Leadership 101 - Potential is Great but Kinetic is Greatest

If you heard about S.V. Shekar (multi-facet person, hero, comedian, politician with dignity), you should probably heard this one.

Character 1: What was your ambition when you were young?
Character 2: Like my father, I too wanted to become a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer and a teacher.
Character 1: Oh great. Is your father a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer and a teacher.
Character 2: No, he too wanted to become a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer and a teacher
Character 1: Thinking of committing suicide :-(

If you see, in real world, there is no difference between "character 1" and us. We think that we have great potential but the world measures us with the action we do, the results we produce and the impact we make. There is a big dam with full of water. You cannot harvest the crops without letting the water flow into your field. You need to open it and allow water it move. Dam has a potential to give irrigation to thousands and thousands of acres of land. But it is of no use, if you don't open it.

I agree that unless you have water you cannot irrigate the land. The potential is an entry criteria to make an impact. In order to be useful, you need to convert your thoughts to action. So, potential is great but kinetic is greatest.

Leadership 101 - Be Level Headed

Sometimes when I do extreme things or things that are extreme to my capabilities (like jogging for 10 kilometers continuously), I feel superior and bump people like a maniac. When I m faced with an athlete who knocks off 40 kilometers consistently, I fall down and I consider inferior to them. Factually, it is a absolute truth but generally we are more psychological than factual. We need a fact to either boost or ditch things. We never treat and behave based on the facts.

I have also written couple of posts on Emotional Intelligence and this is a overlap between this post and those. It is quite essential for leaders to stand on their legs. Because of the position they decorate and the number of decisions they take everyday, it is reasonable to say that the decisions they make create an impact (positive or negative) on every stakeholders. If you are a born jerk, it is quite true that all the decisions you are going to make will be bad decisions.

It is quite essential that one should start living a level headed life - not get carried away with successes and failures emotionally. Take them as a fact to add up your experience and move on.

Create an Image of Yourself

In this fast paced world, we tend to anything and everything that gives as pleasure. Most of the things that give us pleasure don't generally give us peace after sometime. We get addicted to those habits only to spoil ourselves. For example, eating fast foods, smoking, drinking, sleeping, procrastination and the list goes. We do all things that put us in pressure and finally after doing it we feel that we need to relax. We either go to spa for a massage or party out in a pub only to get pressurized more. The cycle of pressure and relax goes on and on. We never know how to break the cycle and during each iteration the pressure and the need for relaxation grow more.

But the real growth starts with a purpose like "absolute willingness to be a good human being", "helpful to self and possibly to others", "spread the goodness to the universe". This may sound altruistic. But that is what the life is all about. I never believed in the words of others (how great they are) but now I have started to feel that those words make sense. I am thinking how Swami Vivkenanda would have lived his life and wanted to have similar impact in my life. Sometimes my mind travels into 1800 to these days West Bengal to sneak peak what Swami Vivekananda is doing. I look at Gandhi's passion towards truth and want to resemble him in truthfulness. All these great qualities did not come to them but they acquired those qualities by constantly working on those qualities - sometimes alone and sometimes with their Guru.

These great people make us so tiny and yet give us hope that we can also experience their excellence in our lifetime. I believe, in order to do that, we need a mental model of ourselves, need to be sure about the ways of reaching them and inner, never ceasing passion to be self. The only thing that is required is to be self and constantly working on improving our inner self. The other things like discipline, character, wealth, health, peace and all goodness comes to us automatically. It all lies in our hands - creating an image.

Leadership 101 - Integrity, Makes You Feel Great When You Die

I just love it, the word Integrity. I have a great respect for the word and I consider people with Integrity as my Guru may it be two years old or hundred years old. Integrity is one of the rarest quality that we can find these days. When the man invented money he started to lose his integrity. Often his desire turned to greed and he had become a maniac to go to any extent and most of the times even up to losing his Integrity.

I don't want to hide the fact that on a daily basis there are challenges that put me on a hot stove only to test my Integrity. When I encounter those situations, my inner tells me that don't mortgage Integrity for the sake of momentarily success on petty things. But yet, my greediness wins and I lose Integrity. How powerful my greediness is?

