3 Tips, 3 Ways and 4 Things For Effective Leadership

From my gleanings from Harvard Biz.. I am re-posting some good tit-bits on 3 tips for strengthening big picture skills, 3 ways to handle disruption and 4 things to empower your employees with:

The critical skills of seeing the big picture is really a right brain activity but also draws from the left in detecting patterns, relating narratives and linking the concepts that relate to your program or organization's mission and vision. The valuable 3 tips are:

1. Identify Parallels: When faced with a new situation or project, ask yourself if it reminds you of anything. Are there elements that are similar to or relate to other situations in which you've been?
2.  Expand your thinking. Look for non-obvious factors that may affect the situation. Seek out underlying causes or events.
3. Articulate analogies.To communicate what you are seeing, use metaphors and analogies to which others can easily relate.

On the third point I want to emphasize is talk in narratives, tell stories, we relate with good stories and especially stories that inspire, teach a lesson in character and arise them from ashes.

Coping with the unexpected isn't just a good leadership skill, it's critical. Expect change and be flexible for change. Create a plan where you are not reacting to change but being proactive to change. Know with change comes disruptions and to minimize the effects of disruptions you response need to have three ways:

1. Have a back-up plan: You may not always be able to rehearse Plan B, but you should have alternative approaches that can help get you out of a bind. In the absence of actual plans, mental flexibility can help you respond more quickly.
2. Speed up communication: Information needs to move through your company quickly and efficiently. Find ways you can collect and disseminate data in short cycles.
3. Instill values: Values help people know the right thing to do without being told or waiting for permission. They also bind a company together when surprises happen and therefore can help companies recover more quickly.

Harvard Biz quotes transformational leaders know and recognize that employees want much more than that. Here are the four things your people need to succeed with you and for you:

1. Love.This may sound touchy-feely, but love simply means focused concern that is exclusively for that person's good. Show your employees you care about them and their futures.
2. Growth.No one wants to be exactly where they are forever. Create a culture that allows your people to grow and expand.
3. Contribution.To feel fulfilled, employees must know that they are contributing to the whole. Emphasize the ways that their work matters to the organization
4. Meaning. We are meaning-seeking creatures. Share a vision that demonstrates that all of your employees are engaged in a larger purpose.

The caption for people who cannot read the fine print: "The leader always sets the trail for others to follow"

Forwarding thoughts @ssnautilus:

Sam Kurien

Who shouldn't be taken lightly in the Search Space?

Here are the top 5 search providers, as ranked by Comscore for March 2010. Just for fun I’ve added % growth since January 2009.

1.	Google	13,996,000,000	19%
2.	Yahoo	2,839,000,000	-5%
3.	Microsoft	1,883,000,000	58%
4.	Ask	719,000,000	11%
5.	craigslist	685,000,000	38%

I have been discussing with friends how though Microsoft waits to gear up on several fronts (developing secretly, waiting and watching), its a fierce competitor once in the space it enters. Just look at the  right hand column a 58% per cent growth is mind boggling. Smart strategies include in making Bing official on Yahoo and making Bing the official search engine on Windows as well as iPhones (Cover (60% of the mobile space). For Google and Apple getting things ugly didn't help but has given Microsoft the opportunity to propel forth forward in its penetration strategies.  Google is trying hard to diversify into gaming, TV and the mobile space the question is ...Is it too late? Or will it be over-spending and long term low return on investment. Personally I think the idea is how good can you leverage and converge search in those areas and how will you motivate people to use you. 

Classifieds advertising has always been vying space and a $40 billion plus market, it after all burns down to people finding a good bargain and a good trade hence ...craigslist is a not surprise on the search space here; I wonder what would happen if they did search as their primary business? Another surprising fact of this contender is Craigslist surpasses eharmony.com, match.com in the personal ad section. From a UI point of view craigslist is a anomaly for the feel-good designer but an example of a perfect functional site. A bare bone look and feel and the users still hunt for what they need. A 38 percent up ward growth from 2009 means something is being done right in spite of all the legal suits. 

Anyway my observations for the day!

