Personal and professional development for technology professionals.
» Bringing Ideas To Life. With Love!
By Rajesh Setty on Tue 21 Mar 2006, 11:25 AM - Leave Comment
My friend Kimberly Wiefling sent me a cute card this morning that had this short quote on caring. Caring for people is important but it also has bonuses.
Posted under Great Quotes, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Mon 20 Mar 2006, 11:43 PM - 2 Comments
Living in the Silicon Valley gives you some perks that is hard to be
matched by any other place. The other day I had to walk to the hotel
next to our office to listen to a fantastic speech by Pramod Haque. Pramod Haque is a Managing Partner at Norwest Venture Capital.
He has been ranked as a top dealmaker on the annual Forbes Midas List
for the past five years, and in 2004, Forbes named him as the #1
venture capitalist based on performance over the last decade. Haque
spoke passionately on wide ranging topics that included Spirituality,
Entrepreneurship, Politics and Life in Third World countries. One topic
that touched my heart was the growth and the impact of “micro loans” in
the third world countries.
Haque talked about the work of one of his favorite charitable orgnization (Opportunity International) in Uganda.
As of today, the organization has provided micro loans (as little as
$50) to about 12,817 poor workers and disbursed more than $3,496,495 in
loans. These grassroots initiatives are transforming the communities
across the country. What was interesting was to hear that the repayment
rate was greater than 98%. How does this happen?
What can we learn from this?
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Mon 20 Mar 2006, 2:16 PM - Leave Comment
Imagine this scenario. You are down in Disneyland for a family vacation. Its a beautiful morning and the kids are excited about what they are going to do and see on that day. Suddenly, you realize that you forgot to bring your camera. Your spouse is not happy but has a simple solution – you could just buy a single-use camera. Its expensive but it is worth its price. You are happy and the problem is solved. What happens during the day is not very important. However, I want to focus on what happened to that “single-use” camera that you purchased. Here are a few things:
2. You take it to a studio where you order a set of prints and possibly a CD with digital images.
3. Once the studio person takes out the film, the camera is trashed or recycled.
This seems very logical. The “single-use” camera su ddenly assumed a lot of importance for that particular day. It became useless as soon as it served its purpose. In other words, you had an “opportunistic” attitude with the single-use camera and that was the right thing to do.
Unfortunately, there are people out there who extend this “single-use” policy to people that they should be developing long-term relationships. It might have happened to you in the recent past. An old acquaintance calls on you for help. You take some time out of your busy schedule and help him or her out. That’s the end of it. You will never hear back from that person again. Sorry. I said it wrong – you will never hear back from that person again – until the person needs you again.
What would be your disposition towards such a person when you get a call the next time around? while you might be sweet and accomodating and may be you will help the person out – chances are that won’t be a priority for you. If you have to help out two people and one of them is a master of “single-use” policy, he has to wait in the queue for his turn.
When you are a victim of the “One time use” policy of someone, it hurts! The other way is true too. If you have used a “One time use” policy on one of your friends, it hurts them. If you drop the “One time use” policy for the rest of your life, I won’t guarantee that you will make more friends but you may have a better chance of retaining existing friends.
Good luck!
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Mon 20 Mar 2006, 12:27 AM - Leave Comment
Hope you all had a great weekend. Thank you for the overwhelming support for my latest eBook “When you can’t earn an MBA: Thoughts on getting ahead without an MBA”
In the last ten days, about 4000 copies have been downloaded. For those of you who have sent me an email regarding the book, I have replied to all emails received until March 14. I will get to the remaining ones later this week.
I am busy working on my soon to be released eBook “Personal Branding for Technology Professionals” so blogging has been slow. The eBook should be released in the next ten days or so.
Here are some quick announcements:
1. Open Source Blog
2. Welcome to Naveen Lakkur to the blogosphere
3. Growing your business with Google Teleseminar ($399)
4. New manifesto on Networking: The Care and Feeding of Your Network
Link – ChangeThis Manifesto: The Care and Feeding of Your Network
OK, now I have to get back to working on my eBook. Have a great week ahead all of you.
