Traditions and New Era

A little distance away from my house is a crossroad. A cross road which connects roads from four different direction. Although it is not a main traffic road but lot of people move around in the colony using that road as center. We in India call these junction, where four roads unites as Choraha. For simplicity of our readers I will use the word cross road. This cross road has a steady flow of people, cycle rickshaw, school Vans, rag pickers and many other forms of commuting or transport vehicle.

I woke up on 1st April 2013, and found lot of candles being lit right in center of the cross road. There was prasad ( a sweet offered to god and distributed among devotees), puris (Indian Bread) which was kept right in center of that cross road. There was enough food for at least 20-25 hungry people lying on the road. This is done as one of the process to offerings to God. I saw a dog came to eat some of the food and it was kicked by some of the devotees. True but SAD. God and Religion is not more than living beings, may it be human, animals or plants. I am writing this not to hurt sentiments of people or religion but making them realize.

Probably those 3-4 rag pickers could have been offered that food and it would have added to the humanity score of those people. Which religion or God does ask us to throw food and now offer to some one in need. We have so many people dying of hunger and our religion, devotion to god make us do things, which does not makes sense (at least to me and many others). When I looked into the eyes of those rag pickers, I felt them saying this.

"Why god we are born with so less to eat and why is that all this food is just wasted. We wish we could have been like this. If In future by any chance I will become like them, i will probably give this food to some one in need".

What happened to the food and those candles was that it got crushed under the wheels of traffic, under school vans, under cars of people going to office.

I am not being atheist, but would like people to read this and start thinking in different way. We ( all those who luckily can afford food)  run behind our kids to make sure that they are fed even if kid may not be hungry and here around us we have so many people who can eat and they run behind us for food.

Does this new ERA or new decade not teach us love and humanity. Where is love towards people vanishing.
Do believe in god but see the facts. Be open to humanity and love.

Differently Abled

I was walking on the street when I encountered a turn towards his right hand. With in split seconds bubble of thoughts hit my mind. There is something different. I realized the street on which I was walking has suddenly changed. What ignited the change of thought in me? What made me  realize that street I was walking on was no more the same I usually walked on?

Second thoughts made me realized that day was Tuesday. A Day when lot of activities happens in the temple. Right on the turn was a temple located. I had not observed the Temple although my routine for the walk was same. What made me  realize that there exists a Temple?

It was Tuesday, a Day worship some of followers of God. There was lot of incense sticks which were burning and the environment around the temple presented a feel of perfume garden. There was lot of people worship god and offering "Prasad" ( a sweet which is generally presented to god and then distributed among people). Small kids played with the Bell of the temple. Few young and some old people were worshiping god with their eyes closed and  hands folded. Probably all of them had something to be asked from God. Some may have wanted love, some money, some happiness, and even some of them would be asking for death.

As I walked he looked at a young but Differently Abled  man sitting on his feet. This man must be in his late 30s but looked older and pale. The Man ( I will call him godman for our reference) had white hairs, very beautiful sparkling eyes, long nose and white teeth which were visible even when he was not smiling.  this GodMan was sitting and waiting for some of the people to come out of temple and share with him some of the Prasad. A little of prasad from few people may probably quench his hunger. I am sure if this man would have dressed well and was standing in a Movie Theater, or a Discotheque, he would have attracted many eyes towards him. Two small poor kids came and start making fun of him. Each time they made fun of this man, he smiled and laugh. Probably this is the way Godman enjoys happiness. It touched my heart. He was such handsome man but could not think as we do. But he could smile from deep beneath his heart which probably lot of us could not.
So is it he who is truly happy or is it all of us. He did not have brain and intelligence like us. He did not have clothes to cover his body fully. He did not have money to buy food for him. All of us or many of us have all these things. What he had probably many of us do not have. He had a smile, a genuine laugh at some of silly things. I wish we could smile and laugh from our heart like him.

His smile is sitting deep in my heart. Whenever I think, I do not know if I should smile because his smile was so addictive or I should be sad for he being "Differently Abled"

Social Media and Being Social

I will start by quoting "Aristotle"

“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god. ”

Facebook is one of the very prominent and accessed social media application. Human Being (Social Animal) has been taught or injected with some of the teachings/values right even before the birth (right from Mother's womb). In this article I would like look at one of the aspects of Facebook which will allow us to learn from this application. Facebook (if looked from different view) teaches many of the values of being social and hence living a happy life. I would like people to add more views/points if they can.

