Archive for Leadership

Decision fatigue and why Obama always wear dark suits.

September 20, 2012 at 6:28 am · Filed under idea, Leadership, Managment ·Tagged ,

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“Making decisions uses the very same willpower that you use to say no to doughnuts, drugs or illicit sex,” Baumeister says. “It’s the same willpower that you use to be polite or to wait your turn or to drag yourself out of bed or to hold off going to the bathroom. Your ability to make the right investment or hiring decision may be reduced simply because you expended some of your willpower earlier when you held your tongue in response to someone’s offensive remark or when you exerted yourself to get to the meeting on time.”

–Jone Tierney  

“You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” he said. “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.” He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. It’s why shopping is so exhausting. “You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.”

– Obama’s Way

Image courtesy:  Athena Currier

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Sridhar Vembu on building a software product company in India

July 27, 2009 at 8:41 am · Filed under Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Managment ·Tagged , , ,

product companies have another dimension that is usually not a big concern for services companies: marketing. In fact, marketing can be as important in the success of many products as the quality of R&D. The reason is that even the largest services companies do business with a fairly small number of global corporations (typically a few hundred) so that their sales teams can reach them easily. Product companies have to reach a much broader audience, so marketing is crucial. Yet, this is easy to overlook, particularly for people with an engineering background. I certainly have made my share of mistakes in this area, so I can speak from personal experience here.

One of the hardest things about marketing is that it is so hard to measure its effectiveness. Internet traffic is easy enough to measure, but how do you measure brand perception or market credibility, which can be very important in understanding whether a product is successful or not? This lack of measurability trips up a person coming from a typical services project management background, where precise measurability is the gospel.

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Bill Coleman On Failure & Startups

June 20, 2009 at 5:56 am · Filed under Entrepreneurship, Interview Entrepreneur, Leadership, Worth reading ·Tagged , , ,

“I’ve had failures, Visicorp was a failure and so was Dest Systems. At BEA Systems, when I was putting together my senior staff I wanted people that were in at least one company that had failed. You learn not just about failure and how to make things work, you learn the psychology of failure and how you react to it. If it’s the first time you are learning it you probably aren’t keeping the momentum going in your company. You are exactly right.”

“When I got out of the air force, and went to VisiCorp and we failed. And then at Dest Systems, great technology but we couldn’t get any money. I was looking at all these people, at the time there were lots of PC companies , and I started to notice that guys that failed started showing up at other companies in more senior positions. Aha, I realized, it doesn’t matter if you have some failures what matters is that you dust yourself off and learn from that failure. I used to say Sun did everything wrong that was possible, but it never did anything wrong for too long. A startup is not a technology company it is a learning machine.”

Source: Silicon Valley Watcher

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Worth reading: Matthew Stewart on MBA education

April 28, 2009 at 11:24 pm · Filed under Leadership, Managment, MBA, Worth reading ·Tagged , , ,

On MBA experience

“”the impression I formed of the M.B.A. experience was that it involved taking two years out of your life and going deeply into debt, all for the sake of learning how to keep a straight face while using phrases like “out-of-the-box thinking,” “win-win situation,” and “core competencies.”

On Frederick Winslow Taylor

Taylorism, like much of management theory to come, is at its core a collection of quasi-religious dicta on the virtue of being good at what you do, ensconced in a protective bubble of parables (otherwise known as case studies).

On Managment theory

The world of management theorists remains exempt from accountability.

Between them, Taylor and Mayo carved up the world of management theory. According to my scientific sampling, you can save yourself from reading about 99 percent of all the management literature once you master this dialectic between rationalists and humanists. The Taylorite rationalist says: Be efficient! The Mayo-ist humanist replies: Hey, these are people we’re talking about! And the debate goes on. Ultimately, it’s just another installment in the ongoing saga of reason and passion, of the individual and the group.

In a sense, management theory is what happens to philosophers when you pay them too much.

Philosophers vs MBA

” two crucial differences between philosophers and their wayward cousins. The first and most important is that philosophers are much better at knowing what they don’t know. The second is money”

Source:  The Management Myth

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Morten Lund on Entrepreneurship

January 29, 2009 at 6:08 pm · Filed under advice, Business, career, Entrepreneurship, idea, Leadership ·Tagged , ,

Lund has founded or co-invested in more than 40 high-tech start ups in the last decade, most famously Skype, the VoIP star snapped up by eBay for $2.6 billion in 2005.

Qoutable qoutes:

“I started with nothing as a student ….I probably had more fun  than I had last year when I was thinking about buying a private jet.”

