Innovation camp for toddlers ?

With kids around Sunday's are not really boring. They swing from being a lot of work to outright enlightening.

This fateful Sunday is enlightening one :)

While the ladies of the apartment complex are busy arranging the Ganapati on 3rd Sep. I had the charge of keeping the kids busy for few hours. Neighborhood kids between 4 and 12.

After many games, many packets of biscuit and making maggi noodles it was time to sit down in the terrace and have some topic to talk about.

So one 8 yr old boy starts with Quizzing on invention.

The usual quiz book stuff followed.

Who invented electricity - hands go up "Thomas Alva Edison".

Who invented phone - hands go up again " Graham Bell".

Before 15 mins all the book stuff was over. Then the kids started musing on their own "Bullet Train ? " No hand went up.

As the adult in charge I tought them how to get on Wikipedia and get some answers.

But even Wikipedia ran out of answers for the questions those were coming next.

"Who invented belt ?" One younger boy asks.

I said - "someone whose pant was falling down always and being shame shame invented it".

Who invented "Bullock Card?" - Someone who was either lazy to carry stuff around or wanted a less painful way to carry more stuff.

Kids were smart enough to find a pattern.

If something troubles us consistently, we find something to reduce the pain.

This is something very profound. So profound that even grown ups, being paid fat money to innovate, dont understand easily.

I constantly get e-mail requests from our VP asking to nominate Top 10% of the team to attend Innovation camps and listen to successful people in "Star breakfast" program.

It has never mentioned, nominate people who complain the most about a product or a process.

Kids discussion was self sustaining for next few minutes and evolved in to processes.

The last question was "Everyday mama screams at us for drinking milk. Lets find something to reduce that daily pain of drinking milk".

I had to moderate , "Lets learn to like milk and ask for it ourselves. There will be no screaming / scolding. It will be much less painful".

No one appreciated that - that gives me the idea of having a "Think Simple camp for toddlers" one of these days.

Green is the color of ambition ...

Green is associated with many things. Envy, Environment ! And more over Money !

Off late I notice Green has become a Mantra.

A mantra that should be used to achieve the Green Initiative. Reduce the power usage. Reduce the water usage. Conserve energy. Plant more tress.

Every use of Mantra also has its many mis-uses. Indian mythology has many examples of that !

In today's corporate world, I have started noticing the abuses !

Ambitious managers, upwardly looking ones, all chanting the same mantra. In all meetings.

How green their initiatives are. How the printing is being treated as a modern taboo. How, waterless urinals can save us water. How, plantation around the work place gives cleaner air to breath.

Green has become that one initiative of choice. Everyone is jumping on the green bandwagon. It has become the next color of ambition.

I am personally happy about this change. As for every key killer initiative on the block, this one is also being introduced with chaos, multitude and 80 percent of people focusing of 20 percent green.

Nevertheless, great change in mindset. Great mantra to chant.

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Betaal hopes - after the initial abuse goes down rest 80 percent of the job will be done.

We will produce devices that inherently use much less power rather than writing applications to switch them off when a tools thinks it not in use.

We will make our work places green not using Eucalyptus trees that actually make the land baron by sucking in all the water.

We will not have the flowing fountains in front of our office. We will not have urinals that take 20 units of electricity to do the flushing job without water.

We will make the process truly paperless.

Mahatma Gandhi said - "Nature have enough for human beings need. But not enough for human beings greed".

We will be less greedy one day :)

Two wrongs don't make it right !

Betaal and Vikram had not met in a while. Both were traveling and taking care of independent stuff.

So after a few days when the met, Betaal was in a quizzing mood.

Betaal: Vicky ! How have you been ?

Vikram: Great ! Glad to be back together.

Betaal: I ve a puzzle for you to solve.

He goes on !

"I hired two young men in 2006. From the same company. Same grade. Hired both of them on the same date. For this puzzle lets name them Mahesh and Suresh.

Both of them were supposed to join on 11 Nov 2006. And because they could not be relieved from their previous company, they had to postpone the joining dates to 25th December of 2006.

As you we know we do give employees stock option of our company on joining which are priced by the board after the joining date of the company. Both of them had same number of stock options at joining.

Board meeting happened on 19th Nov by which time both Mahesh and Suresh did not intimate their delay in joining. So, all there options were priced at USD 19 (the value on that day).

But they joined late. And technically the pricing now is before their joining date. The next board meeting happened on 27th Feb 2007.

