Friday, January 24, 2014

What I need from my weather app

what good is my weather app showing the current weather?

Oh!Yes it saved me from peeking out and see it is raining!

Come on guys, make an app that shows me at a glance how it is going to be when I go out for lunch or leave office to go home.

Build me a widget with a simple slider for  'Time travel'. I am almost never interested in current weather.

Build me a 1X1 icon that tells me if I need to take my umbrella along to work.

Build me what I need ....

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Making life simpler in 2014

One of the many things I want to do in 2014 is "to make my life simpler."

As a part of this theme I have been trying to mercilessly trim down my RSS feed. I have even considered consuming news only from a couple of magazines and podcasts .If the news'X' does not appear in my selected 2 news sources then I would be happy taking the risk of not knowing it.

And as I am thinking about executing my plan, this comes up on my RSS reader :



And I followed the link, and now I am a little wiser today having known about this fad called ''Cross fit". Does it make a difference to my life ? Will I be taking up this crazy HIT workout anytime soon?
NO
Time to execute my plan and see if it makes a difference to me in 2014 . Wish me luck...

Friday, October 4, 2013

The Curse of Knowledge - Harvard Business Review

The Curse of Knowledge - Harvard Business Review: "The problem is that once we know something—say, the melody of a song—we find it hard to imagine not knowing it. Our knowledge has “cursed” us. We have difficulty sharing it with others, because we can’t readily re-create their state of mind"


How to Juggle Multiple Roles - Christine M. Riordan - Harvard Business Review

Golden advice:
To manage our roles, we need to think deeply about each of them and identify their important behaviors. I can say that “I am an author.”  It means that I write articles and books. But, it is more significant to think about what I need to do to be an author.  A simple phrase change captures the difference:  I am an author versus I am being an author.  When I envision myself as “being an author,” I start to think about what behaviors I engage in. To be successful as an author, I should be researching a subject, reading other material, laying out the concept for an article, taking time each day to write, and working with editors and reviewers.  By laying out the behaviors associated with each role (e.g., I am being a mom, wife, friend…), we can determine if we are focusing on the right activities.
 Please read the full article at How to Juggle Multiple Roles - Christine M. Riordan - Harvard Business Review:


Sunday, July 28, 2013

What's 'Ubuntu edge' and why the buzz around it??

All of us were excited when we first heard of ubuntu for phones and I am sure many of you already checked out the unveiling of the ubuntu phone at CES 2013 (it was running on a nexus 4 I believe).

'Ubuntu Edge' is the name for the ubuntu phone that Canonical plans to come up with. And it's making news because Cononical has started a crowd-funding campaign to make this possible. Guess what..they are asking for $32,00,0000 (bn)!!! to make this happen. At day 5 as I post this they have raised 6bn.

Check out this video. This guys explains it beautifully in 6mins. 


Do check out the links given on the same page to know more.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Boar in Boots: Book review

That's a weird name. Why did I pick this book? I love stories and I expected to find lots of them. And I must say I was not disappointed. The author Parthasarathi Swamy has been a business journalist for the last 25 year working with most of Indian business magazines (was the editor of Business World and currently editor at IndiaKnowledge@Wharton) . So I did expect a few insider stories from his encounters with industry scions and there are plenty.

The book is titled as "Boar in the Boots:A Business Travelogue - Down the bylanes of two decades of India's liberalization. It consists of the author's experiences and articles from a number of Industry leaders. More that anything else it made me familiar with a lot of key players in the India Industry wihtin the last 20 years (unlike Gita Parimal's business maharaja's that covered only the well know business houses like Ambanis, Birlas and Tatas)



The language is conversational but be ready to google out things like, who was Gordon Geccko. And I am sure you would like what you find. (He is credited with the dialog "Greed in Good")

The chapters are short so dont worry about picking up a 300 page book. That's enough of a formal review, here is an excerpt from my notes when I was halfway through the book.


Page 166:Harshad Mehta
Just when I started feeling that it was becoming a drag, he slips in a great piece of narrative. After reading pieces from the likes of Adi Godrej and Narayan Murthy he gets you on your toes with his insights into scams, corruption and his interactions with Harshad Mehta.

That tells me one very clear thing, I picked up this book to get familiar with the journey of India's liberalization but what I craved for was inside stories, anecdotes from the author's experience covering business in India. He ensures that there are enough scholarly articles by erudite professors and industry think tanks for the serious kind of readers but thankfully intersperses his witty insightful articles to keep me glued onto the book.

