Once ‘owls’ finished their part, focus was on ‘packers’ & ‘movers’ to get the young couple settle in the new house.
Every one called this movement ‘Delivery’ and coming from an engineering background I was more used to the term ‘commissioning’ and was wondering why it’s called ‘Delivery’ here . One senior myna told me that I am too new to understand and should wait for nine months because it’s ‘Delivery’.
It was not easy to find ‘packers’ & ‘movers’ as one came from ‘wolves’ and other from ‘jackals’. With the power of CC line and personal contacts of senior mynas a team was formed with a leader.
One day land lord called me and said that he received a parcel and I should help him understand what it was. It was a small carton box with few CD’s wrapped in news paper and also a poster. CD’s had some number written in pen and I realized this is the first shipment!
Poster was very nice, it had the picture of ‘red boxing glove with spikes’ and said ‘unfair advantage’. Land lord was excited to see this colorful poster and he pasted it on the main wall.
'Packer' and 'movers' arrived and they started putting things in place. All had fun for first few months as things were just being put in place. Whatever ’packer’ did ‘movers’ didn’t like and vice versa, so many a times ‘myna’ had to come in between with few white feathers as symbol of peace.
Once they started connecting wires, life changed for all. Every day something was blowing off and land lord started worrying!
Land lord formed a team to see how things are progressing and they started testing. I learned terms like ’ bugs’ ,‘patch‘, ‘fix’ etc
Pressure was too much on land lord to make the world know that celebrity tenants have moved in.
One day all agreed that the ‘pain’ was too much and it’s better to send ‘packers and movers’ back and annouce to the world that the new celebrity tenant has moved in! They called it the ‘cut over’
Land lord was looking at the poster which said ‘unfair advantage’ and was wondering who had the unfair advantage!
Nine months had passed by then and I got the answer why this process is called ‘Delivery’!
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
The 'Handshake'
In few months I started feeling like a ‘myna’, flying around, singing tunes (it was called demo’s) etc …
Mynas were good at their singing and were quite innovative. They had their ‘emperor ‘and ‘king for Africa ‘and all of them believed in the song they sing!
When I started my singing classes, I realized it’s a ‘duet’ we have to learn and the song is of a young couple.
This young couple had met in Africa and before they had any love, some brilliant myna saw great potential in getting them married for the benefit of mynas. This brilliant myna convinced the families of these couple, the ‘wolves’ and ‘jackals’ to get them married.
These are very powerful families from ‘south’ and ‘west’ and under pressure from mynas and others agreed for the marriage which was called the‘handshake’. Marriage got registered but the families couldn’t see eye to eye and young couple had no clue why they are having the ‘handshake’.
My job was to find a home for this young couple in Africa. So after learning the song, I went and met the local chieftains (called the local partners) who are like real estate brokers in the country to look for houses. We found a big house and then the job was to make the land lord allow this young family to move in.
It’s a processes by itself, we had few rounds of song performance and land lord found this young couple very ‘modern’ and had great family background. Our real estate broker was singing his own songs which he had composed on his own in local language.
One day, the land lord decided to travel to India and meet the young couple and do some back ground checks before taking them as tenants.
It’s the job of mynas to arrange discussions with elders in both families (‘wolves ‘and ‘jackals’) in India and also get the land lord to do some background checks.
This is the time I realized there are some elders who sit in ‘glass cages’ and it’s not easy to get them into one room and prepare for the song performance. I had to line up minas with extra feathers to get the glass caged wolves and jackals come together and prepare for the song performance. This is the time I understood the political power of ‘CC’ line in an email. One senior mina had the unique skill of marking CC’s and making glass caged wolves and jackals ‘move’ and that was a real learning in life for me.
It was still becoming difficult to make all sing the song together and in ‘one voice’, so the strategy was to ‘pamper the visiting land lord’. Welcome with sandal wood garlands, taking them to places of interest and arranging dinner every night.
Strategy worked well and chieftains informed in few days that the ‘deal is on’ and we have to sign the ‘agreement’. Mynas started celebrating, but there was no excitement for wolves and jackals and I was wondering what the matter was.
