Archive for March, 2005
By Rajesh Setty on Thu 10 Mar 2005, 6:11 AM - 1 Comment
A Company’s resume – client list
A teacher’s resume – student list
A leader’s resume – his people
If you are a leader, there are so many things that you have to do right. There are people who are watching your moves as you are a role model for most people. There are many ways to know how effective you are as a leader. One quick way is to constantly watch what your people are becoming. Your people are your resume.
Growing people may be the most important thing a leader has to to. One of my favorite authors on the topic of leadership John Maxwell (who is also a great leader) says that his job definition is “lid lifter” – he lifts lids (limitations) off people so that they can grow higher.What a neat concept.
If you have been leading people for more than a year, take a look at all the people who were with you last year same time. Compare them with where they are today. You should have been a catalyst to cause a major shift in what they are today as compared to what they were last year. If you care enough for your people and create an infrastructure to grow them, miracles will happen. It’s a matter of time.
Posted under Leadership, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Thu 10 Mar 2005, 5:13 AM - Leave Comment
I love Google and I think they are an innovation powerhouse. However, this new Autolink feature that they have introduced in the Google Toolbar scares me. From what I understand of this feature, if you use it the webpages will get modified and keywords on the webpages will get new hyperlinks automatically (mostly to other google properties and advertiser websites.) This is one case where I think Google innovation has gone awry.
Steve Rubel has a nice piece written on this topic Google gets away with what Microsoft couldn’t.
My worry is that this is a glaring strategy to increase their ad reach in the disguise of a feature. Google would be doing so well without these kind of tricks. People are smart and most of us will figure out that there is more in it for Google than for the users. I am also sure that there are millions of google toolbar users out there that may not even have read about Autolink but are now silent participants in increasing the ad impression count for many of the google advertisers.
I have not installed a toolbar (first of all, I use Firefox only and they don’t have an official toolbar there) and now it is clear to me that I should not install one. If this was a plan by some new startup, that would not surprise me but coming from Google – come on, give us a break!!
I think what we can learn from this is that we need to respect our clients and always assume that they are SMART. Tricks will work – only for a short time!!
Posted under Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Wed 09 Mar 2005, 10:04 PM - 1 Comment
Thank you for all your emails so far. I want to give a quick update on
the book “Beyond Code” I am fortunate to have Tom Peters write the
foreword for this book. It was a dream come true for me.
The book is in final editing now and it should go to print
simultaneously in US and India (two different publishers) in the next
two weeks. The release date is about 6-8 weeks from now. I am hoping to
have the companion website up and running well before that.
For those of you who are interested in getting notified when the book
is out, please send me an email and I will add you to the list:
rs at lifebeyondcode dot com
More soon.
Posted under Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Tue 08 Mar 2005, 9:34 PM - Leave Comment
Two days ago I met with my friend Mitchell Levy and we had an interesting discussion about his latest project Happy About.
Happy About is a series of books with a positive spin on topics that stir emotion. Currently there are two titles – one on Outsourcing and the other one on Trends for 2005. The books are edited and compiled by an expert with contributions from people that include movers and shakers of a particular industry. There are a few more titles planned for release in the next few months.
Mitchell and I have talked about this project several times. I am a great fan of Mitchell and I am, actually, VERY happy about this project for him.
While this is an innovative project (I have not seen or heard of anything like this before) the reason I like this project is the timing. We are in a world where the media is bombarding us with negative news. In fact, we have an overdose of negative news everyday. Want proof? Take a look at daily world news on google or any other news portal. Most of the days, the headlines are negative. We are starved of news with positive outlook and positive spin. Happy About is one such attempt and it deserves all the support it can get. I stopped reading the morning newspaper (in the morning) a few years ago when I realized that I was carrying a lot of baggage from the newspaper into work. We need to be aware of what’s happening but there should be a balance of intake (positive and negative) to keep ourselves in balance.
Here is wish for all of your happiness.
Posted under Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Mon 07 Mar 2005, 10:07 PM - 2 Comments
Most of us need a big victory to celebrate but a very small failure to
get upset. In other words we need really strong reasons to celebrate
but to get upset we don’t need a lot of justification. In fact,
sometimes we can get upset for no reason 
We are smart people. We know that
a) Failure is the stepping stone of success
b) It’s NOT not falling down but standing up every time we fall down that matters and
c) A bend in the road is not the end of the road
and all those cool things. This should all make it easy for us to
handle small failures. Apparently not! We have trouble facing failures.
