Multiple Dimensions

What is 9460528400000000?

It is the distance traveled  by light in one year in meters. If the theory of big bang is true and if this universe started off from a tiny dot and still expanding till the moment we read this, what will be the size of universe. In which direction does it expand, may be in all possible direction. If you say the size of universe is infinite, how infinite is it? We tried to find the size of universe and we failed. And then we started to say "the size of observable universe"

Assume that we haven't invented numbers yet. How will you describe the size of universe? Having no number system is a dimension and having a number system is a dimension. You need both to depict or guess the size of universe. You need "no number system" dimension to say that the universe is massive and you need "number system" dimension to say or to give a feel of how massive is this universe. Each dimension has its own job of conveying something unique of the subject. And we can travel only certain level in each dimension. Assume that instead of sending light to measure distance, you decide to walk and count the number of kilometers. Beyond a point, even sending light and measuring the distance doesn't do well (as waiting time is more. If you send light, only your grandson can receive the light reflected from the subject) and you have to measure the light that is originated from the distant galaxy. There is clearly inherent limitation in each dimension and we have switch over to another dimension to visualize things (and to overcome the limitations of a dimension)

Unless the subject is caught in few dimensions, our understanding of the subject will be vague and limited. Multiple dimensions really help not only in finding the size of universe  (science) but also in solving general problems in life. :-)

Problem Solving - Tools are Different, Techniques are Same

It has been a while and restless search to desperately find something, something that is invaluable to me - the experience in solving problems. Without knowing what to do, I have been wandering here and there for a while (close to seven years) only to find that problems can be difficult, the problems can be different, but the solution is common. The solution is to solve them. During my wandering, I found that algorithm of solving problems is same. But the application of algorithm will be different. Let me explain with an example.

In order to explain with a software engineering example, let us take "traveling salesman problem". This algorithm gives near optimal solution to reach nodes of a graph. This is a single algorithm but can be applied in courier distribution, aircraft industry to optimally fly aircraft between destinations and many more. A mathematician cannot say that he cannot solve airline problem if he can solve traveling salesman problem. If this can work for math, can't it work for solution problems?

Yes, it will work perfectly fine for solving problems. If we have experience in solving a single problem, it gives us knowledge to solve many problem and we understand the process of solving problem. When we are trying to solve the problem, it is the approach that gives us solution. The solution is not really the outcome of knowledge you possess but an outcome of the process you follow, the approach you choose and your ability to think through the problem - techniques are same, tools may be different. In order to solve the most difficult problems, first you need solve one problem and the rest is matter of time.

This is one of the priceless lessons that I learned when I wandered like a mad guy. :-)

Reskill or be ready to be irrelevant

People used to say that "Change is Permanent". But when you closely watch the change, we will understand that change is not permanent. Let us consider the penetration of technology in our everyday life. Few decades before the penetration of technology was slow and not that rapid. But today, we have so many new markets, so many new products and people often surprised by the technological change. By the time people get accustomed with one technology, it becomes irrelevant and people feel that they are left behind. So, in today's fast paced technological life, we cannot say "no" adapting to change as we may need to completely renounce technology (which no one is ready). Even the change changes rapidly with more acceleration than the previous day.

The same is the case with an organization because the organizations are also built on top of technology and it cannot isolate itself from outside world. If the organizations want to leverage the maximum from the change, it is highly essential that the organization goes for reskilling everyday. The individual need to forget the technology/concepts that became irrelevant and should start learning new things that are widely adopted.

The only way that the organization can be competitive is by reskilling its employees. So, reskill, reskill, reskill.

Human Brain - Reversed

I worked in Network security and the interest towards security led me to read about application security and reverse engineering. Reading reverse engineering is exciting and reversing a software is a great experience. Reversing a software is no means a small thing but even multiple times harder is to reverse a complex system - the brain simply because "software" is created by man but "brain" is not created by man (though human is responsible for creating a race, no one yet has created a fully functional brain and it is nearly impossible). The brain, weighing roughly three pounds has a lot of mystery. The scientists are trying to figure out the potential of brain and most important try to reverse the brain.

