Personal and professional development for technology professionals.
» Bringing Ideas To Life. With Love!
By Rajesh Setty on Sun 18 Sep 2005, 9:13 PM - Leave Comment
Money is important without a doubt but there are other things equally
or more important than money. Here is a beautiful quote from Garth
Brooks.
Posted under Great Quotes, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Fri 16 Sep 2005, 6:27 PM - 2 Comments
I am shocked and sad after the news “Man breaks record for watching TV” made it to the front page of CNN.
I loved the Guiness Book of World Records when I was a kid. It was
interesting stuff. Not anymore. I don’t care if someone has the longest
hair or longest toe nails. How does that matter? There are so many
burning things that need attention in this world and we report about
someone watching TV for 60+ hours continuously? It makes it to the
headline news on CNN and it becomes part of the morning TV show. Give us a break!
Imagine the impact on other people who might want to imitate Suresh and
beat his record. Total waste of time for a ton of people without a
meaningful purpose. I only wish the media were more responsible and not
give such stories so much importance.
May be I am too harsh but it just doesn’t make sense!
Posted under Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Fri 16 Sep 2005, 7:00 AM - 4 Comments
You may be shocked but you will agree with me if I say that one of the hardest things is to be just yourself.
It’s true. Most of the times we were a mask or a facade to hide who we really are.
A thin mask should be fine to ensure that you are behaving according to
the social norms set by the society. But if the mask makes you a
totally different person than who you really are, we have a problem and
you have a multiple personality disorder 
A few years ago I read a phenomenal book called “You are the message
by a renowned speech coach Roger Ailes (Mr.Ailes was a speech coach for
two past presidents) and the key message of the book was that inorder
to speak well, you need to be yourself. Let me say that we can extend
this further and say that if you need to be successful, you need to be
yourself.
The smaller the difference between who you are without the
mask and who you are with the mask [I call it the "facade diff"] the
more comfortable you are with yourself. Very few people may have the
facade diff set to zero. It may not be necessary to be set to zero,
however, it is important that it is kept small all the time.
There is so much power in just being yourself!
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Thu 15 Sep 2005, 8:41 PM - Leave Comment
Advance Praise for Beyond Code
- Bo Burlingham Editor at Large – Inc. Magazine, Co-author of The Great Game of Business
Posted under Endorsements, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Thu 15 Sep 2005, 5:15 PM - 2 Comments
People always complain about not
getting enough credit for the work that they have performed. There is no simple
solution for that. However, what ticks off people more is to see someone get
credit when it’s not due to him or her.
to refuse credit when it’s not due to you. Second thing that you can do is to
pass on the credit to the person that really should get credit in that
situation. Accepting “free” credit comes with a big price – “credibility”.
Nobody is “entitled” to get credit, everyone has to “earn”
it.
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Tue 13 Sep 2005, 3:32 AM - Leave Comment
Thanks Chaim for sending this.
Just because you can do something, please don’t do it. Activity is not
equal to productivity. Many times we get carried away with
organizational change initiatives without fully understanding why
something is in it’s current form.
Posted under Great Quotes, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Mon 12 Sep 2005, 12:30 PM - Leave Comment
We all know the power of habits. Paul Getty talks about their role in the success of a person.
Posted under Great Quotes, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Sun 11 Sep 2005, 11:06 AM - 1 Comment
Dave Warnock has a response to my twin posts
a. Harvard MBA and the fisherman story challenge
b. Harvard MBA and the fisherman solution
Dave’s point is that Harvard MBA is wrong as you can’t spend 12 years running a business and then come back and have a life of peace with kids. Good points there so makes me believe that I was not clear. If the Harvard MBA was wrong, was the fisherman right? No, there is no digital (0 or 1) solution for this problem.
The objective of my twin posts was not to focus on the fisherman or the solution but on the power of storytelling. Obviously, we all want the fisherman to make the right choice based on his life priorities but I don’t want the fisherman to lead a life without considering the risks that comes with a particular kind of lifestyle. Dave’s response makes my point even clearer. This is a fictional story and we all get carried away by fiction. There was no fisherman and there was no Harvard MBA that went and talked to the fisherman. This is all fiction. My point was to prove that we get carried away by stories and suspend logic when we are listening or reading stories. When I asked to identify the flaw in the logic of the story, I got a ton of responses but only two were on the mark. About 2% of the responses were right. As I know some of the respondents personally (who got it wrong) there is no relationship with the reps one and the intelligence of the people. They are all very bright but the point is that it’s human tendency to get carried away by stories and suspend logic in the process.
Thanks Dave for taking time to finding the flaw in the logic that was trying to find the flaw
Posted under Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Wed 07 Sep 2005, 2:42 PM - 1 Comment
From the time I started blogging (Feb 2005) I have been writing on a
series called “Ways to Distinguish Yourself”. Now,
ChangeThis has published the first 25 of them in a manifesto titled “25
Ways to Distinguish Yourself”. You can download the PDF document over
at ChangeThis.com
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Tue 06 Sep 2005, 10:28 PM - 9 Comments
No, there is no mistake and I did not mean ROI. ROII is a new term that I coined. It stands for “Return on Investment for an Interaction”.
Let me explain -
Life if full of interactions. We interact with people when we meet
them, when we talk on phone, when we exchange emails or for that
matter, I am interacting with you when you are reading this blog entry.
Every interaction has a cost for both parties participating in the
interaction. If you focus on ensuring that the other party has the
highest ROII (return on investment for an interaction with you), you
win big time.
What if you decided that for the rest of your life you will ensure a
high ROII for anyone that participates in an interaction with you.
Wouldn’t that make you special?
Update: I got two
emails asking for examples. Well, let me pick the easiest example -
blogs – the fastest way of interacting with people. I want to
dedicate this post to a few people whose blogs have provided the
highest ROII for me in the past few months (in no particular order)
* Seth Godin
* Brad Feld
* Robert Scoble
* Worthwhile Magazine
* TP Wire Service
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
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