After deeply introspecting, I found myself a "self centric" person focusing on myself and never tried connecting with the whole. I never searched whole. For example, when I m in my home, I think about home but do not think home in the context of a whole "town". When I think about "town" I don't connect it with my country. When I think about my "country", I don't think about my planet. When I think about my "planet", I don't think about my universe. When I think about my universe, I don't think about myself.

We the human being often fail to appreciate the interconnectedness between many objects in the creation. We know little things and often we fail to realize that we know only little. The ego and greediness rules and that leads us towards something insane. We guys know how to crab someone without appearing like a "ditch guy". We are experts and we call it growth, outpacing competition, strategist and business leaders.

If you are going to do something after mortgaging your Integrity, the world is not going to like it and so are your people. I feel that before working on my business skills, I need to work on my Integrity to make myself a good human being. After doing that my business skills will make some sense to this world and myself.

Video Post - Java Code Coverage with Emma

Here you go, for the first time, I have recorded my voice for a tutorial on Java Code Coverage with Emma. Please have a look and let me know whether it is useful to you. I m planning to slowly but consistently release similar tutorials on Java, Tools, Operating Systems and Network Security. Watch the first presentation on Emma by clicking this links

1. Emma Code Coverage - Part 1
2. Emma for IDEs - Eclipse
3. Emma for IDEs - Netbeans
4. Emma - Offline Instrumentation
5. Emma - On-the-fly Instrumentation
6. Emma - Reporting
7. Emma with Ant
8. Emma with Junit
   

Leadership 101 - Trust, Remember it starts from you

If there is a broken relationship or a failed business, there will be only one reason - "Failing to establish the trust". This world has seen and probably each one of us might have seen businesses and relationship fail because of lack of trust. It is the same trust that is behind each successful organization and peaceful relationships. For example, assume that you go a shop to buy a thing for a buck. The trust between you and the shop keeper is just for a buck. It is when either you or the shop keeper trust the other for more than a buck, the relationship grows, else it decreases gradually. This is exactly why we are pleasant to few and unpleasant to few.

If we are unpleasant to few, this shows that we don't trust them fully - there are strings attached, you trust them with conditions. When you want to grow the relationship or business or lead a team, you got to trust them more. When you trust them more, they sense and experience it, then they trust you even more and it grows. On the other hand, when you trust them less, in return, they trust you less and finally both of you end up in mistrust.

Like me, if you believe in God, the God within you, "Trust Others, and They will trust you more" and I believe, this is the foundation for strong relationship and leadership.

Have a Great Day.

Leadership 101 - Listening People Isn't a Bad Idea

It takes a great deal to be a leader and even hard is to become a charismatic one. If you look at the charismatic leader, they listen to others and they communicate well. But is it sufficient? Every charismatic leader are down to earth either in terms of accepting what they don't know or put their knees down to reach out the people who are hurt.

They know their limitations and even if they cannot fix all the issues, they just hear the voices, feelings and emotions of hurt souls. Generally, people fell great when someone hear them. Just check this with any three old kid. He will come to you and explain his own story about moon. After he completes his story, his eyes go bright. He feels that the person who hears him respects him. WoW, what a feeling? Think about when you show similar respect to other human being who feels that his voice hasn't be heard. Just hear it.

Listening is a way of leadership when one sits with a person who is seriously hurt. Just keep on listening and speaking only little to help him to vent out his feelings, emotions and words. During listening, authentically engage in active listening. Don't browse your cell phone, laptop or think about your friend who will wait for you in a cinema theature next week. Engage in active listening. Listening is sufficient to put your views across that you are respecting him and that will lift his morale.

Listening is equivalent to leading. It works.

Leadership 101 - Paint the wall of Great Future

Many of us were good in the past and good in present. Given a task or work, all of us will complete it successfully. There is no doubt about it. Many of us call ourselves successful if we are little better than others in our own scale. The scale or the parameter we compare with others vary and it is a convenient marriage between what you achieve and what others don't. We generally do not compare ourselves with our weaknesses (which is often other's strength). That is fair as it is human tendency.