“An entrepreneur is someone who is more willing to fail at something that matters than to succeed at something that doesn’t”

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Best investment that you can make: Warren Buffet

December 27, 2008 at 5:43 pm · Filed under advice, career, Leadership, Managment ·Tagged , ,

The most important investment you can make is in yourself. Very few people get anything like their potential horsepower translated into the actual horsepower of their output in life. Potential exceeds realisation for many people…… Just imagine you’re 16 and I was going to give you a car of your choice today, any car you wanted to pick. But there was one catch. It was the only car you were able to have for the rest of your life. You had to make it last. So how would you treat it?

Well, of course you’d read the owners’ manual about five times before you turn the key in the ignition. You would keep it garaged; any little rust would get taken care of immediately; you’d change the oil twice as often as you were supposed to – because you would know it had to last a lifetime….

Then I tell the students you get one body and one mind. And it’s going to have to last you a lifetime so you’d better treat it the same way. You’d better start doing it right now because it doesn’t do any good if you start working on it when you are 50 or 60 and the little speck of rust has turned into something big… The best asset is your own self. You can become to an enormous degree the person you want to be.”

Source : During the question and answer session at the AGM of his Berkshire Hathaway

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Dee Hock on Management

March 24, 2008 at 6:14 pm · Filed under Leadership, Managment, Mentor

I stuble upon  on  this    interveiw with Dee HOCK.. I am really impressed with brevity,honesty and simplity of his thoughts. An interesting read.

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VC Funding 101

August 9, 2007 at 11:44 am · Filed under Entrepreneurship, Leadership, start-ups, VC

Source:This was an etech talk by Marc Hedlund, Chief Product Officer, Wes more

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IBM INDIA Director on LEADERSHIP

April 3, 2006 at 8:54 am · Filed under advice, Leadership, Mentor

Where the head is in clouds, feet on ground

Saturday, December 30, 1899

Shanker Annaswamy, the Managing Director of the 38,500 strong IBM India has brought 28 years of industry experience in running multi million dollar organizations to IBM. His operational strategy is to work like an entrepreneur inside a huge multinational?stemming from his belief that an entrepreneurial mentality brings in an ever-lasting percolation of vision, integrity and value systems at all times, good or bad. As a leader, he?s assuming responsibility to discourage complacency and motivate the team to shoot for bigger goals. Annaswamy?s goal is clear: To take the company to greater levels.Annaswamy identifies two different levels of situations for a leader. The first, where one has a chance to turnaround a company?s entire performance from bad to good, and the second where the leader is faced with an opportunity to transform a company from good to great. ?When things are bad, marginal improvement is easier to showcase. However when the business is performing well, it takes tremendous effort to bring more conviction in the team and take the company to a different level of achievement,? he says. Interestingly, it is often not different leaders who can change things, but different leadership qualities of the same leader.

Every success story whether bottom to top or good to great demands multiple facets of leadership. ?In the former you may need to be a tougher and assertive leader, while for the latter case you need to be a strategic and a collaborative leader,? he says.Fortunately or unfortunately, very few leaders have an opportunity to wear such a dual-leadership mantle in their career. ?However, the ones who have had the opportunities to experience it and emerge successfully out of it, are a privileged lot,? says Annaswamy.A self confessed passionate learner, Annaswamy claims to have learnt something from everyone he has met – his young daughter is also in the league of teachers. ?When I moved in as the Country Head, I was a novice to the IT industry. However, my openness to learn and the conviction within, has never let me bite dust,? he says.

Translating learning to execution is what Annaswamy does the best.Nothing-happens-overnight is a chapter in his virtual book of leadership. ?People who don?t focus on execution do not prosper in their career, but the ones who do, stand out as leaders,? he says. During his early days at IBM, as an outsider, the first execution was to prove to himself, and then on to execute with the team to collectively perform and beat all expectations.Collaborating with teams and motivating employees is a leader?s forte believes Annaswamy. This is his learning from his earlier assignment at GE Medical Systems where he rose from being a project manager to the President of the company.

Currently in IBM India one of his objectives is to focus on small and medium businesses and to deliver value in the segment. ?You add business value to your company and the company adds value to your country,? he says speaking of IBM in India. In order to infuse the spirit of leadership in his team, he launched an India Leadership Program across various divisions of his organization. He tells his young employees: ?If you rest upon your laurels then you may not turn out to be a good leader. Good leaders maintain sustained growth in the company, and the success is an integrated coming together of the vision, goals and execution.? Personally, raising employee spirits is his energy booster. ?We are a large company and we need leaders at every stage,? he says referring to IBM. He is also aware that his leadership traits have some sway on his employees. So he often leads from the front, rallying teams and motivating them. He feels executive presence is a key leadership quality. ?Executive presence is not about wearing a great suit or a tie,? he quips, ?but an inside presence which enables the leader to connect with people internally and externally?employees and customers.?Annaswamy thinks value addition, whether to employees or customers, should be a true motive of every leader. He professes that a company adds value to its country, ecosystem, clients and industry. ?Value through extraordinary depth of industry expertise, content and innovation can change the entire industrial landscape,? he says. However, delivering such value can only be done by cross functional teams in large corporations and not by few leaders alone. He emphasizes, ?In big companies a country head is not the only leader, all of the business heads are leaders too.?Strategic risk taking ability is a key success factor for leaders as per Annaswamy. He wants every leader in his company to be responsible and take calls on strategic investments on newer market segments. Also, Annaswamy?s job is to make sure that these newer areas are in line with his organizations charter. Leaders need to back their strategic investment plans by market analysis, data and contingency actions. ?There would be a day when you have to prove yourself not just quarter-by-quarter, but even month-by-month and day-by-day. 24 hours a day is often quite inadequate for a CEO,? he says. Along all these lines of leadership lies

