Subroto Bagchi is co-founder, Vice Chairman & President,MindTreeConsulting. He works out of New Jersey, USA.)

My first assignment in the US was in 1990 when Wipro asked me to move to the Silicon Valley to set up a beachhead. A decade later, I am back here, as co-founder of MindTree Consulting - looking after our operations in the Americas. Until recently, I used to tell people, half in jest, between both assignments, everything is the same. Both the times, there has been a Mr. Bush as President, both times there has been recession and both times, US has gone to war. Yet, in 1990 - we had probably less than five software companies of any consequence, work was done only in client locations and the India brand did not exist. Today, we are talking about 850 or more companies directly impacted, more than 400,000 people and their families involved and depending on how the world emerges from the brutal attack on the World Trade Center - we will really know what will be in store for each one of us individually and collectively. Yet, there are lessons we need to pick up as we go.

1. Beyond a point, worrying does not help, you have to know as you go. Yes, the US is in a state of recession. The last one lasted 3 years - from 1989 to 1992. This one has been worsened by the dot.com / Internet bubble which was fanned by an overheated stock market. As a result, the crash has been louder than last time. Also, as against the last recession, today's world is so well connected, so simultaneous that if you touch some thing in New York - in the very next moment, you can feel the impact in Tokyo or Bangalore. The other aspect is how much people are exchanging information and how fast news and analysis reaches them today. This has at least one negative impact. It breeds a herd mentality at a global level. If one company in one industry does a layoff, everyone else says, why am I not following suit? Either people say the world is going to be great place or every one says it is coming to an end. The truth is in the median. Beyond a point no one knows the full story, no one has the full data. After all, who could predict the WTC bombing? So, we have tofocus on the job at hand and move on. We have to make changes, as events unfold. The important thing is in cultivating the ability to do so.> >>2. Companies are not slot machinesIn the last few years, fund managers, venture capitalists, retail investors and a tribe of analysts had all contributed to the over heated investment climate. Unfortunately, people had lost track of a simple truth. A company is not a slot machine. But for a moment, let us agree that it can be. The danger in that argument is that, the rules of the slot machine then apply to companies. What is the rule? A slot machine can reward only two per cent people only two per cent of the time. Change that simple rule and no one will ever set up a slot machine. We had the

absolutely crazy environment in which, first of all, people regarded companies as slot machines. Worse, 98 per cent people expected to get more than they gave 98 per cent of the times. Educated people should know that that is a coveted but not feasible model. Unfortunately, in the mayhem - a lot of people got greedy, set up companies with short-term gain in mind and they are falling by the wayside today.Quite sadly, they are taking a lot of people with them.> >>> >>3. You do need a business plan after all

When we thought of MindTree Consulting, we began the process of thinking through the business plan 14 months prior to launching the company. We wrote an old-fashioned business plan that ran in to 80 pages. Did we have all the answers? No we did not have all the answers. Yet, we wrote the business plan - not to con someone in to funding us. We believed what we wrote and used it to guide us till we rewrote the plan again. Yet, I know of someone in the valley, who raised $100 Million without having to write a business plan. Every one got so carried away that some one said, if you have to write a business plan, you are no good. This company just wrote a sheet of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and handed them to their potential investors. Two years in to the game, the $100 Million has evaporated and so has the company. The moral of the story is, you cannot build businesses in the air. You cannot work for people who do that. If you choose otherwise, you choose the consequences as well.> >>4. People need real skills to build real solutions for real customers to get real cash

People make money when real customers buy real things and pay for them. Only then, our customers can use your or my services. Those services cannot be vaporware and they cannot be devoid of the need to build solutions that "move" things. Yet, we live in times in which these seemingly simple precepts were thrown away. Many trivialized the effort it takes, the investments you need and the time it takes before capability can be built to listen to customers, understand needs, manage them and build value for them. We also diluted the standards for hiring. We overlooked considerations and ignored simple rules of engagement. From the developer perspective, a lot of people know that they do not know. Some have no understanding of business and how things work. Armed with a rapidly acquired degree, some questionable work experience, they all flew with the H1 visa. A H1 visa takes you from place A to USA. It does not make up for, nor does it shorten the knowledge acquisition process and the experience building that are pre-requisites to delivering real value to paying customers. > >>5. Hard work and loyalty are back in fashion

