Struggle is good..if you wanna fly

Here is an interesting story of Caterpillar undergoing metamorphosis to go on to become a  Butterfly  which gives insight into the struggle involved in the process of change and often leading to exciting results and a colorful future. The story is not new, the objective of the post is to trigger thoughts to get a fresh perspective, reflect on the theme... and share the insight.

Once a little boy was playing outdoors and found a fascinating caterpillar. He carefully picked it up and took it home to show his mother. He asked his mother if he could keep it, and she said he could if he would take good care of it.

The little boy got a large jar from his mother and put plants to eat, and a stick to climb on, in the jar. Every day he watched the caterpillar and brought it new plants to eat.

One day the caterpillar climbed up the stick and started acting strangely. The boy worriedly called his mother who came and understood that the caterpillar was creating a cocoon. The mother explained to the boy how the caterpillar was going to go through a metamorphosis and become a butterfly.

The little boy was thrilled to hear about the changes his caterpillar would go through. He watched every day, waiting for the butterfly to emerge. One day it happened, a small hole appeared in the cocoon and the butterfly started to struggle to come out.

At first the boy was excited, but soon he became concerned. The butterfly was struggling so hard to get out! It looked like it couldn’t break free! It looked desperate! It looked like it was making no progress!

The boy was so concerned he decided to help. He ran to get scissors, and then walked back  He snipped the cocoon to make the hole bigger and the butterfly quickly emerged!

As the butterfly came out the boy was surprised. It had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. He continued to watch the butterfly expecting that, at any moment, the wings would dry out, enlarge and expand to support the swollen body. He knew that in time the body would shrink and the butterfly’s wings would expand.

But neither happened!

The butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings.It never was able to fly…

As the boy tried to figure out what had gone wrong his mother took him to talk to a scientist from a local college. He learned that the butterfly was supposed to struggle. In fact, the butterfly’s struggle to push its way through the tiny opening of the cocoon pushes the fluid out of its body and into its wings. Without the struggle, the butterfly would never, ever fly. The boy’s good intentions hurt the butterfly.

As you go through school, and life, keep in mind that struggling is an important part of any growth experience. In fact, it is the struggle that causes you to develop your ability to fly. Being in the comfort zone takes you nowhere. Lending a helping hand to others is no doubt appreciable, however the tendency to overprotect could be counterproductive.

If the process of growth or maturity involves some struggle, one should let it happen in the interest of individual going through it, as it may involve great learning or acquisition of new skills/strengths.

When did you do a new thing first time in the recent past? What was your feeling while doing it? How often do you do new things? The answers these questions will tell you whether you tend to be in your comfort zone or out of it.

Change is the hallmark of the natural process of evolution. Struggle or discomfort signifies the process of change which should be welcomed. Change is never easy, you fight to hold on, you fight to transform. So do not run away from it, rather embrace it. Life does not get better by chance, but by change.

What is the end of the life of Caterpillar, is the starting of the life for a Butterfly. 

Welcome into the flying club!!!

On this note, I would like to wrap up my postings for the year 2013. I started this blog in October'13 and with 17 posts and over 1800 page hits, I think I was able to connect with good number of viewers in a short time. I look forward to to share some more interesting thoughts regularly on Leadership, Technology and Businesses with all of you in the coming year as well. 

You are always welcome to visit my virtual home, "Brindavanam" where you will mostly likely find some healthy and interesting stuff for reflection, rumination and sharing. I'll be pleased to know your reactions and feedback.

Thank you very much for your patronage! 

Happy holiday season!

                                                                                                                                 

Top Technology Trends

Gartner, leading Technology Research and Advisory company has published the top 10 Technology trends for 2014 which can have significant impact on the IT industry and the Enterprises that adopted Information Technology in a big way for business transformation. Including the gist of the trends in this post.

As Technology progresses by maturing or taking new directions, we see big change in the way it is impacting business offering strategic advantage and sometimes changing the way business is done whether it is internal operational processes, workflow management, customer relationship management or supply chain management. Technology today has become critical part of the business and the trend is changing towards taking businesses closer to the customers or other stake holders. 

Here are the technology trends that will be strategic for most organization in 2014. Strategic technology is the one that has potential for significant impact on the enterprise. Significant impact includes potential for disruption to IT or business and the need for major investment or risk of lagging behind.

