2009 to give way for India 2.0 and Sameer Shaikh 2.0

Yes.. 2009 goes off... Today as on 31st December we all would release 2009 to get into a mode of retrospection and planning for the next year. A quick review on this blog for the prime time actions of 2009...

1. Depression : The biggest ever economic crisis continued all through the year almost, trying to get its head up the economy was altogether a platform to inspiring leaders. Those of apples and facebooks and twitters who made money even in the downturn show that there is nothing called as depression.

2. The Obama's got in to Steer America to a better reputation. Manmohan Singh re-elected to lead the largest democracy in the world.

3. Swine Flu terrorised the world as mush as Al Qaida and other terrorist organizations did.

4. Andhra Pradesh is burning.. earlier with the death of YSR and then with the Telangana issue.

5. Sachin shows that fitness is in mind, Tiger shows it somewhere else ;)

6. We spend almost half of our year to plan and deliver the future of our Company.

7. India gets Intelligent people like Manmohan Singh, Shashi Tharoor, Nandan Nilekani in the cabinet.

On a personal level :
1. It was a Happy year.. lot of work
2. We could bring the old gems together to work with and elevate the future with class
3. The Teams in UK and India started up well and are contributing to the future leaps and bounds
4. Inspite of tough year our Management showed a lot of faith in us and Development
5. I found a way to find time and blog..In the last 3 months I almost blogged 50% of what I blogged in rest of the year.. some of them I thought were quality posts.
6. I prepare for a funfast new year.

Wish you all a very Happy New Year and a funfilled New Year eve.. May this year bring a lot of propsperity, wealth and fun to your professional and personal lives. Have a review of your Year soon so you can start preparing for it.

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Team Building, What does the leadership need?

It has always been a paing, Yes PAIN... building Team is not a easy task, you have to be calm, patient, understanding, shrewd, helping and above all energetic... Many times team building is not even considered when teams are formed. Mostly what I see in the Service sector of the IT world in India it appears like Teams are formed and collapsed.... The process that we call forming -> norming -> perform and out stand is nevertheless given importance.. as opposed a policy of HIRE and FIRE is applied.

As Building Team comes into discussion I always feel that you need a strong leadership that would apply various rules and methods to build a strong force as opposed to just a Team... Here are a few things that I see important in the Team Building process:

1. Goal Setting

Every Member of the Team needs to know what his goals are for the year / period / project / release or task. Goal less members cannot form a Team... I heard a story in my childhood when a Sailor asks a Bird about a destination... the bird just flies down the sky and says If I had known it I would have being resting and not running around in open sun and sea.... A Goal less Team member is a Headless chicken and cannot let the Team build. Specifying and measuring goals will help achieve fair degree of Team spirits as each one would know what they have to achieve and of course they are in line to organisational objectives....

2. Communicating
Its important that everyone knows how to communicate, they need to be made understand on how to communicate. There should be a fair degree of open culture where everyone is asked to openly talk... a few times I have realised that the quietest people are the smartest ones , however the ones that talk a lot get the paycheck .... Communication has to be fair and in a 360 degree angle... anyone should have access to anyone...

3. Inspiring
Inspire them to grow, Inspire them to think, Inspire them to innovate, Inspire them to critisize, Inspire them to do what they want to.... Yes Inspire them to fly... Its important that everyone in the team is inspired... un inspired mammals are like dead bodies... talk, Understand , Implement and Iterate this till they do what they want to do....

4. Do they Reflect it?
A healthy culture? A spirited soul ? A fresh mind? A killing attitude? Ask them what they have learnt every now and then and make them learn new things... Get them to a place where they start asking themselves on what I have learnt and am I on it or not... Not just this it is important that reflections are thrown to every part of the organisations.... think about Vipin talking about organisational values, think about Shankar loving everyone the Team member, think about people who had quit wanting to be a part of you again... isn't it all reflection? I learnt and I want to learn more....

