Archive for October, 2005
By Rajesh Setty on Sat 22 Oct 2005, 2:36 PM - Leave Comment
WAG is an acronym I coined and it stands for “Watch your Attention-Getters”
People draw attention for several things. The easiest (but not
desirable) ways to get attention is by complaining and/or whining.
When was the last time you liked someone who was a complainer and/or a whiner? I bet your answer is “Never”
Typically when people complain they transfer the responsibility of
solving the problem to someone else. It’s almost like everything is
right with them and something else needs to be fixed to make the world
better. I am not saying that you should NEVER complain but if that is
the only reason why you will draw attention from people around you
(friends, colleagues etc.) then there is a serious problem. So, what
are the other things that we can do to get attention?
We all know that if we just do our job, it’s hard to get attention just
because everyone else around us are also doing their job. Naturally, if
there some people out there going beyond the call of duty, they draw
attention. However that attention is short-lived because the tendency
is to think that this “walking the extra mile” was more of an
exception. The game changes significantly when you consistently start
exceeding the expectations of people around you. That is when you have
“distinguished yourself” or become “special”
The attention you get when you stand out of the crowd is the kind of attention that you should seek.
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Sat 22 Oct 2005, 1:34 PM - 3 Comments
Most people can’t handle criticism well. In fact, if you criticize
someone on a topic, some of the most common reactions from that person
will be:
* to defend strongly and say that you are wrong in criticizing them
* to attack you for one of your related or unrelated fault
* to ignore and not bother
* to question your authority and qualification to criticize
If this happens consistently, one effect of this is may be that you
won’t criticize the person again. What might very well happen is
that you might
marginalize the person. In other words, you may write off the person
from your life as one of the “not so important” things in life.
The same rule applies to you when someone criticizes you. While it’s
easy to say “handle criticism with grace” it’s hard to follow. Next
time when someone criticizes you for something, try focusing on the
message rather than the messenger. It may change the way you look at things.
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Sat 22 Oct 2005, 1:21 PM - Leave Comment
Advance praise for my book “Beyond Code”
“Witty, creative, succint, insightful! This little book is ideal for anyone with a big dream.”
-
Marcia Wieder, America’s Dream Coach
Posted under Endorsements, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Sat 22 Oct 2005, 1:03 PM - Leave Comment
It’s unbelievable how much clutter there is in life and in business.
Entrepreneurs know this very well – they look at something that is
complex and try to offer a new way of doing something that is more
simple. Historically we have seen that the marketplace rewards someone
who makes things simple. Any remarkable invention or innovation
simplified things.
Take some of the basic examples
Automobile – made it simple to for people to go from one place to another
Telephone – made it simple for people to communicate over a long distance
Fax Machine – made it simple for people to transfer documents from one place to another
I picked general examples but you can take companies and you will see the same thing
Google – made it simple to search on the web
eBay – made it simple for people to participate in auctions (buy and sell)
Amazon – made it simple for people to to buy books (sorry almost everything)
Questions to ask yourself:
* In your role in the current company what are you simplifying?
* In your relationships with other people what are you simplifying for them?
* Same time last year were things more simple or more complex? How do you think things will pan out same time next year?
There is a lot of literature available on this topic. The best book
that I have found on this topic is Bill Jensen’s Simplicity
.
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Fri 21 Oct 2005, 9:19 AM - 1 Comment
Not literally, of course! Authors William Oncken, Jr. and Donald L. Wass wrote an article in HBR titled “Who’s Got the Monkey” and interestingly after 30 years, it’s still extremely relevant today.
Monkey management is mostly useful to managers but all of us can learn something out of it. So, here it is:
Monkey management is the art of managing upward delegation. When one of
your employees comes to you with an unsolved problem he has two choices
- one to ask for help and the other is to transfer the problem to you.