The combination of Social Media, Mobility. Cloud and Information will continue to drive change and create new opportunities, creating demand for advanced programmable infrastructure. The top strategic technology trends are: 

Mobile Device Diversity and Management

Growing variety of devices, computing styles and user contexts will make “everything everywhere” strategies unachievable. The unexpected consequence of bring your own device (BYOD) programs is a doubling or even tripling of the size of the mobile workforce. This is placing tremendous strain on IT and Finance organizations. Enterprise policies on employee-owned hardware usage need to be thoroughly reviewed and, where necessary, updated and extended. Most companies only have policies for employees accessing their networks through devices that the enterprise owns and manages. The concept of Trusted device needs to be extended to allow access to Tolerable devices as well. Balancing flexibility with confidentiality and security requirements is the key while formulating policies.

Mobile Apps and Applications

Improved JavaScript performance will begin to push HTML5 and the browser as a mainstream enterprise application development environment. Developers should focus on creating expanded user interface models including richer voice and video that can connect people in new and different ways. Apps will continue to grow while applications will begin to shrink. Apps are smaller, and more targeted, while a larger application is more comprehensive. Devlopers should look for ways to snap together apps to create larger applications. Building application user interfaces that span a variety of devices require an understanding of fragmented building blocks and an adaptable programming structure that assembles them into optimized content for each device. The market for tools to create consumer and enterprise facing apps is complex with well over 100 potential tools vendors. For the next few years no single tool will be optimal for all types of mobile application so expect to employ several. The next evolution in user experience will be to leverage intent, inferred from emotion and actions, to motivate changes in end-user behavior.

The Internet of Everything

The Internet is expanding beyond PCs and mobile devices into enterprise assets such as field equipment, and consumer items such as cars and televisions. The problem is that most enterprises and technology vendors have yet to explore the possibilities of an expanded internet and are not operationally or organizationally ready. Imagine digitizing the most important products, services and assets. The combination of data streams and services created by digitizing everything creates four basic usage models – Manage; Monetize; Operate; Extend. These four basic models can be applied to any of the four "internets” (people, things, information and places). Enterprises should not limit themselves to thinking that only the Internet of Things (i.e., assets and machines) has the potential to leverage these four models. Enterprises from all industries (heavy, mixed, and weightless) can leverage these four models.

Hybrid Cloud and IT as Service Broker

Bringing together personal clouds and external private cloud services is an imperative. Enterprises should design private cloud services with a hybrid future in mind and make sure future integration/interoperability is possible. Hybrid cloud services can be composed in many ways, varying from relatively static to very dynamic. Managing this composition will often be the responsibility of something filling the role of cloud service broker (CSB), which handles aggregation, integration and customization of services. Enterprises that are expanding into hybrid cloud computing from private cloud services are taking on the CSB role. Terms like "overdrafting" and "cloudbursting" are often used to describe what hybrid cloud computing will make possible. However, the vast majority of hybrid cloud services will initially be much less dynamic than that. Early hybrid cloud services will likely be more static, engineered compositions (such as integration between an internal private cloud and a public cloud service for certain functionality or data). More deployment compositions will emerge as CSBs evolve (for example, private infrastructure as a service [IaaS] offerings that can leverage external service providers based on policy and utilization).

Cloud/Client Architecture

Cloud/client computing models are shifting. In the cloud/client architecture, the client is a rich application running on an Internet-connected device, and the server is a set of application services hosted in an increasingly elastically scalable cloud computing platform. The cloud is the control point and system or record and applications can span multiple client devices. The client environment may be a native application or browser-based; the increasing power of the browser is available to many client devices, mobile and desktop alike. Robust capabilities in many mobile devices, the increased demand on networks, the cost of networks and the need to manage bandwidth use creates incentives, in some cases, to minimize the cloud application computing and storage footprint, and to exploit the intelligence and storage of the client device. However, the increasingly complex demands of mobile users will drive apps to demand increasing amounts of server-side computing and storage capacity.

The Era of Personal Cloud

The personal cloud era will mark a power shift away from devices toward services. In this new world, the specifics of devices will become less important for the organization to worry about, although the devices will still be necessary. Users will use a collection of devices, with the PC remaining one of many options, but no one device will be the primary hub. Rather, the personal cloud will take on that role. Access to the cloud and the content stored or shared from the cloud will be managed and secured, rather than solely focusing on the device itself.

Software Defined Anything

Software-defined anything (SDx) is a collective term that encapsulates the growing market momentum for improved standards for infrastructure programmability and data center interoperability driven by automation inherent to cloud computing, DevOps and fast infrastructure provisioning. As a collective, SDx also incorporates various initiatives like OpenStack, OpenFlow, the Open Compute Project and Open Rack, which share similar visions. As individual SDx technology silos evolve and consortiums arise, look for emerging standards and bridging capabilities to benefit portfolios, but challenge individual technology suppliers to demonstrate their commitment to true interoperability standards within their specific domains. While openness will always be a claimed vendor objective, different interpretations of SDx definitions may be anything but open. Vendors of SDN (network), SDDC (data center), SDS (storage), and SDI (infrastructure) technologies are all trying to maintain leadership in their respective domains, while deploying SDx initiatives to aid market adjacency plays. So vendors who dominate a sector of the infrastructure may only reluctantly want to abide by standards that have the potential to lower margins and open broader competitive opportunities, even when the consumer will benefit by simplicity, cost reduction and consolidation efficiency.

