. And to ensure that others pay attention to that, he sets questions based on the class presentations etc. 
• No attendance sheet:-This is rare, but his logic seems(he has not explained it explicitly) is that since the outputs are graded(report, presentation), monitoring inputs are not that essential.

Knowledge-the major new factor of production

Knowledge is power-but only when applied and commercialized. In the minds of some, knowledge is something which is taught, discussed, published and understood-with the burden of its application passed on to those in the sordid 'industry'. But they forget that one cannot separate knowledge and its application, because what use is knowledge which cannot be applied?

History is replete with examples of wars won by superb battle strategy/tactics(Genghis Khan, Alexander's win, USA civil wars, British East India conquest etc) where smart warriors used their minds to win battles over much larger foes). In the retail industry, WalMart used its information centres and data analytics to introduce JIT/improve supplier coordination etc to improve sales and profits, while actually shrinking the need for inventory. That is a great example of replacing physical assets('inventory') with information(via RFID/barcoded inventory). An interesting example is the online retail of goods, music, books, insurance search, banking etc which have replaced the need for brick and mortar store. Yes, they do depend on a physical logistics backbone for execution, but that is much smaller than the cumulative assets they replaced.  The low carbon movement has led to a spurt in energy efficiency, green supply chain planning etc which drastically lowers the resource requirement. Even in the military era, the use of nukes as a deterrent may reduce the need/size of standing armies in future. This is true also given the new dangers of cyberwar, where a handful of hackers can bring down entire countries on their knees.

Of course, the limit to this is that knowledge is always a complementary factor of production, which would always need some other factor. That said, applied knowledge can cut resource use substantially. And that is why it is necessary to increase interest, improve curriculum quality etc of the STEM subjects(Science Technology Engineering Medicine)-since the fruits of these can really help the economy in future. But non STEM graduates also should not shirk their responsibility to think innovatively on how to replace assets with knowledge. If that leads to more virtualization, so be it.

Assisted Access to e-governance services-will this be its Waterloo?

Corporate and Tax laws/procedures have been significantly modified to allow for e-governance. Some examples are mentioned below

• All excise/service tax returns must be filed online irrespective of amount etc
• Significant chunk of income tax returns are filed online 
• All company law forms/returns are filed online, and payments
• Many state VAT laws now mandate electronic filing of returns/audit reports/registration

To ensure greater data integrity, the initial mandate was that certain practising professionals(CA, CS,CWA) could pre-certify the filing, using their digital signature. But the issue then rose about accessibility. After all, not all are techsavvy, even fewer have a good broadband connection etc. Therefore, the concept then arose of Certified Filing Centres(CFCs) for both corporate and tax laws, which essentially provide administrative support for filing including scanning, uploading, reformatting etc. The primary responsibility of the filing remains with the filer though. These CFCs may be run by professionals themselves or by private parties.

The Code of Conduct of the respective professional institutes may ensure good quality work by professional run CFCs but the issue is whether this is sustainable? After all, such work does not need a CA to do it, and would result in higher fees than compared to non CA/CS/CWA doing it.

But if one throws open CFCs to persons not regulated by their respective professional councils, then the issue comes about compensation for erroneous filings etc. No amount of security deposit can really suffice, nor can the amount be readily computed. To strike the balance between public interest(lower fees) and information integrity, a good midway could be online checks/validations which would avoid gross errors, as well as random confirmations in case of outlier numbers. This is done for TDS returns, MVAT returns etc, and can be extended to all. I'm sure the IT industry would be ready to help set up and design forms allowing for live validation checks and confirmations. If this is not done, then the inevitable errors when publicized, may lead to loss of faith in the new system

Presenting data properly-some dos and donts for power point PPTs

After years of seeing poorly presented data in slides, I thought it was time to design my own.pointers for that. This post is more from the MBA side of me. Comments are welcome. 

·         Zoom in to fit within the screen:- Else within the time you scroll to and fro for making your point, you have already lost the audience.

·         Proper use of decimal rounding-Please do not show stuff like 1.348575 on slides, it really slows down the reader’s pace of comprehending.