That’s the time the ‘owls’ came into picture with a huge document called ‘ The Agreement’ which myna has to take to landlord and get signed with one condition that ‘ nothing to be changed’ . Job of the myna was to make land lord understand that what ever we have discussed so far will not hold good and this agreement will be final.
By the time land lord and owls agreed to sign, myna lost few feathers!
Mynas were good at their singing and were quite innovative. They had their ‘emperor ‘and ‘king for Africa ‘and all of them believed in the song they sing!
When I started my singing classes, I realized it’s a ‘duet’ we have to learn and the song is of a young couple.
This young couple had met in Africa and before they had any love, some brilliant myna saw great potential in getting them married for the benefit of mynas. This brilliant myna convinced the families of these couple, the ‘wolves’ and ‘jackals’ to get them married.
These are very powerful families from ‘south’ and ‘west’ and under pressure from mynas and others agreed for the marriage which was called the‘handshake’. Marriage got registered but the families couldn’t see eye to eye and young couple had no clue why they are having the ‘handshake’.
My job was to find a home for this young couple in Africa. So after learning the song, I went and met the local chieftains (called the local partners) who are like real estate brokers in the country to look for houses. We found a big house and then the job was to make the land lord allow this young family to move in.
It’s a processes by itself, we had few rounds of song performance and land lord found this young couple very ‘modern’ and had great family background. Our real estate broker was singing his own songs which he had composed on his own in local language.
One day, the land lord decided to travel to India and meet the young couple and do some back ground checks before taking them as tenants.
It’s the job of mynas to arrange discussions with elders in both families (‘wolves ‘and ‘jackals’) in India and also get the land lord to do some background checks.
This is the time I realized there are some elders who sit in ‘glass cages’ and it’s not easy to get them into one room and prepare for the song performance. I had to line up minas with extra feathers to get the glass caged wolves and jackals come together and prepare for the song performance. This is the time I understood the political power of ‘CC’ line in an email. One senior mina had the unique skill of marking CC’s and making glass caged wolves and jackals ‘move’ and that was a real learning in life for me.
It was still becoming difficult to make all sing the song together and in ‘one voice’, so the strategy was to ‘pamper the visiting land lord’. Welcome with sandal wood garlands, taking them to places of interest and arranging dinner every night.
Strategy worked well and chieftains informed in few days that the ‘deal is on’ and we have to sign the ‘agreement’. Mynas started celebrating, but there was no excitement for wolves and jackals and I was wondering what the matter was.
That’s the time the ‘owls’ came into picture with a huge document called ‘ The Agreement’ which myna has to take to landlord and get signed with one condition that ‘ nothing to be changed’ . Job of the myna was to make land lord understand that what ever we have discussed so far will not hold good and this agreement will be final.
By the time land lord and owls agreed to sign, myna lost few feathers!
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Birth of John Santhosh
Horror stories from Africa didn’t scare me much. First trip to Nigeria in Ethiopian Airlines was my first international travel so it was more of excitement than fear.Had a stop over in Addis Ababa with a small city tour of this fantastic African nation before getting to Lagos.
It was just after military rule in Nigeria and when you land into Lagos airport you are welcomed by many with all possible suggestions. I heard this line ‘What for me’ on my first day at Lagos airport and I still hear that from Africa…………….
I started staying with the engineers who support few banks that use older version of the software and I was tasked to sell the new state of the art technical avatar of this old software!
Quickly I understood that these young engineers who stay with me are actually been punished for the sins committed by some brilliant developers in India. These ‘Hyenas’ travel in the night for something called “EOD Support” and during day take the beating of the customer for the sins committed by someone else. Over time I realized, its part of the strategy to send ‘Hyenas’ with software once you have made the ‘sales kill’!
With no IT knowledge or banking knowledge how to sell this new state of the art technical avatar of the old software to banks in Nigeria was a big question for me. Only way I could think is to get connected to the decision makers in some other level and that changed ‘J P Santhosh’ to ‘John Santhosh’ and I became an ‘Evangelist’ of technology in Africa.
