Archive for November, 2005
By Rajesh Setty on Fri 11 Nov 2005, 7:11 AM - 1 Comment
I have always said that if you want to do something great, work with a
great team. Working with an “A” team has a ton of advantages but there
are some problems too. One problem is that it’s not easy to reach a
consensus sometimes. Each person has an opinion and will have valid
reasons to believe that he or she is right (and the others are wrong)
If things were to be simple, the team
members will discuss the differences and agree upon a course of action
and everyone supports the cause and moves forward. Things would be just
great.
Of course, we all know that it’s not that easy. Some smart people will
say they will support the cause but actually they won’t. The sad part
is that they will practice “passive resistance” meaning they will
manufacture situations that will stall or sabotage the project.
The soul searching question to ask yourself is “Am I committed 100% to
all the projects that I am participating in?” If the answer is “Yes”
then you may not be playing the “passive resistance” game. Good for
you. If not, you may be playing a passive resistance game to some
degree. Now the interesting part – if your leader is bright, this is
not news to that person. He already knows it and he may have accounted
for this time in his “master plan.” What you may not know is that slowly but surely he is losing trust in you.
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Tue 08 Nov 2005, 4:16 PM - 5 Comments
Okay – there is no
such law. I made this up based on an advice by one of my mentors.
Imagine an empty glass where you can pour water or any liquid. It’s
ready and willing to get filled.
Imagine a bucket filled with water. Now, start pouring the water from the
bucket into the glass. After a while the
glass will be full. You can
continue to pour more water but unfortunately the glass can only hold a
limited amount of water (way less than what a bucket can hold)
You can devise a strategy to pour water slowly or you can employ
“positive thinking” and be optimistic about the possibility of putting
in more water. Won’t work. Sorry!
Summary: Next time, when you are talking to someone, please see whether the
other person has a glass or a bucket and then pour your information
appropriately. It will save both of you a lot of time and energy!
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Tue 08 Nov 2005, 2:59 PM - 1 Comment
It’s always fun to meet my friend Mitchell Levy of Happy About. Today at lunch, Mitchell was kind enough to share his three rules of business success. Here they are (with his permission)
1. Make as many friends as possible and do as many favors as possible.
2. Looking for pain and solving it directly or through relationships
you have developed through rule #1. In other words, work on supply and
demand.
3. Enjoy business, have fun and learn from failure
Mitchell says that in the last few years, he has not found a situation where these rules have not worked 
Posted under Leadership, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Mon 07 Nov 2005, 5:08 PM - Leave Comment
I recently wrote
about a report from Blog Herald that there are now 100 million blogs in
the world. How long would it take to start a newspaper? May be a few
months? How long would it take to start a blog? Less than a few
minutes!!
With the information explosion continuing to haunt us, there is a
serious need to enhance the “signal to noise” ratio. One such attempt
is the “Carnival of Agilists”, a sort of a weekly newsletter for
technology professionals with links to interesting content.
I came across this initiative when the recent issue of “Carnival of Agilists” included a link to my article “Leading smart IT professionals”
Thanks to the fine folks there.
PS: As you guessed rightly, I am biased about this initiative. Hey, they added a link to my article. I have to be biased
Posted under Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Sun 06 Nov 2005, 7:00 AM - Leave Comment
Blog Herald reports that there are now 100 Million blogs
in the world. While we can question the statistics, the fact is that
there are a LOT of blogs out there. Also, with the availability of
blogging tools it’s VERY easy to create a new blog.
So if you want your blog to get ANY visibility, one of the basic things is to FOCUS on creating GREAT content for your visitors.
Always remember that you are only one click (Unsbuscribe) away from losing a visitor.
Summary:
If you don’t respect your readers’ TIME, readers will walk away
Posted under Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Sat 05 Nov 2005, 6:05 AM - Leave Comment
My trip from Boston to San Jose couple of days ago had another
highlight. American Airlines was screening a movie called “October Sky
”
and since I was confident that I will complete reading Grapevine(by David Balter)
quickly, I chose to watch the movie. What a good decision it was! I was
proud of myself. Sometimes I do make good decisions altough Kavitha (my
wife) says that it is just statistics in play
October Skyky is a true story of Homer Hickam, a young student from a
town where all the people are employees of a coal mine. Homer (the
protaganist) gets interested in building rockets after watching Sputnik
(the russian space shuttle) and getting inspired by Ms.Riley (his
teacher). The rest of the movie is a brilliant depiction of what all he
has to go through when he starts to chase his passion and dreams. While
he gets support from a few people, most people think that it is a
ridiculous idea and wants him to give up.
Homer Hickam is currently a NASA engineer training astronauts for space shuttle missions.