On the other hand, when we have small victories, we don’t have time to
celebrate them. We postpone celebrating small victories as most people
around us don’t celebrate such events. The benchmarks set by the
society (in general) for celebrations is very high. We want to be
“normal” - so we follow the crowd.
Nobody is surprised when a small failure causes a major upset but
everyone will raise their eyebrows if a small victory is celebrated in a
big way. Both are extremes but each one gets a different treatment.
Happy people do things the other way around. It’s fun to be around
people who celebrate small victories. They are full of life and they
bring life to people around them.
When was the last time you celebrated a small victory? May be it’s time for a small celebration for a small victory…
All the best!
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Sun 06 Mar 2005, 11:11 PM - 3 Comments
I was thinking of a title like “Leverage” for this post but decided to be more direct and hence the title “Ask for help.”
Most of us know that in some cultures, asking for help has a negative
connotation (may show a sense of incapability) Most of us don’t ask for
help and beat ourselves to death trying to figure out everything by
ourselves. It is not required. Life can be simpler than that. In fact,
I feel that there is more help than you may need out there. The
pre-requisite, though, is that you should be ready to give when it is your time. It is a two-way street.
There are so many people that are out there who have the right
knowledge and resources that might solve your problems or open up new
opportunities for you. That’s why they say that it’s not what you know but who you know that matters.
Whenever I teach, I always start by saying that since I have not learnt
mind reading, it is upto the students to talk and ask for help.
The same is true in business and in life. You have to ask and only then you shall receive. Please make it a point to ask for help with someone this week. Watch the miracles unfold!!
Bonus: You might get a side benefit from asking – humility (which I think is a great virtue to have)
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Sat 05 Mar 2005, 8:56 AM - Leave Comment
Picked this up from Tom Peters website. This quote basically says that there is no room for complacency.
“If things seem under control, you are just not going fast enough.”
- Mario Andretti
Posted under Great Quotes, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Fri 04 Mar 2005, 11:18 PM - Leave Comment
“Under promise and over deliver”
Easier said than done. Most projects fail even after the team puts in a
lot of hard work. Many times the project success is not even dependent
on the amount of effort that is put into the project. If wrong or
unrealistic expectations are set, even the smartest teams can fail. The
#1 requirement to succeed in a project is to set the right expectations
for all parties involved.
Organizations are systems. Very rarely projects are executed in silos.
Every project is connected one or more other projects and a delay in
one project has a cascading effect and the impact is felt in more
places than you might have imagined. Understanding these relationships
is the foundation of Systems Thinking (Take a look at Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline
to learn more about this topic.) The more you understand Systems
thinking better you will be at setting expectations as you will be
aware of the overall impact of missing a deadline on your project.
Also, remember that expectations keep rising without your knowledge. My friends Michael Weissman and Dave Mosby of Fresh Perspectives
have authored a phenomenal book on this topic called Paradox of
Excellence in the form of a business fable. It’s a MUST read for anyone
who is engaged with a client in some form or fashion.
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Fri 04 Mar 2005, 10:30 AM - Leave Comment
Jim focuses on growth in this quote
“Success is making measurable progress in reasonable time”
- Jim Rohn
Posted under Great Quotes, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Thu 03 Mar 2005, 11:02 PM - Leave Comment
Open source changes fast. Very fast. We should know this. We at CIGNEX
have been implementing open source solutions for customers across the
world since last four years. It was a lot of hard work initially as
there was limited documentation on most open source software. Now a
days, we have a ton of books that are being published on open source as
a movement as well as several open source tools and technologies.
Here is an interesting problem with books related to open source tools
and technologies: They get outdated fast! Publishing is a long process
and many times the book is outdated even before it hits the market. So,
there is a publishing challenge when it comes to books related to open
source tools and technologies.
A problem for one is an opportunity for another. I am so proud of my friend Matt Filios who took this up as an opportunity to build an innovative publishing company Sourcebeat.
Sourcebeat publishes books related to open source that are available in
traditional book format but they are more famous for their subscription
model. When you buy a sourcebeat published book, you are guaranteed
freshness for the next twelve months as the authors update the book
every month and the updates are available for free for the next twelve
months.
There is a lot of momentum for sourcebeat titles as the value is clear.
Books denoted some sort of finality earlier but not anymore – with the
companion websites, live updates etc.. books have become just a
starting point of a relationship with the author and the reader.
It seems like an obvious thing now. Most innovations are like that. Hats off to Matt for thinking about this first!!
Disclaimer: Two of our team members Munwar Shariff and Michel Pelletier have written a book called Plone Live that is being published by Sourcebeat. The book is in the Early Release Program now and should be out soon.
Posted under Innovation, Main Page.
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