Raising the minimum wage

I have taken an interesting decision at Peach recently.  I have decided to establish my own level of minimum wage, set at more than twice the prevailing rate.

I have done so for a variety of reasons:

First, I have done so to protect my company.  I feel that India is experiencing an unreasonable degree of inflation.  And this inflation does not affect us all equally.  We can see several of us, at least a huge portion of the people who can manage to read this blog, earning decent five-figure salaries.  For such people, inflation works both ways, as their salaries also rise, and therefore they do not get really affected.  In fact, they are able to afford even more, even though they may grumble about inflation.  But for the rest, the vast majority constituting poor people to whom we rarely even give a thought, this inflation has cut into their lifestyles.  They can no longer afford even milk.  They cannot even dream of owning their home some day.  They can no longer manage their expensive social traditions and even basic needs for survival from their income.  Therefore, like many people I've seen around me, they are forced to sell their assets.  Next, they borrow.

This is not going to sustain.  Some day these guys are going to stand up, and vent out their frustration on us, like they've done in Mid-Eastern countries, as we grow more and more insensitive to their troubles.  I do not want to see this happening.  At least, I do not want to be part of its cause.  Therefore, I must set a salary level at which they can manage to live respectable lives.

Second, I have taken this step to build a loyal and satisfied team.  If I pay 20K to a developer, he will find an option of 30K elsewhere.  But if I pay 8K instead of 5K to my driver, I am assured that he is not going anywhere, cuz by far nobody will pay this.  I am buying his loyalty.  And believe me, I've found these people - administrative staff, driver, peons, etc. - to be far less replaceable than my developers.  One may find a typical ASP.NET programmer anywhere, but it's tough to find and train a driver with our specific preferences, familiarize him with our frequent destinations, and build a trust so that we can send him with our guests.  Yet we manage to exploit him cuz he does not know his importance to us well enough.  Or maybe market forces setting rates exploit him.

Next, I have raised the level of wages to raise the level of intelligent output at my company.  I do not have a cash-rich company with vast operations.  Instead, quite to the contrary, I cannot afford the luxuries of such initiatives.  However, I firmly believe that the intelligence of most people is not widely varying.  It is their training, and luck that forced them into a particular profession, that determines who gets how much.  I always have the option to train people, and I cannot penalize them for bad luck!  Therefore, I have decided that the salary band in my company will range from 10K to 50K.  People seeking more than 50K can earn it through performance incentives and profit-sharing - I will not give security (without performance) to such highly-paid people.  But the lower limit is more relevant to this topic.  The employee and I have to work out ways to ensure that he delivers worth this amount.  I have to train him, and he has to work as hard as it takes.  I have to identify the gaps, and add to his roles.  This is a management challenge, which I cannot shy away from by insulting people's intelligence.  I have observed that several people, who had given up on ever needing to use their brains at work, have reactivated their IQ, and are making wonderful contributions to Peach.

Even Peter Drucker (aka Guruji) has been a strong proponent of narrowing the gap between the wage of the janitor and that of the CEO, to ensure stability in the company. I think it is simply common sense, and an all-win option.


I will share more as I experience the fruits of this initiative.  I am confident that this should work out well, but I'll update you even if I find gaps in my approach.  Feel free to share your thoughts on the applicability of this system, or whether you find this worth implementing at your workplace.

The First Daily Victory

I borrow this thought from Stephen Covey.  It's helped me (and some people I know) a lot, and probably will help you too.

I'm sure each of us faces several challenges every day.  We have tasks to finish, projects to pursue, products to sell, homes to manage, exams to give.  We win some, we lose some.  Our victories motivate us, our losses at times demoralize us (cuz we're humans).  And that makes it especially important that our first challenge results in a victory, every day.

That first victory, in my opinion, is an early start to the day.  By that, I imply waking up early, maybe doing some physical exercises, planning your day, and then starting off.  Waking up early gives us success over our laziness.  It makes us feel good, feel that we are in control.  And that gives us confidence that we can likewise win over the other challenges of the day.  Next, physical exercise and/or yoga prepares our body to stay strong as we enter our battles.   And finally, planning - simulating our work items, prioritizing and scheduling - prepares our mind for the day.

I have personally found this very rewarding.  I get a wonderful kick-start to the day.  I now wake up at about 5 AM, and by about 7 AM, I feel that the rest of the day is only a formality, for which I am fully prepared, and which I can complete much faster.