Web-Scale IT

Web-scale IT is a pattern of global-class computing that delivers the capabilities of large cloud service providers within an enterprise IT setting by rethinking positions across several dimensions. Large cloud services providers such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc., are re-inventing the way IT in which IT services can be delivered. Their capabilities go beyond scale in terms of sheer size to also include scale as it pertains to speed and agility. If enterprises want to keep pace, then they need to emulate the architectures, processes and practices of these exemplary cloud providers. Gartner calls the combination of all of these elements Web-scale IT. Web-scale IT looks to change the IT value chain in a systemic fashion. Data centers are designed with an industrial engineering perspective that looks for every opportunity to reduce cost and waste. This goes beyond re-designing facilities to be more energy efficient to also include in-house design of key hardware components such as servers, storage and networks. Web-oriented architectures allows developers to build very flexible and resilient systems that recover from failure more quickly.

Smart Machines

Through 2020, the smart machine era will blossom with a proliferation of contextually aware, intelligent personal assistants, smart advisors (such as IBM Watson), advanced global industrial systems and public availability of early examples of autonomous vehicles. The smart machine era will be the most disruptive in the history of IT. New systems that begin to fulfill some of the earliest visions for what information technologies might accomplish — doing what we thought only people could do and machines could not —are now finally emerging. Gartner expects individuals will invest in, control and use their own smart machines to become more successful. Enterprises will similarly invest in smart machines. Consumerization versus central control tensions will not abate in the era of smart-machine-driven disruption. If anything, smart machines will strengthen the forces of consumerization after the first surge of enterprise buying commences.

3-D Printing

Worldwide shipments of 3D printers are expected to grow 75 percent in 2014 followed by a near doubling of unit shipments in 2015. While very expensive “additive manufacturing” devices have been around for 20 years, the market for devices ranging from $50,000 to $500, and with commensurate material and build capabilities, is nascent yet growing rapidly. The consumer market hype has made organizations aware of the fact 3D printing is a real, viable and cost-effective means to reduce costs through improved designs, streamlined prototyping and short-run manufacturing.

Social Media in Modern Times

Social networking has become integral part of the way people live in modern times. 47% of American adults use social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Classmates.com and the number is growing. Present global user base of Facebook is three times the population of the US. People are developing their profiles on social media sites, communicating with friends and strangers, sharing ideas, photos, music links and much more.

Social networking sites encourage online interaction with friends and family members and erase geographical boundaries. The credit goes to technological ingenuity of visionaries who made irreversible impact on the way the world interacts. There is some criticism against social networking that the sites prevent face-to-face communication, waste time on frivolous activity and later spoil children’s behavior and expose users to predators like pedophiles and burglars; and spread false and potentially dangerous information.

However, over the years, social networking among college students and youth has become more and more popular. It is a way to make connections, not only on campus, but with friends outside of school. Social networking is a way that helps many people feel as though they belong to a community. I see social networking as using major social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube, blogs, Twitter, MySpace, or LinkedIn etc. for this discussion.

Whether one likes or not, social media has entered our lives and it will seek to play bigger role in the lives of millions of people across the globe. They way forward is to utilize the media for the benefit of all of us and the society around us. In this post I’m discussing the impact of social media on the society, not on business. Perhaps the impact of social media on business can be covered in future posts.

Social Media Penetration

The number of social media users are expected to grow 17 per cent to reach 91 million in urban India by December 2013, on the back of rising Internet penetration due to increasing affordability of smart phones and availability of cost effective data plans. The number of social media users in urban India reached 78 million by June 2013. It is said facebook is the leading website accessed by 96 per cent of all social media users and it is most used to connect with friends, publishing content and searching contacts.

Some social media networks have a more active user-base than others. Statistical research reveals that more than 95 percent of Facebook users log into their account every day. The same number for Twitter is 60 percent and for LinkedIn is 30 percent. In order to cut costs, businesses are now avoiding websites like LinkedIn, which have a very small reach in terms of market impact, because their users are not active when compared with Facebook or Twitter.

