24 Lessons Learnt in the 12 Years at WSO2

I joined WSO2 in the second week after its inception on September 1^st, 2005. Since then I have been playing various roles. It has been a long journey, with interesting experiences.

It has never been a smooth ride, but a very vivid and enjoyable one.  There were good times, not so good times, tough times and exciting times. But I have enjoyed it all the way along, and the journey and the outcomes so far have been exciting.

I have been privileged to be here for this long.  And I have learned so many lessons thought-out. Here are the highlights, the top 24 from those many lessons I learnt.

1. Delegation is the first lesson to learn towards great leadership

I am a geeky technical person. I can do many things on my own. When I started with WSO2 I joined as a C/C++ person in an architect role. I worked with the C team and created the Apache Axis2 C project.

I would work hours, considered any issue that the code base ran into and worked on everything and anything that I could in the code base.

I was pretty good in C. Some people even used to say that I can code C using a notepad and get that to compile in one go.

However, there was a problem. The problem was that, I was working on anything and thereby I shadowed and prevented others in the team doing deep work. Even before they could think about it, I would go in and fix them.

The best career advice that I got in a performance appraisal was that “You are very good technically, but if you want to help other people in your team develop, and if you are to be a real leader, you got to delegate”. This advice I got from Sanjiva and I can still remember it to this day. And it was one of the best I ever got.

If you have someone on your team who can do a task 80 percent as well as you can, delegate it.

(The 80% rule for delegation) 

It was a bit shocking to start with, but when I thought about it, I could get my head around this constructive feedback and adopt myself to that.

2. Culture evolves but values should stay intact

The relationship between culture and values is like that of design principles and technology. Principles are universal and prolonged. However, technologies evolve over time. For example, the principle of separation of concerns is always useful. Weather this applies with service oriented architecture, micro services or IOT does not matter. However, the technologies change over time. For example, XML was the popular format for data encoding a decade ago however, JSON is the preferred one today.

Let the people drive and shape the culture the way it should be, while keeping intact the key values.

Such are values. You need to pick and choose what values you believe in as a company in terms of the lasting ideals shared by the people of the company on what is good and desirable. Those should be adhered to and kept intact by the people for longer time. Unlike that, the culture evolves with growth and changing times. It is very important to educate people and empower them to make the culture what it should be, while keeping to key values.

3. There is nothing called stress less work

Stress is part of any work. It is inevitable that there will always be stress in any work environment no matter what. Many people want to run away from stress, or want to find work without stress. However, it is important to learn how to live with stress. That is more useful and productive.

People worry about work life balance too much. However, the reality is bulk of our life is spent working. So, if you want to enjoy life, then you should learn how to enjoy work, and given that there will be stress embedded in work, learn to live with stress.

Learning to do team work right is one of the best ways to get rid of stress. If you are stuck, seek advice.

Learning to live with stress starts with letting go the worries and understanding that we will get though. So be prepared. You got to remember that shit will happen time to time, and shift happens too. Learn to escalate, seek help and talk to people and bank on team work. That will help deal with stress a lot.

4. Respect others and you will earn returns

If you learn to respect others, you will earn respect in turn, that is the biggest return.

Respect others time, their ideas and views.

Time is very important. If you respect others time, you will be on time yourself. If you want others time, make sure you do your homework so that you make the most of their time. I usually do spend lots of time doing my homework so that I can make the most of it when the time happens.

Other’s ideas and views are very important, those are the main sources of your inspiration. You can have your own standpoint. But if you learn how to respect, you will learn how to listen. Respecting is not about giving up your convincing, or take other’s ideas as they are. It is about paying attention to detail on what others have to say. If you want others to listen to you, listen to them. Sometimes I do think about others views even after the discussion, so that I can better relate – or I re-read the emails, so that I can better understand.

The win-win is not about in proving you are right, rather understanding what is right for everyone.

5. Motivation will hit its low, but it is a local optimum

It is a given that time to time you will have your moment of low energy, desperations and disappointments. If you ride the wave of the heat of the moment, you will lose it.

It is very important to learn how to keep your spirits high. You got to remember that global optimum is optimistic though the local optimum might not be.

Learning how to keep motivation up is a key still you must develop. This first requires you to learn of the certainty of motivation fluctuations. But if you keep your head up and keep focus on your larger overall objectives it becomes easy to deal with this.

If your overall objective is not motivating enough, then there is a gap in terms of what you do and where you are going. So, you will then revisit, find and refine your purpose.

Motivation is likely to fluctuate. Long term purpose focus will help you reignite.

