Management Styles

Managing people or being managed is always more successful if you can determine what type of management style is in play. Each manager is going to manage their team differently but generally most follow one of several common management styles. Typically we see two management styles that are most common in the workplace. Authoritarian or Autocratic management styles take little input from the group and merely hand out orders. The manager using an autocratic or authoritarian management style typically expects their directions to be followed with little or no discussion or questions. This style of management works best when managing large numbers of employees doing similar simple jobs. Another style of management is the participative or democratic management style. This style involves taking input from the team of employees, the manager then considers the ideas brought forth and makes the final decision. While this style is sometimes called democratic it really is not because in the end the manager makes the final decisions. Participative management is a more proper way to describe this management style. This style works great when managing a smaller team of highly skilled individuals.

Mr. Google Vs. Mr. Originality

There is a lot of hue and cry about googlization of information. When I've an assignment to do, my starting point is typically google and the end result (the report) is a potpourri of matter from different sites which sometimes makes sense and sometimes does not. Apparently google is students’ best friend, but is it not harming their growth in the long run?

Today something happened to me...something that happened to Samuel Taylor Coleridge way back in the autmn of 1797 when he conceived Kubla Khan of Xanadu in his dream (where do you think I got this date from...of course google ;-) ) I had a dream - a dream full of ideas. I woke up and tried to scribble them on paper. Now I expect something somewhat original somewhere.

The point I’m trying to make is if we give it a thought and don’t mindlessly start googling (as I do), we sure can come up with original ideas. And then may be some day....

We would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And drink the milk of Paradise.

;-)

No open source future for Virtualization?

Industry experts take Dana Blankenhorn on as he believes that there is no open source future for Virtualization. Tarry Singh, CEO Avastu Appliances, says:

I don't get it. Is it taking a jab at all other firms like Redhat, Novell, Virtual Iron and warning them not to rely too much on Xen? This summary is rather succinct and honestly does not do any justice to what the Open Source is capable of.

Alex Weeks, author of the Linux System Administrator’s Guide, says :

Like Tarry, I don’t get Dana’s point. In fact, I’m not even sure why ZDnet published this. It really lacks any point. I think he’s trying to make a point without really understanding the technology. Or any technology for that matter. I read some of his other articles, and he doesn’t seem to get any where. It’s like he’s writing inside jokes that only he understands. In his articles, he starts to go somewhere but never goes there.

Indeed open source is important to our future and virtualization is the next big thing. Combine the two and what you get is a deadly mix!

Virtualization & Open Source in India

The Indian IT market is estimated to touch $65 billion by 2009, posting a compound annual growth rate of 21 percent. The market, on the back of strong demand over the past few years, has emerged as the fastest-growing one in the Asia Pacific region.IDC India Limited, an IT industry analyst firm, has predicted that the year 2007 will witness Indian enterprises graduate to the second level of Dynamic IT infrastructure – where IT infrastructure can effect changes fast in response to the changing business scenario. The key technology components to attain this state are virtualization, SOA and application integration. CIO India examines the impact of open source & virtualization.

.......What has caused the effective price of virtualization to head toward zero -- and how? In contrast to many who seem to feel that open source and proprietary software operate in two parallel but separate universes — that open source is used by people who can’t afford ‘real’ software, while proprietary commercial software is for organizations that need reliability, scalability, and all the other ‘abilities’ — I believe that open source is already challenging the proprietary software world.

How about a case study to test the theory? Let’s look at virtualization, something that has tremendous potential with a clear payoff: reduced costs for IT organizations, both hard (power, machines) and soft (admin and operations personnel). It evinces an undeniable fact: machines are improving so fast that they make possible a change to the traditional hardware infrastructure, breaking the bounds of the one machine, one application practice used by most IT shops....

Read on.

Blog Development & Thinking

Blogs.....What does an obscure format which started with computer geeks have to do with development? Quite a bit, say Tim Harford and Pablo Halkyard, co-authors of the World Bank Blog.

….the playing field is much more level than it was even a year ago. Being a big organisation counts for very little in the booming world of blogs - what counts is quick, relevant content. And if the playing field is being levelled within the developed world, just wait until the developing world starts to play the game. It’s already happening: during this summer’s Live8 campaign, some African bloggers started to complain that the concerts were irrelevant, patronising, or worse. Even just a couple of years ago, such dissenting voices from Africa would never have been heard. Huge sites, such as Harvard’s Global Voices Online, are gathering together the output of ‘bridge bloggers’ who read local blogs and comment in English. Some countries, such as Iran, have vast blogging communities; others are tiny but growing very fast.

It has never been easier for journalists to pick up voices from the developing world - or even for you and us to do so from our desks. People all over the world are talking, but only now can we hear what they’re saying....

Read the entire article here — encouraging stuff.

Gross National Happiness (GNH) : An Inane Concept

Have you ever wondered what happiness is? Happiness is quite often equated with money. The gross domestic product, or GDP, is routinely used as shorthand for the well-being of a nation. But the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has been toying with a completely different idea for a while. King Wangchuck has decided to make his nation’s priority not its GDP but its GNH. And believe it or not but the most unlikely place on earth for the birth of an international trend is emerging as a global leader in the promotion of this whole new concept of the 'Gross National Happiness.'

According to Wiki, Gross National Happiness (GNH) is an attempt to define quality of life in more holistic and psychological terms than GDP. The concept of GNH is based on the premise that true development of human society takes place when material and spiritual development occur side by side to complement and reinforce each other.

I am sure we all will agree that happiness is a feeling, a subjective experience. I may say “I am happy” just as I may say “I am rich.” The two statements sound similar but these statements are qualitatively different. There is an objective validity to the statement “I am rich” because my wealth can be measured. But happiness is subjective and does not allow interpersonal comparisons, while richness does. We can definitely say how A’s wealth compares to B’s wealth but cannot say how A’s happiness compares to B’s happiness.

GDP is a measure of the annual production of final goods and services in an economy denominated in monetary terms. GDP does not aggregate cows. Thus saying that the GDP does not accurately tell me anything about how many cows are in the economy is as silly as saying that GDP does not tell me whether the people in the country are happy or not!

I have never considered the GDP to be the end-all and be-all of an economy any more than I consider the monthly income to be the only relevant characteristic of a person. Those who complain that GDP is not all that matters are making a valid but rather trivial complaint. What I don’t understand is the attempt by the detractors of GDP aping a metric which they have perhaps misunderstood. They are in effect saying that GDP does not measure happiness. So we must come up with an alternate aggregate measure we will call Gross National Happiness which will be more appropriate. That is GNS - Gross National Stupidity ;-) Tomorrow they may say that GDP does not give a count of the number of cows so we should come up with some kind of Gross National Cow index!

Investment Banker Wisdom

This one is reeeeeally hilarious guys! (forwarded to me by one of my friends)

The investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal
Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The investment banker complimented the fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The fisherman replied, only a little while.

The investment banker then asked why didn't he stay out longer and catch more fish?

The fisherman said he had enough to support his family's immediate needs.

The investment banker then asked, but what do you do with the rest of your time?

The fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life, senor."

The investment banker scoffed, "I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You can leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise."

The fisherman asked, "But senor, how long will this all take?"

To which the American replied, "15-20 years."

But what then, senor?

The American laughed and said that's the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.

Millions, senor? Then what?

The American said, "Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos."

;-)