The later is the classic case of upward delegation. When you take an
unsolved problem from your subordinates, you are allowing a figurative
monkey to leap from your employee’s back to your back. If you have more
than one subordinates, you may end up carrying a number of monkeys on
your back. This will not only cause you undue stress but also your
subordinates won’t progress on the job.
I won’t list everything in the article. However, here is the basic law for managing monkeys (as the authors put it)
At no
time while I am helping you will your problem become my problem. The
instant your problem becomes mine, you will no longer have a problem. I
cannot help someone who hasn’t got a problem. You may ask my help at
any appointed time, and we will make a joint determination of what the
next move will be and who will make it.
Quick question: How many monkeys are on your back today?
Cheers!
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Wed 19 Oct 2005, 11:12 PM - 2 Comments
Think about the amount of investment you made on yourself in the last
twelve months. Imagine if you double that investment in the next 12
months. Would that make a difference in your life? You bet it would!
It
is important that we consciously increase our rate of learning. This is
especially important when you are working towards building your brand.
If you are concerned how you can pack more in your already “packed”
schedule. there is help. You can change the strategies and tools you
might be using for learning.
Here are some suggestions:
1. Use Audio Books:
Audible and
iTunes provide thousands of audio books
2. Use Music for learning: It is no secret that using the right music will help in accelerating learning. Stephen Halpern is a world renowned musician. I have used Stephen’s Accelerated Learning CDs for years and they have helped me tremendously.
3. Use Mindmapping: Mindmaps provide a great way of visually summarizing a book. Mindjet provides great software tools for creating mindmaps.
4. Use speed reading: Almost half the material that you read can be read using speed reading techniques.
5. Start a book club: Find a few like-minded people who are interested in learning. Divide and conquer is a great strategy
6. Subscribe to book summaries: There are a number of services that provide book summaries for a fee.
There may be more tools and strategies but the above should give you a headstart.
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Wed 19 Oct 2005, 9:37 PM - Leave Comment
I have said this before and I have also said this in my book and none
of us can escape from this – we are always in the middle of two or more
projects in our life. I say two or more as there will be at least one
project from your work and there will be at least one project from your
life. Just to give an idea – if you find anyone working on only TWO
projects, it will be a miracle.
In one of my earlier posts, I talked about the need to learn the art of managing multiple projects.
Here I want to focus on the need to connect most or all your projects
so that each project will leverage out of your investment in the other
projects.
I learnt this late and I just wish I had learnt this before. First, I
had to define who I was to connect the projects that I was working on.
I now describe myself as someone who EATs with passion! (E=Entrepreneur, A=Author and T=Teacher) and it’s working out great. I love to create companies as an Entrepreneur.
I have failed, succeeded and learnt about entrepreneurship all “on the
job.” From my experiences, I write books as an Author. That gives me credibility to Teach
where I meet potential employees or partners for companies I create. So
it’s a full circle. Whatever I do in one area easily supports the other
two areas. The relationships I create in one area help me with
relationships in the other area. Of course, all this did not happen
overnight. There was a lot of trial and error.
I am not saying that I have found THE winning formula but I must say that this is a winning formula for now.
Think about the projects that you are handling now and look for ways
for connecting your projects. What could you leverage from one project
in the other. Can any of your relationships in one project be leveraged
for your other projects? Is there anything that you can do that can be
leveraged across all projects?
Something to think about.
RSS (Rajesh’s Shameless Self-Promotion)
If you like this post, please vote for my proposal “25 More Ways to Distinguish Yourself“ that will motivate me to complete the remaining 6 items in the series.
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Wed 19 Oct 2005, 9:50 AM - 2 Comments
When the project is bigger, everyone knows the need for getting things
in the right order. The output is polished and the presentation is
impeccable. The size of the project that you are working on makes a big
difference on how much effort you put into packaging the materials for
the project. It can be a simple status report or an executive summary.
The sad part though is that people expect that you do a “phenomenal”
job when the stakes are high. So, basically, doing a “brilliant” job in
a big project is nothing special. It is part of meeting expectations.