A movie worth watching for sure!
Posted under Cool Movies, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Fri 04 Nov 2005, 7:06 AM - 5 Comments
There is a saying in the software development world that “it takes 90%
of the time to complete 90% of the project and another 90% of the time
to complete the other 10%.”
Think about it – how many of your projects
are almost complete? If a few projects come to your mind instantly
don’t panic – you are not alone. We all are experts in getting to 90%
completion level on most of the projects that we are working on.
If that is the case – isn’t it simple to “stand out” of the crowd and
focus on the last mile on your projects and take them to completion.
There is another reason for focusing on the last mile – many times a
project that’s 90% complete is of little use. Let me give you an
example. I was in Boston speaking at the Open Source Business Conference a
couple of days ago. I stayed at the Marriott Newton and absolutely
loved the hospitality of the folks over there. They keep raising the
bar on the kind of service they provide.
In the end
when I wanted to check out, I realized that I could complete the check
out procedure via the Interactive TV. Here is where Marriott got the
project to 90% completion level. When I wanted to get a copy of the
bill (they call it folio) they
told me that they can send it by email.
I thought that was nice and clicked on the button. I was taken to a
screen where I was asked to input my email address, name and phone
number. All I had was a remote control with numbers on it. Go figure!
I had to stop at the reception and finish the formalities. If only
Marriott had finished the other 10% of the project, they would have
saved time for me and them
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Fri 04 Nov 2005, 5:45 AM - 3 Comments
I wrote recently about being ready to win the boxing game. Lot of you wrote to me to expand on the topic. So here is what I have got.
Elevator pitches are quite common in venture capital industry. If you
are an entrepreneur in the valley (Bay Area) one of the first things
that you will get an advise on (after the business model) is the
crafting and delivery of your elevator pitch for your business. Venture
capitalists have very limited attention span so they want to get to the
bottom of what your business is in the shortest possible time. Elevator
pitch in essence is a compelling description of your offer to the
marketplace in the time it takes for you to take an elevator ride (less
than a minute usually)
When you go to a networking meeting remember that people you meet over
there are similar to venture capitalists. Venture capitalists have
money to invest and in a networking event, people have attention
to invest. Both are in limited quantities and both parties will want to
get the highest return for their investment. So, when you meet someone,
if whatever you say in the first 30-45 seconds is not very compelling,
most often your new found acquaintance switches off and decides to
invest his asset (attention) somewhere else where the return on
investment (ROI) is higher.
What could you do – since you get one chance (most of the time) you can
prepare in advance and study a bit more about where you are going
(event) and think about the kind of people that are going to attend the
event. Craft an elevator pitch for yourself that the potential
attendees may find it interesting. What are one or two things that you
want someone who meets you to remember about you? Most often when I
meet someone and I ask them “What do you do?” or “Tell me about
yourself” I get to hear things like “I am a Project Manager” or “I am a
software engineer” with almost no passion 
How do you expect me to
remember another “project manager” or another “software engineer” when
there are so many of them out there. What could you do or say to “stand
out” from the crowd in a short time?
Summary: You are your biggest
asset. It is worth spending your time on preparing an elevator pitch
for yourself. It will pay back big time over a long time.
PS: Your elevator pitch is not set in stone. It changes over time – so please be prepared to refine it at regular intervals.
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Thu 03 Nov 2005, 10:43 PM - Leave Comment
For those of you who are following the series
you know that distinguishing yourself is not a destination but a
journey. It’s a life long journey that you need to commit to. This
means that once you achieve distinction in something very soon there
will be many people who will catch up with you and your distinction is
no longer “special”.
If this is true, you can decide to change the rules of the game. Every
now and then you can commodotize your work and give away your “tricks
of the trade” for free to the rest of the world. What is the immediate
effect of this? You immediately set the bar higher for yourself and everyone. Whatever knowledge you have or whatever tools you used to become special is now open for public consumption. The extra mile is now part of the standard package. You and everyone else have to find another “extra mile” to become special.
Want evidence? Watch some of the key thought leaders (example Tom Peters, Seth Godin, Marshall Goldsmith etc.) giving away stuff at an amazing rate.
Don’t hold on to your idea as if it’s the last one on your mind. Start giving it away and make room for new ones in your mind
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Wed 02 Nov 2005, 9:10 PM - Leave Comment
Fellow Gnomedexer Andrew McCaskey picks up highlights of my CIOUpdate column “Leading Smart IT Professionals” in today’s Slashdot Review (a 10 minute review of interesting Slashdot news and links)
Here is the link to the podcast: Slashdot Review for Nov 2 (MP3)
Thanks Andrew!
Posted under Main Page.
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