Google Chrome - Ambitious Project

Few days back Google announced a new operating system and the announcement did not stir any reactions from Microsoft. Google is trying to push SaaS as next generation de-facto technology and today it is trying to build tools to wrap around which can be later used to push the technology further to its advantage. On the other hand it seems like Microsoft (and most of the other companies) lost their fuel to do something for next generation. I believe Microsoft will never come out of outdating technology. Its strategy will be revolving around its core products MS Windows, Office and other similar products. But Google is trying to change the field by taking a giant leap on how computing and data is stored.

We are already witnessing trends of moving towards cloud and SaaS. I believe Google's intention and strategy is not to outsmart Microsoft but to take computing to next level. Another advantage to Google is that it is going to release Chrome as open source which may eat up Windows marketshare over a period of time as more and more applications made available to work on Google Chrome. Rather than selling applications, Google business model would be selling services. Let us hold the breath until later half of next year to get the feel of Google Chrome.

India and China - Propellant of Global Economy

The dream of India to become global economy propellant may soon come true. India, together with other developing economies in the region especially China, may drive the growth of global economy. As the time passes on, these developing economies are becoming more relevant to propel prosperity. This month's Harvard Business Review comes with a sweet news and alarms the global organizations to watch out for top ten trends - India and China being one among them.

While the consumer spending plummeting all over the world, post recovery, the consumer spending in India and China will be heading higher. US continue to be in the top followed by China at the second position. European countries will occupy the third position and fourth place by Japan. India will be the fifth country. China, India and Japan (Asian countries) put together will have consumers who are ready to buy products. What does it mean to us? It means that Asian countries will have new level of influence and responsibility to propel global economy. All the developed nations will be willing to do business with Asian countries and we will see "protectionism" will be underplayed and we will again step into controlled liberalization. We are going to see more liberal voices and policies soon.

Necessity to "Think" and "Think" long

Amidst global economic recession, there are many areas that undergo transformation. People started to think and the thinking is response to shock due to recession. People are thinking about spending and they are going small - small apartment and small pizza. While the lower in consumer spending may impose a threat, I believe "the small pizza" is going to be healthy over a longer term. As long as the small pizza gives me nutrients and satisfaction, it is always good. The next thing that organizations should work out is how to survive and do business in the changing business environment. The companies should rethink, be attuned to changing environment and customer spending patterns. Being attuned to changing environment is more relevant now as the current change is rapid and huge. I remember reading in one of the articles that with the current environment even "the change is not permanent". The change is changing rapidly fast.

When you think in short term and that too for a low paced change, the strategy will not be sufficient even for few years. So, it is absolutely essential for organizations to have holistic view of uncertain environments such as climate change, government policies, economic growth, globalization with protectionism, rising prices, the roles of developing economies and many more factors. With the whole a lot of uncertainty, we, the human beings, either renounce modern life and go back to jungle or "think" properly and "think" keeping centuries in mind. Think to work with nature and not against it for simple reason that nature creates man and man is part of the nature. Nature knows how to "check and mate" something when it goes beyond a point (learning from the first chapter of GST by Gerald M. Weinberg)

Example of thinking long term. I m currently reading "An Introduction to General System Thinking" by Gerald M. Weinberg. It is so easy to think now about climate change and water depletion. It is impeccable and needs great foresight to think about climate change some 25-30 years back when the book for written. One needs to have great brain and great heart to think like that.

Worldclass Reference Points - Fight with them

Today, my friend Rajkumar and I had to attend another friend's marriage and as usual we talked about something, some mediocre people who always expect that the world should/will revolve around them (sharing our miseries). Neither they speak convincingly nor think thoughtfully. It was utter waste of time and probably be used to chew one's ego. If you make earnest try to drive home a point, I bet you will fail rather miserably. Silence is the language that you should speak.

Next we have talked about two thoughtful people. When Rajkumar talked Gerald M. Weinberg and James Bach, both of us were excited, spoke passionately and striking the thoughts in resonance. When you argue with thinkers either you become a student or become a teacher and there will be solid learning for both (On a contrary, when you have difference of opinion with mediocre people neither you nor the other will have any learning).

Today, my friend Rajkumar taught me an important lesson "Fight with worldclass reference points". Teachers are all around, Worldclass reference points are all around, you got open your eyes to see them. Thank you Raj.

Collaboration is injurious to growth

1. "Whole is more than sum of the parts".
2. Together, we can do great things

and you can find so many decorative statements and words with hidden agenda. Collaboration and Team work have been misunderstood by many people. Let us take the first statement "Whole is more than sum of the parts" with an example. When you have ten people and if all the ten people work as a team, the team is likely to produce better results. Fair statement. When you have ten mediocre people and all of them show mediocrity, won't the result be uber-mediocrity?

Next, we need understand that each one of us are not always foolish and not always intelligent. In every decision, we show enough immaturity before appearing mature and in some cases we never appear mature simply because we never think sufficiently and we hardly go deeper. When someone says that he understood, it really means that he has started to understand.

With a blurred vision and improper thinking, I don't think collaboration will be a useful exercise. Thinking is fundamental. Without thinking, it is like erecting building with foundation. So, collaboration without thinkers and the decisions made by pseudo collaboration are going to be simply waste of time (now you know why politicians make bad decisions :) ). Being able to think, think right with systemic view, understanding the deficiencies in one's thinking are primary ingredients to even think about collaboration. Getting ready to collaborate had to start well before collaboration. "Being able to think" is required condition to get started with collaboration. Collaboration of non-thinkers is injurious. Remember the story of Paramartha Guru and his disciples.

Why companies fail to out-think?