For people like who missed the 90's and the liberalization growing up, there is enough from the last decade. I had just not taken the pain of collating my thoughts as I lived through them. For eg. I never looked at Satyam scam and told myself it can be looked at as a classic case of 'affinity fraud'. Well to be fair I did not know this word until I read this chapter on Satyam. But now that I do, I can move on to deeper issues around diversity on governing boards of companies. I am just a little better off understanding why Mr. Kamath was a natural choice when Mr. Murthy was stepping down a few years ago.
-----
Whoooow!!! TeamLease has 70,000 emloyees!!
"The world of organizations has deconstructed and the employment contract has shifted from lifetime employment to a taxicab relationship - Manish Sabharwal CEO TeamLease
-----
Some of the narratives opens up your mind to areas that you never thought of. I did not expect Mr. Murthy to be speaking about increasing FSI (floor space index) as a next step for liberalization/reforms. He says that will allow businesses like his to employ more people and get over land shortage. Now that he does say it, I can understand it must be something that a large business like Infosys has to grapple with.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Create magic in whatever you do

We all believe a magician does not reveal his tricks. Not until I saw this video, did I realize the pain and effort that goes into each of David Blaine's performance. No doubt he is a master performer, but listening him explain 'magic' is an eye-opener. As I heard him say these words, it reminded me of a few lines I had jotted down years ago from a poem called 'Luck'.

I worked by day,
And toiled by night.
I gave up play,
And some delight.
Dry books I read,
New things to learn.
And forged ahead,
Success to earn.
I plodded on with
Faith and pluck;
And when I won,
Men called it luck.




Hope David's words inspires you to create magic in whatever you do. As he puts it, "It's practice, it's training, it's experimenting, it's pushing through the pain to be the best that I can be.."

And some day, you get to recite the poem looking into your rear view mirror..

Related: Passion in life

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Leading into the storm

Nothing like a great story that leaves you with mixed feelings. The one I am talking about today is a story with a 'not-so-happy' ending and might leave you torn between celebrating risk-taking, adventure, heroism while reminding where such things might lead into.

This is a full length feature on CNN's site, quite a long read but gets you hooked on pretty easily. More so if you start thinking of similar situations around you or in your organization. Or better still if you are yourself in a position of leadership. Capt. Robin Walbridge was leading a vessel with a great history (take a look at the embedded video below) and was leading a crew who are not very different from the people on your team. Each of them with tons of ambitions and dreams and Capt. Robin the over-arching leader they looked up to.

The story is of the last voyage made by the vessel HMS Bounty before it lost itself to hurricane Sandy (2012). The story of a captain's awe inspiring speech about "Chasing Hurricanes" before losing the vessel, his own life and that of a crew member on that fateful day.

Before you move on to watch this video and read the full length article on CNN, I will request you to put a thought to how often are we in these people's shoes. Either as the Captain, chasing hurricanes or the crew who harm the boat more by keeping silent rather than vocalizing our concerns about the directions our team is taking.

So here is the link to the article on CNN's site "Life and death on the Bounty"

But before you go there take a look at this video to get a hang of the person (Capt. Robin Walbridge) and the magnificent vessel he commanded..the one that is now lost forever..




Friday, March 1, 2013

Review: The Oath of Vayuputras

One thing off my checklist. I almost expected to see lines of fans infront of Landmark on the morning of 27th. I had decided to go for a hard copy this time instead of a kindle copy (which is going to take some time). I had stopped myself from pre-ordering the book on landmark, I even made an effort not to take up the groupon offer (with 30% off).

Short Verdict: Worth the wait..

(Spoiler Alert)
The best part comes @ page 463 (chapter 45)!!!. I could feel my heart pounding as I joined in the action and interestingly the action figure was not Shiva but Sati!! I felt Amish was at his best in this part of the story..


Worst part.. wish Amish had stayed away from explaining basic science. For example Just a reference to mushroom shaped clouds should have been enough.

What I had always liked about the Shiva Triology was the unexpected twist that the author gave to our age old Hindu mythological characters and this one does not disappointing. Go for it, you wont repent..

Monday, January 14, 2013

Does Power-posing work?

