Saturday 28 July 2007

Commodity Leadership

While I dont intend to discuss the Harry Potter and the Deathly hallows secrets by any chance on this blog I am forced to write about something that is a part and parcel of todays fast moving business world. One of the reason why Professor Dumbledore could not succeed to be a Master Of Death or rather be the most powerful Harry Potter character is that he was a Commodity Leader, This was revealed and discussed in the last few chapters of the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

So for the readers and the feeders of this post who will definately ask what exactly does it mean by Commodity Leader.. here is the answer for you:

1. A Leader who wants to achieve some goals or keep on achieving goals for himself is a commodity leader

2. A commodity Leader only thinks about saving ways to own success, this is revealed by the insecurity and subsequent defensive acts done.. Guess why Lord Voldermort is a commodity Leader?

3. The difference between the leader and the commodity leader is Secrets... Harry Potter never kept secrets , Dumbledore and Voldermort did, like I said its revealed by the insecurity the fear of failing or the fear of getting overtaken by another strong competitor creates this issue.

4. A commodity Leader reacts, A leader goes for it with the Team ofcourse, So when Voldermort knew about the passage of Harry from Dudseley's to the Order safe zone or to that matter the whole of the journey of Harry to the Godric's hallows all through Voldermort did was reacted, when it came to the end Harry was not afraid to go for Voldermort in the abandonned forests to fetch Voldermort. Similarly an attack on a commodity leader turns into reaction very soon some way or the other.

5. A commodity leader prefers favourisms, No wonder Dumbledore or Voldermort or to that matter Thicknesse? everyone had there own sets of reservations as far as favoursisms are considered. Dumbledore to Harry, Voldermort to Luious Malfouy Or Snape to Draco and so on... the favoured may or may not be capable.

6. A commodity leader understands critisims as complains and empowerment as delegation

7. A commodity leader is selfish and the play is for glory..

8. Praises and curses matter to the commodity leaders, they cant sustain curses and they can't stay without praises which makes a world difficult for them for long since praises comes with curses.

9. Commodity leaders find wrong in anything that is not them, While The Elder Wand was a key to success did Voldermort really trust Snape? Or Did Dumbledore trust anyone else for the Magical limits ever?

While the commodity leader continues to be a leader and tries to enchant the growth of the organisations one of the cause of failures of early startups is commodity leadership. The ways to get out of commodity leadership is essential but while we think about the ways to thin about practical leadership lets decide on what House of leadership we would like to go? Choose the house than letting others choose whether you want to be a leader or not... let the magical wand choose what type of leader you are...

Wednesday 25 July 2007

Sharepoint Goes RSS

While I was really thinking how beneficial it would be to get RSS Feeds for the collaboration tools.. the 1 step ahead Sharepoint has already declared it with newsgator... Darn sounds like Sharepoint is moving towards the semantic world.. More to Read on

http://www.newsgator.com/Enterprise20/SharePoint/SharePoint_3.aspx

Tuesday 24 July 2007

DOING A JOB or DoING it RIGHT

"When there's a gap between someone doing a job and doing the right thing, then management has failed"

Now I don't remember which Article or Blog I read this and unfortunately not able to find the exact place even after doing so many searches, I am actually forced to link this to the Harry Potter book specially because of the incidences happening over there... BTW This post was written when I was in the Godric's Hollow where Harry has just survived the Deathly attack.I am having a feel that its the Voldermort's mismanagement that is killing him. Be it not managing Snape to kill Dumbledore or be it not getting hold of the Undesirable one while leaving the dudesley's. Anyway forget it, coming back to the Fun. The root cause of failures in management are linked to doing wrong things at right times.Yes say for example "Taking your kid out in rain when he has just come out of cough and cold" Or "Having a quarrell with your wife when she is in a real bad mood" too many more things really, yeah wrong things at right times....

So while we think that its a managements failure when the right things are not done and the jobs are just done as a Project Manager certain things really can be credited on the path to "Why My Software Projects Fail". Lately while realising and analysing the follies and faults a Project Manager can do while reacting to situations can definately lead to the worst. Through a Project Managers career comes occasions like :
1. Biz critical situation needs to be responded by a Software support.
2. Risks need to be managed by playing with resources (doesnt only include Man Power).
3. Values need to be staken at the cost of situations...
more of course that you wont like me to write here.... under these situations the Best Manager's takes a call that can suffice and satisfy the needs and what plays a major role here is the time taken between the agreement on decission and actual implementation. If you are a cricket fan and had watched the 2nd day play of cricket Test Match between Englad and India you will agree Vaughan's decission to let Panesar continue a longer spell of bowling thinking that his spin will bowl out India short;) Unfortunate the decission was wrong. I have seen Managers who want to do everything in one shot right from decission to implementation and 11 out of 10 times it results into failures (however there is NO MANAGER IN THE WORLD WHO SAYS I DID THIS WRONG) If you dont believe this ask your Manager why a person who was fired recently becuase he been not productive or having other issues was HIRED at all? Well the answer wont be My choice was wrong it will be "He was better now he changed" so anyways.. taking decissions hastily is a art of Mis Management that can kill success... And I believe it is "JUST DOING THE JOB"

Yet another place to measure how it can affect in doing the right thing or just doing the JOB. A Father of an Indian girl's decission to hurriedly (without proper investigations or checks) of the groom she is marrying can result in disaster of a spoiled marriage, while if the fixing of marriage and the actual marriage takes long its possible that you might find the defects of the groom/bride way in time... definately leading to a find of successful marriage.