The price of the stock was 27 USD.

HR process figured out the illegal option pricing done for Suresh. And made the original stock price void and made it 27 USD per share.

For some reason, it missed Mahesh, who had the exact same situation. Now, after almost 2 years, Suresh demands the difference between 19 USD and 27 USD. What should we do ?

Stock Admin suggests - do him a CAP award for the amount.

HR suggests - Roll back Mahesh's pricing now. But Mahesh stocks now have started vesting and he has already sold some as they are in gain.

What would you do Vicky ? "

It sounded complex. Vikram thinks about it for a while.

Vikram: I guess we need to convince Suresh that what is done for him is right although he is set to lose money. Its going to be difficult. From his prospective its not fair. From a system prospective, it is not fair because of a mistake. Some wrong doing on someone's part.

Doing another wrong thing would not make it right.

Betaal smiled and got up to walk to his cabin.

While going away he said - "Thats the right thing to do Vicky ! Thats the right thing.

However, if Suresh is someone you want to bet on, if Suresh is someone worth fighting for, I would give him the CAP and make it up for him. I would do the wrong thing if he is worth it"

Work Life Balance - Action Plan

Lets get down to some action plan ! Shall we ?

MWLL

Manage personal energy

This is one of my best ever Harvard Business Review reading, that explains it all.

Making of a corporate athlete (http://www.emilybarnes.com/docs/corporateathlete.pdf).

(Its pretty much a myth that life is a marathon. Its actually set of small Sprints followed by rest/lull. At least for people like us. )

Delegation

There is always something we can handover others to do. For them to grow. For us to get a break and make bandwidth to grow.

One thing to be careful in the delegation business though - you can not delegate everyone equally. There are some people you need to delegate the

tasks. There are some people you need to delegate the responsibilities. If responsibility is delegated to some one who is worth taking care of tasks, you will end up doing double work ;)

Set expectation

Both at work and to friends and family. How much work by when ? How many dinners together a month ? How many movies with lunch table in a quarter ? ;)

Communicate

There is no such thing as over communication (in most cases). Someone out there has a easier way to do what you are struggling with.

Blend it

Work and Life. Have plenty of fun while at work. Have a core group of friends (like I am blessed with :). Celebrate small things. Get some work done from house.

Join a company that allows flexible timing and working from home.

Stay close to work :) Dont spend precious time in commuting to and from work.

Grow at your pace

(this one not all going to like). Dont look at someone else's growth and try to mimic it. Compete with only yourself :)

LWML

Why is this important ? If one is not successful at work, it creates certain social pressure that can erase your fun that you having with life.

Work comes first in the term/phrase Work Life balance. Of course enhance skills and watch other successful people. Have a role model at work.

May be not in the right place in terms of work ? May be not enough ambition to succeed ?

Key is most of the MWLL pointers help in this section to increase Work part !

LWLL

Something is fundamentally wrong.

This state needs a lot of soul searching. DNA tweaking. Medication.

Are you at the right place ? Is the place bigger than you ?

Is your family worth having around ?

I had an employee who did not do great at work and she was neither having fun in personal life too.

I spent many hours listening to her issues.

It was a case, where she was not keeping up with work pressure and did not have adequate pace and skills to fare with rest of the team.

She was carrying the stress home. In her home, her parents were adding more pressure to that. She was physically handicapped and finding a groom for him in Indian society was a challenge that was bothering her parents. The end result was, a lot of frustrated people and yelling at each other every night.

The end result was coming to work to feel even more dejected next day.

It was a genuine case where luckily things were not related to maturity of the person. I did coach her for a while.

Provided some of the suggestions for her to take up a job in a service industry with much less challenging work profile and move to a different country (for a while).

Her family did she her value addition when she went away too far. She came to terms with work as she could handle that. And the foreign soil taught her self respect.

She started respecting her work.

Most importantly -

Thou shalt not procrastinate !

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Told ya ! It is going to be a lot of preaching and obvious stuff ! You were forewarned ! :)

Work Life Balance - Setting Goal !

Based on your own preferred accounting mechanism once the Work and Life parts are measured, it would be easy to know where to focus.

There are 3 possibilities.

- More Work. Less Life. (MWLL)

- Less Work. More Life. (LWML)

- Less Work. Less Life. (LWLL - Yes ! This is also a case of imbalance)

The fourth possibility - More Work and more life (MWML) is discounted. As if thats the case, there is perfect harmony already. I would love to work for you :)

Now the constraints.

