Archive for June, 2008
Being a First Time Manager and Coaching a First Time Manager.
One very key factor in both employee engagement and performance management is the role of the immediate manager. As the Gallup poll on this subject confirms by this classic statement “when an employee joins he/she joins an organisation, BUT when he/she leaves he/she leaves the manager”. This article addresses this critical role of the First Time Manager and coaching the First Time Manager. I give the summary below
SEZs are not good for Small & Medium sized IT Enterprises
With the uncertainty over the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) scheme after the union budget, a mad rush towards Special Economic Zones (SEZs) is very much expected. I have been studying about SEZ or last three weeks and two things are very clear -
- The SEZ Act is under constant change. So whatever is stated there cannot be taken as a confirmed policy from the Government.
NASSCOM EMERGE Community launched
Community is going to be a key theme for all NASSCOM activities this year – as it features in the Six point agenda for 2009 set out by NASSCOM Chairman, Dr.Ganesh Natarajan earlier this year. As a key step forward in this direction, the NASSCOM EMERGE Community has been now launched. This is a full fledged piece of internet real estate meant exclusively for SMEs and comes packed with features such as discussion boards, in-depth member profiles and file sharing. In a word, everything that a community needs for collaboration.
The Business of Software
This is not only the topic of my new blog but also the book which I just finished reading. This is a 2004 book but very relevant even today in the business of software. The author is Michael A Cusumano, Co-author of another famous title – “Microsoft Secrets”.
Making a Good Organization Great…(Friday’s 2.0 – 36th session)
Neerja Verma former Senior Vice President, RMSI India spoke to us on the 36th session of NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0. The session began with a round of introductions, with the 32 attendees saying a few words about themselves and talking about their expectations from Neerja’s talk. The audience was a mix of people from HR, Marketing and the CEO community. Neerja started off with an overview on “What does it take to build a Great Company.” She emphasized that rather than depending on great leaders, organizations could become great by following a process and ensuring consistency in what they did.
Cultural Issues in Employee Engagement and Retention
“Eighty percent of success is showing up”-Woody Allen, Hollywood comedian, screenwriter and director
It seems that the days when this used to be true have gone. Today, with passionate employees becoming a minority, employee retention is a critical issue that needs to be tackled with. Industry statistics show that about 20% of the employees are highly engaged. So where are the rest going?
A Safer India is a MUST : IT power of India and Protecting ourselves
This has been bothering me for quite a while, particularly more so when I visited US last month and saw how few other countries were being pushed. This being a very touchy subject, I debated myself a few times on whether I should blog or not and my emotion had a better of me, and hence here is the blog. No I am not such a big guy to talk about such a big subject nor this is something related to SME space alone, but I feel it is a pan India issue which I like to bring it here.
Transforming IT and rural India
In any industry, annual growth of over 25% would be considered excellent: for an industry that is already large — with revenues of Rs 200,000 crore — it is truly exceptional. What makes the story even better is that about three fourths of the revenues come from exports, and that too in a highly competitive global environment. Finally, as icing on the cake, is the fact that this industry created over 300,000 direct jobs last year, and four times as many indirectly. It requires but little knowledge to infer that we are referring to India’s phenomenally successful IT software and services industry.
SMEs: Is this the end of the Plain Vanilla outsourcing?
“The ability to focus and differentiate is the main secret of success for SMEs” says John McCarthy, Vice president Forrester Research on how Indian SMEs can succeed in the highly competitive crowded outsourcing market (Source NASSCOM’s NEWSline April 2007 Issue no.66), in the report “The SME Survival Kit”. Another very strong statement by the same Forrester research in the same report goes as “Going forward, only one to three Indian offshore service providers will emerge as true multi-line, multi-geography players. The remaining will have to focus to create sustainable growth and differentiation in the marketplace”.
Learn Blogging in 178 Seconds
Have you ever wondered why blogs are getting so popular today? Do you know that number of blogs crossed over 100m in 2007 end? Every second, a new blog is created. Still, all these numbers represent only the blog writers. Imagine the community of people who are reading the blog posts.
