Tuesday 26 February 2008

Being Sick Sucks

I am Sick... Completely Sick. Mentally, Professionally, Emotionally and Physically.... the last few days have been troublesome... everything is going against time and Wish. Every single thing I am doing is getting myself in the bestest of hell as possible. This is how every Project Manager feels when he is in the middle of any critical project, whooaa the deliveries and projects for me though running smoothly I feel something is lacking.

Its time for me to sit back and retrospect what should be what and correct it now else it will screw me up like anything...and you would not see more of me until I get my nerves back....


P.S This post was written 5 days back and now I am just getting myself on the right possible track....

Thursday 21 February 2008

Motivations?

I read this in an email forward and found it funny... the best part of the humour below been at least there was some planning ;)

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Once upon a time, a British company and a Japanese company decided to have a competitive boat race on the River Thames. The Japanese won by a mile.

The British firm became very discouraged and morale sagged. Senior Management decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found and a project team was set up to investigate the problem and recommend the appropriate action.

Their conclusion: the Japanese team had eight people rowing and one person steering. The British team had one person rowing and eight people steering. Senior Management immediately hired a consultant company to do a study of the British team's structure. Millions of pounds and several months later they concluded that too many people were steering and not enough rowing.

To prevent losing to the Japanese next year, the team structure was changed to four 'Steering Managers', three 'Senior Steering Managers' and one 'Executive Steering Manager'. A performance and appraisal system was set up to give the person rowing the boat more incentive to work harder and become a key performer.

The next year the Japanese won by two miles. The Executive Steering Manager of the British companywas heard to say: "Next year that lazy SOB is going to have to row a lot harder!" But his underlings laid off the rower for poor performance, sold off the oars, cancelled all capital investment for new equipment and halted development of a new boat. They gave high performance awards to the consultants and distributed the money saved to Senior Management.

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Tuesday 19 February 2008

Do Hell with Retrospectives!!!

A Failed Project, A toxic leader, A Butt checker Team, A furious client, A meeting to decide who is to be blamed for the failure of the project.... Wow How best than this can you define UNTEAM. A developer blaming on the UI designer, The designer blaming on the developer, the QA blaming both, The Manager blaming everyone and the client blaming the development Team all of this has become common now... even with the Agile teams.... somehow I am getting a feel that the best of the processes that are introduced are getting screwed just becuase people dont understand if they are using it or following it correctly...

Surprisingly I see a (so called)Agile team that does not believe in retrospectives... the fun part of it is that retrospectives are not known, people do not know what , why and when about retrospectives.... As an agile Team I always believed that somebody or everybody in the Team needs to know what goes right and what we can do to make it more effective, morever it is also important to know what is going wrong and what best can be done to make it work right. So when the Agile Teams call Hell with retrospectives the projects are going to fail.

Now do you want a weekly kick off to happen to discuss what is going right and what is going wrong rather than discussing who did it wrong and that what was done wrong?

Monday 18 February 2008

Make your Organisation a GRAVEYARD

If you think you want to get a FLAT hierarchy in your team or a culture that lets you work with every level without having a feel of hierarchical protocol... You need to make sure that you make your organization a GRAVEYARD... Yes this is the only place where equality is religiously followed.... You would see the Poor and the rich, the nun and the witch all in same place...

While I keep myself busy and upset about so many things... I think I should now take the time to build the graveyard back in my own organization....

Wednesday 13 February 2008

You get rejected if?

Yesterday I interviewed a Sr. Business Development Manager for my new venture, the role involves everything a Biz Dev Manager has to do plus be a potential CSO. Unfortunately he got rejected inspite been tremendously talented the only reason been there was a lot of "I" in the conversations... when Rama asked me last time on how to ensure that we get a person with the right attitude I had thought of a few reasons... but becuase most of the people think I am a sadist I would put it in the best possible negative way. Here are the reasons why we would reject you for any position in our Organisation no matter how talented you are:

1. You think you work hard while others dont.

2. You use a lot of "I" in your conversations.

3. You want to do everything on your own.

4. You talk great about your company and Boss and bad about your peers and collegues.

5. You want to grow personally and professionally alone.

6. You think creating your importance in the team will secure a permanent place for you in the team.

7. You like to control.

8. You like to make decissions on your own.

9. You think you are smarter than anyone else in the world.

10. You dont have 5 reasons we should hire you

11. You dont know what comes after been a CEO of our firm.

12. You like to keep trade secrets.

13. You think becuase of you many things work.

14. You think change causes disasters

15. You dont have a great sense of humour.

16. You only want to succeed in your life without failing

17. You think you can make or bend careers of others.

18. You dont like your Boss, Collegue or your peer

19. You think Hook or Crook is the right way to survive...

20. You like to work late and hard.. ( Geez did I just loose my job?)

Now this is just my base version of list... I have a technical version of it that can tell you more about our way of choosing the Teams....Now what do you think when you hire someone?

Tuesday 5 February 2008

Employees makes Brands and Cultures not Management

I happened to visit Planet Ford office at Pune for the regular servicing of my car eventually when everyone coming to me started asking Me for and about the car I felt to be like GOD and why not this is what makes you believe that there are people who still think Customers are God. When I peeped around I realised that the employee who had joined just a day ago was also behaving the same way the most senior person in the Team... Wow is this what is called culture? is this how you make a brand? Well the answer is Yes....

The culture is made by the employees and not Management, when a culture prevails it does so only because the employees are enagaged to prevail it through... They are the ones who build it and they are the ones who flow it horizontal and vertical.... The reason why I say that Management does not play a part here is I have seen several service shops where employees work hard or do their jobs right only when the Boss is around... talking to such bosses or owners or managers I get to feel that such bosses know how to be focussed towards quality and services but dont know how to enroute the same to their Teams....

So when I see several smiling faces around ready to serve the most arrogant customers with the best of their smiles and attitude in the car Service Station it makes me believe that the best cultures can only be run by employees....

Are you all set to kick off the best cultures in your Team? I am up for it....

Monday 4 February 2008

TechShepherds is a NO NO!!!

My New Venture is starting to trouble me even before it started... the first thing that went wrong was my decission to bring in the change to the Business Model ;) and now my decission to bring up a name for the business that will help me accelerate the organisation and venture. Yes it was in my mind since long on not to anymore continue with TechShepherds however at this point my thoughts turn concrete as finally the name matters.... though my Ryze Page says "Whats in the name". I think there is a lot in the name atleast when it comes to business ;)

Here is why I feel TechShepherds is a NO NO to my Business name:

1. It does not say what the business is doing... I mean its clear that its not a technology company all together.

2. It does not trigger attraction to my customers... of course it does not. The name does not carry a simplicity buzz that can help me attract business clients.

3. The domain is no more with me.

4. The name drives only technocrats and not business crabs ;)

5. It does not go with the buzz around like names Yahoo, Squidoo, Bebo, meebo.

6. I really believe that in the world only 2 things sell well Sex and Shahrukh Khan and TechShepherds is not one of them, it defines a wague term and hence doesnt kickstart.

7. It doesnt make much sense to say "TechShepherds Software I am Sameer how may I help you?" specially cause I need supporting names like Software, Technologies, Solutions, Associates etc to give a weight to the name...

And now with all of these things rotating around in my mind I am just waiting to think the best possible name for me... here are the few things that jumped my mind:

1. MakeitWork
2. Qualitized
3. iBullShit
4. QualityQuest
5. Qyloo

Do you guys have any suggestions? Its lot of time you guys got to send your suggestions over the name at sameera.cmc@gmail.com as I am known to take time before finalising names...