Quantity of time - Upper limit is 24 hrs a day. Time we spend on work, time we spend on life and time we waste because of procastination or stress, all together.

Quality of time - A flexible dimension that can be tweaked to achieve MWML.

Now, lets have our eye on MWML target based on how much success we want at work and how much at life. Again, feel free to use your own numbering system. I like decimal :)

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As I am writing it, I am also doing my own math. For the first time in my life I am taking a serious look at achieving MWML :)

Work Life Balance - Measurements !

While tackling any issue, we do need to start with a way to clearly measure the current state. Set a goal for the end state.

Some thing that can be validated against. And then make an action plan. Very engineer like .. really !!

So, before delving in to the preaching ;) part, lets take a moment on how to identify how much balance each one of us have.

In traditional sense, "work" is something we do to earn something to have a "life" that we want.

In the process, sometimes "work" becomes the "life". Mainly because it becomes and addiction, or we get caught in a never ending rat race.

So, to measure work life balance, we need to talk to people, who we work with and who we have the life with.

A lot of us remain content by just looking at our own sense of balance. Which is not the right metrics.

Many occasions I ve seen the working spouse boasting how much he or she helps out with household chores and kids. And more time, we have seen the non-working spouse shouting back, that thats not the case.

Many times we see ourselves complaining we do so much work, while our boss or peers not really thinking that way.

So the measurement should start with by talking to others, not to oneself. In most of the cases where one is successful at work, they get hooked / addicted to some level. And they develop a blind spot to their non-work portion, without their active knowledge. They think their life is cool. But its not so, if others who one supposed have the life with are not cool.

@ Work - watch peers, watch successful people, watch unsuccessful people around you at work. Watch they manage their time or don't manage their time.

Create a baseline.

@Life - See if you spouse / partner / relatives / friends / kids others are content with your involvement or not.

Take a piece of paper and write down if you know 10 people, outside of your work and relatives. People you can call up anytime. Go to their houses and have impromptu get together and have fun.

So, looking for the right sources to get your data about your work - life balance provides the best measurement of it.

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Next - Setting a goal !

Work Life Balance

Most of us in information technology industry, working out of India, having customer base all over the world do not certainly have the lifestyle what our

parents used to have when they were working (for local institutions / Govt. etc).

We do not have concept of timezone as world does not sleep and customers are all over the world. In other words we have ONE time zone called Gobal Time Zone.

As a result, we do not have a 9 to 5 job. Most of us.

So, last evening when bunch of us got together for a kids birthday in neighborhood, there are many key observations that jumped out.

- The only way of bonding and social get together happens through the kids now for the middle aged professionals.

- Although most of them were physically present in the birthday party, only kids were enjoying and doing their bits needed for the party.

All the working adults were either taking calls / listening in to with their mobile phones/bluetooth ear pieces. Some of them are in different corners checking out their BlackBerries frequently.

I tried to bring up the topic of Work Life balance as it seemed most appropriate to me at that point.

And one wise guy responds, "I ve perfect work life balance. I do the work and my wife does the life".

That was good for a laugh. But far from truth and far from political correctness.

I am not master of work-life balance. But that wont prevent me from looking at and discussing the obvious about how to strike one.

Over this week, I ll post a few items on how to achieve work-life balance and different schools of thought regarding this topic.

Of course most of them are going to be obvious and common sense. But so is everything :)

Importance of a Role Model - The story of M&M

I am not a huge cricket fan, but I do keep a tab on scores and wins and losses etc. Moreover, if there is any new, innovative revolution happening in this game, I am hooked. By being an Indian, its really difficult to get cricket out of DNA completely.

Now, India is visiting the neighboring island of Sri Lanka for a series. India team is pretty strong now. It has come off its lows 2-3 yrs ago. Its young, fearless and has a
good "Can Do" attitude. That makes the game interesting.

With this backdrop, I was not expecting India to struggle against Sri Lanka.

And I was wrong. Sri Lanka has taken the game to next level with one new discovery - "Mendis".

They have reinvented Murli in Mendis. Amazing new style and deception that will take world cricket 5 years to come to terms with.

Mulri and Mendis ( M&M) - reel the wickets with precision and frequency never thought of earlier.

So, what makes Sri Lanka to have a Mendis right when Murli is in the last mile of his career ? Why have not other countries found their own Mendis ?