I was watching this talk by Amy Cuddy from TED (Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are). Here is the crux of the talk in a few lines.

Our body language is normally a reflection of how we are feeling. Amy and her team of researchers carried out studies to figure out if it works the other way round. In her words,
"Our non-verbals govern how we think and feel about ourselves. Our bodies change our minds"
So she suggests "Fake it, till you make it". Taking up a few power poses can affect how you feel and behave.

But as a bunch of people who facilitate often, have any of you tried PowerPosing just before a session. OR using a typical Power stance to rein-in a conversation. Do you see people in your team take up power poses during a conversation with predictable results?

Friday, January 4, 2013

The art of juggling


As a child I was always fascinated by the Juggler. I would hold my breath as my mind would tell "Be ready to see gravity at work", but this interesting character seemed to have mystical powers. At least over those balls. I wished I had those powers. 

As I grew up I started to have a similar admiration for people who could handle with a zillion unfinished tasks on their plates. Well the feeling actually shifted from sheer disbelief, to accusing them of being irresponsible and callous, to a slow realisation that this is indeed the truth of life. There is no escaping the juggling and each one of can only strive to get as good as we can. But it took a long time to cross over to reality. I kept struggling to keep things in control and to be on the top of everything. Along the way I started picking up things that conformed to my beliefs. 

So when I came across these words in Shiv Khera's book 'You can win', "Unfinished tasks are like holes in a bucket. They drain your limited source of energy" I felt I had been vindicated. Here was a wise man saying what I have always known. Movies like 'Ocean Eleven' and 'The Italian Job' became my favourites. I would plan, simulate and be ready with a Plan A,B and C ready for everything. 

I wish, it had continued that way but I graduated, joined my job, settled into a relationship and life kept throwing balls of different colour at me. Soon it was becoming difficult to keep all of them in air. And I reacted with more rigour. I needed help and started trying out anything that promised redemption. From techniques like Pomodoro and GTD  to a hundred tools and apps that claimed they could help. As I met with varying success, I kept moving from a state of denial (it's just not possible) to ecstatic optimism (this finally seems to work!!).

It was a slow realisation that things you wish to happen do not happen as quickly as you want them to. You can not always finish one thing and move on to the next. Neither can you by any means have control of all the variables that control your world. And I thus started on the path of learning the 'art of juggling'.

Everyday I continued to see master jugglers who seemed to have perfected the art while there were others who seemed to have a secret pact with fate. Things just worked for them. But either ways they were far happier. 

As someone so fascinated with jugglers and claiming to study the art of juggling, it should have been evident long ago but I needed my deja vu moment. Not long ago, a friend was trying to calm me down over an planning related argument and tried explaining the term 'Last responsible moment'. He said, "I worry too much.." and a decision needs to be made at the LRP. I was not too surprised when I traced it back to 'Alistair Cockburn', a familiar name in the geekland I live since the past few years. 

It's the slight twist of wrist as the master juggler throws the next ball into the air, that makes the difference. Or may be the trick is know the right time to do it. Should have been obvious to me but nevertheless I was happy as if I had finally figured out the secret sauce. This may be another false start in my eagerness to master the art of juggling. But nevertheless, I need to try it out. Wish me luck.

PS: Dedicated to all the master jugglers I have met so far. Most of them natural jugglers who can't explain how they do it :)

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Story of an App Wonder: Draw Something

Charles Forman
Meet Charles Forman. The date is 21 March 2012 and our prodigy is raising a toast to an unprecedented success.

The events in this story are not unprecedented but so close a fairy tale that I am going to set this story in a not so imaginary land call appland.

He had just taken up an offer for $118 million.

Not too far back into the past… The date was February 6th. His team was sitting and anxiously watching a counter tick. The last round of funding from the VCs was going to dry up in just over 3 months. This was a big day. They were launching an app call 'Draw Something". Slowly the download ticker inched up to 30,000 on the Appstore. But what happened next made the world sit up and watch.

In just 9days they had reached 1mn users!! (== entire population of a country like Mauritius or Bahrain.) To put things into perspective Facebook took 10 months to hit 1mn users, twitters 24months, foursquare 13 months  and a few more successful ones like instagram 2.5 months (Link)

In over 85 countries it had become the top app in App Store. It reached a height of 24mn daily active users over the next few months.