I am running two steps per second and my friend is running at three steps per second. I feel that it should be pretty easier to catch him up in next few seconds and I keep running. I don't focus on the things that I should be doing and I m thinking to beat him. My friend keeps running at his own pace and so do I. After an hour, I find my friend quite a distant apart and no more reachable in two steps. We, the human being, fail to appreciate the importance of daily improvements and we realize the havoc only when the difference is huge. Then, we blame technology, processes, economy, education system, neighbors, society, politicians and everything. When you don't think about future, you cannot have future and in future you will be history.

With this thoughts in mind, I am going to open the book of "Competing for the future" by Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad.

How can we give little extra?

While many organizations are working on increasing their employees productivity and ask for little extra, only very few people have the guts to give little extra. They understand the significance of giving - giving little more respect to the teammates, giving little more care that they deserve, giving little more attention to their accomplishments, giving little more thought to their prosperity. All these little extra things when mixed with high volume of authentic willingness, then, leading will be equivalent to parenting and the team will be equivalent to family.

When a leader honestly sign up to work for the elevation of his team, without anyone's knowledge and to everyone's surprise, the team will work for the leader's agenda. But everything starts with little extra things in a specific order - little extra care, little extra attention, little extra feedback, little extra recognition and finally expect the little extra effort. So, you got to give many things to get that little extra effort. But all those little extra things are worth giving.

Before you ask someone, can you work extra, you ask yourself that have you given all those little extra things that you ought to give.

Learned, so what? - Learn to Unlearn

It is almost seven years in Software Industry. When I look back, I made a pretty decent ride learning several new things in my career. Though I feel that I could have done more, it was decent accomplishments. I thought that I was a quick learner but later understood that I learned only what was needed. Anyways, there were no major issues. If there is one lesson, it would be "learning and unlearning".

I feel that the experience is nothing but interrelating ideas and generalizing them, storing them and keeping in memory for easier access, keep expanding this knowledge base and field of application. Once it is stored at a general level, the specifics are no longer needed. You need facts only till you understand or make out ideas/concepts and burning it in your long term memory. Once that is done, you can forget the facts. Only when you understand the facts, the concepts or ideas can be generalized and burnt in the memory. I will go to an extent of saying that this "forgetting" is needed, else, throughout your life you may need to process really a hell a lot of data. This forgetting can be called as "unlearning". So, it is important that you learn and it is much more important that you unlearn it.

Learning and Unlearning makes you a perfect intelligent human being. So, the next time when you are learning, make sure that you unlearn it after sometime :-)

Inspire and Get Inspired

It has been quite a learning after becoming (more aptly made as) a leader and held responsible for someone's work. It is quite easy to get the work done. This was at least what I initially thought. But as the time eroded and when I honestly engaged with my teammates, I started to understand the real meaning of "privilege to lead". While it may be easier to get the work done and for that you don't need to be a leader. Just a manager would do. But the real leader does n't bore people. His agenda is quite simple. Inspire and Get Inspired.

Also, the inspiration has to happen almost without the knowledge. It has to be a daily happening, not seasonal, not occasional. It has to be automatic, natural and spontaneous. When you do that, you will see the whole benchmarks are redefined and the standards keep rising.

Isn't it what you want to do? Won't it be exciting to be in that place? Won't you be willing to create the resonance to multiply the energy? Drawing inspiration and there by inspiring others is a wonderful thing.

I have started to realize "the resonance". :-)

Will the world end by 12-12-2012?

Sometime back, when I was surfing, I happened to visit a site that talked about 12-12-2012. The world is likely to come to an end by 12-12-2012 giving a lot of evidences from ancient history to modern sciences. The evidences are not more than mere superstitions. This superstitious group is arguing about end of this planet and another group tries to give array of counter arguments that the world will not end. After reading an article from this month's Scientific American India, I feel that the world will not end by 12-12-2012 but it may take few more decades, probably 5-8 decades. Why? Read on.

When we compare the population of the world with the population that existed few decades back, it is fair to say that we are exponentially growing. We are likely to hit a spot somewhere higher and as of now it is difficult to predict where it will be. As a result of increase in population, the demand for food and infrastructure is increasing. When we want to live, we will happily kill trees and massacre forests leading to rapid deforestation. Even with the current population, as more developing nations become developed nations, their consumption will also increase which in turn increases the demand for food. So, there are two visible factors that is going to influence the high demand for food. Let us assume the following simple math.

Assume that we double our consumption and engage in rapid deforestation by converting half of the forest as living communities. How can we produce 2X food from y/2 land. There is going to be a big pressure and we will end by increasing the productivity of lands artificially through fertilizers. To our havoc, we will run out of one of the components of fertilizers soon. In order to understand the entire mess that is currently building up, I encourage you to read Scientific American India. In this article, the author gives a clear picture about depletion of phosphorous and how the world will end if phosphorous depletion is not addressed. When you do not have phosphorous, you cannot grow plants and trees.

So, without being supersititious, we have found another reason why the world will end. We are creating a big mess for the future generations and making this planet unsuitable for living.

Freedom Moves to Custom Domain

It is over six months that I am blogging sort of consistently. The amount of readership is more than what I expected and hence I thought that it will be a good idea to move to a custom domain. A couple of days back, I registered the domain "grabyourfreedom.net". It took a while for me to make associated changes and the blog is now ready. The blog which is previously accessed through "http://grabyourfreedom.blogspot.com" can be accessed via "http://unstuck.grabyourfreedom.net". The previous posts are still intact and nothing changed drastically and in fact for you the change will be seamless. If you are reading the posts with the help of feeds, now you have get subscribed to new feed. But for folks who subscribed to receive posts via email do not need to do anything (hope that is good news).

Thanks for all your support. Please do write to me in case if you face any technical glitches in accessing the website/blog.

Summary:

New Web : http://www.grabyourfreedom.net

This Blog: http://unstuck.grabyourfreedom.net