Star performer, Competence, Incompetence, Mediocrity!

It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence. And yet most people—especially most teachers and most organizations—concentrate on making incompetent performers into mediocre ones. Energy, resources, and time should go instead to making a competent person into a star performer.

My own search engine

The number of search sites is also skyrocketing, as the technological barrier for search has been lowered. In December, Manning Publications published Lucene in Action, a guide to creating search engines with open-source software called Lucene, which is already used on singer Bob Dylan's Web site. Armed with this book, the average programmer can create a search engine in less than a day, says co-author Erik Hatcher.

www.businessweek.com/technology/

Outsourcing Innovation

Sweeping Overhaul
India is emerging as a heavyweight in design, too. The top players in making the country world-class in software development, including HCL and Wipro, are expected to help India boost its contract R&D revenues from $1 billion a year now to $8 billion in three years. One of Wipro's many labs is in a modest office off dusty, congested Hosur Road in Bangalore. There, 1,000 young engineers partitioned into brightly lit pods jammed with circuit boards, chips, and steel housings hunch over 26 development projects. Among them is a hands-free telephone system that attaches to the visor of a European sports car. At another pod, designers tinker with a full dashboard embedded with a satellite navigation system. Inside other Wipro labs in Bangalore, engineers are designing prototypes for everything from high-definition TVs to satellite set-top boxes

Complete article:

www.businessweek.com/magazine/

How much is your salary worth??

“One Singaporean worker
costs as much as …
3 … in Malaysia

8 … in Thailand
13 … in China
18 … in India.”

Source: The Straits Times/08.18.03

Big Mergers!!

Are Big Mergers Successful!

“When asked to name just one big merger that had lived up to expectations, Leon Cooperman, former cochairman of Goldman Sachs’ Investment Policy Committee, answered: I’m sure there are success stories out there, but at this moment I draw a blank.”

Mark Sirower, The Synergy Trap

Are U Talented enough???

WHY “TALENT” MATTERS …

Came across this quote from Microsoft’s former chief scientist, Nathan Myhrvold:
“The top software developers are more productive than average software developers not by a factor of 10X or 100X or even 1000X, but by 10,000X.”

How bad oraganizations are in dealing with PEOPLE.

BELIEVE IT AND WEEP …

Some terribly dispiriting figures from a Harris Poll of 23,000 full-time U.S. workers in key industries.

Herewith a sample:

37% have a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve;

20% are “enthusiastic” about their team’s goals. [TP: could the sample include the U.S. Olympic basketball team?];

15% feel their organization enables them to execute key goals;

15% describe their organization as a “high-trust environment;”

10% believe the organization holds people “accountable for results.” (And so on.)

Management & Leadership!!

I have always been facinated about differences in middle management and leaders.

My thoughts-
Management - you spend shorter time in learning how things are done and implement them on day to day basis.

Leaders - They see what can be, bring about changes in perception . Their advise last longer , like an old fav mp3.



Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Peter F. Drucker

Business , Economics & People.

The Future Creative Employee!!!

“The past few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind—computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind—creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers. These people—artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers—will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.” —Dan Pink, A Whole New Mind

- From www.tompeters.com