Facebook, Twitter, Google+ - a whole new world 

With Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social networks we have become much aware of the world we are living in and this is one of the changes being talked about. Social Networking giants like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ have contributed to create a whole new world where we are free to express our opinion and share it with our friends and peers. This world of social media gives scope to everyone to express and share ideas, thoughts and feelings, who want to be the part of it. Here are some areas where they have made significant impact.

News and updates- 65% of social media users get their breaking news through social networking sites. While the credibility of some sources can clearly be contested, news channels tweet or give updates on significant happenings all over the world. This becomes more important when the credibility of TV Channels becomes questionable especially in countries like India. We see every news paper and TV Channel clearly serving interests of one or other political party making neutral reporting the casualty. Other news sources through social media come in handy in such scenarios. TV Channels with their focus on TRP ratings are losing the bigger battle to other sources of news and their popularity and credibility may go down if they don't do something innovative to retain viewership.

Interactions- Social media has furthered interaction by such a massive scale that is hard not to notice it. It allows people to keep in touch in a more regularly, and sometimes, more intimately, than was ever before because of time and space constraints. People cities or continents apart can keep in touch so effortlessly, making distance irrelevant. Twitter has become a self-promotional tool used by celebrities. For those who like to “follow” their favorite celebrities, they can get instant updates about where their favorite singer or actor is, what they are doing, how they are feeling, etc. 

Political Influence - Social media has enabled greater political awareness and organization, which has in some cases rewritten entire political landscapes. It has particularly played a large part in the Iran elections, and Obama’s reelection for a second term as US President, and inspired the political unrests in Egypt. In India nobody can ignore the role played by social media in Delhi rape case. National Political parties like BJP and Congress are competing with each other in reaching out to youth through the SN sites. Both PM candidates are in the social media race, with Modi leading the race with his early catcher advantage. 

Verification of Credentials - Companies are increasingly turning to social media sites to peep into the candidate's profiles to find out what kind of a person the candidate is based his/her social behavior and check emotional aspects as well, in addition to career history. The kind of friends you have also is a factor that defines your personality. One would do well to demonstrate responsibility in one’s online behavior. The candidate’s past behavior is critically examined by recruiters to find out the fitment of a person into the role they have in their organizations and avoid bad hires, especially at senior levels.

Marketing -The whole dynamics of marketing have been changed, and rather than investing in mass channels ads, companies are becoming more consumer-centered through interactions made over social media. They are able to understand the needs of the market from the market itself, greatly altering the way marketing has been done in the past. 

Law Enforcement - investigating agencies are actively using social networking sites to nab the criminals who indulge in unlawful activities, thus improving the quality of evidence and enhancing their effectiveness.

While it is good to be up-to-date and leverage technology for the benefit of family and friends, one should avoid the pit falls of networking. Whether to use social networking site or not is an individual decision to many. But you must be aware of certain things when discussing your private life in public. These are some of the tips that can make you and your family safe on the networking sites.

1. Change the profile privacy now. Keep your information accessible only to people in your friend list.

2. Don’t accept friendship request from strangers. Most often we judge a particular person online, by his/her profile picture and personal information. This is the first mistake that cyber criminals wanted us to do.

3. Don’t post very personal information on the profile. It includes your email id, date of birth, contact number, home address and information about your family members.

4. Be cautious while posting your photo. Ensure your photo background doesn't show about your actual whereabouts.

5. Don’t post your current location when on a tour. Posting this information on social networking site is just like inviting criminals to your home.

6. Don’t post negative things about your life. This is just like maligning your own image. Your friends are monitoring your activity and one such mistake can cause havoc in future.

7. Don’t substitute real friends with virtual friends. Facebook/Twitter is a great tool to connect new people across world. But they can never be your real friends. You need real friends to enhance your social image and reduce stress and anxiety. Real friends can be part of your friends list though.

8. Avoid using Social networking sites in work hours. When you try to use social networking sites during work hour, it not only affects your work performance but also increases chances of getting fired.

9. Keep a check on children’s social media usage. Checking facebook every 15 minutes, chatting with friends can be a time killer and effect children’s academic performance and can also lead to undesirable consequences.

Please remember when you are making a post on social networking site, you are broadcasting your message to your present friends and future friends as well. There are software tools coming up,  which scan through all the postings of a user and based on the content posted, report the personality, likes and dislikes of a user. The consumer of the report could be your boss or future employer! Does it mean that you remain inactive all through and present dull behavior? You don't have to.

Happy Social Networking!

Leadership Essentials

The topic of Leadership has been discussed a lot and significant amount of time and effort has been spent on the topic and will continue to be spent on what leadership is all about and what qualities make one effective leader. The secret of Leadership has always been ever eluding and enigmatic and keeps changing with the  times we live in. I’ve come across great leaders in my career some of them very inspiring, charming and carry a lot of positive energy with them. Effective leadership is all about how you see and what results leaders produce and create value.