5. You Suck!!!
Not many take criticism healthy... not many criticize healthy... this is the biggest team building killer... kill it. have sessions to criticize... I always wanted to arrange workshops where every week one person is going to be criticized.. let him /her know what wrong they have done for the whole week not from one person to have grudge or bad feel but from all anonymous masks where no one knows no one.

6. Where is my Mentor?
Let them find their mentors.. let them choose. They need to decide from whom they will learn and what.. its important that they understand and realise that there is a lot of mentoring available and each one of them are ready to mentor others... whoa did we just not plan to conquer the world?

7. Share / Earn / Laugh
Why go to a laughing school when you can sit with your team and make everyone laugh while you do the same... its important that the Team enjoys each others company.. let them laugh and laugh loud.. so that they feel the emotions and burn the frustrations... Laugh is a medicine to the success of Team building activities.. it begins with a laugh and that is what exists and persists...


8. He cannot do it SO CANT I?
Its important that you put yourself in the shoes of others and then talk... i remember Yogesh N once telling me that "I think it would have got delayed if anyone would have done it..." its not about someone not able to do it... its about can you think what he can think of...moreover can you stand for what he stood for? Why not discuss Rama here when he choose to say that even if I had worked on the upgrade to Hibernate I would have taken same or maybe more time.... its all about Team and the bonding... the more you understand each other the more you say that...


9. Commit to your mistakes
Let each one of us come out and commit what we do wrong.. what we can do better and what we intend to do.. there is nothing stronger than committing your mistakes and facing what is lying ahead of you... put the Team into the habit of being honest

10. Driving
Drive them to the best... Till they become the Ants or the Penguins they need to be driven.. Get every one drive everyone but in one force and flow... Its important that they are driven in the right directions... the more they go right the more they learn and earn...

11. Timing
Have you heard of a father who's son asked him how much he is paid every hour? And then he comes back and pays his father just to get time from him? Well your Team is like that... make sure that out of work you find time for them.. be with them when they think they need you. Make yourself available for what they need.. Make this a habit , make this as a passion... after all as a Manager you are not a Supervisor but a force...

12. Loving
Teach them how to love each other and stand by each other.. now this is not something you can do easily... When they love each other they love what they do..


Do you think you have some more to discuss? Why not share?

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The Learning attitude

What a Waste it was!!!
Damm if it was done like this we would have not wasted blah blah blah
I wasted X years of my life in school

and what not.... I am sure you may have encountered these lines few or many times a day or week or month or whenever.... but something that can change these lines is the attitude within you that somehow we ignore... Yes I am talking about the learning attitude... Well you might end up saying I am a curious A** so I want to learn everything... but just go back a few years and count how many times you have used a word *waste*... A recent incidence and something that happened a few weeks ago just got me to write more about this... I would like your opinion on a few words said by different people here and then we can talk about the Learning attitude...

I think everything that is coming to me is a new learning for me... so whichever Technology or Project I work on is going to be the Best for Me -- Seetha

I think I wasted all this time on been this project... I have learnt No new thing -- Some One I dont want to disclose

Recently Ahh... I got a complete different requirement but anyways I dont think my work is a waste cause I learnt how to mount a NFS on a windows box for a linux machine -- Phil

Before I could waste more of my time doing this I think I should walk off -- Someone recently

Well so all of this teaches me that their is a breed in the world who knows and thinks that everything that they do is going to add something to their knowledge and is going to be a valuable earning for them and there is another breed that thinks that something that is not known is only learning... be it Technology or any other thing.... Which one do you think you gonna get on? For me obviously it should be the former .... and why not... Project Management teaches me new thing everyday.. one way or the other... been a father teaches me a new thing every day, playing a husband teaches me to make different excuses to keep awake late and work or watch TV ;) new learnings everyday.... So for those whom who think that ONLY that thing is a learning which they did not knew then their age is not enough to identify what they have to learn....

So here a few tips to those who really want to be on the side of learn from everything that comes to you...

1. Be Curious
2. Be Inquisitive
3. Listen and think to what others say
4. Question them not for the sake but to know why they say what they say
5. Confusion is a mother-in-law of failure.... either is bad without the other

Hope you learn something from this post ;)

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Success is in ????????????

