An article on owning the outcome, being responsible and standing up for your decisions.

1. Have your "Skin in the Game"PUNEET ARORA
USER EXPERIENCE SPECIALIST
BANGALORE

2. Being a person known for connecting random dots, I
easily qualify as a fan of Mr. Taleb (read: Nassim Nicolas
Taleb). His writings on Probability, Uncertainty and
Randomness have a huge following especially in times
we are living in. After reading rave reviews about his
recently released "Skin in the Game" book, I though of
writing a short piece for my fellow Designers and
Engineers.

3. Although we as professionals are known to be
quite vigilant about our quality of deliverables,
how many of us would still like to use or even buy
the same product that we try to sell to our
customers - being very much aware of the kind of
bug-backlog and tight-timelines we have been
through for that product.

4. Having a Skin-in-this-game would lead to being a
real-stakeholder of that product; not the kind we
discuss in our daily discussions during standups,
rather the one having a carefully though-out vision
and gameplan for the product.

5. In it's most appropriate sense, if the product loses
in the market, WE ALL LOSE. And if goes on to
become a top-of-the-chart app, WE ALL GAIN!!
It's like everything I have is at stake here. My skin-
in-the-game not just means I'm here to reap rich
dividends, I am equally responsible for it's failure
and also have to share the bad-reviews and
disincentives.

6. A wise person (can't recollect their name) once
mentioned - even in your corporate life being an
employee in an MNC, manage your Career like an
Entrepreneur. Don't get managed like a resource
which has a shelf-life and is treated more like a
machine -a desktop or a printer in every other
organization.
Only if you have your Skin-in-the-game, you will
take responsibility for everything, learn more and
probably EARN MORE!