Posted under Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Sat 18 Mar 2006, 7:08 AM - Leave Comment
Timing is important. Check what Holy Bible has to say
——————————————————————————————
To everything there is a season,
a time for every purpose under the sun.
A time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
a time to kill and a time to heal…
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance …
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to lose and a time to seek;
a time to rend and a time to sew;
a time to keep silent and a time to speak;
a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace.
- Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8
———————————————————————————————-
Posted under Great Quotes, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Wed 15 Mar 2006, 4:13 PM - 3 Comments
The last four weeks it happened thrice. It may be just a coincidence or
there is something more to it. So, I thought it was high time I write
about it. I met three young entrepreneurs in the last four weeks. While
their ideas were all very different, these were the common things:
* All of them were trying to raise money for their new venture
* All of them had were working on their fundraising initiative for more than six months without any positive results
* All of them had got a number of meetings with VCs and some of them had more than one meeting with a VC.
* All of them felt that that VCs “loved” their idea but money was not coming in.
The
last part is what I wanted to address. The important thing to remember
is that if you are a budding entrepreneur with some seriousness,
chances of you having a “good” meeting with a VC are very high. If they
see a promise in you as an entrepreneur, a VC typically will not say
that your idea is bad. By not making a negative statement, a VC is
basically keeping the doors open for a future entry IF in case you make
this idea work. So, if you think that your idea is good just because
the VC explicitly didn’t state that your idea was bad – chances are:
you are drawing wrong conclusions.
Think about it. Who do you
shop your new idea to? Usually people that are close to you. Most of
them will say it’s a great idea. You got a ton of positive feedback.
Think about it again. This is to be expected. There is no major
incentive for people that are close to you to critic the idea. If they
have a lot of time, they may be willing to debate about it and make you
realize that your idea was dumb. That happens too but typically “It’s a
great idea” is what you will hear.
So, generally whenever you
have a reasonably good idea you get a ton of positive feedback – so
much that you can drown in it. The key is to not get carried away by
the positive feedback. What you need is not a pat on the back but for
someone to rip your idea apart and expose the flaws within it. That way
you don’t burn more money or time on a “dumb” idea.
Why does this happen?
2. Your close friends have not many incentives to say that it was a dumb idea. So they may as well cheer you up.
3.
You tend to shoot the messenger if the message is bad. If that is the
case, there is a big incentive for your close friends to just agree
with you and avoid the annoyance altogether.
4. You are so
convinced that your idea is great that although some people hinted to
you that it’s a really stupid idea, you missed all the cues.
5.
You have invested so much in the idea in terms of time and money that
you will go and find someone that will help you justify that investment.
What could you do differently:
2.
Stop defending your idea when someone disagrees and listen to them
carefully especially if the person disagreeing you is smart. If you
wanted the person to just agree with you, then why ask?
3. Take
a different approach. For example, ask questions like “I am trying to
figure out if this idea makes sense or not. I have thought a lot about
why it will work. I want someone to play a devil’s advocate and prove
to me why it won’t. Could you please help me?”
4. Asking for
feedback and leaning on someone to justify your own decisions are
different. When you want feedback you should really want that and
should be READY to receive it when you get it.
5. Take it easy.
This is not the only idea you will get in your life. Statistically,
only a small percentage of ideas can be really good. So, if this one
was bad, you are increasing your chances of getting a better idea next
time 
Note: If you would like to read the other articles in the same series,
please take a look at the lens I have created on Squidoo: Squidoo Lens: Distinguish Yourself
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Tue 14 Mar 2006, 5:09 PM - 1 Comment
Today morning the shower in the bathroom started acting funny. Sometimes it would work and sometimes not. Just like some features in several software products. I am an idiot when it comes to fixing those things. But I am also optimistic. I tried to fiddle with it for a while and actually messed it up even further. I wanted to do something before Kavitha (my wife) comes back home. I took the broken shower head to OSH and was looking for some “Do-It-Yourself” help on shower head fixtures.