Ain't the athletes trying in other places ? Of course they are.

I do not have a clear answer to this question.

However, on my way back from Goa, on the flight I was listening to the 12th Chapter of Bhagbat Geeta (The Bhaktiyoga). That could have answered my question to certain extend.

In Bhaktiyoga Arjuna asks Krishna, "There are many sages who do everything to know the Bramhan and do rigerous practices to attain it. While I see others, more earthly people trying to pray you and be your devotee. Which group of people are right ? Who will succeed in attaining you and the Bramhan ?"

To which Krishna responds, "The people who are becoming my devotee will have a better chance of getting there sooner. Although, the sages who are practicing all the right things to achieve or attain Bramhan would also get there, they may take more time or some of them may not even get there. They know all the best practices that they have to master. Despite that they wont all get there.

In the other hand the people who have surrendered their ears and heart and mind to me, will get there easily.

Because, they have a role model. I am their role model. They will look up to me, the Bramhan itself. And they will follow the practices with devotion. They wont questions certain things. They completely surrender and trust me. I am happy to be their role model."

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May be to achieve the level of perfection like Mendis, we all need a role model like Murli.
A live, kicking, real Role Model. Just knowing what are the right things to do, may not be enough.

Posting from Goa !

Kabhi kisi ko mukkamil jahaan nahin milta

Kabhi jameen toh kabhi aasmaan nahin milta

What makes one wise ?

Vikram is smart when it comes to choosing right people for his team. He has built his credibility around his nack of hiring the right people. Attracting the right talent and retaining them. However, lately some of his key hires in to management team are not working out well.

Some do not fit in to the aggressive, constantly changing business needs. Some of them chicken out too soon, thinking they won't fit in.

Vikram is conflicted. Not sure what is going wrong in his process of choosing the right DNA for the job.

His need is imminent now. One of his recent hires in to management team has quit. And he has to find a replacement soon to keep the business running. And can not afford to make another mistake.

He takes a quick walk to Betaal's office and settles down behind the closed door. All he gets is 5 mins of help in making the right decision.

Vikram: Hi Betaal !

Betaal: Vicky .. you look worried. What's up ?

Vikram: I have two potential candidates to choose from, for one of the critical job functions. One of them really sounds like a wise guy.

Talking to him, I get this feeling that he has taken right decisions all his life. Communicates well and smart.

The other one is also smart, technically strong. Understands business and people and the context. But he has failed in two of his last six or seven projects / deliverables. He is still a favorite in the management community though.

Betaal: Congrats Vicky ! You are lucky to have a choice. I am glad you have narrowed down to two people. Now, what is the problem ? What exactly bothers you ?

Vikram: From a skills and experience fitment prospective, I like the second guy. But he has really failed in some of his key projects. I am worried if I hire him, I ll inherit his bad luck. I really need a wise guy for this job. I ve personally failed to hire the right people first place, and thats why I am here so soon.

Betaal: What's with the first guy ?

Vikram: On paper he is perfect. All interview feedbacks are good. But, there is just one problem. My instincts, my gut feeling are not with him. You know it is not very scientific to judge these things based on gut feel. I am here for you advice.

Betaal: OK ! Let me keep it small and simple. Go with the second guy ! If you need a wise guy, given everything equal the second guy is wiser than the first.

Good judgement comes from wisdom. Wisdom comes from bad judgment.

The second guy has done some mistakes in recent past.

He is wiser because of his mistakes.

Secondly, gut feel ! That's your cumulative experience speaking to you. That's your inner voice. It does not have to be scientific.

Vikram's 5 mins were over. The cloud of confusion gone from his face.

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Its a long weekend coming up. And hopefully the dark monsoon clouds over the city sky will clear up too !

Feed-forward !

Its been a while I ve posted something here. Been a week or so. Not that I do not come across incidents that is worth writing about.

Life has never been that dull :) Just that other stuff took priority over posting the blog.

The yearly appraisal season is going on. This is a corporate process when one as a manager, provides feedback and rate his / her employees.

For some people its very stressful season. For some, business as usual.

My personal approach towards giving feedback and rating peoples performance is very basic and down to earth simple. I like to provide the feedback on a continuous basis. Feedbacks, that I derive from the delta between my experiences and the person's experiences. And the feedbacks I give, are in very non-threatening environment and media.

In a hallway. Over cup of coffee. PJs, Story telling. Over instant messaging.