Some of the qualities I see in any person whom I call leader are the following. These are no way exhaustive, but definitely critical for any leader to be successful.

Inspire Action

Leaders create a vision and share it with the team that inspires the people to do whatever it takes to get there. They work hard, endure short term pain to realize the vision. The best leaders act as catalysts and remove the organizational roadblocks that constrain the employees’ creativity and natural talent and unleash tremendous amount of positive energy in the process.

Exude Optimism

All of us would like to be in the company of the people who raise our spirits instead those who drain out the energy pull us down. Positive energy and enthusiasm are contagious and quickly spread from person to person. A leader seeks out positives in his people and help them realize their full potential, spreading energy, enthusiasm and optimism across the organization. 

Integrity

The most important thing that employees expect from their leaders is integrity. They expect the leaders to walk the talk. Honesty, fairness and candor are the qualities which keep the leaders in good stead.

Risk Taking

For the people to give their best, they need an ecosystem that supports them by encouraging them to take risk, speak their mind be not afraid to fail. The fear of failure and being punished kills the initiative of the people. Leaders who encourage teams to take risks, be with the team through thick and thin facilitate progress towards attaining the goals. Here is the interesting story as told by former president APJ Abdul Kalam in his own words:

The Story of Rohini Satellite

"Let me tell you about my experience. In 1973 I became the project director of India’s satellite launch vehicle program, commonly called the SLV-3. Our goal was to put India’s “Rohini” satellite into orbit by 1980. I was given funds and human resources — but was told clearly that by 1980 we had to launch the satellite into space. Thousands of people worked together in scientific and technical teams towards that goal.

By 1979 — I think the month was August — we thought we were ready. As the project director, I went to the control center for the launch. At four minutes before the satellite launch, the computer began to go through the checklist of items that needed to be checked. One minute later, the computer program put the launch on hold; the display showed that some control components were not in order. My experts — I had four or five of them with me — told me not to worry; they had done their calculations and there was enough reserve fuel. So I bypassed the computer, switched to manual mode, and launched the rocket. In the first stage, everything worked fine. In the second stage, a problem developed. Instead of the satellite going into orbit, the whole rocket system plunged into the Bay of Bengal. It was a big failure. 

That day, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, Prof. Satish Dhawan, had called a press conference. The launch was at 7:00 am, and the press conference — where journalists from around the world were present — was at 7:45 am at ISRO’s satellite launch range in Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh in southern India. Prof. Dhawan, the leader of the organization, conducted the press conference himself. He took responsibility for the failure — he said that the team had worked very hard, but that it needed more technological support. He assured the media that in another year, the team would definitely succeed. Now, I was the project director, and it was my failure, but instead, he took responsibility for the failure as chairman of the organization.

The next year, in July 1980, we tried again to launch the satellite — and this time we succeeded. The whole nation was jubilant. Again, there was a press conference. Prof. Dhawan called me aside and told me, “You conduct the press conference today.”

I learned a very important lesson that day. When failure occurred, the leader of the organization owned that failure. When success came, he gave it to his team. The best management lesson I have learned did not come to me from reading a book; it came from that experience."

Communicate

In any organization, knowledge is power, and great leaders ensure that every employee, from the very top to the very bottom of the org chart, is provided with complete and up-to-date information about the organization’s goals, performance, successes and failures. To achieve this level of connection, you should also provide ample channels for two-way communication between employees and managers, actively soliciting their ideas for improvement and rewarding employees for submitting them.

Decisive

The most important function of any leader is decision making. Highly effective leaders aren’t afraid to be decisive and to make tough calls quickly when circumstances require it. Once you have all the information and options available, you need to make an informed decision, then don’t hesitate--make it. And once you make a decision, then stick with it unless there is a particularly compelling reason for you to change it.

No matter what type of organization or industry you're in, it's possible to become a more effective leader, inspiring your people to give their very best every day of the week. Make a point of practicing these leadership traits, and you will be an effective leader too.

Look at the Bigger Picture

There are several Leadership qualities that are seen among the leaders such as Communicator, Organizer  Motivator, Trustworthy, Able to see the big picture etc. Which leadership quality would you rate highest?

One might say the Ability to see the Bigger Picture and we will discuss this quality in detail in this post.
The quality is well explained in the classic “stone cutter short-story.” You find several versions of the story and several ways to understand its valuable lessons. The power of the story lies in the importance of perception and the way each person handles his work.