Try it out!

Know his name

Friends, I'm sure many of us are frequent visitors at specific restaurants, hotels, or offices.  We get accustomed to seeing some faces, especially the ones who serve us.  They often become a part of our routine, our life, but all we acknowledge that with is a small, at most.  We know that they are doing their jobs, at times doing so as we pay them to do so.  And in case one of us actually bothers to think of the situation, we justify that there is nothing missing in our demeanour.  But I have experienced that doing slightly more than this makes an enormous difference.

I have learnt from my uncle Yogeshkaka and Papa the art of connecting with people who we don't really need to connect with.  I have seen them referring to waiters, receptionists, clerks with respect and dignity.  Beyond that, I have seen them acknowledge their individual identity, and address them personally.  They know the names of the people who serve them, take interest in their background, care to remember this supposedly unimportant information, and interact with them as if they are known friends, because that is what they are.  And this small pain is rewarded highly - they get treated with care and affection that even QE2 would not receive.

I guess there are some who feel that interacting with poor people or service-givers or even suppliers in general is beneath our "status".  I do not believe that.  Rather, the respect we accord them determines our nobility.  And there is, of course, the additional pleasure of having brought a few smiles to people who need them the most!

So I urge you to give this a thought, and try acknowledging and enjoying your supposedly-insignificant relationships with people who serve you.  You won't regret it!

A Re-Start: Writing about Murder, Cold-blooded Execution

Hmmm... I've finally decided to make another effort at blogging.  Let me start by sharing my thoughts about one of my biggest irritants: Indian English, which is killing the language I love (English, duh).

I am appalled by the state of English in our country.  Back in school days, I believed that the whole world save my Gujju medium schoolmates could speak decent English.  But as I opened my ears to hear the real world, especially after college, I felt shocked.  I can now see a systematic, wide-scale murder of my language.

We seem to have decided to simply ignore grammar.  People who wish to refer to me with respect have pluralized me - "Parth are not coming to the movie."  (Of course, here I refer to the fresh recruits who neither know me nor my real age behind the moustache.)  We clearly do not know about the existence of the "perfect" tenses - we just keep language "simple" (pun intended, you dummies!).  We Capitalize Any Letter that we find to be Important.

But of course, this does not keep people from claiming fluency in this language.  I've seen countless resumes claiming English skills while not having a single error-free sentence.  In fact, I am yet to see a single resume without a spelling mistake!

Speaking of spelling mistakes - I fill horified by dhe eaz weeth wich we mek them.  There's this new guy who joined us in marketing yesterday - for some unexplainable reason, it occurred to me that I should write down some basic linguistic expectations from him, as he'll be communicating with our customers.  Despite my ultra-clear instructions, I found five spelling mistakes in a three-sentence report he sent me today.  And when I brought it up, he stared at me in a way that told me how foolish I was to treat those as mistakes!

We have lost the sense of perfection, especially in language.  We have already doped our native languages with hundreds of English words that we cannot live without.  If we cannot expect perfection in spellings, how on earth can we expect perfection in sentence formations, and further fine-tuning in even choosing the right means among several grammatically correct options?!

Unfortunately, there is not even any hope.  While we ourselves do not even realize our mistakes, we no longer even have people around us, or teachers, to correct us.  We dole out degrees like MA (English) without ensuring even the fluency of pre-school levels.  And those among us (I claim myself to be one) who could claim decent fluency are also giving up, as we are forced to re-phrase our sentences to make sense to our listeners, and filter all but the simplest vocabulary, while being bombarded with poor English from all corners.  As a result, our English is often a mere disorderly translation of sentences formed first in our native Indian language - hence full of passive voice, "respectful words", etc.

I put most of this blame on two categories of people - "urbanites" and "marketers".  Urbanites, especially the so-called "professionals", have decided that their language of speech must be English.  They try to express the world within their tiny vocabulary.  And their most amusing aspect is their confidence - it often makes me literally speechless!  The second class is the marketers, who, again, have decided that anything other than English is beneath their dignity.  And therefore, these Englishmen torture their customers with not only their products, but even their language.

Any way, I guess I have rambled enough for today.  I'm struggling to retain my remaining fluency.  If one of you readers feels likewise, let me know, maybe we can figure a solution, or at least mourn together for the death of our dear language!  (Or, you may simply help me by correct the mistakes in this blog...)