The experience was interesting. When I asked the first employee (who was in a hurry) I met, he promptly directed me to Aisle 16. I was cursing my luck and asked another employee for help. The response I got was very different and interesting. He first asked me why I was looking for another shower head. When I explained what the whole story, he patiently listened and said that while he can easily sell me another shower head, he wants to explain how this particular shower head fixed. I told him that I was indeed interested to learn what could be done to fix what I had in my hand. The person patiently explained the whole thing in complete detail. The rest of the story is not very interesting.
What we need to observe here is that it was easy for the OSH employee to sell me the “right” shower head and I would have been happy. Instead, he went on to show that it was his priority to serve first even if it means not sell at all. That was pure customer delight.
In summary, by not choosing to win the sale, OSH employee won over the customer.
Posted under Business Models, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Mon 13 Mar 2006, 3:43 PM - Leave Comment
I have been blogging less in the last few days because I am completing an eBook on “Personal Branding for Technology Professionals” to be released soon. I have also been working on finalizing this workshop. So here is the announcement.
I have been working on this program for a few months ensure that participants have a high ROII (return on investment on their interaction) My friends at Intulogy have put together a compelling package.
Here are the high-level details:
Delta P Delta T Workshop: Moving from Coding to Leading
This is a one-day interactive workshop for (ideally) people in the technology industry where we will explore how they can distinguish themselves and succeed. Participants will leave with a “Delta P Delta T toolkit” that will contain several resources to use beyond the one-day they will spend at the course. The toolkit will include:
The course will be led by a team of Intulogy training specialists.
More details can be found in the PDF document below (right click and save)
or you can talk to Bill Sherman at Intulogy for further details:
Phone: 830.598.6444 x134
Email: “delta at intulogy dot com”
The plan is to have a pilot program for a limited set of people in the Bay Area in June 2006. The introductory cost of the program is $497 per learner.
Posted under Endorsements, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Sat 11 Mar 2006, 9:05 AM - Leave Comment
My new friend Javier Marti has written an interesting article on the
effects of social bookmarking – good and bad. As you will discover, the
article touches on things way beyond social bookmarking. I am sure you
will enjoy reading it.
Here is the link:
Javier Marti: The power of Social bookmarking and how it affects YOU
Cheers!
PS: While you are there, please don’t forget his brilliant artwork.
Posted under Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Thu 09 Mar 2006, 9:49 PM - 1 Comment
Yesterday I had the privilege of sharing the stage with Dr.Prasad Kaipa at an event organized by SIPA. Dr.Kaipa talked about several interesting topics on that evening. One story that touched my heart was about giant pumpkins of Half Moon Bay in California. Every year there is a contest and whoever grows the largest pumpkin wins a prize. Dr.Kaipa talked about one person who won the contest and did something very interesting. He gave away half of the seeds from the winning pumpkin to the neighbours.
Incidentally their neighbours were also his competitors that year and would be competing with him next year. Everyone around him (including his family members) were surprised by his action. When asked, he mentioned that pumpkins grow by cross-pollination and if everyone around him was growing healthy and large pumpkins, he had higher chances of growing healthy and large pumpkins. He wanted everyone surrounding him to succeed and in the process his chances of success were higher.
It was an interesting story and I am sure you would have got how this applies to our own lives. If we are in the company of smart people, chances are that you will become “smarter” than what you are. How about approaching life in a way that you are consciously contributing to your entire network and ensuring that everyone is growing? Wouldn’t that increase your chances of growing faster than you are currently growing? I bet it would!
If you think this is all hard work, I can prove to you that it’s really not. All you have to do is to make small changes in your behaviours that will provide high-leverage to you and your network. Let me give a few examples:
* Next time you find a great resource on the web, share them with your network.
* Next time you watch an inspirational movie, share with your team what you got out of the movie
Yes, the above items look trivial for some people. Think about it. If someone in your network was consistently sharing such ideas with you, wouldn’t you find that valuable?
Note: If you would like to read the other articles in the same series, please take a look at the lens I have created on Squidoo: Squidoo Lens: Distinguish Yourself
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
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