There has seldom been an occasion where I set up One to One meeting with my employee to do feedbacking ! (This has its pros and cons both. )

My main goal always has been, that no one should hear something new and surprising when it comes to this session of feedback and rating. Everyone should know where they stand by this time. Everyone should be aware of the areas they can improve in.

Often I come across a very few employees who do everything right for their experience level. Always surprise me by thinking ahead of me. Getting involved before being asked. Doing things the way I would have done. I find myself in a situation of not being able to provide any feedback that can result in a positive change in those employees.

I had this appraisal session with one of those employees recently. I found myself doing stuff which is more future looking that backward looking. The correct word to explain that would be "feed-forwarding". Its like if you do these things, org will see you there. That "there" is somewhere beyond where the employee is right now.

This is a technique I learnt recently and I am happy with how it works so far.

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When you can not feed-back, feed-forward.

Pressure ! Cooks and crumbles

There are many schools of thought when it comes to the most ancient corporate tool of productivity, called "Pressure".

Some feel we should let the minds free, allow them plenty of time, water, air and food (for thought) and they will come up with the GOODs ! If we apply pressure (in terms of deadline, budget, survival ) the poor souls crumble. They suffocate and even the last bit of possibility of any innovation crumbles to death.

Some feel, if we do work under pressure, we do come up with a solution. We deliver on time, as we are focused and not procrastinating or day-dreaming. The mind is occupied with the thoughts of getting to the result and the consequences of not getting there.

Now, lets take a look at the whole thing slightly differently. Through nature's eyes.

- Under pressure food cooks faster and using less resources (like heat and edible oil)

- Under pressure the debris of nature convert to petroleum

- Pressure difference in atmosphere, cause huge destruction and causes the same debris

Many good examples and many bad examples. So, both schools of thoughts are right. As a result both schools of thoughts are wrong.

Because its not pressure that really determines the consequence. Its the subject under pressure.

So, which subject and what context would flourish under pressure ? The whole question need to be asked and answered every time we generate pressure to get something done. All three parameters - subject, context and pressure need to be thought as single entity to achieve desired result and success.

And sometimes we do not know all three of the parameters before we create the pressure situation. We might know the context, but not the subject or vice versa. Those are the situations, you go with your gut feel and take a risk and be prepared if it back fires !

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I found myself creating undue pressure on an artist to create an unique new art. And the artist revolted that art is something that does not develop under pressure. Which I did understand and felt sorry about doing this. But the artist went ahead and tried the best. The art came out to be a master piece. But the interpretation by the artist is pressure helped the great result.

I think - the outstanding result made it look like that pressure worked.

Chasing our tail

It has been part of life all along.

Right when you are ready to commit to a relationship, a few more conditions will spring out.

Right when you are ready to kick a bad addiction, a situation will present itself that seeks comfort in that addiction.

Right when you want to get over some one, an opportunity will swing by to have him / her for longer.

Right when you need to stay close, you will be drafted.

Right when you need to get away, you would discover the bond.

Right when you finish climbing one peak, the higher peak will be visible.

Right when you are ready with a release a product, a few of the show stoppers will pop up.

Right when you are ready to seal a deal, a few more erratas to RFP will show up.

Ain't we all chasing our own tail ?

Will we ever get there ? Wherever it is ?

We are all in a rat race. Whether we lose or win it, we are still rats.

Right when I slow down and say I do not need to be in the race, the rules change to that of a "slow cycle" race !

Relationship Fuel !!!!

(For the sensitive nature of the event that leads me to write this, I would refrain from writing the story and just mention the moral here. Just the Gyan, no Vikram / Betaal chit chat)

What is needed to build relationship between two human beings ?

Most common and researched answer will be "Love and Trust".

Here is my finding from some of the events today and looking back to many such experiences in the tenure of my life.

Relationship needs any sort of emotion between two human being. They do not have to be Love and trust.

The emotion can even be curiosity, admiration, inspiration, intolerance, hatred -- the entire spectrum of emotion. If any sort of reaction is evoked when two people meet, there will be a relationship. Any sort !

No reaction , No relation :)

PS: I will come back and explain it in much detailed with help of my main characters, Vikram and Betaal, the two splits of the same personality.

Useful Inaction ???

I kept hearing the verses of Geeta again and again in the 23 hour flight back home.

( That is the ONLY music on my iPOD apart from a few HBR audio articles and a few Bob Dylan, Kenny Rogers, Gulam Ali and Fateh Ali Khan).