Sam Kurien

'Open Innovation' - Knowledge Brokering

I have always been fascinated with the concept of open innovation, a few years (well many years) back while I was in B-School I read Tom Peters famous pictoral book 'Circle of Innovation' and ever since been arguing (with myself mostly) if - Is it innovation that sustains you in marketplace or is it better processes that nurture that innovation?. I am slowly beginnning to understand that its actaully a  balance of both and more importantly right timing. I say right timing because innovation at the wrong time is thrown out of the marketplace because the market is nor ready to accept that innovation.  Innovation at the right time changes the landscape of the society and brings financial success and sustainability to the company .  So what is open innovation? Since it has begun transforming global companies coming out with new products and been influential in bringing variety of strategic-operational solutions to organizational problems.

  Open innovation is creating a culture of participative management thinking and is rooted in the practice of knowledge brokering which is systemic approach to seek ideas externally from people from cross contextually from various disciplines and finding how combining them to your industry result into a innovation in the marketplace.

The idea here is the tap into people who are ready to share their experiences and most of them are ready to share that experience for free and this is a place where we generate ideas from the marketplace and leverage it back to the marketplace. It is more than just doing a survey , it is an ongoing active participation, knowledge brokering, knowledge storehousing, and then knowledge benchmarking. The on-going activity of generating experiences and ideas from the marketplace can go back in revising the benchmarks and knowledge sharing.

A closer look at the way forward-looking organizations use knowledge brokering to improve their business processes offers practical lessons for companies of all stripes and suggests how senior managers must adapt to thrive in a digital era characterized by increased collaboration.

Knowledge brokering offers companies an analogous capability. I suspect this idea must have come or pioneered by product designers in companies such as the design consultancy IDEO. In practice knowledge brokering is about forming project teams that initiate conversations with knowledge brokers—people willing to discuss their experiences to serve the teams’ needs—and then combine the external ideas with internal ones to improve these companies’ business processes. Sometimes the art of gathering or brokering this information can be tricky but is not rocket science by any means; a genuine interest to be a change agentp; a diplomatic front to seek good and the idea to give credit where credit is due will automatically enable you to gather these ideas.

Consultancy firm Mckinsey confirmed and reported in its study over the past four years,  the use of knowledge brokering among more than 50 teams they deployed at ten multinational companies in industries such as banking, consumer goods, high-tech products, shipping, engineering, retailing, and utilities. Each team used this approach to devise an innovative solution to a project assigned by senior management in areas including strategic planning, supply chains, sales and marketing, corporate social responsibility, and HR. When surveyed afterward, team members unanimously agreed that knowledge brokering increased the effectiveness of their projects—and two-thirds said it did so “greatly.” On average, it helped the teams design new processes twice as quickly as they would have expected to do by using conventional techniques.

Knowledge brokering is not copying but sharing ideas to innovate and bring that innovation when the market demands it or bringing it when the market is ready for it.

My thoughts for the day!

Sam Kurien

Now that every Joe has blogged about the iPhone

Now that every blogger on the planet has reviewed the endless stories about the iPhone, I have decided to do a head to head honest comparison with HTC HD vs iPhone (I am sure this is done somewhere) but I couldn't resist putting this one in as my friends got HTC HD 4G and I am the lone iPhone player waiting in the wings to jump at the iPhone 4 but a wise man waits ...waits...waits and waits...and then writes a comparative review ...and then waits a little more...

I took eight sections concerned to me to make a good decision (Design, Screen Size, Cameras, Battery, Apps, Networking, Multitasking & Music)

The HTC HD known as HD on the widows platform, EVO as the android version at first look attacks the iPhone on the gorgeous screen size 4.3" compared to 2.32 inches of the iPhone of which you really only get 2.28, end to end screen and more real estate on the HTC makes it a winner when you want to fire up those YouTube videos and movies. Talking about movies HTC comes with two free Tranformers in HD quality ...IPhone (you got to buy them thru iTunes...bummmmerrrrrr...grrr!!) ---Winner - HTC

Design - Now this is a shady area (no offense aimed at you Glen!...(his nickname is Shady)) ...beauty is always in the eye of the beholder. The HTC sports a lot of plastic, but the new iPhone has lots of aluminum (shiny!!) like the first generations one's. Form form factor point of view iPhone clearly takes a win here, it is just better to hold, light weight flat glass surface. HTC HD & EVO though sleek in in its design, the hold  while conversing is not that good but the big screen makes up for it.

Screen Resolution

The HTC HD and EVO for android as mentioned earlier wins in the screen size but the iPhone resolution is higher with what they call as the new kind of display 'Retina Display'. Reso wise iPhone wins 960 x 640 vs 800 x 480. Personally on small screen higher resolution is not a big deal for me so I can live with the HTC's resolution.  Outdoor viewing HTC definitely has work to do... but I don't watch movies while driving or sitting on the patio....