But that was not always the case. How did this happen. Charles the founder of Omgpop started about 6 years ago with a not so imaginatively named site called iaminlikewithyou. From what was almost a dating site it slowly moved towards becoming a casual gaming site. It was only in 2008 that he managed to get a funding of $1.5mn. They had come out with 34 games before Draw Something (not surprising, Rovio actually had 51 game titles to itself before Angry birds became a rage).

Draw Something had its roots in a real time drawing game called "Draw my thing" on iminlikewithyou.com (note omgpop.com). It was one of the more successful games and had a decent following. It graduated into a Facebook app and gathered a sizeable fan base. So when the time came to bet big, OMGPOP decided to put its force behind it. From the web to Facebook land the journey had been promising but the actual treasure was in Appland. After having taken the Apple App Store by storm an Android version for the Google Play Store soon followed. In the first 50 days it was Downloaded more than 50 million times over iOS and Android. 

What made it such a great success?

The simplicity of game play is a great factor for sure. But according to me the fact that you get credit only if the opponent guesses it correct made it truly collaborative.

The app seemed to have gone viral by leveraging existing network on Facebook. Ability to spread via contacts: call for players over Facebook, twitter or email helped it go viral.

Free version with ads in addition to a paid version. Both having options to buy extra features. This ensured it lured enough people into the game before hooking them onto it.

And as they say, nothing succeeds like success. As it rose up to the top 10 chart on App Store, it gathered more attention. Soon people (including celebrities) were tweeting their drawings and more people were taking note of it.

Not surprising that Zynga started taking note of it and a deal was done soon enough.

PS: There is another facet to this great success story. Supporting an app that scales at such an unprecedented rate is nothing short of a thriller my techie side. Here is a link to an article on Gamasutra that you may find interesting. (Link)

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Don't give up on your user

It's hard to get a new user. So it makes sense to make a real good effort not to lose one that you have. 

People who have agreed to subscribe to newsletters from you provide a straight communication channel. Not going into how they agreed in the first place, as users we know that it soon seems like spam in our inbox. If it becomes too much then users look for a way to get out of it.
  
I liked this particular experience as I was trying to handle what was becoming too much of messaging from a site I used.

As I clicked on the unsubscribe link from the mail, I faced the first attempt at keeping me with them. "Have we been sending you too many mails?", Oh yes!! you have been. That's what brought me here. But I appreciate the fact that you seem to have realized that as a possibility..

Fist step of unsubscribe process. Just reduce the number of maills

Nevertheless, I no longer wanted the mails and so chose 'Unscubscribe'. Done!! I thought.. but they had not given up on me yet!!!

What if I still wanted their mails but on a different email address??

Good try!! But no.. 

Things do not end here.

"Ok. Ok.. we understand, but now that you are here (and we don't know when you will be here again) why don't you take a look around... and may be give us some business!!!"



Well I ended it there. But not without appreciating their efforts at keeping me was their customer.

As an analyst, I get into discussions around experience like these and in the past I have allowed customers to part without much of a fight. Next time around I am going to make a real effort to cling on to my customers. Would you not???

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Management funda 17: be your own advocate

There was a farmer who had a horse and a goat….. One day, the horse became ill. So he called the veterinarian, who said:

"Well, your horse has a virus. He must take this medicine for three days. I'll come back on the 3rd day and if he's not better, we're going to have to put him down.

Nearby, the goat listened closely to their conversation.

The next day, they gave the horse the medicine and left.

The goat approached the horse and said: “Be strong, my friend. Get up or else they're going to put you to sleep!”

On the second day, they again gave the horse the medicine and left.

The goat came back and said: "Come on buddy, get up or else you're going to die! Come on, I'll help you get up. Let's go! One, two, three..."

On the third day, they came to give the horse the medicine and the vet said: "Unfortunately, we're going to have to put him down tomorrow. Otherwise, the virus might spread and infect the other horses".

After they left, the goat approached the horse and said: "Listen pal, it's now or never! Get up, come on! Have courage! Come on! Get up! Get up! That's it, slowly! Great! Come on, one, two, three... Good, good. Now faster, come on...... Fantastic! Run, run more! Yes! Yay! Yes! You did it, you're a champion...!!!"

All of a sudden, the owner came back, saw the horse running in the field and began shouting: It's a miracle! My horse is cured. We must have a grand party. Let's kill the goat!!!!