John Santhosh started attending Sunday mass and was the only Indian in the church. In a month’s time I had details of all bankers coming to this HNI church and had even attended multiple services on the same day to meet with them after mass. That worked well and contact list was growing.
I started learning banking from the’ Hyenas’ (some of them were civil and mechanical engineers). We all agreed that we went to Engineering College to become engineers but bankers didn’t go to any specialized school to become a banker, so we can learn banking seeing the ‘code’ of the software!
We had a ‘vulture’ with us that time in the country. He is a functional expert who joined the IT Company from the bank and was also feeding from the same ‘kill’. His job was to go and correct the suspense account that gets build up every night because software didn’t know what to do with many transactions and where to post them.
Working with these ‘Hyenas’ and ‘Vultures’, I became a true banking technology evangelist in few months.
It was just after military rule in Nigeria and when you land into Lagos airport you are welcomed by many with all possible suggestions. I heard this line ‘What for me’ on my first day at Lagos airport and I still hear that from Africa…………….
I started staying with the engineers who support few banks that use older version of the software and I was tasked to sell the new state of the art technical avatar of this old software!
Quickly I understood that these young engineers who stay with me are actually been punished for the sins committed by some brilliant developers in India. These ‘Hyenas’ travel in the night for something called “EOD Support” and during day take the beating of the customer for the sins committed by someone else. Over time I realized, its part of the strategy to send ‘Hyenas’ with software once you have made the ‘sales kill’!
With no IT knowledge or banking knowledge how to sell this new state of the art technical avatar of the old software to banks in Nigeria was a big question for me. Only way I could think is to get connected to the decision makers in some other level and that changed ‘J P Santhosh’ to ‘John Santhosh’ and I became an ‘Evangelist’ of technology in Africa.
John Santhosh started attending Sunday mass and was the only Indian in the church. In a month’s time I had details of all bankers coming to this HNI church and had even attended multiple services on the same day to meet with them after mass. That worked well and contact list was growing.
I started learning banking from the’ Hyenas’ (some of them were civil and mechanical engineers). We all agreed that we went to Engineering College to become engineers but bankers didn’t go to any specialized school to become a banker, so we can learn banking seeing the ‘code’ of the software!
We had a ‘vulture’ with us that time in the country. He is a functional expert who joined the IT Company from the bank and was also feeding from the same ‘kill’. His job was to go and correct the suspense account that gets build up every night because software didn’t know what to do with many transactions and where to post them.
Working with these ‘Hyenas’ and ‘Vultures’, I became a true banking technology evangelist in few months.
Entry to Africa
Electrical Engineering was my passion, but the Indian IT boom of 1998-99 made me leave my passion and move to green pastures!
I realized people around me are all learning software to get to US and Europe and I was not cut to become a software developer. Only option to join the band wagon was to show case my skills around solution sales and one large IT company was ready to test me out. I think they were really bold to take me with no IT knowledge or banking knowledge to sell banking technology applications and gave me a job in ‘International Sales’
Induction was real fun as people were using acronyms like GL, FX, MM ,LC etc when my world till the previous day was around Volt, Amp and KW!
Just after induction, I got the shock of my life that I am 'Sales Manager' for 'West Africa' as “international Sales” for this company means sell software in AFRICA ! I was send for ‘ Yellow Fever Shot’ and that day I became an African .
I realized people around me are all learning software to get to US and Europe and I was not cut to become a software developer. Only option to join the band wagon was to show case my skills around solution sales and one large IT company was ready to test me out. I think they were really bold to take me with no IT knowledge or banking knowledge to sell banking technology applications and gave me a job in ‘International Sales’
Induction was real fun as people were using acronyms like GL, FX, MM ,LC etc when my world till the previous day was around Volt, Amp and KW!
Just after induction, I got the shock of my life that I am 'Sales Manager' for 'West Africa' as “international Sales” for this company means sell software in AFRICA ! I was send for ‘ Yellow Fever Shot’ and that day I became an African .
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