Annaswamys most important aphorism: A good leader has his head in the clouds visualizing about his company?s future and his feet deeply rooted on the ground carrying out the day to day execution perfectly.

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leadership by vivek paul

March 31, 2006 at 2:26 pm · Filed under advice, career, Entrepreneurship, idea, Leadership, Managment, Mentor

By Vivek Paul

It is truly a source of pleasure and pride to all of us BITS alumni to see how many successful leaders have been produced by BITS. What made the BITS experience so useful was that was that BITS did more than just teach us curriculum, it made us grow in multiple dimensions as we emerged from our protective familial cocoons to a melting pot of the best and the brightest from all economic strata and from all parts of India. The list of successful leaders in this issue is a salute to that diversity. As I think about the essence of leadership, the first thing that comes to mind is that different circumstances sometimes throw up leaders that are right for that time and situation. But even if you hold aside the situational leader, there are many threads in common for those that lead through all seasons, and I?ll share a few through some key quotes. ?All progress owes itself to the demands of the unreasonable man?. To be reasonable is to accept the status quo, to accept small gains. You must be unreasonable — have a vision, a change agenda, something that most people would not see or be willing to push. So look around you ? what do you see changing that requires a different approach. Learn to pick up on the weak signals ? change descends equally on everyone, but a few realize it faster than others. These few see a technology shift, a social shift, an industry shift and seize the agenda. So go explore the boundaries of knowledge. Be like a jigsaw puzzle player who sees the full picture the fastest. And be unreasonable in demanding from yourself and others the effort it would take to change the status quo. ?Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn?t have to do it himself?. This skeptical view has checked many a leader in his or her tracks. Leadership can only be successful by example. If you expect hard work from others, you have to work the hardest. If you expect breakthroughs, you have to show a few yourself. There is no room in the world for ?empty suits? and never let a formal designation lull you into thinking you no longer have to personally contribute. So always balance your time between directing and excelling as an individual performer in whichever aspect you can do well at. ?If it is not important to make a decision, it is important not to make a decision.? There is this stereotype of this macho leader spewing a barrage of decisions. The reality could not be more the opposite. You have to learn to live with ambiguity for about as long as needed, able to balance the action list with ?no regret?, ?hedge the outcome? and ?full steam ahead? moves. There are only two ways to get this mix right. First, use a lot of data for every decision. Irreconcilable differences vanish when enough data is mined. The disciplined training in thinking we all get at BITS is invaluable for this. Second, is listen ? respectfully and with an open mind to your team. And here the diversity of your team is truly an asset. Foster the differences in perspective, and this is one area where I now see how BITS truly stood out in its encouragement of diversity in its population when I was a student. And since this is so critical, weed out yes men and foster people who are unafraid to tell you the unvarnished truth. In the jungles outside Bangalore there are many elephant camps where one can see huge elephants chained to a tiny stake. I wondered why the elephants do not just pull them out of the ground. I was told that as calves when they are tied to this stake, they try very hard to pull, but cannot, and reconcile themselves to being tied down by the stake. But as they grow bigger and stronger, they are mentally still tied to that stake and do not even try to break free. This then brings me to the next leadership idea ? have an infinite faith in yourself. The problem in being a leader is that there is no one to say ?well done?, no one to reconfirm your agenda against the whirlwinds of uncertainty you face every day. There is only you. And the good news is that just you is enough. I will end with something I learnt from Jack Welch, previous Chairman of General Electric. He said that he loved international trips, because every time he got on the flight on the way home, he would pretend that he had just been appointed CEO, that this was his first day at the office and that the guy before him was quite a dud. He would come up with scores of things he would do differently as the new leader. And this brings me to my last leadership idea ? always reinvent yourself, never being afraid to challenge your own past and your own success. So in a nutshell, catch the wave of change for therein lies opportunity, be unreasonable in terms of your expectations, demand of yourself more than of others, have an infinite faith in yourself, never be reluctant to change yourself and when success swoons at your feet ?always take your job seriously, but never take yourself seriously?.

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