If you are being motivated by low hanging fruits, then your motivation too is short lived. So, you need to aim high and have clear high-level focus. Aiming high and having elevated level focus requires you to understand the big picture. If you do not see clarity in the big picture you will falter time to time.

6.  Earning leadership is an art

Leadership is hard. At the outset, you have the dilemma of making right decisions. You are here to get the job done. It is easy to mistake getting the job done to controlling. However, that is not the way. When you deal with intelligent people, leadership is about being able to inspire and being inspired by them. You can be inspired if you listen and observe. You can inspire if you can relate to them.

The art here is to learn how to play to the strengths of people and learning to inspire accordingly.

Learn how to play to the strengths of each person in your team and you can lead everyone in right direction.

     

7. If you want to make the job easier, develop others to your level

People sometimes worry about job security. This leads to all sorts of complications in terms of protectionism, and not letting others develop. If you let others develop, you will learn the art of leadership. People will always have questions for you. If you spend time on helping answer them, you will realize you learn a lot yourself. That is your development opportunity.

Always work at the next level and help others who are junior to work at your level. That way both you and your potential successors develop much faster.

If you develop others around you, they will lift your skills up, they will ensure better business and you will benefit from better returns.

If you help others see the way, you yourself will learn a better way.

8. You can always learn from others, no matter who they are

I have learned from many people. Learning is not only about what is job related. It is about learning lifelong value propositions that makes your life better overall.

In one of the performance appraisals so long ago, the appraisee said that he wants to establish a charity as his 5-year goal. That was quite inspiring to me at that point. As I had never thought about that ever before. I am not sure if that person built a charity ever. But I will one of these days. But my inspiration came from that point in time.

If you are willing to listen and observe, anyone can inspire you.

I have learned things from interns and junior people. They will be junior and not mature as myself. But the only way to not be an old fart is to keep listening to young generations.

Some of the people that I have managed, in my career at WSO2 have been much smarter and brilliant than myself. Some people are leaps and bound better. There are productivity tips, tricks, technical vision and direction, thinking styles and patterns and problem-solving patterns and many more that I have learned from them.

9. Innovative ideas do not come in working hours, it happens when it happens

If you plan and try to invent, that does not happen that way. Invention to me is like Benzene, you can figure it out in your dreams.

Of course, you need lots of challenging work and continuous work. But you can never tell when the inspiration would hit.

What matters most is not when you work, but how much quality thought you put into it.

Keep working on your plans and do your work right. You will hit the inspiration when it happens.

What is important is to keep the mind open.

Invention is sometimes misunderstood to be only technical work related. It is not. How you manage, people, how you design processes and work protocols are also about invention.

Intellectual work is about intellect. It requires lots of mind application and you got to live with it. If you keep looking you will find innovative ways of getting things done, however, the chances are that it is hard to define a timeframe for the best idea to happen.

10. Keep your head down and focus on your work

People often worry too much about promotions, increments and recognition. They work for those. For me, I do not work for those. I only work. Those promotions, increments and recognition will follow.

I have seen so many people spend too much time worrying and analyzing their position and pay to that of others and keep wondering if the system will be fair or not. Life is not fair. That is the reality of the world. Yes, we can strive to make the system fair, but not perfect.

If you want fairness, you got to do your work first. Let your work do the talking and not your questioning or bargaining. If the place is not the right one, you should move on. No point in fighting.

You got to do your work the best no matter what, after all it is all about your career and your business value that reflects in the experiences you gain.

When people feel they are being treated unfair, they slow down, does not do the work right, or hide and seek. But that impacts your own experience and hence your own career in the long run. It is more important to focus on your success than bothering to make the system fair. In fact, system may be fair. What I do is that, I believe that the system is fair and I lift myself. That is much easier than trying to rectify the system, because as an individual, I always have room for improvement.

Believe that the system is fair and focus on lifting yourself up. That will help you find and focus on your own areas of improvements and develop yourself.

11. If you cannot fight it now, let it be

The truth will be seen sooner or later. If you want to keep fighting, you will lose your energy. There are fights that are worth fighting for but there always should be a limit.

The universal truths will stay. Hence, the heated arguments on varying perspectives are at times useless. Look at data and if you do not have data, let time pass so that data will be collected and available.

When you sit on some things, either you will convince that you were mistaken or the other parties will. Continuous fighting never wins. You need ceasefires to win a war.

I have seen people argue for the sake of augment. And even the primary point is missed. If you take a step back, sometimes you realize, why do we even have to talk about it.

Most of the time, the reality is, we do not have enough data to decide. Then it is more important to go back, experiment and come back with data.

