mind × the + gap ™

Continuing from the previous post , following are a few more Catch Words of Consulting: Q x A = E : Q uality of Solution x A cceptance = E ffectiveness of Change. Q is good most of the time. The Key differentiator is Acceptance and Adaptability for a successful Change management. Passive Resistance: is nodding the head, but not actually going to participate in change; civil disobedience of a personal kind; dragging the feet with a smile. Planning vs Plans: D. Eisenhower once said, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." Planing is so important that PMBOK devotes the largest of its five process groups entirely on planning. See also: Related post: Change, and Catch Words of Consulting I

Shubh Deepavali A warm wishes to you and your family for A Happy and Prosperous Diwali The Festival of Lights of India - illuminations, oil lamps, firecrackers, colourful lanterns, rangoli mandalas, bright clothing, sweets, feasts, and festivities with families and friends.

"CHANGE IS THAT BIG FAT PINK ELEPHANT that drunkenly roams around this large organization, stamping on people, without anyone having any idea what to do about it." This is how the elderly consultant illustrated in his concluding report to the senior management of [an organization] that was undergoing post-Outsourcing blues. (Do notice elephant as a hidden reference to India as the low-cost location.) It indeed was a significant experience to participate in a professional forum in Australia with such Consulting veterans and alumni of the global consulting 'Big 5' sharing their vivid experiences.

GOLDMAN SACHS PROJECTS THAT India’s middle class will outstrip China’s by 2045. This is some 15 years after half of China’s population becomes either too old or too young to be part of the workforce. Perhaps instant-ness of contemporary life induces a certain myopia. Social media - twitter , FB, and other "self trumpets" - may make one feel that 2045 is too far away to be bothered about. And perhaps that's true for some as well, those who would want to die out soon, but 35 years is a fairly short turn around time by economic standards. Malthusian Matters (pun intended), and stands nonetheless to see another day, another argument. See also: Go here for more on Malthusian catastrophe . Go here for more on this interesting article at Reuters.

"MIND THE GAP AND THE ACCIDENTAL TECHNOLOGISTS" is the topic on which Andy Mulholland wrote an interesting note recently, and I so wish if this were a guest post on this blog, if only for the namesake. Highlighting 'the gap', as he puts it, Andy describes the misalignment of Technology focus with Business needs. The problem is rather recent, cropping up only from 90's, because before that, nobody actually bothered. The flexibility of IT introduced by leaps and bounce of advances of the recent decades is the reason for this widening gap because previously the rigidity of how computer systems worked almost ensured that business accepted what (MIS) system owners dictated.

HOW SHOULD ONE REPLY TO THAT seemingly casual email detailing titillating offer of servicing the client from onsite or onshore location for a few weeks or months to take the project to the next big level? The short answer is, reply by sleeping over it a couple of days, especially while one is been-there-done-that category. The recent HBR research article however goes on to urge you to deny it flatly. It is apparently less costly for the company to push for short-termed, employee-only transfer compared to a two-year global assignment having a settled designation for the similar tasks. The research running for a couple of years shows that these propositions are riddled with marriage troubles, depression, child behaviour issues, and other difficulties.

Peter Principle: "Every new member in a hierarchical organization climbs the hierarchy until he/she reaches his/her level of maximum incompetence." [try here for more] IT IS PARADOXICAL, SOUNDS UNREASONABLE, AND DEFIES COMMON-SENSE. But that is how it works, realistically and evidently, for any hierarchical organization where the way of promotion rewards the best members and where the competence at their new level in the hierarchical structure does not depend on the competence they had at the previous level, usually because the tasks of the levels are very different between each other. Since about 50 years ago when a Canadian psychologist named Laurence J. Peter published his studies to this effect in 1969, there has been many changes in the way organizations and it workforce operate in relation with each other. There has been multiple experimental models across various industries, including Role-based organization, Competency-based designations, (A fusion of sorts of thes...

