Go Kiss The World

The resurgent India has given Indian professionals optimism and a tad of arrogance as well. Nothing wrong with that! While the new-found wealth is always welcome, the challenge before the professionals – young and not-so-young is to find a sense of direction, purpose and some guiding principles to lead them as they head into the chaotic, unforgiving and demanding world.

Subroto Bagchi, who now calls himself a ‘Gardener’ at IT services company, MindTree, is shaping himself as a master coach and mentor. In his second book Go Kiss the World: Life Lessons for the Young Professional l (Penguin Portfolio June 08) through personal anecdotes, he brings lessons on working and living, energizing ordinary people to lead extraordinary lives. Bagchi urges Indian professionals to recognize and develop their inner strengths, thereby helping them realize their own, unique potential.

For those who constantly worry about building careers and successful businesses, Bagchi has this to say: “Our lives are like rivers – the source seldom reveals the confluence. Does a river fret over the long journey and about its end just as it is about to spurt? It simply does not do that, caring instead to fl ow, to begin its journey, and on its way builds a beneficial relationship with anyone who comes in contact with her.”

To read the full article, click here..
To read the ePaper, visit: http://emagazine.managementnext.com

Beyond programming

Most of us would agree that every project has requirements. Every time a new software application is being developed there is always a ‘Business Analyst’ (BA) from the project team who performs the role of requirements gathering for every software project. While some requirements are crucial to the application others are considered to be gold-plated luxuries.

How do we determine that the approach being adopted to gather the requirements is accepted as a good practice? What makes an individual a successful BA who not only understands the business problems but also models a solution which can be effectively leveraged through the use of technology?

How can one be assured that a BA is given the power of execution to get the things delivered with a benchmark of quality and within the defined time frames? Here are some of key pointers which are essential for business analysis.

Who gathers project requirements

While determining the project requirements one needs to identify at the beginning of the project who would be taking the ownership for capturing the project requirements.

Today, many software developers do perform the role of a BA. The technical discussion coupled with absence of soft skills and business acumen can dilute the interest levels of the customer and result in total disconnect.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://emagazine.managementnext.com

The Tata Way

Tata companies today are in the news for big ticket acquisitions of global companies and brands. Yet, the group has not lost its fulcrum, and remains a pioneer in its thinking on how future organizations are run and managed.Decades before terms such as ‘Sustainability’ and ‘CSR’ became fashionable, the founder of the Tata Group, Jamsetji Tata was crystal clear when he said: “In a free enterprise, the community is not just another stakeholder in business, but is in fact the very purpose of its existence.”

While community-centric corporate philosophy was indeed spoken about and practiced all these years, the Group is now making the inherent sustainability element more explicit, and evolving policies and systems to institutionalize it. In fact, corporate sustainability is boldly acknowledged as business strategy by the Tatas now. Dr. J.J.Irani, Director, Tata Sons, is, in fact, insisting that sustainability professionals in the Tata companies should be seen as business strategists. What’s more, sustainability is turning into a serious career option here.

Understandably, the much-used phrase ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ (CSR) is passé at the Tatas. It’s ‘Corporate Sustainability’ from now on. What this means is Tatas are broadening their agenda beyond communities, to include the environment and bio-diversity. For a conglomerate that’s got its feet soiled in carbon intensive industries such as steel, chemicals and automobiles, this would surely mean a highly challenging commitment to sustain. For the Tatas now, ‘the business of business is sustainable value creation’ and they are busy institutionalizing it across the Group.

The transformation

All this while, the Tatas have co-ordinated their CSR efforts at the Group level through Tata Council of Community Initiatives (TCCI), and gone about building CSR capacities through several initiatives across the Group. They’ve made CSR agenda a part of KRA’s for their managers and integrated CSR with business excellence.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://emagazine.managementnext.com

Cutting attrition among women

Faced with a severe talent crunch, American companies are seriously coming up with attractive plans to minimize attrition among women employees. Johnson & Johnson's Crossing the Finish Line and Intel’s Technical Leadership Pipelines Program for Women provide critical career development opportunities just before the break point. Cisco’s Executive Talent Insertion Program is designed to bring in a significant number of new women as senior-level lateral hires.

A new research identifies a fight-or-flight moment (ages 35–40) when female attrition spikes dramatically. Around 35-40, women across science, engineering and technology experience a perfect storm. Career problems escalate and family pressures deepen at the same time. The losses are massive – fully 52% of women fall away. This is hugely painful, both for women who abandon hard-won credentials and for employers struggling with worsening labor shortages.

A new study—which Sylvia Ann Hewlett co-authored—published in the Harvard Business Review titled “The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology”) demonstrates that over 40% of highly qualified scientists, engineers and technologists on the lower rungs of corporate career ladders are now female. In pharmaceuticals, high tech, petro-chemicals, and aerospace, young women are making impressive strides – and garnering rave performance reviews.

To read the full article, click here..
To read the ePaper, visit: http://emagazine.managementnext.com

Don’t ignore small growth

According to Ray Kurzweil, an avid and renowned innovator, it takes only 7 periods of doublings to turn one percent growth into 100 percent growth. “So small growth should not be dismissed.”

At a presentation in MIT recently, he said “information technology- driven innovation is characterized by exponential growth, not linear growth, which causes almost everyone to miss their projections of when technology-fueled advances will take off.” Exponential growth means that performance doubles in a given period. Then in the next period (say a year), that doubles.

He also said because we don’t understand this, we dismiss the potential of such technologies as solar energy, which is doubling every two years. Kurzweil says that in fewer than 5 years we will reach the tipping point where solar power will be less expensive than fossil-fuel power.

21st Century 1000 times faster than 20th

Ray Kurzweil also illustrated the growth of various technologies over the centuries. His main point: technology evolves exponentially, the rate of technical progress itself is accelerating, so expect to “see 20,000 years of progress in the 21st Century, about 1000 times greater than the 20th Century.”

One of the predictors of the power of the internet, Kurzweil believe we can say good bye to cancer and heart disease within 15 years, and hello to living way past 80. Among his other prognostications – computers “will combine the subtlety and pattern recognition of human intelligence with the speed, memory and knowledge sharing of machine intelligence.” The marriage of nano technology and AI will bring us “a killer app”-- nanobots that can keep us healthy from the inside. Wow!

The best selling author of The Age of Spiritual Machines presents the next stage of his compelling view of the future: the merging of humans and machines.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://emagazine.managementnext.com