If you did not consider data and make an argument on gut, that is not good. Gut is always good, if you verify that with data and information. If you did not do your homework, you are not talking with insight.

Sometimes, people look at data, and then even going back to the original point in contrast to what the data indicates. At that point, it is ego.

If you are struggling to make your point that is probably because of your ego. Give empathy a chance and the struggle will end.  

12. Growth is not easy, it is a complicated process

Growth is a curse. Look at kids, they are nice and cute if they are small. But them being adults is a must. Such is the growth of a company. You cannot be always a 5 million or 10 million company or a 50-person company. You got to grow over time.

Growth needs new people, expansion and change.

One of the things that you got to Watch out for is that, when you grow, people will flood in. There will be so many who want to come and join. Picking and choosing the right ones that match what you want to do is hard.

Adding people and integrating them into the system is not easy. And rapid growth is a killer.

If you want to grow rapid, you got to know that what used to work in terms of training and onboarding is not going to work anymore. You need to plan accordingly.

Growth causes proliferation of permutations required in operational activities.

For example, if you want to go from 50 to 200 it seems logical to do 4 times of what you do right now with 50. However, the permutations exponentially explode in cases such as communication. And people are not like software system where we can limit interfaces. So what works for 50 never works for 200.

13. Hard work and smart work are two different things

To succeed, you need to work hard. There is no question about it.

However, had work doesn't always pay off, if you do not work smart.

Sometimes people do lots of work and think that is demanding work. But you got to explore why you should work so much. If your lot of work is not real smart work your chances of being successful is less.

Time to time, take a break and see if you are trying to repeat the same things and expecting different results.

Sometimes, people keep doing the same work and expect to have better results. But if you keep doing the same thing and see no progress, then there needs to be a change in the way you work and the things that you work on. Being smart at work is about figuring out the shortest or quickest path to get to results. If you keep doing result oriented smart work and keep doing that, you can reach many results faster - that is real hard work.

If you do something different, you might reach a different result.

Sometimes, people think that you need to be super smart or intelligent to get things done effective. That is not the point. People think that I get so many things done because I am brilliant by nature. But being brilliant for me is about demanding work. I wake up early, and by the time others come to work, I have done 4 to 6 hours of work already. So, I am naturally ahead. And I learned to combine that with smart work. I pick and choose the battles, I keep working smart at them, and if no results I often change direction and keep working on those. And I have learned that if you keep putting decent quality 30 minutes or one hour into something and get to some results and get a break, then you have more energy to focus on the next one.   

14. Fear is the biggest inhibitor

Fearless am I. I do not care who I deal with or what I must do. I just do what I must do.

Fears are multifold. Sometimes people fear people. Sometimes people fear work in the sense if they can do it successfully - some might call this as lack of confidence.

I have seen and learnt that fear of people and fear of work complexity and the resulting lack of confidence inhibits people more than anything else in their progress.

Fear is a nice excuse. If you face the facts you will see for yourself that there is nothing to fear.

My view is that, if you are in the battlefield, on front line, if you fear your life you are going to die. It is natural to fear death. But the only way to live is to fight like there is no tomorrow and you might live.

So, when you are faced with problems, never worry about what others think or if you will make it. Just let the fear go and do what you must do. To do what you must do, you need to pay attention to detail – the facts, the logic and the reality of the situation – then you will be able to research on those and gradually build confidence on yourself.

15. Generals get work done

I am usually known for my commanding leadership.

However, those who know me well would never fear me. Rather they will trust my judgement and trust that I will help and guide people get the job done.

Generals win battles. They get the job done. But the general needs troops to do it. If soldiers are not willing to do the work needed when it matters, then nothing will happen.

So, while at the outset it seems like rude, commanding, and not so soft, the reality is it is about being blunt, being truthful and not sugarcoating it. I have learnt over time that, being rational is more important than sugarcoating a situation. Motivation is key but motivation is not about fooling people. It is about letting people see the realities. Education is also paramount.

Being a leader is not easy. Leadership is not about winning a popularity contest. In fact, you will not be popular at times. It is about getting everyone to win. Once everyone wins they will think that they won - and you should never worry about appreciation or popularity, because everyone won.

A leader should nether worry about popularity nor about appreciation.

16. You need master builders, not only master architects

When it comes to appreciation of success, people will always talk about one or two leaders who made that happen or few in the leadership. However, the reality is that, you can have great vision and strategy at the top but you need equally good executors at the ground to execute strategy.

When Mikhail Gorbachev executed Perestroika, restructuring Soviet Union, he was seen as the master architect. However, Perestroika would not have happened without Eduard Shevardnadze, then Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union. He was described as the master builder of Perestroika. While there are criticisms on Perestroika that it caused the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the learning point is useful.