Some of the lessons which Facebook teaches us are :

1. Always Appreciate from Heart:
    Who does not like to receive Appreciation? Login or check Facebook account of yours or any body and you will see the immense pleasure you get when you see people liking your picture or talking about you or your post. Why, in reality we fail to usher such appreciation to others? It is always good to say a word of appreciation while they are living than writing a beautiful biography or bringing a bouquet on their death ceremony. Dead men can not see , smell or read what is written in their praises. Facebook teaches us to be generous in appreciating others.Many times we do not appreciating other due to one of the following reasons

Jealousy:

We can not appreciate others when we are jealous of others good deeds. We need to remove jealousy from our heart and soul in order to appreciate the great work  and support others are providing to us.

Ignorance attitude: 

Today with so much advances we are living in a better life. Have we ever thought  our heart and soul in order to appreciate the great work  and support others are providing to us. If we are so ignorance about others good deeds, we can not appreciate others good deeds. In order to know good deeds of others we need to come out from our ignorance. Ignorance is due to lack of thinking and analytical power.

Callous attitude: 

 We are intentionally or unintentionally too callous our of others hard work for us. We may not have personal relationship with him/her but we need to appreciate the good work of others.

2. Ignore Negative Comments:
      What do you do when some one posts a very bad or a negative comment about you? You go and delete the post or picture. Another way is that you may try to understand why he said so by commenting back on it. All these actions are basically teaching us (human beings, the social animal ) how to handle negativity or negative comments. You can not run aways from negative comments , especially when you are vocal and love to express yourself.

Facebook teaches us to deal with negative comments as follows:

Dealing with Troll:

 Trolls in social media are the lifeforms which do malicious things to get attentions. So what do with them. We do one of the following:

 1. Delete the comment

2. Sideline them

3. Use the U-Turn, Ask question.

In reality also we will get face to face with trolls ( people who would love to get attention by using negative comments about you).What do we in reality? In reality also we need to delete the negative comments from mind, heart and soul, rather than think and worry about it. We can other wise sideline the comment by responding " Thank you for sharing your opinion".

3. Knowledge Sharing

      There is old saying I always heard i.e. "More you share, more you gain Knowledge". Today when we meet someone and we talk about some business , we ( I for sure) see that people tend to hide knowledge. We forget that we have moved from era of "consolidation" to "collaboration" . In facebook we share without hesitation, be it a "traffic update" , be it a "technology update" or for that matter a "rape , abuse , robbery". We do with pride. why do we not share openly when we meet in person. What are we scared of?

Sharing definitely increases knowledge. If you are wrong , your friends (true) would correct and if you are right people may ask you questions and while you answer you gain more knowledge and the topic is stored in your memory more deep.

Leadership Practice

"Change is inevitable"

The above line would have been heard by each and everyone. This is true in real life and with the growth, change in mind set, competition, increase in competency level of an average person, we do change or are part of change in each aspect of life. This is true even in Leadership. Here I have collected 10 points which should be changed or rather removed from the "Leadership Practices" which we have been following for years. 

Business owners certainly have a long way to go, especially in more established companies where old practices die hard. By creating a company with a clear purpose and values, you'll find your employees connect themselves to something bigger, and that increases productivity.  In other words, a culture of engagement leads to greater customer loyalty, and better financial success.

Remove or throw away following from your leadership Practice.

A.  Micro-management, or the need to control every aspect of your company is outdated.  Empowerment, the ability to give your people some rope--even rope to make mistakes without blame. Empowerment is the Key now.

B.  Management by walking around the office; it is no longer enough to be visible. What is now happening is : Leadership by watching and listening, engaging in conversation, implementing the ideas presented to you, and distributing the results.

C.  Pretending you know everything. You don't have all the answers, so why try to make people think you do? This practice is gone now and what is in is: Knowing your leadership team members and trusting them. Choose great people who have the right skills and fit the culture.  And get out of the way.

D.  No mistakes, or a "no tolerance policy" some still think works, but it does not. Today we are  Learning from mistakes, or being the first to admit an error.

E.  The balance sheet drives the business, and informs all other decisions is out and what is in is  People drive the business, boosting customer loyalty, and profit.

F.  Job competency is sufficient. Do the job asked, and you'll survive. This now history. Need of today is  Recruit "A" players who will go the extra mile. They're out there.

G. Out: Invest in technology to increase productivity. In: Invest in people.

H. Out: Demand change; be very specific about what you want and when. In: Nurture change; your people can come up with the best ideas and you can give them credit for it.

I. Out: Fried food in the cafeteria. In: Wellness in the workplace.

J. Out: Incentives; pay employees more money and they'll do more. In: Rewards; being valued matters more than money.

Think... For all the leaders and all those which aspire to be leaders

Unspoken Communication in Presentation

Presentation ( making ppt) is one of key in almost all companies for communicating an important piece of information to stakeholders at all level. Presenting a concept , may it be a strategy, solution, plan or anything in form of power point presentation provides ease of building creditability and engaging all users to participate with their thoughts. Would you like to listen to a speaker who is standing with an angry look on his face? Mostly (baring few exceptions) not. Right from children to old people, we want to befriend a person who is cheerful, playful, approachable, smiling. Although we communicate with words, but our non-verbal signals communicate a lot in participants mind. Here are few points which would help present you point in a better way

1. Never show you displeasure: Even if something has not gone in your favour, do not look displeased. Wear a warm smile. Remember no one cares if your displeased, how ever people look forward to you if you are pleasing personality.

