Kelley Bell is a writer, graphic designer, martial artist, and seminar leader who resides happily in Ohio with her husband and two children. She is a self proclaimed Eco-Feminist and Progressive thinker.
Kelley is a freelance writer, co-author of a soon to be published work on Women in the martial arts, and has written a companion book for her seminars called: Reach for the Stars: A Guide Book to Extraordinary Living. She is in the process of completing her first novel, and writes on a freelance basis for various publications.
Kelley is active in many areas. She works hard to promote women as participants in the political arena. She speaks frequently to groups on the subject of women’s empowerment. She teaches the philosophies of Integrated Medicine, preventative health care and meditation, and she works tirelessly to protect our environment. She is an amateur historian, mythology buff, and naturalist who loves Falconry, and offers seminars to educate the public about conservation, and the spiritual connections we have to our natural world.
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Kelley’s Quought for the Day
“Am I doing what matters right now?”
Kelley’s note accompanying the Quought I do not believe one can find a complete answer from any single question, any more than one could fill an entire ocean with only one cup of water. I do have a theme of which I think would be a good start, but it would lead to many questions, as all theories do:
Imagine you are at the very end of your life, looking back on your hopes, dreams and accomplishments. If you could go back, start over, and write the script for your life, what would you dream it to be? To answer this, you must ask, “What matters most?” And from there, the real question is; “What steps must I take, right now, today, in this very moment, to make that dream awaken?”
If you can answer these questions, everything else in life then flows, like a crystal clear river. For then the only question is, “Am I doing what matters right now?”
David Moxam serves as the President & CEO Authentix, David leads a team of PhDs, engineers and industry experts that work with Fortune 500 companies and governments around the world combating the issue. The firm’s pioneering work has been the subject of numerous broadcast and print stories and in 2006, Mr. Moxam was recognized as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in Technology. Personally committed to using advanced technologies for the betterment of society, a mission statement principle of Authentix, Moxam serves on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce board of directors where he co-chairs its Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy technology program. He also serves on the Board of the Texas Nanotechnology Initiative, was one of the founders of the NanoTX conference, and serves on the board of Compassites Software Solutions in Bangalore, India.
Prior to joining Authentix, Mr. Moxam spent 15 years running global operations for companies such as EDS, Telecom Canada and Starpoint Solutions.
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David’s Quought for the Day
“What am I doing directly, or by the influencing of others, towards the betterment of society? Could it be fun and rewarding to do more?”
David’s note accompanying the Quought: This is the one question I asked myself several years ago that significantly changed my life and perspective …
The last few years there have been many protests in the US about outsourcing and the loss of jobs. I was a bit confused on that but this trip to India it made it clear.
I spent most of my time in Bangalore and Chennai and saw what the consumers were fascinated with. Here are a few examples
* Bharti has signed up with AXA Insurance to roll-out their offers natinowide
* Talk about anything from perfumes to handbags to computers and servers – they are buying American brands.
There are going to be 1.6 million technology professionals in FY2007 and there are 1 Billion consumers. You do the math. And, if you apply pure logic, outsourcing should only increase because it will make the foundation stronger for American brands to sell to Indian consumers.
Soon it will be two years since I started blogging. I was interested in re-designing my blog for a long time and finally that happened with the help of these fine folks
1. Karthik Sundaram and Sunil of Purplepatch Services for the concept and design behind the new look and feel.
Sridhar Krishnan shares a wonderful story about problem solving. Enjoy!
Many years ago in a small Zezuru village, a farmer had the misfortune of owing a large sum of money to a village moneylender. The moneylender, who was old and ugly, fancied the farmer’s young beautiful daughter. So the moneylender proposed a bargain. He said he would forgo the farmer’s debt if he could marry his daughter. Both the farmer and his daughter were horrified by the proposal.