The more of a Manager we be the more we loose on the leadership front… this I have noticed over a period of time while Project Managing…. While I think about all this I realize that this really has nothing to do with Manager or being a leader but rather with everyone be it a developer or QA or Manager… I think success is a radish that everyone really wants to achieve and for that they do anything and everything… I thought I would put up some points that can tell you where we fail in defining success:

Success is in:

1. Empowering the team to handle their tasks but not driving them to solutions….
2. Involving the Team into decision making and not defining what they have to do to achieve a solution…
3. Meeting as a Team to discuss problems and solutions not just taking it away…
4. Responding to queries and exploring solutions rather than waiting for them
5. Being Yourself rather than pretending to be someone else
6. Sharing the experience with everyone and not keeping things within fearing that everyone will be what you are….
7. Listening to what others want to say rather than pretending to know you know everything
8. Telling what you know and exploring the options within but not defining it to be the ultimate solution
9. Reflecting rather than being Opaque… so that other's can have a space to expand
10. Prompting rather than commanding so that everyone gets help wherever required… and still can balance themselves
11. Suggesting rather than dictating so that you learn what is in store with others
12. Connecting rather than isolating…. Like …How good it will be to involve the Developer while we discuss the requirement changes with the BA
13. Digging it rather than wrapping it with some make ups…. Like do you think that there is more of a problem in the solution?
14. Encouraging rather than hiding the credits… Like… This is something that was a problem since long… I am sure this solution will be liked by everyone
15. Focusing rather than deviating…. Like we discuss about all the issues in the company when doing a personal appraisal…
16. Being specific than generalizing like "Saket missed the bug which is causing the broken application" … rather than saying "QA missed the bug or dev did a faulty code to screw the app on a whole" (Sorry Saket that was just an example)
17. Marshalling rather than getting driven …. Like Agreed that this is a problem but for now our objective is to resolve XXX problem… lets come back to this when we have resolved it.
18. Challenging than accepting everything like "do you think that's the ultimate solution?"
19. Reading it to the bottom not just the heading

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Information………………

Every morning for years, at about 11:30, the City MIC telephone operator in a small town received a call from a man asking the exact time. One day the operator summed up nerve enough to ask him why the regularity.
"I'm foreman of the local sawmill," he explained. "Every day I have to blow the whistle at noon so I call you to get the exact time."
The operator giggled, "That's really funny," she said. "All this time we've been setting our clock by your whistle.

The moral of the story is that sometimes we rely so much on a set of information that we really forget to testify the originality and reliability of it. You agree or you don’t I see it as a SIN in Project Management. If you want to be a Good Manager you need to make sure that what you have is correct and testified, if not you have to take the pain to do it before actions are performed on it. The added pain you take will also help you be a curious, inquisitive Manager who wants to learn more than pretending to know or giving Bookish answers…

There was a question raised in the SEO caferatti that happened 3 weeks ago at the KP Barista where SEO Manager of BigBytes raised a question saying “I am subscribed to several forums and websites and a part of Global SEO community, yet reading and implementing all the changes is not getting me to a highly trafficked website”. The answer was clear the information he was subscribed to was either not true/ bookish/ not relevant for what he was doing / not a solution and still he ended up spending 3 engineers work on a strategy which was uncertified…. Good Managers take a added step before provoking the team to move in the given direction so that they don’t end up in the debt of Fatal mistakes on irrelevant information.

Where do you think you stand while you use the information process in your team?

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5 things about me that you don’t know

Well you are not forced to post in here… but since I am tagged now at Technorati I sought to post the 5 things that many of you don’t really know:

5. I had being a Poet for a long time, Thanks to my schedule now that I don’t really get into it again.

4. One of my passions include being into a profession where Mass is involved…

3. I wanted to be a "Band Master" when I was 5 (they usually play music in Traditional Indian marriages)

2. The only Lady I fancied ever before my wife is Laetitia Casta the French Super Model…Unfortunately my travel to Goa was useless when she was there for a while… Gosh what a disappointment.

1. I don’t like to be honored for the things I haven't done…

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