Accountability....

Off late, I had a lot of instances where I noticed that the one thing I always see being affected is Accountability. Most of the activities are in more than one tied to this and are constantly measured. My take on this, everyone is accountable for their actions and should be held responsible for it. Period.

If you are given a task, it is your ethical and moral responsibility to finish it. There are no exceptions under normal circumstances for it. Do it once and do it right. Once you finish, you are responsible for the rest of your life. Take instance of work place, if you are given a work, you are expected to finish it. Improvement would be measured on how you do it, how fast you do it and what can be done to automate it next time so that you don't have to spend time for it yet it is done. There is always someone on top of you to help out and validate.

Workplace accountability is very important. Every action, task is your responsibility and you are answerable to your supervisor. This also ensures that a hierarchy is maintained because your supervisor is also responsible for you apart from his own. So, that is one extra thing for your supervisor to handle and if he/she has done is right, that is what put them in the position they are. Accountability is one of the key factors to innovation.

Innovation is not an expectation these days, it has become a necessity. It is what sets you apart from the rest, kind of separates boys from men. With accountability, one get a moral sense of ownership. This ownership lets the individual see and identify ways to improve the action. As mentioned earlier, Automation is one of the key levers. It removes the proneness to errors and thereby results in higher quality, faster turn around time.

Accountability is one of the pillars of a strong character. It defines actions and predictability in humans.

Have it. Own it. Enjoy it.

Pebble

Two weeks ago I bought a new watch. It is a Pebble (https://getpebble.com). Interestingly cool and worthy is my opinion. I did a lot of research on the kind of wearable technology (not many choices using an iPhone) between Galaxy Gear, Sony and Pebble. The former two do not work with iOS leaving me the only option of Pebble. 

It is a cool looking black watch (that is the color I picked) with just one color to display, like a kindle (eReader). Because of this battery life is really good. Though it advertises of 5-7 days, I observed that 4-5 days is really comfortable. It connects to your phone using Bluetooth which means that your phone battery is gonna drain a bit faster than normal.

How it works is that anything that is a notification on the iPhone is displayed on the watch and apart from this one additional thing that can be controlled is the music on phone (start-stop play-pause). It has a small vibrator too so, if your phone vibrates, so does this (depends on what is set on your phone to vibrate). 

It can support up to 8 apps (very limited but...) that includes watch faces and apps. There is an SDK (Software Development Kit) that will let you program it (not for the non-geeky kind). So, you can keep changing the watch face whenever your mood changes. Some apps that I seen are for running a chrono clock, score etc. Since it has a accelerometer, it can track your hand movement and so, comes really handy to track your calories and activity while running etc.

I own a Bluetooth headset too so this is the coolest feature is that I can put my phone in the bag and just carry the headset and the watch. The watch tells me who is trying to reach me and the headset to communicate. I keep my phone on vibrate mode most of the time without disturbing anyone. I can answer and reject calls from the watch too. Watch faces are just great and I keep changing them very often. 

Overall, priced at 150$, I would say its worthy of the price. I am not too tech savvy about the features it has but this works for me, so I am good.

New age math calculations...

Well, this happened while I was in a bus.

This is the conversation between two guys after they purchased three bus tickets.The guys appeared to be 25-26 year IT professionals.

Guy 1: How much were the tickets?
Guy 2: 48 
Guy 1: So, how much is each (really??)
Guy 2: 3 tickets...48 Rs. So, that is 48 by 3...26...no...24...no..16. Yes, it is 16 Rs. (woahh.. Go home and open 4th grade math text book).

Me: With a really straight face and being as composed as possible (trying really hard). In my mind, I am like (ROTFL, LOL LMAO... #$%^&*)

So, in conclusion, 48/3 is a tough mathematical calculation....

Peace.