In 1998, I had Gallup do a poll with 100 software engineers to accurately map the profile of the quintessential Indian software developer. Turned out, it is a 26 year

old male, decided to be a software engineer in his 9th grade, came from a nuclear family, father professional, mother home maker, places learning, family and money as the priorities in life (in that order), is a pathological learner ("learns to learn" more than "learns to do") and has changed 1.75 jobs in the first two years of his career. Go to any one, any where in the world - they will tell you what is wrong in that model. You have to choose your career well. You have to know that you cannot be just a bundle of technical skills. There is more to life than writing code. The world needs solutions, not software and it will take time to master that. You just cannot be tactical with your own life -sooner or later, it will all catch up. That is beginning to happen. You did not need a recession or a Bin Laden to drive home that point. That is the way it works in the medical profession, in public life, in journalism, in teaching primary school children. We cannot be an exception. > >> 6. It is going to be a long haulHow long before the current slow down, recession, uncertain geo-political situations get better? First of all, it will get worse before it gets better. But it will get better. It is very unlikely that we will see improvements before the end of 2002. First of all, in the best case scenario, the aftermath of the WTC tragedy will take the rest of the calendar year to get sorted out. Disclaimer: Even Mr. Bush does not have full knowledge and full control over what will happen, whatwill be the consequences and what cascading impact we will see as a result of the planned overt and covert operations. Given that fact, investment climate will be cautious, new applications will be on hold and business justifications will be demanded before anyone spends any money. So, it will be somewhere in the middle of next year that we will come out of the penumbra of the economic effects of the next three months. And when we do come out, it will not be a start from where we left ourselves in 1999. It will be a world that will demand more personal and collective accountability. Markets, customers, investors and employers will not be the same again. Given that, you and I will need to ask our own selves some very basic questions whose answers only you and I have. >>>7. Skill merchants beware

In all the flux we are seeing before us, if there is one thing that is increasingly clear, it is this - people who have a purely skill view of themselves, will have more difficulty coming through. There are a lot of people out there who think that knowing Java, C++ or EJB is what it takes to assure career continuity. Unfortunately, it takes much more than that. Early in one's career - a technical person needs to learn a lot many other things. He or she needs to understand how businesses work, how to handle clients, how to work as a team and a host of other things. These can happen only one project at a time and require both patience and contemplation. Traditionally, many people have thought these are fringe issues andwhat really matters is the ability to churn code. Additionally, people need to learn some very non-glamorous things. The current crisis reinforces the fact that the real

world depends on mainframes, legacy applications and a host of very mundane but critical things. People who have disdain for these will be in for surprises. We have to have the same attitude to the routine as we have for the latest and the best. > >>8. Know how much to fake

In the last two years, I am amazed as to how many people we have bred who are not their own selves. Every other day, I come across people who have a disproportionate image of their own selves. Worse, they believe in the self-created age. Some people look so puffed up. Strange job titles, phony accents may look alright for a while. After some time, theycan actually make a person unusable. The other day, I met this otherwise very usable middle level manager. Pre-melt down, he got carried away and got slotted for some thing he did not quite fit. His company is gone but he is still perched on that imaginary place. Even making conversation is so difficult with him because he helplessly mouths jargons that make him look like a liability. It is important to be yourself. Fancy words on a resume do not carry one beyond a point. They actually destroy you..> >>9. How tactical can you, should you be?

It is important to seize the moment and take advantage of opportunities. But how far should you push the envelope? In the last few years, investors, employers, employees and customers - everyone has been guilty of developing a tactical view of the world. This was to hurt sooner or later. The current situation has hastened the process. The result is that investor money has evaporated, companies are floundering and employees are lost in a maze. In times like these, we tend to blame everything other than our own judgment. While the events around us are responsible, so are we. In Bhubaneswar, next to my in-law's house, there used to be a private computer training institute that was always full. Whenever I visited them, my in-laws would ask me if all the boys and girls there would soon be flying off with H1 visas. I was getting tired of saying "no".After a while, I began to suspect my own cynicism. Today, the place is quiet as a graveyard. The question is, how could thousands of people who could not write a page of English without making a dozen mistakes and had no math skills and would not qualify a written test for a third level engineering college, suddenly become exportable computer wizards? Did they themselves not know this? Did their parents not realize the improbability of it all? We can blame the slow down. On the other hand, we are the slow down. > >>10. The world will move on. Will you be there?

Allan Greenspan says that the only thing certain about a recession is that it gets over. I could say the same thing about war and associated crisis that we are going

to witness. That is how the world has always worked. Our parents and their parents have seen larger crisis. It so happens that our hare of growing up is coming to us after a protracted period of what looks like good times. Having said that, things will come back full circle. As that happens, some will survive and some will be hurt. Rather than worry about either, it is a good time to do some deep reflection and come to terms with realism. It is also a good time to take a larger, more comprehensive view of ones career and make some solid investments towards that. It is also a time to rethink ones perception of some old fashioned things like focus on fundamentals, hard work, loyalty and building real value for real customers. Are you ready?> >> _______________________________