At one side, the biologists are trying to study brain as neural circuitry and another front scientists are also studying brain to improve relationship, leadership and emotional intelligence. The study of brain will help us to understand how the brain works and most importantly how the brain learns. This will help us to properly educate the kids and grown ups. I believe the study of human brain and understanding it will be more challenging and rewarding as well. John Medina, in his book, Brain Rules, says that the human beings are smarter rather than being stronger and the history of human evolution also proves that we are smarter and hence study of human brain is very important and it can lead us to next level in human evolution.

Survive in Hard Time - Connect with your people

Assume the following scenario in 22-Apr-2009. "We are now in tough times and this is the right time for us to optimize and so we are going with cost cutting. We cannot afford to be complacent and we will emerge strong post recession. The time we invest, the strategy we chalk out and its execution will decide whether we will emerge stronger". Just fast forward your time machine. Can you guess what they will say once they economy recovers (and if they exist).

You are in 22-Apr-2012 and again you hear the same voice. "We emerged strong, we did something which is innovative and it made us to be here. We are ahead of the competition". I believe, most of the corporates, if not all of them, will be on top of the world and beat drums that their strategy worked. In a real sense? No, says many professors at famous business schools. They say that most organizations ride the waves because of either of two things - Co-incidence or luck. They just happened to be there with probably a strong balance sheets, they were able to withstand the recession and as expected post recession, the economy booms and they start to build their balance sheet again. Their profits erode in recession and booms when the economy comes to normalcy. This is how most corporates work.

Then what the heck that this strategy does. Why often leaders confuse their people about strategy. Why dont they be meaningful? How to thrive well in recession. It is fairly simple, "deliver more for less". How can you make it? Just connect with you people and make them understand your perspective. The employees may think that why the hell he/she needs to deliver "more for less" unless one gives the perspective. It is imperative that leaders, irrespective your designation, interact with people (not just CEO, VPs). Connecting is quite different from forwarding emails, connecting is quite different from a monologue. When you try to connect with people, the first thing you got to do is understand their problems, respect their opinions, reject their opinions with due dignity and above all have guts to take blame and do not shy away.

One thing that managers keep telling their people is communication and bringing up the issue at right time and with due sensitivity. Isn't it not important to connect with people when their morale is down or when their life is at stake? It makes sense even in good times but it makes more sense in difficult times.

When you do that, your people will automatically deliver more and you will also leave a legacy.

Intellectual Curiosity - Questions Matter !

Intellectual curiosity is the one of the factors that tells whether we are moving in right track. If you look at great people, they always asked good questions and the guys who answer the questions were average guys. It takes a great deal to ask sensible questions than answering some ordinary questions :-). For example, many scientists were ousted from schools because their teachers thought that they were asking non sense questions. But those teachers failed to understand that the very same curiosity later drove them to learn more things and to see things differently. I feel that answering a question is pretty easier when compared with asking relevant, meaningful, thought provoking questions. Though a child is immature, everyone wants to be like a child and everyone prescribe others to be like a child. Curiosity makes the different, isn't it?

Sometime back, I hovered over Internet and landed on the website of Jim Collins and read his biography. After a while, I was reading "The Greatness Guide" by Robin Sharma in which he emphasized the importance of being "under construction". When I reflected the words of these great people, I felt that there was a great advantage in being a life long student constantly looking out of opportunities to learn the knowledge and unlearn the ignorance. This is an wonderful state of being and signifies the growth of any person. Awareness follows thinking, awareness gives us intelligence and intelligence helps us to find answers for those complex questions. Only when you ask questions, you understanding expands and that shows that you are moving in right track.

So ask questions, don't bother if you don't answers, but eventually you will find it. Any thoughts?

Creating a WoW

We, as a human being are like goats. By and large, we go with majority. When so many people in a room say that "world revolves around me", we will also agree with it. If they say, they want to create a wow, all of a sudden and without understanding the science and art of innovation, we will jump in and say "yes, we will". Up to this, it is quite good. At least you have the curiosity. But the worst things is many of us tend to stay in the same place without taking any initiative. We just want to build a marvelous building at this moment without any foundations/hard work. Creating a wow or innovation is easy. But it is not so easy and does not come just like that. I am not a innovator and I have distantly worked with some innovators. Here is my point of view.