So, if I am successful in WSO2 as a leader, that is because the second and third and fourth level leadership and their hard work too. You got to recognize value of builders in the system when you architect processes, protocols and operational models. They hold a significant role that will make the universal system successful.

 Those who execute on the ground holds the key to success in fulfilling strategy.

17. Being open and being truthful is the best even with customers

You can fool all for some time, you can fool some all times, but not all always.

It is hard to live dual characters. It is hard to pretend and do an effective job.

You can pretend for some time, but truth will prevail.

It is much better to be open and truthful all the time, even with customers. I have learned that, when you tell the truth upfront, you win confidence rather than them loosing confidence later. So, it is much better not to provide with false promises, and hide and seek on actual problems.

You got to remember, on the other side too, there are human beings and they want to know the truth, so that they can plan accordingly and they can collaborate better. Then things happen better. When you lie or pretend, neither party wins.

Customers know that you too are human. Treat them as if they are also part of your team.

18. Customers want value added partnerships and relationships

Technical people are more oriented towards focusing on what they do and how they do it. So, when it comes to explaining products or services they focus on what and how factors. However, if you are to win customers, what I have learned is, they want partnerships that add value and not just product or services. The reason they buy is because they are looking to solve problems with desired outcomes. And they want the solution to keep working. So, partnerships and relationships matter than anything else.

What I have learnt is that, focusing on value delivered and long-term partnerships are easier said than done. It requires you to reach pinnacle of curiosity, empathy and customer advocacy. That requires sustained prolonged work and focus.

Customers never buy what you sell. They will spend money if they understand the value you bring in to help them.

19.  When work is not “work” you do not need leave or vacation

Work life balance is quite overrated in my opinion. When your margin between work and life is crystal clear, it becomes harder and harder to manage.

I have been working on support more than any one in WSO2, even while I was in engineering support was something that I championed in. And it is an unspoken truth that people do not like support much. However, if I did not like it, it would not have happened. The secret is to learn how to love what you do and then make it more than just work. Find the meaning and purpose and you will learn to love it.

If your work is repetitive, then automate.

One of the key things to look at work and eliminate the pain factors is to focus on productivity and efficiency. When you get rid of routine tasks out of your work, it becomes much exiting. So, automate whatever you can, and look for productive means such as keyboard shortcuts or canned responses or templates that you can re-use. Then you have more time to focus on innovative work. That makes you enjoy the work.

Then you can map passion or interest into the job. I am an AI fan from the days I was an undergraduate. But, I never got a job to work on AI. However, in support I learned how to use AI interest to make the job better. And we have now come a long way. And I am excited to see how AI helps so much to make things better.

If you cannot find a job that matches your passion, bring your passion into your current job.

When you figure out how to match your passion, interests, focus on productivity and do only ale added bits in work, you are enjoying it. You do not need leave or vacation to enjoy life anymore.

20. Great place to work is about work, not about play

In my opinion, play is fooling people from their focus. Unless otherwise you are a professional player, you are not going to earn with play, so you got to learn to work and enjoy work.

Wonderful place to work is about how much novel, innovative work you get to work on. It is about how much you can learn in the process. It is about, would that work help you to build a personal brand for you.

If you work in a place for two years, and when you look back, if there are no great milestones for you to talk about in your CV, that is not a great place to work. Because, you cannot talk about play in your CV.

If you are not doing some new job every 2 years, you are stagnating in your career.

One of the key things that I enjoy about WSO2 is that, I am not doing the same thing repeatedly. My theory for an illustrious career has been that one should not be in the same place for more than 2 years. But then I have broken my own rule being at WSO2 for 12 years. In fact, I see that as if I have done 6 jobs in the past dozen years. Meaning I could do great amount of novel work, innovative work, learn from those many new things and more importantly was able to enhance my business value to a great deal over time. That is what a wonderful place to work really means.

21. Engineers should be managers

This is a term that I have hear repeatedly in the university as I was from the faculty of engineering. What I have learned in the industry and specially at WSO2 is that managers cannot manage. In other words, the phenomenon of non-technical people is a broken concept in today’s world. Everything we do is technical. The phone you have has 4G and can connect to Wi-Fi. That is quite technical to start with.

The real thing that I have learned is that, when you are an engineer who knows to apply science to real life, then you can be a good manager. Because management is about applying of execution techniques to map to strategy and get things done.