2. Don't Look away: While presenting make sure your eyes communicate ( where you look) to every side where the participants are sitting. Especially towards end (last slide) many people just look at the last slide as reinforcement or may look aside as to communicate (non-verbally) "thanks god it is over".Never speak with your back towards the audience.

3. Ease at start and End: Engage people in some general topic before  the start so that participant opens up the bond building with the presenter. Good example may be one of the recent topics of news (which generally all are interested in) or a quick story or joke. Although many people follow this but their are very few who does this at the end. Do not rush to pick your things and go back to your seat. Say thanks and wait for people to respond to you. Slowly pick up your things before you leave the presenter seat. Keep looking at participants while you are wrapping up to leave.

4. Hand Gestures: Use slow hand gestures that move in harmony with your words like your are directing a group of people performing musical night. Hold your hands out and palms down while presenting facts.Prospects that rub, pull or scratches their ear while you’re presenting to them means they 
have either; heard enough or they want to speak.

5. Visual Aids: While presenting you may use visual aids like some picture on ppt, or using some note card to participants. It is obvious that while you present using visual aids, you may loose eye contact. Hence keep note pad in your palms right in front of you or stand near the visual aid side of ppt. This will make people to keep eye contact with you

These are very small but very high impact communication for a presenter. Initial users ( who has not given much presentation ) can practice this and see the impact. 

5 Things That would Help in Project Management

Information Technology has always been a challenge for people who manages IT Projects. The challenges are different for following reason:

• Information Technology is always been linked to Business and business is always growing , changing and expanding. Information Technology projects goes through changes even before it has been delivered.
• Business users are ignorant about technology(Although we have seen a growth)  and their understanding of how to use the Information Technology to maximize potential is limited. They see technology as solution provider and not the tool to help them.
• Technologies are changing faster than any other business

Keeping all these in mind, we need to have following things to manage our Delivery of the solution in a better way:

1. Open for change: Define the scope and limit it to development but make sure that you are developing something which is easy for change. Avoid giving answers like "this is not possible in this technology?". Remember if you can not do it, some one else would.
2. Understand Business: It is important that the whole development team understands the business to the maximum they can. Once they understand the business and the need of the user , they would themselves come up with solutions which will give then praises from customer and end user.   
3.  Embrace Change:  Team should be motivated to accept changes which are critical to the business requirements. If they understand Business they would definitely accept it more easily.Make sure that team is able to say "No" for a change which is not critical for business or does not add value ( It reminds of Lean Philosophy).
4. Ready Made Code: A typical developer will always love to write his framework/libraries etc , this eating away the time which can be used for some meaningful development, if we take off the shelf available code or already developed frameworks/libraries.
5. Partnership Not Management: Project Manager, Customer and team should work as a Partnership firm, where every one has a role defined and is working for the goal. Manager should not be only acting as some one sitting high and ordering, he should be like a Team member with maximum expertise/information/experience

Finally I would be happy if you people ( whoever reads this!) can comment with their points.

Software Team Management

How is it different from any team management? Lets see how a common ( General Rule applied  ) man ( working in a Company) think of IT.

• If there is a problem, it has to do with software.
• IT does not yield direct revenue to the company
• IT people are paid well above their capabilities.

In all these scenarios it becomes slightly more difficult to manage your team. I am putting down some of the points which we must do, with the team to make sure that we deliver best as per expectations to the customer. These may not be the guide lines for doing it, but these have worked for me over the years.

• Do Explain the project from Business perspective to the team. Make sure when you are explaining, you explain in a layman's language.
• Spend time with the team  whenever possible. 
• Give small doses of appreciation. Who does not like it, even after years of service an appreciation gives me goose bumps
• Make sure you are friend to them when they need you and a tough manager to them when it comes to delivery.
• Ask them to write what they have understood. I learnt in my childhood after writing. It helps you recollect while thinking in mind and then while writing. Also, we have every thing in "Black and White" as they say.
• Remember not to show them that you are smarter than them. Sometimes a foolish idea from them can turn to be a big idea. This foolish idea will come to you only if you show that you are still learning.
• Understand the career plan for each of them and align that with the work given to them.
• Play some games to activate there mind during the project, may be ask riddles. Remember a mind used is mind sharpened. We need proactive ideas, nothing is changing and expanding as Information Technology.

I would appreciate you all to add to this and pass your comments. Finally it is a collaborative world now.