Whether you think you’re just earning a living, doing the best at your job, or you’re leaving a legacy, this story demonstrates that there is great value in thinking positively and in seeing the bigger picture.

Another version of the story, adopted by Management Guru, Peter Drucker suggests that seeing the bigger picture is the first step, the real leadership quality is while seeing the big picture, the Leader should ensure that others see it. This is done by building a shared vision.

The third version of this story graphically illustrates the view point of Peter Senge, the Author of the book “The Fifth Discipline.”

Story of Stonecutters

One day a person goes to a place where a few workers are building a structure. He goes to a worker and asks him, “What are you doing?” He says, “I’m cutting a stone”. The person doesn’t fully understand what’s going on, so he goes to another workers asks the same question. The second worker says, “I am cutting this block of stone to make sure that it’s square, and its dimensions are uniform, so that it will fit exactly in its place in a wall.” A bit closer to finding out what the stonecutters were working on but still unclear, the person goes to the third stonecutter. He seemed to be the happiest of the three and when asked what he was doing replied: “I am building a Cathedral.”

This story beautifully illustrates a key leadership quality - seeing the bigger picture. All three stonecutters were doing the same thing, but each gave a very different answer. Each knew how to do his job but what was it that set the third stonecutter apart? Perhaps:

· Knowing not just how and what to do, but knowing why.

· Viewing the whole and not just its parts.

· Seeing a vision, a sense of the bigger picture.

· Having the ability to see significance in work, beyond the obvious.

· Understanding that a legacy will live on, whether in the stone of a cathedral, or in the impact made on other people.


"I am Building a Cathedral”

Explaining this leadership quality, Peter Drucker told a different version of this story, going beyond the obvious in drawing out its lessons.

In Drucker’s version, when asked what they were doing, the first stonecutter replied:

“I am making a living”.

The second kept on hammering while he said:

“I am doing the best job of stone cutting in the entire country.”

The third stonecutter, when asked the same question said:

“I am building a cathedral.”

As with the earlier version, the first stonecutter knew what he wanted to get from his work, and was doing so. He was giving a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. The third stonecutter obviously had a positive attitude to his work, perhaps because he saw the bigger picture. But what about the second stonecutter? Drucker suggested this was a potential problem area, perhaps the opposite of the third stonecutter’s view of the bigger picture. Here was someone focusing on his own narrow view of work, possibly to the detriment of the project as a whole.

Perhaps it’s worth reflecting on how we see ourselves.

· Has work become simply a means of earning a living?

· Are we too focused on our individual performance or achievements?

· Do we have a sense of the bigger picture in what we do?Answers to these questions will probably change over time and at different periods of our lives. Perhaps we do just see work as a way to earn a living, because we have more important things in our lives. Or perhaps being expert at what we do is sufficient, and we don’t feel the need to engage in the wider picture.

However, we spend much of our lives at work so making that time as fulfilling as possible is worth the effort. There is also considerable evidence that being a rounded, more complex person can make us happier, both at work and in our personal lives. Learning to look beyond the obvious, to see the bigger picture, can be a big step towards that happiness but does leadership require something else?

Did the third stonecutter’s reply demonstrate a leadership quality, or just someone happy in his work? Simply having the vision is not enough. Good leaders need the ability to show that vision, to share it, and to inspire others to understand and work towards it. The third stonecutter becomes a leader when his view of his work is shared by his workmates – when none of them says they’re simply doing their job.

As Peter Senge has put it: the responsibility of a leader is not just to share a vision but to build a shared vision.Our final version of the story illustrates Senge’s idea of leadership quality. This time the stonecutters are building London’s magnificent St Paul’s Cathedral, designed by the great British architect and designer, Sir Christopher Wren. In this story the third stonecutter’s response does illustrate a leadership quality…

One day, after work on his cathedral had begun, Wren unrecognised by the workforce, walked among the artisans and stonecutters.

He asked one of the workmen:

“What are you doing?” “I am cutting a piece of stone“, the workman replied.

He asked the same question of the second stonecutter. “I am earning five shillings two pence a day”, the second workman replied.

He asked a third workman the same question, and the man answered, “I am helping Sir Christopher Wren build a magnificent cathedral to the glory of God.”

A leadership quality might be seeing the bigger picture, but it’s essential to help others share that vision.

“Cathedrals and Big Structures are incredible symbols of human endeavour. Whether we need cathedrals are not, definitely we need cathedral thinkers, people who see beyond their tenures in the organizations or their own lifetimes. They add a new dimension to the world around us and leave a legacy behind.

If you are unhappy...