People could never fly until they understood that flying is about aerodynamics. Then they applied the aerodynamics principles to build airplanes. If you are to manage a project of building an airplane, you better known aerodynamics. In other words, if you know aerodynamics you can be a great manager in aviation product engineering.

To be great managers, engineers should focus on building soft skills.

What I have learned is that, if you know your technology, you can be a much better manager because you can relate to technical people, rationalize the way they would understand and sell to crowds who work in the space who want to buy the same. Only thing is, you need lots of soft skills on top of hard skills. Building soft skills is not rocket science.

22. It is OK to let people go

Letting people go is the primary emotional task that leaders should deal with. Emotional intelligence is not just about yourself, but also about your ability to deal with the rest of the system and do greater good than local good.

At the outset, letting people go is seen as local minima and focused on global optima. In simple terms, it is like letting someone not so good go to help the company. However, what I have learned over time is that, in fact, it is not good for the individual to be kept in the system if they have trouble dealing with it. The person is struggling already, and trying to pretend he or she will get there knowing that they will not, is killing key cycles. Not all people match a given DNA of an organization. However, they will excel elsewhere. If you try to keep weak performers as a favor to them, then you are both infecting the system as well as you are not letting the individuals grow either. If you let them go, they will find their own purpose.

The let go decisions needs to be based on prolonged mismatch of alignment both in terms of performance and objectives. However, note that some people takes time to develop. So being slow is not a problem if they are willing to take time. Sometimes the problem with slow people is that they think they are not slow and they struggle to understand why. So, they want promotions while they work at it. But that will in fact outplay them faster as they will not be able to sustain the next level with a promotion. So, if people are willing to take it slow, being in the same position for some time, it is OK to give them time and not rush to let go.

Behavior will indicate if people will make it or not out of a performance struggle. Behavior also reflects attitude.

After all, attitude is a killer if it is broken. Even with performance and skills, you should not tolerate broken attitude.

23. Time is one dimensional, space is not

Tolstoy is a great writer because he understood both time and space dimensions and how to manage them both in his writings.

For splendid work, you not only need time but also space.

When you want to get something done, we often ask when can it be done? That is a time question and that has a linear dimension. But the question of what it takes to achieve this is rarely asked, or sometimes assumed to be implied. But that is about space you need and that is not a linear dimension. 

The relationship between time and space is a philosophical issue - but we do not have to get there to understand the need.

Often, we blame wrong estimates when we cannot deliver on time. However, what I have learnt is that, it is because we do not pay attention to space that we miss badly in estimates. That is one example.

The more complicated one is, what does it take to deliver creative work? Why don’t some people ever get what we want them to understand? I have seen many of these and I am sure you have seen these as well. For me, the answer lies in the aspect of space. When people think liner about something, they are linearly focused. So, they never get it, no matter how much time we spend explaining something or even the need for something. If the focus shifts form linear focus to n-dimensional focus, then people get it. In fact, when we say some are good in delivering creating work, it is because they take space into account.

If you want to be creative use a whiteboard, it is not 2 dimensional.

So next time when you want to get something done, do not ask when we can do it, rather ask what it will take to get it done.

24. Being a change catalyst is more important than adopting to change

Change is inevitable. You have heard that. Adapting to change is intelligence. You have heard that too I am sure. But they all sounds as if you are following change. If you want to be successful you got to be the change catalyst rather than the someone who adopts to change.

Be the one who creates change, not the one who adopts.

Being a change catalyst is challenging. Sometimes you do not know what you should do, but you got to do it. You must understand that people will be receptive to change no matter what. You need to learn the art of driving change.

To drive change, you got to first be convinced yourself that it is going to work.

WSO2 has changed leaps and bounds over the years. The biggest change catalyst initiative that I drove in WSO2 was the Carbon platform drive. There was massive resistance and lack of buy in for the need of a platform in those days where we had few soiled products. Some people even left around this initiative. However, I could be the catalyst easily because I was attached to none of the existing products. My learning point is, no matter how much you have worked on what is existing, if you let your attachments go, you can easily be the change catalyst, because you will both understand why the change is needed and you will also see the positives of the potential results of the change.

We could very easily build products like API manager in quick time thanks to the Carbon platform capabilities. The transition from Carbon to Carbon 5 was much easier as people now understand the value of a platform. But prior to Carbon, when people have not seen a platform, being a champion for the change and to get it done, you need to be a change catalyst.

The latest initiative we have is Ballerina language. While at the outset, people understand the change in the direction and rationale of the new initiative, which was originally started as NEL (New ESB Language) I am sure we are yet to see the impacts of winds of change. Because the potential is massive we will have to think about the whole thing in novel ways. And I am super excited about it!