So the cunning money-lender suggested that they let providence decide the matter. He told them that he would put a black pebble and a white pebble into An empty money bag. Then the girl would have to pick one pebble from the bag. 1. If she picked the black pebble, she would become his wife and her father’s debt would be forgiven. 2. If she picked the white pebble she need not marry him and her father’s debt would still be forgiven. 3. But if she refused to pick a pebble, her father would be thrown into jail. They were standing on a pebble strewn path in the farmer’s field.
As they talked, the moneylender bent over to pick up two pebbles. As he picked them up, the sharp-eyed damsel/girl noticed that he had picked up two black pebbles and put them into the bag. He then asked the girl to pick a pebble from the bag. Now, imagine that you were standing in the field. What would you have done if you were the girl? If you had to advise her, what would you have told her? Careful analysis would produce three possibilities: 1. The girl should refuse to take a pebble. 2. The girl should show that there were two black pebbles in the bag and expose the money-lender as a cheat. 3. The girl should pick a black pebble and sacrifice herself in order to save her father from his debt and imprisonment. Take a moment to ponder over the story.
The above story is used with the hope that it will make us appreciate the difference between lateral and logical thinking. The girl’s dilemma cannot be solved with traditional logical thinking.
Think of the consequences if she chooses the above logical answers. What would you recommend to the girl do?
Please see the solution after you come up with your own solution
What the girl really did:
Well, here is what she did…The girl put her hand into the moneybag and drew out a pebble. Without looking at it, she fumbled and let it fall onto the pebble-strewn path where it immediately became lost among all the other pebbles. “Oh, how clumsy of me,” she said. “But never mind, if you look into the bag for the one that is left, you will be able to tell which pebble I picked.” Since the remaining pebble is black, it must be assumed that she had picked the white one. And since the money-lender dared not admit his dishonesty, the girl changed what seemed an impossible situation into an extremely advantageous one.
The $.02: Most complex problems may have a simple solution; just change the way you think about them.
I was waiting for my plane at the San Francisco airport a couple of weeks ago. I chuckled when I overheard a comment from a fellow traveler. He was saying something about his “We say that we are working on the project Fusion but within the company some of us feel that there is only Confusion”
Note: You don’t get extra points for guessing the name of the company.
While the remark was funny, the fact remains that whoever was making that comment was hurting the company’s brand. One can never tell what was the extent of the damage he was causing but we can be certain that some damage was done.
As an employee of any company, you are doing one one of the following. You can:
(a) hurt your company’s brand (b) making no difference to your company’s brand (c) help your company’s brand.
As you can guess, you are more valuable to the company when you are helping the company’s brand.
So let us say you want to help your company’s brand. For starters, answer the following questions (or find answers from the right people) to unleash the power within
1. Why should you be proud of working for your company? Why should you be proud of being part of your team?
2. Why should your company be proud that you are working for them? Why should your fellow team members be proud that you are part of their team?
3. What is your current sphere of influence? what are you doing to expand it?
4. What is the strength of your personal brand today? What are you doing to strengthen it on an ongoing basis? How effectively are you using your personal brand to strengthen your company’s brand?
5. What are you doing today to build and extend your network? Think: How is your company, people involved and the offerings relevant to your network?
6. What is your plan for participating and contributing to the community as a representative of the company? The participating venues can include but not limited to blogs, newsletters, forums and magazines.
7. Do you know the elevator pitch for the company, the main offerings and the people behind? Do you know how to customize this pitch to make it relevant to the audience?
8. Are you effectively evangelizing your company’s projects to the relevant audience within and outside of your network?
9. What are you doing to make your company’s clients insanely successful?
10. What are some of the remarkable things that your company and/or your division and/or your team are involved in?
11. What is your company’s sustainable competitive advantage?
12. What are you doing to increase the capacity of your company and your colleagues to fulfill the brand promise of your company?
13. What are you personally doing to fulfille the company’s brand promise
Note: The above list is not complete and not all questions may be relevant to your company.
Imagine if each one of your employees do this exercise for themselves. There will be some learning individually and collectively that will contribute to strengthening the company’s brand.
Disclaimer: I am one of the Board Members of Compassites. However, I am not writing this post in that capacity.