Once upon a time, there was a nonconforming sparrow who decided not to fly south for the winter. However, soon the weather turned so cold that he reluctantly started to fly south. In a short time ice began to form on his wings and he fell to earth in a barnyard, almost frozen.

A cow passed by and shat on the little sparrow. The sparrow thought it was the end.
But the manure warmed him and defrosted his wings. Warm and happy, able to breathe, he started to sing.
Just then a large cat came by and hearing the chirping, Investigated the sounds.
The cat cleared away the manure, found the chirping bird and promptly ate him.

The Moral of the Story:
1. Everyone who shits on you is not necessarily your enemy.
2. Everyone who gets you out of the shit is not necessarily your friend.
3. And, if you are warm and happy in a pile of shit, enjoy your time and keep your mouth shut. 

The Big Fight - Waterfall vs. Agile

It is the most common scenario! A business problem is handed down to the team. The project manager comes out with project charter explaining the objectives and other details. He determines the project scope, estimated effort, costs and time lines etc. He promises a date by which he’d deliver the solution with a set of features.

Then the Waterfall cycle begins! The teams work meticulously in capturing each requirement in detail, may be using use case, point by point, covering all the scenarios. Then the design team comes and detailing the placement of every field, button, checkbox and pixel and data models etc. Then the army of Developers takes over, write down the code meticulously in the way dictated by designers, implementing each requirement to the best of their understanding to hand over the output their comrades, the Testers. Testers show their mettle in finding bugs and product is ready. And then, finally T-shirts are printed and launch parties celebrated and slowly euphoria dies down. Business gets a chance to use the product. Despite all the confidence inspired, what happened is wrong solution is delivered with right efforts!

What went wrong???

There is a lessons learned meeting, root-cause analysis happens. It concludes that the team delivered the wrong solution because the project was based on unvalidated assumptions. These assumptions were presented as requirements. There is no feedback loop mechanism during the development of the product.Waterfall typically depends on listing the features to the teams which are bundled together and developed as a product. 

Instead of providing the teams with list of features, what needs to be done is to  present the business problem to the teams and put constraints on the solution. Working on short iterative cycles gives the business the opportunity to look at the product and validate the way in which product is being built.

Building agility into the development life cycle with shorter iterations and continuous feedback loop mechanism mitigates the risk of delivering a wrong product to the customer at the end of a long project gestation period. Despite a lot of buzz around Agile methodology with lot of coaches and availability of literature, many people and organizations struggle to embrace agility properly. One of the reasons is people got comfortable with waterfall and the other is no clarity on certain roles. 

Software Engineers whose activity is coding, don't find their role changing. They continue to write the code. For others the roles are not clear. People in roles such as designers, project managers, architects and analysts find their role definition changed. The water fall process provides designers compartmentalized period in which they can focus on their work and draw a lot of satisfaction by providing what they think are optimal design for the application. Suddenly the designer finds the role and space shrunk which leads to dissatisfaction as well as job insecurity. Suddenly you find people screaming, “Oh, this is not the way of working. This cannot be called design.” In agile, the value designers brought into project gets distributed to other roles in the team. One needs to recognize the evolution of the role avoid the temptation to cram the old methods into the new process.

Agile with its orientation towards iterative approach facilitates better coordination and frequent feedback from the customers. Software is developed in iterative and incremental model in rapid cycles. I’d not like to cover the methodology of Agile as such in this post as it is very popular and would limit my discussion to the impact on the teams and development cycle. Here are the Pros and Cons of Agile:

Pros:

Flexibility

Traditional waterfall model dictates that requirements to be defined ahead of design and implementation. The scope is rigid and non-negotiable factor. With Agile methodology, schedule and cost are the major determining factors and it is scope that changes in order to accommodate acceptable business demand.

Immediate Feedback

Presence of business representative ensures that there are suggestions regularly. Agile methodology calls for smaller release cycles, in which the product is always in a ready release state. This ready release state is brought about by continuous feedback from product owners and end users with the development and quality assurance team. Corrections can be immediately passed on to the developers.

Predictability

Fewer Defects make to the end as result of quality assurance testing being done on each cycle. The cycle of develop, build and test cuts down the number of defects and they are caught early on.

Cons:

Documentation Gets Left Behind

Agile’s code-test-build-release cycle does leave one component behind, which is documentation. Due to the fluid nature of Agile, the documentation team needs to follow right behind the curve of the project’s rapidly changing scope. Whether this happens are not is the question.

Daily Meetings take the toll

Daily stand up meetings take the toll due the high pressure created. However, frequency of the meetings is one thing that needs to be decided by the project managers in the interest of the team and project. The team members are expected to have considerable experience expertise and junior members may not always be preferred.

