not enough words to explain, but it is great here. will write more stories soon. I am reserving my comments about french people 🙂
Paris is awesome
Thursday, December 29th, 2005Merry Christmas
Saturday, December 24th, 2005Employers are happy to give you a week off during the week of christmas and new year. It will only be wise to take advantage of that isn’t it?
We are off to a week of sight-seeing to the greatest city in europe! Hey, Eiffel, here we come.
[Eiffel sunrise from Wikipedia]
On this Christmas Day, May God grant good health and peace to everyone.
dream and then follow it
Thursday, December 22nd, 2005I am sure everyone of us have heard of “Follow your dreams”. Most people ignore it either because they don’t dream of anything or they don’t believe their dreams are realistic (unachievable). A few people believe in their dreams and follow it and almost always “dreams come true, if only you follow it”.
Human mind has the capacity to dream beyond impossible frontiers and our brain has the capacity to realize it, but only our heart has the capacity to believe that dreams can be realized. Without true belief, nothing is ever accomplished.
Think about this for a minute: Everything around us exists because someone someday somewhere dreamed of it and followed it and made it into a reality. Someone dreamed of sending voice without wires, I wonder how many of us appreciate that dream when we take a call while driving. Someone had a dream that man can fly and I wonder how many of us appreciate that person when we board a flight. Someone dreamed of connecting computers to make them talk exchange data with each other, I wonder how many of us appreciate when we check our emails or shop at Amazon. Centuries ago, someone dreamed of a ink and paper, I wonder how many of us cherish that dream today when we hold a picture or a book. Of course, the list is endless.
I don’t mean we all should stop everything spend years just appreciating all those people and their dreams. I think all the above are the reasons that everyone must dream. Big and Beyond. Not just dream, but hold on to them tight, believe it and follow through. Are you dreaming? Are you dreaming big? really big? Do you believe in it? Do you follow through?
What if one doesn’t dream or doesn’t follow their dreams? Someone else will, for sure. After all, the only thing we bring with us when we are born is our ability to dream. This life is our only chance to follow those dreams. Many millions don’t realize it, but few million do and the world continue to be a better place to be, one dream at a time.
“If you can dream it, you can do it” – Walt Disney
[Image from www.oneshare.com ]
Judgements
Thursday, December 15th, 2005Good judgement comes from experience;
Experience comes from bad judgements.
Zimmerman’s collection
Friday, December 9th, 2005Dr. Zimmerman’s collection of insights on various topics ranging from customer service to leadership to ‘balancing life and stressful work’…
A couple from his list that stuck a chord with me :
Your life will be determined by your priorities or your pressures.
Take time for rec-reation before your body makes time for wreck-reation.
If you know your “why,” any “how” is possible
Don’t be content with “average.” That means you’re as close to the bottom as you are to the top.
All well said, isn’t it? Now, lets get back to Being, Knowing and Doing
Golden rules
Sunday, December 4th, 2005The current issue of Business 2.0 has a very useful artilce titled “My Golden Rule”. A quick-take from 30 luminaries in today’s American business about which single quality they would consider as their golden rule for sucess in business and life, in general.
Leadership qualities can’t be learned by reading an article or a best-seller but by consciously building one’s character from the best-practices of other successful leaders. Lets incorporate those habits at the micro level on a daily-basis, we will eventually be a “Leader” at the macro level.
Simply amazing
Friday, December 2nd, 2005Krazydad simply is amazing. The image is an high-end art work combined with some mathematical fascination.
Click on the image above. It will open a larger version of this artwork and you will have a better view of the individual phots that were used to create this photo-poster. Move your mouse there over any one circular photo and click on it to view the original photo. Each photo in itself is a piece of art. This is collaborative creativity at its best.
Incidentally got to hear about Krazydad from this innovative presentation by Dick Hardt. The subject Dick is talking about may be boring to many but the presentation style is gripping. A splendid demonstration of visual vs voice coordination, apparently popularized by Larry Lessig.
Leading smart
Thursday, December 1st, 2005Rajesh Setty who writes an interesting blog at “Life Beyond Code” has offered some tips in an article titled “Leading smart IT professionals”. It is pretty good though in some cases uncoventional. However, I think there is nothing IT (as in information technology) about his tips. It can be applied to leading any type of people albeit smart.
A quick and brief listing of his tips in my own words (just so I will remember them even better!) :
Always ask, first, for suggestions and solutions to problems before you offer yours. If you happen to work with smart people, one of them will likely suggest what you might have in your mind. That is almost always better for the team.
Always encourage successful failures. A failure is always better than never attempting. After all, we can only learn from failures. Make your team and working style a safe place for your people to not just take up risk but be able to gracefully fail and learn from them. Encourage them to share their experiences; A failed experience is the greatest asset when making a second attempt.
Introduce healthy changes in regular intervals. Even if the type of work is reasonably unpredictable on a daily-basis, human mind is infinitely capable of adjusting to such jobs. Give people, new roles and responsibilities every now and then. If you are doing the same thing for more than 2-3 years, your “marginal learning” from it may be less.
Understand that everyone wants to grow. No matter how experienced and how young someone is, everyone aspires to grow as soon as they can. Thats the nature of any aggressive smart employee. Understand their expectations and help them set reasonable short-term and long-term goals. Always align them (some if not all) to your team’s goals. Reward every accomplishment. A reward need not be in $$$, a strong appreciation in front a group, especially with senior management, will probably go longer than a small cheque could. Of course, $$$ should come into the picture sooner than they ask!
Engage in conversations and activities outside of work. In 21st century work culture, people likely spend most part of their active day at work and with colleagues. Indeed, work can take some fun and bit of other things too. Avoid setting monotonous routines such as regular friday team lunches or Monday bowling nights! Go beyond what most leaders do. Be creative and let your team understand that you will always bring some cheer when they badly need it.
I like this quote on leadership (more quotes)
“The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind in others the conviction and will to carry on.” – Walter Lippman
This will happen when you make each one of them feel as leaders themselves.