I am thinking that Compassites is M.A.D. (Making a Difference) not only in terms of building cool software products (two of my new startups have their products developed through them) but more importantly via their employee social responsibility program
Last Saturday (20th January 2007) Compassites celebrated its one year anniversary and it was a special day. Among all the activities on that day, what touched my heart was a short video that was created by Vivekananda Sahoo (one of Compassites’ Brand Ambassador) on their employee social responsibility program called COACH (Compassites on a Cause for Help)
Rather than writing about it in detail, I asked Vivek to post the video on YouTube. Here is the video for your quick reference.
I have struggled with this question all my life (or should I say “working” life)
Whenever someone asks me “Where do you work?” I am “shaken but not stirred” mainly because I don’t think I have ever “worked” in my life. It has always been “play” for me. Serious play but not work.
Work is not work if you enjoy it. What do you think?
I am in Bangalore (called Silicon Valley of India which I totally disagree – more about that topic later) for the last few days. I have learnt a lot in the last few days.
First, while the IT boom has helped a small percentage of people directly and a larger percentage of people indirectly, it has created a bunch of problems for all the people. Let me just focus on the dilemma for the software industry here, in this short note.
1. Small and mid-size companies typically are having a hard time attracting top talent to their companies. How can a small company match all the perks and resort-style living offered by big companies anyway?
2. The big companies are able to attract top talent. However, they are focused on getting bigger projects. Majority of bigger projects are focused on commodity work.
3. The big companies are not interested in working with smaller clients as the deal sizes are small. These smaller projects may be “really cool” but it may not make business sense for larger companies to chase them. Margins may just not justify the effort.
4. Smaller companies won’t get projects from bigger clients (size does matter) so they get the cool projects for small and mid-size clients. Unfortunately, since they can’t get top talent to work on these cool projects, they have to work “extra hard” to satisfy the clients.
5. The big companies are thriving on big commodity projects staffed by top talent. I think top talent who are working on commodity projects are held as prisoners as obviously they are being “overpaid for commodity work” but they can’t exit as they have to make a “big sacrifice” to make the switch.
In summary, small companies are “struggling” to deliver on “cool projects” as they have to deliver them using “average” people. Big companies are “thriving” on “mediocre work” (also called mega projects) and staffing them using top talent. Who is really winning here?
Until recently, Ashwin Rangan served as the Chief Information Officer of Walmart.com. Prior to this assignment, he served as senior vice president and chief information officer of Conexant in Newport Beach, CA (www.conexant.com). Ashwin was a member of the founding team that spun-out Rockwell Semiconductor Systems (in January 1999) and created Conexant. Prior to joining Rockwell Semiconductor Systems in 1995, Rangan served as senior manager of Demand Management Systems at AST Computer in Irvine, CA, until AST was acquired by Samsung Electronics.
My $.02: The quick recipe for unhappiness is to not know what makes you happy. If you don’t know what you want, whatever happens, it won’t be what you “wanted.”
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Here’s Ashwin’s Quought for the Day
“What is the one pursuit that invariably brings YOU a feeling of happiness?”
Write down your answer. And measure – for yourself – how much of time everyday gets invested in that activity. The answer will be quite revealing, I feel.
Kelley Bell is a writer, graphic designer, martial artist, and seminar leader who resides happily in Ohio with her husband and two children. She is a self proclaimed Eco-Feminist and Progressive thinker.
(click on the button to read the background for this series)
Until recently, Ashwin Rangan served as the Chief Information Officer of Walmart.com. Prior to this assignment, he served as senior vice president and chief information officer of Conexant in Newport Beach, CA (www.conexant.com). Ashwin was a member of the founding team that spun-out Rockwell Semiconductor Systems (in January 1999) and created Conexant. Prior to joining Rockwell Semiconductor Systems in 1995, Rangan served as senior manager of Demand Management Systems at AST Computer in Irvine, CA, until AST was acquired by Samsung Electronics.
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