Many of us are working on creating wow for others. I don't question the willingness and focus to create wow for the others (mainly customers). But I do like to ask you a question. Have anyone did something for you that impressed you. Otherwise, did anyone in your life created a wow for you. How does a wow smells, what do you feel about it, does it speak to you? When someone did it, did you feel that you were in heaven. Without understanding what a wow is and without even experiencing something, how can you create a wow. Even if you create a wow, how can you say that it is "wow". Creating a wow once or twice is easy and may be gotten due to luck. Do you know how to do it consistently? Do you have the magic of converting the air as wonderful music like a flute.

First of all, may it be innovation or quality or productivity, it sucks without daily improvements. The daily improvements are the foundation. Here my point is not the final product (the big idea) but it is what we do to bring that big idea. The knowledge we gather, the type of people we interact, the number of minutes, hours we think and so on. Without focusing these foundations, creating a wow is just a lip service and I am sure that it is never going to happen. Innovation is a chemical reaction, the reaction that takes place in your brain and you really need to work hard and be consistent in fusing your neural circuit.

Creating wow is not an one time event. We need to come up with techniques where we can create wows like an engine. The customer may not like to stop with just one idea. She wants two, three, and infinite. The ideas are going to give an impression , and it is also true, that you care for her (though it is not the only way to impress). So, if you are consistent, you will be in the game. Else the customer is going to say that you are outdated.

Another thing that we are doing is "ritualize" wow creation rather than internalizing it. When you practice as a ritual, you do it but without involvement, passion and halfheartedly. After internalizing and comprehending it, you do it more with involvement and wholeheartedly. This is another key thing that we need to watch out for.

The final thing is give people the resources and freedom. The resources can be in terms of time and environment that is suitable for creating wow. You cannot expect an idea when people are squeeched and used to maximum possible extent. If you ask a stressed guy, he can only give mediocre ideas. Give them time to think and then expect sparkling ideas.

The above discussed things are my viewpoint. I look forward for your response/comments to learn more on this.

Economic Slowdown - When are going to hit the ground?

It is a trillion dollar question that when are we going to hit the bottom before making a recovery. This is a very hot news and it is minutes after US Fed released minutes. In summary, Fed sees that the economy is deteriorating and downside risk is high. And another point here is the economy is deteriorating more than expected and it is likely that the customers will hold back the spending which again lead to production cuts which leads to lay-offs. This is going to be cyclic and will take sometime to break the cycle and to go in counter direction. In summary, there is lot of downside risk in short term before something happens in a long term

Hold your breath and read through these pages.

Google News
Yahoo News
CNN
Bloomberg

Again, in another two months, the markets are going to see another bottom, may it be capital markets or job market. Now, we should believe someone who says the recovery is going to take three years :-(. Hard truth, but it is truth, we have to digest and move forward.

Absorption and Agility - Learn from Animals

The recent days is testimony for many companies for their absorption capability. There are times when the companies should be agile in looking out opportunities and some times it so happens that they need to tuck their tail and sit idle waiting for opportunities. Sitting idle, as the words suggest, will not yield any benefits other than optimizing the operational costs. I remember that I read that in some business journals that the best companies in the world invest in innovation and making new products which supposed to take chuck of money. Being an uncertain time, many of us fear about the future's prospectus. It greatly applies to individuals also.

There are times when one needs to retreat and practice "wait and watch" game. And sometimes and the situation is in favor, we need to be agile to make use of the opportunity. Few months back, Microsoft's intention to buy Yahoo is an excellent example how things should not be done. Microsoft gave enough time to Yahoo and Yahoo thought that Microsoft undervalued Yahoo. The deal did not go through affecting the stakeholders of Yahoo.

If you ever wonder how to learn "Absorption and Agility", watch this video. We have to learn a lot from animals. Because, they do not have greed like human beings and their agenda is just to survive. I am sure, you will love it.