However, think through all the “small” things that you do in your daily
life. It can be as simple as sending an email or leaving a voicemail
for someone. The expectations for such things are set low by people as
most people don’t give it the amount of thought that one should
normally give. I remember a quote from Jim Rohn “Every disciplined effort has multiple rewards.” That resonates well especially for these times.
If you want to truly diffentiate yourself, start giving a lot of
“importance” for “small” things that others don’t give enough attention
to. When people’s expectations are low on things you can blow them away
by doing a superior job.
A few simple examples:
1. Sending an email
- Choose the “To” and “Cc” fields
carefully. “To” is if you want the person to take action. Better yet,
don’t copy people un-necessarily and waste their time
- State what exactly you want out of this clearly.
- Include your phone contact details if you want to give multiple options to contact you back
- Think carefully why it’s important for the recipient to read this email and why it’s not a waste of his or her time.
2. Leaving a voicemail
- keep it short. some people tell
stories in voicemails. People may be listening to your voicemail when
they are driving or at an airport. Time is of essence
- Leave your phone number clearly
- Don’t block your phone number when calling another cell phone. If
your number gets registered as “Restricted” or “Private” it won’t help
you, will it?
- Think carefully why it won’t be a waste of the person’s time to listen to your voicemail
There are many more things that we do just to “operate” in our lives. You can make a big difference by treating small things with care and discipline.
RSS (Rajesh’s Shameless Self-Promotion)
If you like this post, please vote for my proposal “25 More Ways to Distinguish Yourself“ that will motivate me to complete the remaining 7 items in the series.
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Wed 19 Oct 2005, 7:20 AM - 1 Comment
Many people have a notion that if they keep doing good work they will
be recognized and rewarded. It MAY happen but it is not an entitlement.
In fact it is an ideal scenario. If it happens it just shows that you
have a “super human” as your boss 
I first met Michael Weismann of Fresh Perspectives when I was still the CEO of CIGNEX.
When Micheal heard that I was running a services company, he made some
quick remarks that still resonate well with me. Two things that I can
remember even today:
1. If you pull out the pain, you pull out the visibility
2. When solutions become invisible, value diminishes
and here is the bonus
3. The better you are at your job, the more invisible you become except for failures
If whatever you do is flawless or spotless, many times rather than
saying “Wow!” people think that the job in itself was very easy. One
option (not desirable) out is to create a “mini-crisis” to attract
attention and clear off the crisis and look like a hero.
The other option (which I think is the right one) is to learn to make
people understand your value and maintain your visibility. It takes
commitment and discipline to craft a strategy to ensure that people see
value in what you are doing. But it is time worth spent thinking and
implementing to maintaining visibility for your work.
PS: If you like this post, please vote for my proposal “
25 More Ways to Distinguish Yourself“ that will motivate me to complete the remaining 8 items in the series.
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Mon 17 Oct 2005, 10:07 PM - 2 Comments
I have been exploring Ning, a simple
framework for building social apps. The promise of Ning is compelling
and it appears like it should be easy to create applications like Craigslist, Flickr or Del.icio.us. Ning was founded by Gina Bianchini and Marc Andreessen.
I was tempted to get a beta developer account and get my hands dirty on
this one quickly. Before that, I did want to check how they were going
to make money from this offering. Once I found that out, I realized
that the details are sketchy and the exposure of creating an app is
huge at this point in time.
Here is the Ning FAQ if you want to read it yourself. Two things caught my attention:
* Application Quota is for public applications is 1GB.
Note: Don’t know what it would cost for additional storage.
* You need to pay for turning off features like “Clone this app” or “View Source”
Note: If
I am building a serious application with a lot of effort, I may not
want someone to clone this app. How much does it cost to turn off the
features are not provided
So, long story short, I will wait until they announce more details. I
am sure Ning will come up with answers to the above and I think until
then I will work on my other projects 
Posted under Innovation, Main Page.
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