Screen Size

HTC wins ...iPhone loses.

Cameras

HTC EVO has a 8 mega pixel camera, the widows HD version has a 5 mega pixel camera...I didn't understand the logic here though the android and windows versions have almost same specs except for the camera department. But the iPhone has two cameras...clearly a winner in this section, I want two cameras...with the future for video chat and skype, I wonder why no one thought of this one before....plus two points for Apple. The iPhone has a 5 mega pixel camera. (When will any one integrate a minimum 12 mega pixel camera with a zoom lens)

Battery

Battery life on head to head battle the Apple wins over in talk time, stand by time and even wi-fi internet browsing.  Though the HTC does well on the 3G network, Apple takes a stride here over the already strong 3GS network with first one to enter in 4G fray. It all now depends how AT&T pulls their end of the work. Apple wished it controlled the cell towers...! But the big advantage over the HTC EVO is the replaceable battery.

Apps

Apple emerges a winner at this moment with 200000 plus apps and a strong quality control against Windows Mobile 50000 apps and Android's 50000 apps. However this will change in the coming few months with the launch of windows mobile 7 and by the sheer volume of developers on the windows platform. The biggest win for the HTC HD is the integration of live and the access to all Microsoft Office live goodies...For this just one feature from an enterprise level point of view I will give the HTC to tie with the iPhone. But that said...iPhone has a lot of free apps a...lot compared to the windows marketplace.

Networking

HTC HD is a clear winner in this area. You can connect to all remote servers with remote desktop apps that come standard. The iPhone integration with Exchange seems to be seamless now,  connecting to servers is still a pain. The Apps are expensive in this arena for apple, unless Apple comes out with a free app that is easy to use and comes standard with the iPhone OS4.

Multitasking

We all know iPhone was late in this area but the way they implemented this feature from UI point of view is beautiful. The only addition I would like to have is a snap in feature where it shows me how much memory is being used by each app. From a UI point of view iPhone wins but from usage and historical point of view Windows mobile wins. So we have a tie here.

Music

Finally music! With 15000 plus songs in my iTunes, apparently iPhone ensures I will come back to them, but hmmmm though iPhone clearly wins in this area I know the nerds at the office always figure out a way to get free music and with expandable mico chip memories for the HTC that will flood the market they can go up to 64GB and 128 GB memory in the future. And the MACites can only hope the in the next year iPhone will come up with at least 64 GB memory for those music and video hogs. So the winner here again ....well I will give it a tie.

So we have three ties...4 wins for apple and 2 wins for HTC but I am guessing my friends will argue the three ties will have to go to HTC...well let the office arguments begin!!!

I am enjoying the wait.....

Sam Kurien

Yacht Design

One of my favorite yacht design and manufacturing companies is italian called CRN yacht. They launched a new web site and just like their yachts the user interface is really cool. Check out their website at http://www.crn-yacht.com/

Check out the 2D schematics of my favorite design in their line up - "Romance"

Employees First, Customers Second - Value Maximizers

I recently read a case study surprisingly coming from a little known (internationally speaking) hardware/software company from India called HCL.  Coming from India I knew HCL from its garage phase and followed its visionary leader Shiv Nader who was instrumental in taking this organization to good heights in spite of bureaucratic controls of the late eighties.

The management philosophy they follow is 'Employees First and Customers Second'. The attempt here was not to emphasize some HR satisfaction or motivate employees to do a better job by giving benefits or even just implementing good HR policies/practices but discover within the company how employees can add value to services. The ethos behind this thinking is brilliant because adding value to existing services or adding value to bring something new into the market encouraged innovation within HCL. Added value meant higher levels of achievement among employees translated directly to the end result being transferred to the market place as a company that brought value and innovation to customers.

'Employees first' was a indeed a revelation to me because I thought customers drive the company but its not that way, a customer will pay for added value, a customer is retained because of added value and employees are the one who are directly responsible to bring that added value.  Vineet Nayar has written a book on this theme and is worth reading and the catch statement is very true - "turning conventional management upside down".

My thoughts for the day.

Sam Kurien

Mind-blowing User Interface

The future of online magazines is here...Check out Time magazine's new iPad App




And btw HTML 5 can do all this...(so says Steve!)

Sam Kurien