Lip Service, Laziness and Five Years in Hell

My father was a teacher in state government and he has retired now. When he was in service, he used to go to election booths as presiding officer. When we were kids, he used to tell us about his election experience. There would be so many people inquire him about his election experience on how people stone the election booths. Generally he used to go to other constituency and during all his election duties he never stopped exercising his duty - casting his vote (through post) .My grandmother is now 80s and she never missed one. Check with your family, you will have many great grandparents who are still casting their votes and show us that casting votes is such an important one. But these days, the people are merely enjoying a holiday either watching movies or mini-serial or mega-serial. You have whole bunch of entertainment channels. Also, this time, we also have IPL. Whether it is Congress or BJP or XYZ, why should I bother? Whatever is going to happen is going to happen? I can always yell at politicians or my servant just in case the economy fails.

Sometime back, the senior advocate and journalist Mr Cho. Ramaswamy, in his speech said that people of this generation do not exercise their electoral rights properly. It was proven right during that time that a by-election in TN registered a record polling of 90%. God and politicians only knows how they made the record. Sometimes, even God does not know. When we are not going to exercise our votes, there are two things that can possibly happen. Either someone cast your vote or wrong candidate has been selected to represent you because you did not vote. When you sum up, both the cases is sufficient enough to take our country backwards. If you are going to assume that no one will cast your vote other than you, you are dead wrong. This is secret for record polling. With this economic recession, the prosperity will be evaporated if a wrong party or party with protectionism comes to power. So, use your voting rights to pick the right candidate and right party.

Let us make this place a better one for the future generations. Let the future generations know that their great grandparents are visionaries and thought leaders. If you choose the other way, the next five will be "hell".

Hearing YouTube Video in your Mobile

It has become a standard that people come minimum of 5 minutes and maximum of 15 minutes late for a 20 minutes meeting. Sometimes, even the meeting organizer comes late and ask a question "did anyone come for the meeting" forgetting the fact that he/she is the organizer. It is a punishment for being on time. Going late to these meetings is not a solution and it may not be a good idea to change people. I wanted to use the time effectively like thinking, planning and watching/hearing some useful things. Here is a way to manage your time.

These days a lot video like TED, You Tube are made available the users to download. Those videos are in a way revolutionizing the human thinking. I wanted to copy these videos and hear it during my leisure including the time I spend in meeting waiting for others. But if you look at the video format of You Tube and TED, they are primarily flv and mp4 format. These videos are relatively large in size and I cannot have more than 5-6 videos each running for 30-40 minutes. I have a Sony Ericsson and if I convert to 3gp format I can store upto 12 videos.

I came across a nice open source tool MediaCoder which transcode audio/videos. It has numerous features. It also supports both transcoding audio and as well as video. For a selected video, the user can select audio/video CODECs. There is one feature that is quite impressive. If you select the target device (Ipod, mobile, VCD player), the software automatically chooses suitable CODEs and video format. I have converted couple of videos and stored it in my mobile. It is good that I found this software and it helps me to hear inspirational stories everyday when I drive or am puntual to the meetings :-) Thanks MediaCoder

Going beyond Science, Loving everything as ART

Sometime back, one my friends, Rajkumar forwarded me a link on recent economic slowdown. The author, himself an MBA from a world’s most renowned B-School, talked length and breadth about the school and powerful alumni who created the mess. I neither going to defend nor go completely against those statements. It is good that people are now realizing that “greediness” is root cause of many of the problems we see today. As Tony Robbins (refer his TED talk), any education or learning has two forms. First, the basic form of education is learning something as a science. For example, by studying atomic physics one can know and become an expert in nuclear fusion and fission reactions. They came to know the ways of making a nuclear reaction to produce massive power. However, the science does not teach or bother to teach about how to apply the education. It is up to the student to use it for a noble cause or he may choose to use it for the destructive purpose. The system’s thinker, Gerald Weinberg also says the same (forgetting the second order effects) in his book “An Introduction to General System Thinking”.

This is where the second aspect of education comes into picture. It is so difficult and almost impossible for a teacher to teach anything as an Art. Even an art (like drawing or acting or music) cannot be taught as an Art. Do not misunderstand me. The schools that teach art (like music), they do teach music as science but not as art. If you join a violin class, the guru (the master) teaches you how to place your finger and put the bow on the strings. But did he teach how to play the violin as if you are playing it for your soul. My point is that the learning anything as an art cannot be taught. The student has to immerse during education at school and go beyond that. The people at work have to immerse in work. The immersion will not be successful until the person draws inspiration from someone and also does not look up to someone for moral support or next step. When you feel, emote internally, live with the subject gracefully and for sure you will start to see the subject in art form. Then, so many things sparkles out of you like “How can I do more to my subject, how can I contribute and take it to next level for human/world/universe prosperity”. Like OSHO says, whatever you do becomes creative.