The Lesson: Nobody truly knows which employee actually deserves the merit of success, or who's actually contributing the necessary support to make things happen.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Management Funda 16: It's Performance that counts!!

Here is a good one to add to my collection of Mangement Funda Collection.


A Priest dies  and is awaiting his turn in line at the Heaven's Gates.

Ahead of him is a guy, fashionably dressed, in dark sun glasses, a loud shirt, leather jacket and jeans.

God asks him: Please tell me who are you, so that I may know whether to admit you into the kingdom of Heaven or not?

The guy replies: I am Pandi, Auto driver from Chennai!

God consults his ledger, smiles & says to Pandi: Please take this silken robe; gold scarf  and enter the Kingdom of 
Heaven ...

Now it is the priest's turn. He stands erect and speaks out in a booming voice: I am Pope's Assistant; Head Priest of the so and so Church for the last 40 years.


God consults his ledger; says to the Priest: Please take this cotton robe &; enter the Kingdom of Heaven ...

'Just a minute,' says the agonized Priest. 'How is it that a foul mouthed, rash driving Auto Driver is given a Silken robe ; a Golden scarf and me, a Priest, who's spent his whole life preaching your Name & goodness has to make do with a Cotton robe?'

'Results my friend, results
,' shrugs God.
 
'While you preached, people SLEPT; but when he drove his Auto, people PRAYED'
 

"It's
 PERFORMANCE & not POSITION that ultimately counts."

Friday, August 24, 2012

Why buy from the kindle india store ??


I was ecstatic when I came to know about Amazon finally opening its kindle India store. Took me some time to figure out how to reach there. (Covered in the latter part of this post)

Initial euphoria apart, I was disappointed by the list of books that was available. But definitely better than the situation I remember a few months back. A quick search on 2 popular titles (Melhua and Chetan Bhagat) and I thought 'Not too bad'. I had been searching for a kindle version of "Immortals of Melhua' for a long time.

But the actual good news for us kindle owners is to be able to pay in INR. I was not so sure if this is a big deal, so I dug out my past credit card bills and  did some search around how much difference does it make for each purchase.

Let' take an actual example. I just bought 'Immortals of Meluha'.
Date: Aug 24 2012
Price as on flipkart: 140 INR after discount on the MRP (195 INR ~3.5USD)
Price for Kindle edition: 112 INR (~1.19 USD)

"Thats not good" I thought. The exchange rate today (24 Aug 2012) is 55 INR for 1 USD.

Time to do some more research.. I dug up my old credit card statements. I was in for a surprise. I  had never taken note of how much I was being charged in the name of transaction charges.

On an average I found the each transaction I had done on my India (Visa) credit card had a mark up of at least 10-15 % on the actual forex transactions I had done.

A quick search will tell you that:


Following charges are applied by various entities involved in the transaction:

1. Currency Conversion fee– Whenever a foreign transaction takes place through your card network service providers (MasterCard or Visa), apply a conversion fee in the range of 1 to 2%.

2. Overseas Transaction Charge– Whenever a foreign transaction takes place through your card, the issuing bank applies a transaction fee in the range of 2.5 to 3.5% of the transaction amount.
Source: http://www.goodreturns.in/classroom/2012/02/how-foreign-credit-card-transaction-works.html
Few other sources:
http://blog.vivekv.com/credit-cards-in-india-how-to-get-it-which-is-better.html
http://loans.msn.bankbazaar.com/guide/using-your-credit-card-overseas-understand-your-charges/35228/


So it actually comes up to be slightly cheaper. The best part is that you know what price you are paying instead of waiting for the Credit card bill and realising that you have been ripped off.


I think it is a good deal but do check out what conversion rate amazon is providing before you hit 'pay'.


How to reach the India Kindle Store:


Instinctively I googled it hoping for a India specific link. And all I got was a bunch of news reports and sponsored ads by Junglee.com. The trick is to

  1. Log into your Amazon Account
  2. Go to Your Account > Manage your kindle
  3. Go into Country settings and change the country to INDIA
  4. Now you can visit the kindle store which should now show you the India specific content.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

What makes you stay ??

Ice breakers are great way to start a session. It should be simple, quick and get people talking. When we met this group of stakeholders in my current project, the simple format was: 'Introduce yourself, tell us what you do and why you like working at XXX'

In this group were people who had been working for this organisation for 42 year and the youngest person was around for just a few months. Inadvertently my friend had asked an interesting question that gave us great insights into what it meant to be a part of the business we were dealing with. Most people in the group had spent their lives doing just that and they had just a few minutes to reflect and say what they liked most.