Mushroom Management Theory: Keep employees in the dark and fearful, feed them manure and dung, watch them grow and when they grow enough, get them canned. (try here for more at urban dictionary) IN QUITE A CONTRAST TO THE PREVIOUS post on model leadership , this is not only a different type of leadership, it is found being practices widely as well. Referencing their publication for this month (June 2009), John Landry of Harvard Business Review writes that Lehman would not have happened if they would have allowed a freer flow of information, or made it easier for employees to raise their concerns. Industry observers have drawn parallels of Lehman explosion with implosions of Enron and WorldCom citing the same "keeping in dark" issues where information is not shared. But before that, a brief 'story':

Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood; the virtues that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life. -- Theodore Roosevelt NR NARAYANA MURTHY OF INFOSYS delivered the opening lecture at Columbia Business School's Khemka Distinguished Speaker Forum at Manhattan on May 26, 2009, where the above quote from Roosevelt were the closing lines. Mr. Murthy began by describing Capitalism as an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange of wealth is made possible and is maintained chiefly by the private individuals or corporations. It is a system that incentivises individuals to use their enterprise, drive, hard-work and innovation to create wealth for themselves and the society. Mr. Murthy argued that capitalism is also a sys...

Beautiful Data: The Stories Behind Elegant Data Solutions by Toby Segaran and Jeff Hammerbacher (try here ) Looking forward to his book which is due in July 2009. The 39 contributors of the book explain how they developed simple and elegant solutions on projects ranging from the Mars lander to a Radiohead video. Some of the topics include: opportunities and challenges of datasets on the Web visualize trends in urban crime using maps and data mashups challenges of data processing system of space travel crowdsourcing and transparency helps drug research automatic alerts when new data overlaps pre-existing data massive investment to create, capture, and process DNA data The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development by Chad Fowler (try here ) Chad Fowler argues here that your career in Software has to be a personal enterprise. And this publication from Pragmatic Bookshelf is one of my picks for the new engineers joining the Software indust...

~ Cheers! to Life '09 ~ In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across a hundred years... --Rabindranath Tagore, The Gardner (1915), pp85. Today, May 7 , is also Tagore's Birth Day.

UMERTO ECO'S LIBRARY is supposed to be about books on the pending list waiting to be read - a rather twisted argument by Taleb at knowledge assimilation when he philosophises that the unknown is more important than acquired knowledge itself. Perhaps makes sense, if you are a nihilist as well. Frank Zappa almost gave it up saying, "Too many books, too little time". And this post claims to be no improvisation either. In fact, following are a few from the pending list from my night-stand that give a rather sarcastic stare almost every time. Reviews and comments welcomed. The Future of Technology (Economist) by Tom Standage (try here The Future of Technology (Economist) ) This book gathers together some of the best writings that has recently appeared in The Economist on the way technology and its use is developing, and is likely to develop and change in the future. Taking a look at the index was a compulsion of sorts to pick this engaging read. And the opening para a...

INTERESTING ILLUSTRATION OF CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOUR in the recession era by Armano on his personal blog Logic + Emotion based on a recent article on the topic in The Economist . Here is Armano's post, and here is the original write-up at The Economist.

TED: IDEAS WORTH SPREADING is the welcome line at ted.com - an intellectual platform blending Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and almost attaining a cult status. Who's who of the world have marked their presence at its annual conferences starting 1984. This is the stage where Prof. Stephen Hawking urged mankind to colonise neighbouring planets; where the UN peace ambassador Jane Goodall spoke about her 45 years old chimpanzee studies; where Bono won the price of expressing three wishes in a bid to change the world; and where Bill Gates opened a jar of mosquitoes to the audience to spread (with them) awareness about malaria (later, when the panic subsided it was declared that the mosquitoes were harmless for they were cured of the germs. I am not entirely sure though which anti-virus was used by Mr. Gates.) A meme is an information packet with an attitude. For the current young generation world over, and those leaning towards entrepreneurship, TED is the "in thing...

THE SOCIAL MEDIA AND WEB 2.0 (though both are considered synonymous by some) provided the netizens with amazing new possibilities, like a new universe opening up with everyone mingling with everyone else. While the web (no pun intended) of these collaboration network, social in nature, kept increasing in complexity and continued expanding, there was no measure for if it were to follow the same yo-yo model of the actual Universe (try here ) . In other words, it was very difficult to ascertain if the motion was inward or outward, for there were no clear boundaries defined or known. The size of the neocortex of the brain allows humans to have stable networks of about 150. This is known as "the Dunbar number". With the help of Dr. Robin Dunbar’s research, perhaps we now have the first indications toward the limitations of Web 2.0 vis-a-vis human psychology and behaviour. Dr. Dunbar is an anthropologist currently with the Oxford University and has studied primates and humans and t...