Realizing my power over my people

I had an important realization today, while I was driving to work. I realized my powerful influence in the lives of people who work for me at Peach.



I do not recall having looked at this relation, in past, very differently than a standard give-and-take model, wherein I pay salary to each employee who made himself available to pursue my tasks for eight-odd hours. I used to feel once in a while that I do wield a somewhat higher position than their payer, but I never cared to think deeper. But thinking further today, I sense that my role is much deeper than that of the buyer of their time. I realize that I happen to wield enormous power not only on what they do during these work hours, but even on their life beyond Peach.


I must clarify, at the onset, that a vast majority of the employees that I am talking about are fresh graduates, who have never experienced another job in their life. Things may be a lot more different for people employing mainly experienced professionals. But to these just-released professionals, I define what a “job” is. I define who an “employer” is, what a “supervisor” is supposed to be. The policies I enact and the opportunities I offer develop their impression about how one grows at work. The way I encourage or praise their work, or the way I may turn it down, sets the level of their confidence about their own abilities. This confidence, and their impression about opportunities, makes an impact on their dreams – they figure whether they deserve to dream of big successes, or be content with stability. Indeed, they also gain some impressions from their friends and college mates, who possibly face different scenarios at their workplaces, but I must accept that my actions remain the primary cause of these thoughts nonetheless.


I have managed, like most other employers, to ignore this critical reality, as these fresh employees do not expect much. While they may come with high hopes and dreams, they are generally trained in college, at school, and at home, to be submissive to the so-called “higher authorities”, and accept their behaviour as their fate (unless there is a situation so repulsive as to require a rebellious change). The typical employer gets away with shirking his responsibility of being more than a payer by unknowingly imposing a routine on his recruits, which makes them too busy to introspect.


But I am not sure if getting away with this is what employers should prefer. I rather think that this is a wonderful opportunity that employers must grab. While people crave for power or importance in every community they are in, this is a situation where we get to wield enormous power to change lives. I feel that I have the power to impact 50 people and their families. I feel that I am, possibly unknown to them, among the most important people in their lives, for I get to influence their dreams, their culture, and even their day-to-day schedule. I must check myself here if I am bordering on being royally arrogant or overestimating my role, but introspection tells me that I indeed am this important to my people, so long as they work for me. Fortunately, I do not have enough power to act negatively beyond certain limit, as people always have the choice to stop tolerating my antics. But I have lots of scope to use this importance for good.


Let me now consider how I can use this power. First, I have the ability to define and execute policies. By taking interest in the lives of people, and accommodating their genuine needs, I can make my policies more effective by not victimizing such needs through robotic execution. Next, I can, directly and through my organization & policies, inculcate the appropriate culture in people. That is, I can inculcate perfectionism, care for people, respect for every human, result-oriented management, objectivity, good health practices; I can shun unethical behaviour, tobacco, idle gossip, etc. Now this is naturally restricted to my definition of “appropriate”, but let’s go with that for a while. Further on, I also have the opportunity to teach people. In the name of “training”, my flock is at least forced to listen to what I want them to hear. That way, I can formally groom them in technical and management matters, enriching them as professionals and persons. I can even pursue initiatives related to health, ethics, and similar life-sensitive topics, and expect their attendance, with good chance that they’ll absorb some stuff.


Beyond inculcating knowledge and culture, I have the power to create situations and environments. I can create an atmosphere of trust and friendship in the company. I can welcome frankness and honesty, which will percolate even in their personal lives. I can identify the strength of each employee and work out win-win solutions for her growth and progress of the company. I can learn about her dreams and figure how we can realize those at Peach, so long as she plays her part in the plan. None of these are against the interest of the company. Rather, such initiatives will develop a strongly bonded and self-motivated workforce, and every minute spent in enriching this strength will be earned back by their productivity.


I admit that I’ve written this note in tone that some might find self-flattering. But my intention is not that; when I speak of myself, I actually imply every one of the thousands of entrepreneurs in the world; and when I speak of my “power”, I only imply the ability to make a positive difference to people. We all have such power in reality – that power may be as simple as the power to smile at someone and sparkle her day, or the power to respond and not react to a slight provocation (I refer to Stephen Covey here) – here I only refer to a similar, but additional, power that entrepreneurs wield, and seem to be mainly unaware of. I want these entrepreneurs, myself included, to realize this power, and enjoy playing an important role in the lives of their colleagues.