You can witness the very same thing in organizations. They call themselves number one in profit, lines of business, revenue, number of clients, and many others self proclaimed scales. This stinks and this shows that those organizations do not have legs to stand up. They are in terrible fear of future. Many organizations just ride their future by aligning themselves with economic and business cycles.

Leadership is all about painting the wall with glory of the transformation. Leadership is setting a compelling vision to eradicate fear among people and give them courage to add more glory. It is leader's responsibility to paint the wall of future with compelling vision but not with usual vision of being number one, deliver high quality products and blah blah. For instance quality is no more an competitive advantage and so is cost advantage. If you do not have quality, you will be out of business. The future is more important than delivering the current projects.

Leadership 101 - Dusts are Great, It is Part of the Process

I was crossing countryside and I found a small a small heap of sand. After few hours, when I was returning back to my home, I saw a huge hill of sand. I went to the place and found two kids unearthed so much soil to dig a pit. How much soil they unearth is not that important when compared with what deeper they want to go. They focused on digging, digging and digging deeper. They understood the fact that going deeper makes sense than getting carried away with amount of soil they unearth.

Like kids digging a pit, we are also making a journey towards excellence. Excellence is similar to digging pit and going deeper. If you are also digging excellence and didn't make much progress, remember you are unearthing and going deeper. It will take little more time, dedication, effort and digging. But don't stop digging, dig further. If you have found too much of sand, it is great because it is part of the process and it shows that the process is working for you. Throttle and move on, you are right on track. If you don't unearth dust or it stops, then it shows that you are not digging.

So, dusts are great, it is the part of the process.

Gung Ho

Learn Trading - Enter with Exit in Mind

You might at least heard from few of the stock broking firms or from your friends that you can make great deal of money by short term trading. If they also say that there is equal chance of losing the money, you can believe their words. If they build their pitch around profits, get away from them. Even world's greatest traders and technical analysts cannot exactly pin point when the market will reverse and go against your position. But this doesn't mean that you are going to be loser always. But the loss is a possibility. There is a risk and the risk pays you off equally.

Unless it is long term investment, if you are trading for short term to medium term for some quick profits, the key is money management and taking positions in phases. We will more about more about these in upcoming posts. The more important is the mindset. For example, if you buy a stock for 40 rupees and waiting for making huge profit without any time line or price target, you are unlikely to get profit. So, when you are taking positions, it is very crucial to enter in the right price and right time. It is equal more important that you exit in right price and right time. In the next post, we will discuss why "entry" and "exit" are more important with charts.

Lots of Money To Be Made - Really.

This year is going to be start of another bull market and it is likely to run for at least next few years. After Oct' 08 lows, everyone (including myself) thought that the market is going to hit another bottom. The stock market proved again that anything can happen. It never made another low and probably won't hit a new bottom again. The stocks which traded in hundreds came to as low as to 10 rupees. For example, my preferred stock HDIL made a low in 60s and went up to 300 rupees.

By looking at the patterns, I feel that there are lots of money lying with mutual fund houses, domestic institutional investors and particularly Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) that needs to come to market. These educated folks don't invest like kids. They are guys who make the markets move in either direction. These folks have real huge money and many of them are sitting on reasonable proportion of cash. This tells us that those money has to come to market sooner or later.

Ideally, one should have started to invest during October so as to "bottom fish" but literally one cannot bottom fish as no one knows where the bottom is. So, the key to successful investing is systematic investment. Like SIP plans in Mutual Fund, one should go for building portfolio at crucial support levels of each stock. By this, one can reduce risk and maximize the returns. While "buying at bottom" and "seeing at rise" is a common strategy, the strategy cannot be applied directly. One has to systematically plan for investment, spilit up the prinicple amount into at least 4-6 portions and invest at every crucial support levels (or for every 2000 points drop/rise in Sensex).

When you invest/trade like a machine, you must make a real lot money. Period.