Accidental Entrepreneur: Predictability
Hi Everyone,
Welcome to my 20th weekly article as this week is called “Predictability.”
Predictable Execution is a concept that has served me tremendously throughout both my academic & professional career. Creating a structured plan for a project allows you to establish expectations & timelines toward successful completion.
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“எதிரதாக் காக்கும் அறிவினார்க் கில்லை
அதிர வருவதோர் நோய்” — திருக்குறள் (429)
“No terrifying calamity will happen to the wise,
who (foresee/predict) and guard against coming evils.” — Thirukkural (429)
As I grew up during the civil war in Sri Lanka, there was rarely any predictability in life.
Life was marred with unexpected events such as prolonged school closures, random bombing, arrests+ tortures of young people and killing of civilians including my (Math) teacher. Our life then was day to day survival and short term happiness. No long-term planning was possible given the constant state of uncertainty even for those who were career/goal driven. As I left that situation while traveling through Africa to the USA, I learned about stability and predictability which has allowed the USA to develop this great economy. Let me share some of those learnings in this article.
College/University Life: The universities which I attended had quarter systems which were 10 weeks long. Entire term’s syllabus, homework assignments, due dates, midterm exam dates as well as final exam dates are published and provided to all the students on the first day of instruction. There are well defined rules and clear information on exceptions. Everyone, smart or not so smart, rich or poor, working or not working, are all expected to follow the same requirements. There were established office hours for students to get help. It was so refreshing to see all these things for me.
As I went through my graduate studies (Masters) at Stanford University, the training which was provided to me at the university still drives me for my success. During those 10 weeks terms/quarters, we were expected to come up with an idea, find a partner/teammate, articulate the problem statement, define an execution plan, execute, complete the project successfully and then present it to the class at the end of quarter. The professors and teaching assistants were there to guide us or answer any questions, sometime during midnight hours. While those projects and expectations were tough, the clear expectations and predictable schedule made it easy for us to complete the projects. As I look back, the predictability in deadlines and expectations made our life sane and completing these projects successfully possible.
Early Career: As I started my career at the Rockwell semiconductor after graduating, I didn’t know what to expect. I had worked from the tender age of nine at my father’s store and continued my work during college years. Those were part time jobs and not many responsibilities in my hand.
After a few months of training, I was assigned to be part of a larger team building products for the next generation communication chip/controller which would change the world of telecommunications with multimedia functions such as printing, video processing, image processing and more. These were world changing ideas in the 1990s. There were no smartphones then but these architects were thinking about it. These projects had plans for the next 3–5 years and what features they would be adding incrementally over that time. For a person who didn’t know what to plan for the next day, this well defined and predictable timeline provided a stability which gave time to think and contribute to advance the technology in greater ways. Another advantage of predictability is that it establishes expectations + timelines, which provides an easy way to analyze the situations where things didn’t go as planned and learn from it for future improvements. I learned a lot from predictable expectations and executions during the early part of my career.
Start-up Life: People tend to assume that start-up life is very random and people just wake up with great ideas everyday and make new things and change plans. In contrast to that, for a start-up to be successful, everything we do needs to be planned and predictable. We don’t have time or money to waste to complete the project. In larger established companies there are backup plans or other revenue channels. In a start-up, it’s do or die. Therefore everything we do needs to be planned.
As a project manager, I applied my learnings from college life and early career experiences. During the first few weeks of starting the project, I would develop a framework from beginning to end per project. It establishes the timeline and deliverables for the project. Once the overall project framework is established, the entire team will gather together for 1–2 days for planning and articulating the dependency of the project (During my stint at Intel corporation, they called this event “Map Day”). Predictable and transparent project management helped everyone in the team understand their own roles and contribute to the success of the projects beyond just their own areas of responsibilities. I can state with confidence that the “Predictable Execution” was one of the key reasons for the success of two out of two start-ups with the exit for more than half a billion enterprise value.
Predictability in execution is key for success in life. As I stated, this doesn’t come by luck or random. It needs to be thought through and executed with intentions. Predictability does mean that one knows everything at the beginning of the project. Rather, having a plan and checking as the time goes and making adjustments early before things get bad. By being predictable, using experiences and real data, one gets to control the future or manage the future. Be Predictable. Others will trust you and be appreciative that you had a plan. Changes are inevitable but even being predictable during the time of challenges would provide a framework for success.Early life during civil war hardened me to face challenges, my college and early career time taught me to be predictable and trustworthy for building great products and companies!