These days, taking education or doing work as science is necessity but taking education or doing work as Art is choice.

Couple of Workshops Next Month

The next month (Apr 2009), I have signed up for couple of workshops on open source/Linux. The first workshop is to the students of Vellore Institute of Technology and I will be speaking to them on Linux Process Management, POSIX Threads and Linux Scheduler. It has been a while since I read on these areas. I have started to refresh and testing my memory power. I m quite happy with my memory power. I am able to come out with presentation slides without refering to famous Robert Love and Cesati books. Of course, I will be refering these books after completing my presentation to validate/verify the content. I would say, even preparing the presentation slides for Linux presentation itself is fulfilling. This event will be on 4-Apr-2009. Some well known dignitaries of Indian OSS community are speaking as well.

The next workshop is still conceptual stage and I am discussing with ILUC, Chennai co-ordinator Mr Bharathi Subramanian. I proposed a talk on SNORT and he came up with a brilliant idea on conduting a full day workshop on SNORT. I am going to team up with my friend and colleague S. Badhrinath. Badhri and myself have already started to have set up ready for a basic workshop on SNORT. We just downloaded SNORT source code and some attack tools. We are yet to start the preparation of presentation slides. Still, we have time for this event. This is likely to happen on 25-Apr.

Since there is a holiday season coming up, I am planning to conduct few full day workshops for students in Software Engineering, Linux, Networking, Network Security in Chennai. Let me see how far I m doing this.

Speaking Experience in OSI Tech Days 2009

Chennai is slowly picking up in Open Source initiatives and lot of events such as FossConf has started to happen consistently. There are lot of open source enthusiasts, evangelists and contributors in Chennai and other parts of Tamilnadu. In that sense, it is good to see OSI Tech Days in Chennai. My association with Open Source started about 5 years back and I was primarily involved myself in writing articles for Linux for You on Linux, Network Security and Java. In a way, Linux for You is one of the reasons why I feel connected with Open Source during my initial days. I still remember my first conference appearance in LinuxAsia speaking on "SNORT". There is no wonder why I feel special about LinuxAsia a.k.a OSI Tech Days. This year, we got an opportunity to do a workshop on Open Source Java Developers Tools. We, a team of five (Suren, Veeru, Karthik, Ramakrishnan and myself) registered for the workshop. It was a great feeling and it gave satisfaction to speak to the students/professionals. In general, I could sense that the "Open Source" was catching up everyone in Tamilnadu. Here are some of the highlights of our workshop.

We used "full Linux" (big experiment) for all the demos and presentation and I feel that Linux (Ubuntu) is equally good when it comes usability. But in performance, it is far better than Windows. The first session was on "JUnit" by Suren. He covered end-to-end on unit testing, JUnit basics with simple yet mind blowing example. Then I took my presentation on "Code Coverage". I covered basics and why we need coverage. We also asked few participants to try out the tools to make their understanding better and to convey that these tools are much easier to use. The third session was on "Findbugs" byVeeru. As usual, this gentleman was so involved in his presentation and it was great to hear some of the best practices in Java coding. The final presentation is on "Profiling" by Techie Karthik. Again, this guy proved that he is tall in concepts too. Overall, I had wonderful experience in sitting with these experts for the second time and hear their perspectives on these tools and also from the participants.

Towards the end, we met few students and answered their queries on their projects, jobs and current economic downturn. We were able to give them some geniune hope and I think, the suggestions were well received. Overall, OSI Tech Days, like other open source conference appearance gave a sense of satisfaction. We totally enjoyed the day fully with lot of fun at the conference. Here is the some of the moments clicked with the help of Kathik's DigiCam.

What should be the vision of a leader?