THE FINANCIAL MELTDOWN MIGHT HAVE MADE THE ATLAS TICKLE, or so it may have seemed if one takes the metaphor literally. But Atlas, in spite of shrugs, is going strong on its part. Interestingly, Audacity of Hope by President Obama was overtaken by Atlas Shrugged on the sales charts for a while just before the presidency change. This is the second coming of Ayn Rand that started in 2007. Honestly though, I never got this book right. There was always something ultra-right about the acceptance and success of her (cold-war incubated) concepts of having a platonic state of a democracy (where one would be expected to demonstrate as much dexterity with the left hand as the right. Over the past ten years or so I must have gifted her books, selectively and carefully, to at least three people of my immediate reckoning -all of whom fell out of touch. Not so carefully, after all!). Ayn Rand's rendition of the perfect world —much more vividly worded in her previous notoriety, The Fountainhea...

HOW CAN YOU MAKE GOOGLE SERVE YOU BETTER? Customizing Google search to suit one's needs in a more controlled manner has been a fairly less exploited area - at least by the end-users. Perhaps because there are enough 3rd party widgets available to assist a normal tusker with her Blog to do this work. This post, though a diversion from the normal theme of discussion here, is about getting a little hands-on with Google Search API to put a professional looking search-box on your blog - all the while utilizing existing components available on (what's called) the Google OS. How To: Use Google Search Ap Is On Your Blog View more presentations from mutex07 . (tags: technology google ) With a little tweak, this method also works with TypePad . Now, if you have means of posting CSS and JavaScript on your WordPress hosted blog, you can use Step-1 through Step-11 to create your customised Google Search Engine and plug it into your personal blog. All the best! Seel also: Go here for docu...

THIS ACTUALLY TOOK PLACE AT PBS STUDIOS some five months ago when the $700bn bail-out package aka Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was announced at the U.S. Senate. Nassim Taleb features here with his Guru Benoit Mandelbrot in this joint interview by Paul Solomon titled 'Experts Examine Future of Credit Crunch'. For anyone new to Mandelbrot and Taleb or the subjects of Chaos theory and randomness that they deal with, this shall provide a good introduction (and a starting point to what could become a very interesting journey. I have been meaning to post these for a few months now. Finally, the cat is out of the draft.). Below are two excerpts from the talk, followed by the direct PBS podcast: The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crises less likely. But when they happen, they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. True, we now have fewer failures, but, when they occur, I shiver at the thought. -- Nassim Taleb in his bo...

WILL DURANT CHRONICLED IN HIS HISTORICAL COMPILATIONS THAT ancient trade provided the necessity for the invention of the alphabets. A theory contested by many, but not rejected in its entirety. In this guest post, my friend and Language Technology researcher Jason M. Adams discusses the mutual history of language and commerce by looking at some of the ways that each has been changed by the other and how they will continue to shape each other going forward. * * * Commerce is a human convention deeply entwined with language. Economic motivations were among the many reasons ancient (and modern) empires conquered other lands, spreading their languages beyond their natural range. Traders would travel to distant lands, encountering speakers of exotic languages. Recent study of the immediate commerce and trade (focusing mainly around the era of last 500 years of European Maritime expansion) describes the exchange of languages at trade as follows: In cases where bilingual speakers were few to ...

[Above: Mahatma Gandhi sharing a light moment with his granddaughters. source: Enc. Britannica ] [Gandhi's] words struck me so forcibly that there and then I committed myself to attempt to make a film about Mahatma Gandhi - a commitment that changed the subsequent twenty years of my life. -- Richard Attenborough, in his introduction to the book - The Words of Gandhi Today, Jan 30, 2009 is the 61st anniversary of Bapu's demise. Update: Added Mahatma's speech on spirituality recorded by BBC at Kingsley Hall, London in Oct 1931 (~5:20 min.). See also: Go here for works of Gandhi at Project Gutenberg. Go here for Gandhi's speech at BBC.co.uk.