When it came to me I did not even mention how long I have been working in my organisation. The average life span of a person in an IT organisation seems so short in comparison. And I can truly claim to be working in an organisation that has been voted consistently over the years as one of the best places to work. Interestingly, a couple of days later we were in a pub having a heated discussion over a drink about what brought us here.

But soon the discussions shifted to ' what makes you stick around?'



Listening to each others perspectives was enlightening. For most of us it was the kind of people we got to work with. Quite strange because most of the people around me would be termed 'jerks' or at best 'nerds' elsewhere. But still my answer was "I like working with people who 'keep me on my toes', where every statement I make can be questioned by any member of the team, where passionate disagreements do not lead to sour relations but mutual respect. Of course, I hate the stubbornness of people around which at times seems like an unreasonable eagerness to always  have the last say in an argument. But enjoy (giving and receiving) whole hearted support once we set on delivering/executing plan. I enjoy the sense of shared responsibility of each assignment we take up."

Having been a lateral hire, I put up this question "Grass often looks greener on the other side of the fence. Since you have always been on one side of the fence, have you not had this feeling very often."

The answer was a surprising 'NO'. This seems so peculiar to Thoughtworkers. The overall sense of empowerment provided by the culture and value seems so strong that it made everything else look unattractive on the other side of the fence.

The point is we all have reasons to stick around. Not all of it is intrinsic to an organisation. For an individual I believe it is a combination of a lot of factors. But as a friend put it, " We spend a better part of our life at our workplace, much more that what we get to spend at our homes, so it makes sense to be picky about where you work. Enjoy your life as you earn the mullah because you spend more time earning it that you get to spend it."

Whatever makes you stick around let it be the experience of being around and not anything else...

So what makes you stick around??


Sunday, April 29, 2012

Inception Game : Open the Magic Box

I am right now in the middle of an Inception. (If you are hearing this term for the first time, in simple terms it is the phase of initiation of an agile project.) A time when you are trying to get your head around a business problem. Understanding a new domain and your immediate scope of work. We usually take the help of a number of interactive exercises to get the stakeholders up and talking about their work. Most of the times we have to tweak our repertoire to adapt to the customer domain and participants in the workshop. This time we came up with a new exercise, which we named as 'Open the Magic Box'.

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Management Funda 15: Deflect criticism

I am just back from a short meeting where we sold a vision document to our client. As I saw Mark hard sell all that was in the document, we walked out of the meeting with no change requests. And in the course of all this, here is an anecdote he shared.

There was this guy who worked in the creative field. He had a boss who had the habit of finding and pointing out something wrong. So on days  when he had to present his work, he would consciously wear mismatch of socks. And then just go and present. At the end of it his boss would say "All that is fine but your socks don't match..." !!!

So with people where you know you will be criticized, figure out a way to deflect criticism.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Who am I : Singnature lines

One of the advantages of working for a maverick company is the chance to meet exciting people. Of late I have started taking notice of the signature lines of Thoughtworkers..

The latest one is 'Problem Solver'

I think that is way better than signing off as 'Business Analyst'.Each word carries a lot of baggage with it. The moment you write a 'Business Anaylst' or a Project manager, there is a lot background that gets painted even without the the person realizing. No one to blame. Stereotyping is just one of the many cognitive biases we have to live with.

But how do people react when they are faced with something that they cannot anchor to something else. It's just doesn't fit into the fixed frames of references they have made for themselves. Well this is another complex subject and a whole lot of other cognitive biases come into picture. Most of the times they tend to make a close approximation or rely on only one facet of information that they find handy or easily available.

Here is a small snippet of how people react to a innovative signature line (as expressed by of another Thoughtworker)..

I tried an experiment when I moved from PS into a sales role.  I got business cards that said “leader of change” and some that said “Business Development Manager.”  LOC cards get me a strong reaction one way or the other (what does that mean/how interesting to “is this a joke?”) while the BDM cards were immediately dismissed for fear that I would sell them something.
 I would prefer this scenario better than letting others stereotype me. I am unique and I deserve a chance to describe myself to you... Even if it means unsettling your frames of reference or shocking you ..