Conclusion

There is no single methodology that can be adopted by all the projects. The classic Waterfall model has its own advantages as well as limitations. Agile methodologies can also be inefficient in large organizations and certain types of projects. So it is up to the Managers concerned to select the right methodology based on the project characteristics.

Whatever said and done, Agile is the current trend and Buzz word. As long as we don’t see the methodology as the end in itself, we can adopt any suitable model and deliver value to the customer. It is worth giving it a try.

Mobility is the In-thing

Mobility began as a trend for personal use, social connectivity and as a fashion signature. What started with non-serious activities such as watching YouTube and chatting with friends over weekend has become the game changer! Business owners and executives in all industries have come to recognize the benefit Mobility brings to the table. 

Mobility appears like a treasure as the world grapples with economic challenges. Facebook is working on bringing out their mobile based advertising model which is significant for them. Small businesses all over the world are reshaping their business models with the use of mobile devices such as Tablet PCs. China has surpassed US in the dominant smart phone market. India is catching up fast. As per an estimate, by 2014 there will have been over 76 billion mobile apps downloaded resulting in an app economy worth an estimated thirty five billion in the same year. Mobile business will become big business in the not so distant future. There is going to be mad rush as the businesses chase the fortunes associated with mobility.

However, it is worthwhile to look back and learn from what happened earlier in the initial days of Web. We watched the horror movie of bust after boom over a decade back. In those days browser-viewed applications were the order of the day and businesses rushed to grab the opportunities. E-commerce was the buzz word and associated windfall gains in revenue lured the businesses. Everybody created his own website and launched it without doing detailed ground work and putting in place proper revenue models. As the dust settled in, people slowly realized how expensive maintaining a website could be without accruing any real value out of it. The same is the case with social networking where getting something up in the social networking space without building an engaged and meaningful following. Similar thing is possible  in the mobile space as well, if companies take a “channel” approach instead of behavioral approach. 

Businesses need to differentiate between mobile and mobility. Having a few devices and targeting users with mobiles could be myopic. Instead, mobility is all about understanding the behavioral patterns of the users and the relevance of your connectivity to the user in the context of his lifestyle, needs and interests. Does the user need to connect with you on the go?

In the early days, people wanted information instantly at the click of a mouse. In the social networking era, it also included social connectivity. Mobile takes it further to include instant information or transaction, social connectivity and anywhere, all bundled together across variety of environments, screen sizes and devices.

Mobility could mean a laid back indulgence like watching a video while travelling or making a banking transaction like funds transfer on the go which is a serious business. The aspects that should be borne in mind for businesses is to avoid “bloodshed” that happened during Web days. They should understand nuances of mobility and mobile behaviors before investing in mobile initiatives. Hiring a Hero and providing him funds and resources does not help. Establish a COE, integrate all the business needs and formulate a cohesive strategy and then translate it into initiatives. Going mobile is not all about having an app. Avoid the tendency to develop an separate app for every small thing or interaction. Use a single app to aggregate the content of all the sources in the Enterprise. One needs to differentiate tactics from strategy. 

Today the situation is that there are millions of apps already available for download. Is your app attractive to the users? Who are your competitors? What happens if the number of downloads/ installs are low after spending so many funds? Competition is fierce and what if you have to compete with established brands in the markets? Nobody wants to his apps to be seen as junk in the market. 

With a clear focus and specific needs of the customer in mind, coupled with clear understanding of his behavioral patterns and backed up by benefit-cost analysis, the organizations can take its mobile initiatives forward. There is definitely great future for mobility and it is going to call the shots. The market is in the growth phase. Youth are adopting mobile in a big way  for their interactions and doing businesses. Organizations will have to take a serious look at their revenue models and possible impact by going mobile and if it helps the business and they should certainly work on game changing mobile strategies. Tomorrow’s mobile players will win the game based on usage numbers due to the value of their content, whether it’s sheer utility or irresistible entertainment value and ...nothing... else.

Look at the lessons learned in the past and so that the risk is well managed.

Success

A lot of studies have gone into understanding what Success is and you come across so many definitions and descriptions. Success certainly lies in big achievements, however it is something beyond that. Success lies in simplicity and applying basic principles of life consistently. Simplicity should not be misunderstood as ease. A few interesting thoughts on this...

To laugh often and love much;
To win respect of intelligent persons
and affection of children;
To earn approval of honest critics
and endure betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty
To find best in others;
To give off one's self without the 
slightest thought of return;
To complete your tasks with 
spontaneous efforts by willing teams;
To have laughed and played with
Enthusiasm and sung with exaltation;
To know that one life has breathed easier
because you have lived;
This is to have succeeded
- Anonymous