It has been a while after starting my journey towards leadership. There has been a lot of turbulence and inner chattering happen inside me. A lot of questions been raised, some of them are answered and some of them are left unanswered, some of them are thoughtful and some of them are thoughtless. One such question that came to my mind was “What should be the vision of a leader?” While businesses and organizations can set vision against revenue targets, customer satisfaction, growth and many fancy B-School jargons, the leadership is never thought in school. The leadership has to be an experiential learning. Either you need to have a real environment or simulated environment where you are able to create and nurture your leadership skills. Like human evolution, the leadership qualities have to evolve within you. I would like to present you one such experience and a thought that struck me during my travel. Here it goes.

Leadership is not a position, not a power, not even a feeling. Leadership is being. Why we say that Mahatma Gandhi as a leader, why we say that Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela as a leader. Did they do all the possible best things to their men? Did they ever been given any power or position when they had been called as leader? No. But, why they have been called as leaders.

If they were slave, they never wanted to die as slaves and more importantly, they never wanted their men to be slaves and they never imagined that their future generations in slavery. They did not know how to achieve it but yet they wanted the freedom to get their share of air and their share of prosperity. When we look at the great leaders, they never fixed their eyes on the leadership pedestal but on their people, how to elevate them. They truly want to elevate them. They wanted to take their people to a place where they have been never before. Once they attained it, they never said that they were responsible for the freedom. They understood that sum of the parts is lesser than whole. And that is leadership. When you apply this to business or organization, the managers or leaders should think like this – “I want to create an organization where the people, everyday move to a new place where they have been never before.” If the leaders are able to think in such simplistic way, the answers for all the problems will be answered by the system/organization that the leader has created.

Another fulfilling moment in my life

During last September, I happen to visit Paavai Engineering College at Salem, Tamilnadu for a guest lecture on Linux. It is quite a while after that and couple of weeks before, I got an invitation through my colleague Vinoth to speak students of IT department at Sona College of Technology, Selam, Tamilnadu on Open Source and how they can learn with the help of Open Source. My friend and colleague, Sundar also been invited to speak about "How to handle change", the change from college to company.

We (Sundar, Vinoth and myself) started from Chennai on Friday night and reached Salem Saturday early morning. Vinoth's family (Parents and his brother) gave a very warm welcome. After relaxing a bit after the journey, we reached the college around 8.30 am and met HoD of IT department. We discussed and understood his expectation from us and he insisted to have an informal and interactive session. It didn't surprise us as we prepared our lectures that way and I was more than happy because I do not know to speak formally.

At 9.30am, we started the proceedings with a warm welcome by the students and staff of IT department. I started to speak about Open Source. I planned my session for about 2 hours but wrapped by session within 30-45 minutes as I sensed that the students needed much awareness on taking some areas interest and specialize in a particular area rather than focus too much on Open Source. I feel that Open Source is of much use to the students only when they specialize in a particular area. For example, one needs to know the basics of Networking and Network Security before downloading or using SNORT intrusion detection system. While anyone can download it and do ".configure; make; make install", a lot of theoretical and systematic learning is required to make their learning meaningful. With this in mind, I thought that I would give the floor to Sundar who needed to speak on "change and how to respond to it". It would give me sometime to think about what we should do. Apart from that, I thought Sundar's talk would give students enough courage to speak up and participate. It happened exactly the same way.

Around 10.15am, Sundar talked about change and it was well received and I believe he spoke for more than an hour. Then we left for a break for 15 minutes. The students were impressive on keeping up the punctuality and they were back to their seats exactly after 15 minutes. I was inspired by it. Next, we asked the students to pick an area (Networking, Network Security, Operating System, Database, Embedded) and form groups. Asked them to write down what they already knew and what they would like to know and how they would achieve it.

The view about gaining technical knowledge is not through lectures and trainings. The lectures and trainings will give only awareness. During my session, i thought I should give that awareness and motivate the students to work consistently and specialize in their area of interests. I insisted upon having good theoretical knowledge and expand the gained theoretical knowledge with the help of Open Source Software. A long term goal would be contributing to some Open Source Products and at the same time achieving the purpose of joining an Engineering/Technology course.