·         Color Code cells aptly:- For cells containing key assumptions, results and information, you may like to highlight them for the audience to look at

·         Embedding is fine but check that it opens:- Embedding the spreadsheet as an icon is elegant and good, but test that it opens on the system you are presenting on. Otherwise, it could be a flop show.

·         Stick to slide wherever possible instead of opening workbook:- People have done their homework and should be convinced by your story enough to avoid demanding that. If you can present the key aspects of the spreadsheet as a slide, it will avoid breaking the flow of the PPT.

·         Appropriate units:- As per audience level and background-applies both to unit size(MM/BN/Crore) and currency($/INR)

Anonymous blogs-the best way for industry professionals to share knowledge.

During my 2 month summer internship in the Singapore branch of a UK based investment bank, I tried my best to keep myself updated-besides 'on the job updation' of course! Word documents got filled with the notes I had made during my reading, work, leisure etc. But however much I tried, the process of converting rough outlines to blog posts was much harder than it seemed. Putting pen to paper is much easier than putting finger to keyboard! And the reasons are not far to seek. When a person is in the academic domain, he may not have the information explosion of the busy trader/structurer/research person but he has the benefits of

1. No compliance limitations on what to write(eg-not on companies under live deals) and when to write(not during blackout periods etc)
2. Lesser egg shells to tread on warily. When a professional writes(specially someone in industry compared to Big4) more so on controversial issues in variance with his employer's line, it does create awkwardness for everyone concerned. 
3. No fear of divulging trade secrets-practioners must strike that fine balance between revealing enough to establish their reputation/evoke reader interest, but not so much as to lose competitive advantage.

Navigating these 3 limitations takes more time than it seems, For example, during my internship I had strong views on certain structured products. But voicing them openly on a public forum(a blog IS a public forum) would not have been the best thing, and would have been probably prohibited by some fine print nested away in that contract. Hence, those views will probably not see the light of day for quite some time.

An anonymous blog may still divulge 'trade secrets', but in the small world of finance, innovations rapidly spread through clients/pitch book forwarding/grapewine/new hires etc. So the risk of this is lower. An example of an anonymous blog is one on M&A/markets/finance in general(epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/). It is quite widely followed. 


The benefits of these blogs are that once the professional is willing to 'come out', he may be deluged with book deals, consulting requests or merely popularity. And for blogs with active commentators(unlike this one!), the author can also learn and refine his thinking. That is why even Seeking Alpha permits this.

Prof Anil Gupta-the true face of modern India.

Before joining IIM-A, I had heard about Prof Anil Gupta's yeoman work in the Honeybee network, Shodh Yatra and traditional knowledge. All these issues being related to 'rural India', I'm sorry to say that I imagined him as a do-gooder fuddy duddy, who espoused the traditional way of Indian life.

But when I got to know more about him(he has given 2 TED talks and takes 2 electives at IIM-A), I was quite stunned at his extent of tech savviness. Be it his Blackberry, netbook or extensive use of online databases, Prof Gupta really leverages technology to the fullest to achieve his objectives. And while others give lip service to open sourcing, Prof Gupta believes in using students/academic associates to the fullest to help his National Innovation Foundation, update course material, co author research etc.

And when you hear him speak or lecture, the extent of erudity is simply amazing. Not that other IIM-A faculty are any less, but simply he's in a different league altogether. Instead of launching into another anti West tirade, he backs up his arguments with logic and facts. And his philosophy to learning is more the Socratic way-that the students critically question their peer's presentations(instead of mutual back slapping).

So why do I annoint him the true face of modern India? As we immerse deeper into the modern technologies, the risk of losing touch with our traditional language, values, customs etc increases. But the ideal way is to use modern technologies to enrich the rich cultural heritage. For instance, Geodisic purchased the rights of the famous magazine Chandamama, and plans to leverage various platforms to fully monetize it. Likewise, Prof Gupta uses novel approach to keep traditional knowledge from dying, and straddles the new world and old India with equal ease.