One particular verse keeps reverberating in my mind, from the Karma Yoga. A simplified translation would be something like this -

"Good Action and Bad Action - both are better than Inaction."

I was trying to put it in context ( a much smaller context) for my 2 weeks of inaction. Two weeks I have been out of fire fighting.

Not talked to a single customer. Not coached / planned with any of the managers or leads.

Not written any critical e-mail.

Not participated in any strategy meeting.

All along I ve just trusted the next rung of people in the team and let the inbox build up. Quite un-like me.

I do not like un-read e-mails in my Inbox.

So, this period of inaction has been good or bad ?

I think it has been tremendously good. Certain communication and development that would have made me un-easy, they have shaped over the two weeks by

other responsible people to the state, that I would ve taken them myself to.

Lot of conflicts resolved w/o me. Few other people taking critical decisions. Team has not missed me at all. I ve not lost cool at all on things not done right.

No one has felt a thing. This is humbling for me and very useful for the next tier of leaders in my team. As they have spent some time on their own leadership style and

pace. Not being judged / coached by me. This is good development.

So, is inaction really that bad ? Or may be that was not inaction after all. May be it was good action !

Then I heard the next verse which translates to -

" Person who sees action in inaction and inaction is action is an intelligent person" :)

Automation - Boon or Bane ?

All parts of our life today is touched by automation of some kind and some level. There is a constant pursuit of human kind, to find and separate the "mundane"

and repeatables and automate them.

Automation has been the prefered way to increased productivity since the invention of "ScareCrow".

Did you notice though, as we keep on defining more and more jobs "automat-able" and keep delegating those to the machine, we lose the skills to do those ourselves ?

I was in SFO to catch a flight to Boston, well advance in time in the queue.

Turned out they have just one "manned" counter and all other counters are automated check-in.

Simple stuff really -

Touch screen, choose language, put the bag on scale, scan your Passport or driving licence and one should be done.

Problem is, there is still a section of population that need human help. The line was like 1 KM long. Few older people in the queue constantly shouting for help.

With all that I still made it to an auto-check in counter barely 45 mins left for the flight time.

Just when I thought I made it, the machine complained that it does not recognize my passport or driving license. For all foreign document holders, I need to go to "manned" counter.

And did I mention that there was a union strike and just one manned counter that day ?

To cut a long story short I missed my flight. The lady behind me also missed her flight and at least 20 others behind that.

All along standing in the line, the lady behind was having real anxious and nervous small talks with me. When I missed my flight, I had a broad smile on my face and she asked "What makes you so happy ? You did not want to catch the flight ?".

I said, "No, now the uncertainity is gone. I am definitely not flying today. And thats liberating" :)

Well.. having said all that Automation is still a Boon.

Planning - a case study !

In a long conversation with a Chinese woman, who partners with my team for a release, opened my eyes to new dimensions of planning.

How big a project can we plan ? Contemporary human being has landed on moon. I am sure that needed a lot of planning and course corrections on its way.

So, even landing on moon seems much smaller than the planning case study I am going to present.

Population Control in China !

A nation with 1.3 billion people today was just 500 Million post world war 2. The population grew at a much faster rate during the 80s.

So the party needed a plan to control it which led to 1979 "One Child Policy".

Now, here are some details of the policy how it works. Some fact may shock you as it shocked me.

1. The minimum age of a MAN to apply for marriage license - 25
2. The minimum age of a WOMAN to apply for marriage license - 23
3. The SUM of ages of both should be minimum 50

With all that a couple goes and applies for marriage license. Now, they can have just one kid.

For the kid - one needs to apply for kid, out of a quota given to each agency for a year. If few of the first births turn out to be twins-triplets, then the calculation churns.

Even if you are going to have just one kid, you can not have it anytime. Each year, each agency gets a number as yearly quota. One has to plan and reserve a number before planning to have a kid that year.

There is a big department that tracks the quotas for each org / agency. Each quota again divides in to smaller ones and from a billion plus to a few hundreds in a spreadsheet level.

Thats a astronomical amount of planning involving 1.3 Billion people and many more to come, in a controlled manner.

Objective, the nation had and the results it is getting, both look perfectly aligned.

Its just matter of time the neighboring India will take the population top spot from China (it might already have - census in India works once in 10 years :)


If such a unthinkable problem can be framed, dreamed about, planned and executed, then nothing is impossible.