We had this session for about 90 minutes and then 15 minutes Q/A session. Few students were around there for another 15-20 minutes to get their questions clarified. We could see some sparks in student's mind. Overall, I had another fulfilling day at Sona College of Technology. It was also quite a learning experience for me and yet again the students showed me so many good qualities that are needed for human beings such as mutual respect and trust. Also, I would like to emphasize and inspired by the humbleness, modesty and professionalism of HoD of Department of IT and hospitality of Mr. Iyyanar, NSS Co-ordinator of the college.

Real Hero - Inspirational Story

The leadership starts with self. The leadership is belief. You cannot preach something which you do not believe and if you believe something, you have to be what you preach. While this applies to anything under the sun, these days the authentic leadership is a rare. While many people talk about ethics, integrity and professionalism, their ideologies get diluted as and when they see "some" benefits. The benefits might be money, market share or customer satisfaction. But, only very few have a strong belief in their core values and take this planet to next level. Those are people who set vision, strive hard and work relentlessly without getting fatigue and finally achieve it are true leaders. They do it not because they find it challenging but because they have belief in their thoughts and core values. Here is one such story

This morning I happen to see one such incident. It is very unusual for me to see some news TV channels in the morning but today I happen to see a small news item about an young man (around 65 to 70 years young) who has silently taken the farmers of Sourastra to next level. Sourastra is a region in Gujarat, India where the land is very dry. The region receives insufficient rainfall. Everyt ime, the farmers struggle to cultivate their lands due to water scarcity.

But this young man, started an initiative individually and made a champign aroung the region. He issued notices and took classes to the farmers to dig wells. You might be wondering what is the great the deal in digging the wells. He asked the farmers to dig wells to store water. The idea is to store rain water and use it when there is no rain. He made pipelines and directed all the rain water to any of these wells. The water that is stored in the well is used later when there is no rain. This gave a remarkable results to the farmers of Sourastra and their water problem is solved to some extent.

The leadership is a skill, core value, knowledge, belief and above all, it is the ability to bring in the transformation and lighten happiness and prosperity in the lives of your people. That is what Mahatma did, that is what Martin Luther King did, that is what Buddha did, that is what Krishna did. The leadership is not a blame game or power game. It is serving to the people and equipping them to realize their dreams. The leadership is not a position to achieve your dream and your prosperity. The leadership is taking mankind or trying to take mankind to next level of human evolution.

Interesting Lesson that I learned Playing Chess

I felt that I was not thinking properly and many of my thoughts has maximum of a year's horizon. I analyzed a bit and found out that many of my short term goals are bit successful but I noticed that I failed to interconnect short term achievements. This is mostly due to my reactive nature and I quite naturally fall in love with any technical/interesting thing I learn. The more I try to avoid or overtake that the more it overtakes me. I had no other option other than surrendering to my curiosity. With some of my relatives, I have a bad reputation on quite often switching between many things. I have so many things and so many things as highest priorities. I tend to react to developments and since the developments are very frequent, all my time goes away in context switching rather than doing actual things. It was the time, when I thought "Anyways, that is my nature and I cannot help it." But an interesting turnaround happened and here it goes.

Yesterday, being Sunday, I browsed Internet and my Linux (Ubuntu). While browsing through Ubuntu, fortunately I happen to click "GNU Chess". When I saw the chessboard, I remembered the days (probably, I should be studying 5th class or much younger) when I used to play chess with Kittu anna (Kittu anna is more like my brother and less like my neighbor). He used to win almost all the games (9 out of 10 games). But let me tell you one thing, when Kittu anna played chess with me, he never used to think that I was much younger (may be 20 yrs younger). It was the war between his brain and my brain. He never wanted to fail. While I take around few seconds to make next move, he would take few minutes. But all his moves would be clearly thought out. I had an great opportunity in my life (much early) to know and understand how important was thinking. Somehow, I missed to etch in my brain during my childhood. It is good that I learned it now. :-)

Having these thoughts in my mind and with warm heart about my childhood, I started a new game. Believe me, the game was finished in 2 minutes. Within that 2 minutes, both the computer and myself had made close to 50 moves. I forgot the fact that I was playing with computer. Without much practice and skill, I thought I was on par with the computer. While I did not think it exactly, but my moves were like that. I forgot the fact that one needed to play chess by thinking. I was thinking about my next move without thinking how my next move would affect my tenth move.

