1.
Anant Corporation
Anant Corporation
Leadership & Management
Building People First - Lessons in Team
Effectiveness and Happiness

2.
Anant Corporation
Agenda
• Communication - The Backbone of a
Company
Every failure and success of our company has come down to good or bad
communication. How do we coordinate a diverse team over the Internet?
• Leadership & Management / Knowledge -
Knowledge creation and distribution is a function in our “Leadership &
Management” responsibility. How were we faring before we changed, what do
we do now?
• Enterprise Knowledge - When we “Woke” Up.
When we realized how important knowledge was to our company, we took it
very seriously. This is how.
• Team Building - Team of Teams
Some of us are full time, others are part time. Some of us are employees,
others are contractors. Some of us are onsite, others are remote.
• Building People - Teams are made up of
people.

3.
Anant Corporation
Old Boss : Individuals Leading Teams
Leaders : Company
Teams: Department Teams, Project Teams
Customers & Clients
Leaders : Departments, Projects

4.
Anant Corporation
Communication - Early Days
• Conference Calls
Our company started with 3 calls a week among
3 team members.
• Basecamp / Project Management Tool
We had the cheapest plan to manage internal
and external projects. We decided to use “GTD”
• Emails
We created some groups in our Google Apps.
We mostly used CC’s to communicate, without a
centralized information system.

5.
Anant Corporation
Communication - Kaizen Feedback from Team
• General Unresponsiveness
Members complained about phone, chat, email
unresponsiveness during business hours.
• Vague / Unclear Tasks
Some people were better at assigning / clarifying
outcomes for tasks than others. More
complaints.
• Availability Expectations
Some people were better available than others
at different times. More complaints, frustration.

6.
Anant Corporation
Communication - Today
• Singular Communication Pipeline (Client to
Team)
All client issues are managed through a singular
system through one customer service
process.
• Clarity is Contextual to the Work (Team to
Team)
Processes are documented. Tasks have
outcomes. Projects all have a “Mini” project
document.
• Tools for Different Needs (Member to
Member)

7.
Anant Corporation
Knowledge - Early Days
• “Check out this link”
We either had the knowledge in our heads or we
didn’t. There was no “team knowledge.”
• Different Document Standards
We had client project documents, but there
wasn’t a standard.
• Basic Onboarding / Orientation
People knew where to generally find things, but
each team member wasn’t “onboarded”
contextually with specific skills.

8.
Anant Corporation
Knowledge - Today
• Articles on the “Internal Blog” every Week
We read books or executive summaries all the
time. We privately blog about what we learn.
• Several “KB” entries every Week
Everything that can be reused as knowledge is
added to the KB. All learning, all research.
• Links on Pinterest/Scoop.it every Week
Each team has a quota of new links to add to the
Pinterest or Scoop.it - We review on our cowork.

9.
Anant Corporation
Knowledge - What
Knowledge
Guides &
Resources
Blogs, Links, KB
Assets &
Documents
Files & Code
Structured
Information
Org, Client,
Project
DriveDeltaNutshellLeavesKBWPSourceDriveDB/OC

10.
Anant Corporation
Knowledge - Corporate
• Strategic / Tactical
• Strategic knowledge helps us execute on
the Corporate Strategic Goals (Phoenix)
• Tactical knowledge helps us execute on our
daily, weekly, project, and client tasks.
• Internal / External
• Internal knowledge is what is pertinent to
our company.
• External knowledge is what is pertinent to
our clients, market, industry, and sector.
• Explicit / Meta
• Explicit knowledge means that it is what it
is.
• Meta knowledge may be a blog or kb entry
about a concept, a book that we’re writing.

11.
Anant Corporation
Knowledge - Where
Knowledge
Project
Information
Client
Service
Information
Corporate
Guides
Collaborativ
e
Documents
Assets
& Files
Corporate
Resources
Appleseed Services Search
G Drive
Delta
DropBox
G Drive
Delta
Nutshell
Dropbox
Freshbooks
G Drive
G Sites (KB)
G Drive
Workflowy
Evernote
G Drive
DropBox
OwnCloud
Pocket
Leaves
AIC (WP)
Anant (WP)

12.
Anant Corporation
Team Building - Team of Teams
• Employees / Contractors / PT / FT / Remote
Our company engages ~40 people or “entities”
globally.
• Good Talent is Everywhere / Every time
We can’t profess “Everyone an Entrepreneur”
and not encourage other small companies to
work with us.
• The Criteria for “Good” vs. “Bad” is hard to
set.
We give “exams” before we interview technical
members or teams.

13.
Anant Corporation
Building People - How we Grow
• Respect for Apprentices as Team Members
We don’t have interns. We have apprentices.
They are expected to become Analysts.
• Respect for “External Partners” = Our Team
We’ve received close to half our business from
people that work with us as contractors.
• Members all have “Mastery” Goals
From apprentices to partners, we are always
learning and we’re always documenting.

14.
Anant Corporation
Today - Phoenix - The New Backbone
• Yearly - Organizational + Team Phoenix
Shows everyone in the company what are the
most important objectives & key results.
• Quarterly - Member Phoenix
Each member and their supervisor agree to
certain individual objectives & key results.
• Weekly - Individual ACM Goals + Review
Each person has 3-6 goals they are working
toward each day.

15.
Anant Corporation
New Boss : Knowledge Leading Teams
Phoenix
Goals, Objectives, Results,
Weekly, Monthly, Yearly
Leaders : Team, Project, Company
Teams: Practices, Responsibilities, Project
People: Company, Clients, Members
Knowledge,
Communication
Delta, Documents,
Scrums, Cowork,
...
Feedback
Client Kaizens,
Team Kaizens,
Weekly Review

16.
Anant Corporation
Best Practices – Some Great Books
• Getting Things Done by David Allen
Good basic standard for having clarity to work.
• What it Takes: Seven Secrets of Success
from the World's Greatest Professional Firms
by Charles Ellis
• The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of
the Learning Organization by Peter Senge
• Harvard Business Review on Knowledge
Management by Harvard Business Press

17.
Anant Corporation
Feedback & Call to Action
rahul@anant.us
• Worked?
• Didn’t Work?
• Could be
Improved?
Events & Jobs
• Enterprise Tech
Meetup
–http://www.meetup.com/DC-
Enterprise-Tech-Meetup/
• Bagels + Coffee
–http://anantlabs.eventbrite.co
m
• Apprenticeships
–http://anant.us/339

18.
Anant Corporation
Contact
Rahul Singh
• Click on the Icons Below
Anant
• Web: http://anant.us
• Email: sales@anant.us
• Phone: 1.855.ANANTCO
• 1010 Wisconsin Ave. NW,
Suite 250
Washington, D.C. 20007