So next time you are to make a decission just dont make it "IT WILL BE DOING YOUR JOB" take time and then implement no matter it gets late it will be a right thing ;)

Friday 6 July 2007

Move To Thrash

A Few weeks ago we developed this feature for one of our key Customers on a key Project... what a thing it would be I realised if I get this Button in the Project Management to:

1. Thrash the Communication problems
2. Thrash the delays in the deadlines
3. Thrash the bugs in the system to never restore
4. Thrash the hurdles in the way of a successful growing product
5. Thrash the banners that do not motivate anyone from getting motivated
6. Thrash the fear so as to enable everyone to grow equally
7. Thrash barriers that cause project delays and confusion.

and last but not least solemnly thrash the erosion of quality code.

This is just to make the challenges of Project Management look a bit easier.

Serial Entrepreneurs?

Meeting with Mark Organ a few weeks ago in Pune was a kickoff to think the Serial way.. which honestly provoked me to think about the Buzz Kings and the internet Millionaires... So what is the reason I am writing this post here?

Well Project Management or to that matter any sort of Management is all about making things better than SEX, and Yes Making Money definately is better than SEX.. Hope yall agree..

When Mark termed the word Serial entrepreneur it honestly reminded me of Aaron Cohen and going a bit more insight I really see the way the serial entrepreneurs have bought a revolution in the internet and Media markets...

Heading backwards and coming the way forward we see
Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis ahh you dont know them? Well heard about Kazaa? or to that matter Skype? well the revolution is right here then.

Or you see Mark Fletcher whose ONEList and then later Bloglines IS a big success..

Seeing all this it really triggers that be Sabeer Bhatia (You should see the NanoCity Project that is his new Goal after Hotmail?) Or a YouTube you can be as successful as the internet millionaires if you have a sweet short vision of making a revolution. It doesnt take a long time to reprimind me that "TechShepherds" should not die that easy.... Should I get on the same path with a different vision and destination soon?

Damm some VC's required... anybody out there?

Wednesday 4 July 2007

So whats the Problem?

With reference to my earlier post on Are we creating a Bug? and the strong opinion I carry about Negative Management (I am putting it sweet here so that you dont feel I am calling MIS-MANAGEMENT) In both the stories I find the biggest similarity... A WRONG APPROACH. So who decides the right approach? How to take a right approach? How to avoid creating a Bug? Or Natwar (Our Automation King) language Animator V/s Animation approach.

So the 2 things that tell me what went wrong in the earlier 2 stories are:
1. The right resource was not found..
2. The right action was never right..

think the right action is never instant... there maybe arguments on this but thats a personal opinion.... I have always seen hasty decision ending up into major crisis. secondly when I say the right Action is never right, I always mean that the Right Action has scope to be improved. For instance creating competition is must within an organisation and is the right action, however competition that can lead to insurgency can screw the business.

So we stand on How to be more effective?
How to take the right steps?

Monday 2 July 2007

Creating a Bug?

I always think that Management is all about investing keeping in mind the ROI. Eventually lot of the Managers today know investing but not sure if they understand how and where to generate the ROI from... Well the reason why my post hits the blog is a recent incident that happened... Around a month ago I met a mother of a kid from my son's nursery school and while talking to her I realised that she was planning to get her child out of the school to a new one because she thinks that the school is putting too much pressure on her son and she wants her son do some painting and dancing along with swimming. Lately when I saw her again while going to drop my son to the school we had a chat that hit my mind badly.... She wanted to invest some more time so that her son learns been a bit pressured to study and manage things out...

Goshh.... Well you don't need to meet a mother to know the problem we have here... darn.. I think it sheer BAD Management well in our day to day lives as Project Managers we face similar things... things that can hurt damm hard... wana know How?

Tom is a Manager by mind, Developer by heart, QA by lungs and a Leader by Ears and ofcourse a Dictator by attitude... To be honest he is Jack of All and King of None... His Manager Harry invested time on him to create a backup, while everything went fine.. the Jack attitude took Tom to mis understand and interpret things negatively... eventually it resulted into a Over head for Harry.... the final outcome of the investment was Tom was out working for another company in the same way he started with Harry...

So whats the problem here? Lets relate the 2 stories to find whats the ROOT Problem here...

Positng Daily

Well my Wife's Astrologer told her that starting July first week theres going to be tremendous pressure on me and that I have to take some decissions before July to be safe and Happy....

I made up my mind to start doing things that can relive my pressure to the Least... So my first resolution is blogging daily... I am gonna start a series with situations that forms one of the objectives of my Blog this double quarter...

Keep an eye on this one....

Regards
Sameer Shaikh
http://sameer-shaikh.blogspot.com

Thomas Power in India

A Long tourney Master of the social networking is in India. Yes Thomas Power is in Mumbai, India on the 25th July 2007 for a workshop on Social Networking and More.. for those who don't know much about Thomas Power or who want to know the details of his visit can go on to:

http://www.thomaspowerindia.com/

Regards
Sameer Shaikh
http://pm-better-than-sex.blogspot.com
http://sameer-shaikh.blogspot.com