After playing more than 20 times and losing all the games, I felt that there is a basic problem in me that I should fix. The fix is simple to say, powerful to have and hard to achieve. The fix is "thinking" or "applying common sense". I am happy to discover that I do not practice "common sense". So, the last weekend, I had an important learning in my life. Let me update you how I progress in resolving my weakness.

It is absolute coincidence that tomorrow Jerald Weinberg will be coming to my home. Hold on. I have ordered the book titled "An Introduction to General System Thinking" by Jerry and it is on the way. I am hoping that it will improve my thinking capability and you can expect a lot of post of written about each page of that book.

Why I tagged under "Business and Leadership"? Because, the thinking has great deal to play in Business and Leadership which is the place I aspire to be in.

Productivity Loss - Keep a Watch

I am not quite happy with the way I read in my college. I managed to get first class with distinction without much of studying. When I reflect back today, I feel that I wasted a lot of time during my college. I was an average student until class ten and suddenly become above average in my higher secondary education. I spent lot of time in mathematics and spent many sleepless nights in working out the problems. Even in Chemistry and Physics, I preferred solving problems than theory. The two years in higher secondary passed like anything and I literally felt that those days vanished just like that. Yes, I was in the peak on my productivity. I never read something for the sake of exam and interestingly I never thought that I would get into Engineering colleges because of so many reasons.

I am grateful to my mathematics teacher Mr T. Velmurugan who inspired me. He is a person of hard work and he never delivered anything less than the best to me. Unlike other teachers, he used to solve unsolved problems (not the ones that is already solved in model sections). He had a sound voice and reaches till the last bench. I should say that my interest towards mathematics doubled after interacting with him. This is cornerstone to my career because it is this interest made to the person who I am today. If at all if I have some problem solving skills, the most of it should go to TV Master (that how we call him). He is the man of productivity.

But when I joined the college, I should say that it was a different environment and I never found anyone as engaging as my mathematics master or at least some one who creates interest. With some josh, I tried to secure college third in first semester but my performance and productivity was vanishing. Since I was away from home, I always found an easy reason not to work hard as there was no one to point out that I am doing something wrong. But again, due to my interest in mathematics, I engaged myself in doing some C, data structure programs, assembly programming and finally wrote DOS device driver too. That helped me to secure a place in HCL selection list during my campus interview. Now, I have 6.5 yrs of experience and again I have fixed feelings. I feel that I could have done more.

This is a general feeling that everyone gets as everyone's career is mix of ups and downs. If I look at my career right from my school days, I felt happy and satisfied when I was performing at peak without wasting time. Not only I felt happy but also felt that I was progressing in life. Along with performing at peak, when you make that daily improvement and spend a productive day, the feeling that blossoms is truly different and it propels us towards excellence. So, my learning about productivity and reflecting back helped me to see productivity not as short term factor but also as a long term elixir.

So, it is highly important that we make every second count by constantly watching where and how we are spending most important "TIME" factor. Ultimately, when we fail, we say "it is time". That is true, it is how we spent the "TIME".

Does Outsourcing Look Gloomy?

A couple of days back, the United States President Mr. Obama delivered his speech at US congress. During his election campaign, he argued about stopping outsourcing to other countries. This has started to create slight turbulence in Indian IT industry. With the back drop of the current economic slowdown, another blow like this will certainly create a scenario of deeper and much stronger impact and longer recovery of Indian IT industry. If it happens, many "low risk taking" Indian IT compaines will take a heavy beating. These are facts and no exaggeration.

The mess does not stop here. While, many people may be thinking that he is standing by his election manifesto, the hard fact is that the outsourcing brings a net wealth of 1.14 dollar for every dollar that is spent on outsourcing to United States. The president may be thinking of bringing back the job market in US to normalcy by stopping outsourcing. While this may sound good considering the current climate, in a long term this is going to hurt the companies that gain by outsourcing. Also, stopping outsourcing, the developing countries will certainly review their trade policies as it leads to Win-Lose proposition. The entire world will go backwards by hundreds of years.

Let us hope that this is a temporary workaround until job market recovery. I feel, it is. Also, the companies that are outsourcing may use this opportunity to bargain on price which Indian IT industry is already started to review and reduce the price (happily).