random ramblings

a good quote, from Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker. individuals will have to learn new things well after they have become adults – and maybe more than once. what individuals have learned by age twenty one will begin to become obsolete five to ten years later and will have to be replaced – or at least refurbished – by new learning, new skills and new knowledge. individuals will increasingly have to take responsibility for their own continuous leaning and relearning, for their own self-development and for their own careers. they can no longer assume that what they have learned as children and youngsters will be the "foundation" for rest of their lives. it will be the "launching pad" – the place to take off from rather than the place to build on and to rest on. they can no longer assume that they "enter upon a career" which then proceeds along a pre-determined, well-mapped and well-lighted "career path" to a known destination...

Few more from Wal-Mart story. As before, I compare continuously with Infosys from the perspective of organizations which continue to perform even when they are big. It’s almost embarrassing to admit this, but it’s true: there hasn’t been a day in my adult life when I haven’t spent some time thinking about merchandising. I suspect I have emphasized item merchandising and the importance of promoting items to a greater degree than most any other retail management person in this country. It has been an absolute passion of mine. It is what I enjoy doing as much as anything in the business. I really love to pick an item – may be the most basic merchandise – and then call attention to it. Many of our best opportunities were created out of necessity. The things that we were forced to learn and do, because we started out underfinanced and undercapitalied in these remote, small communities, contributed mightily to the way we’ve grown as a company. Had we been capitalized, or had we been th...

Just completed Sam Walton’s auto biography . The contrast of Walmart and Kmart (then and now) and story of the growth of Walton from one franchisee store to an empire made it very interesting. In case you are not familiar with Kmart, this statement from the book puts in perspective. Compare Kmart and Wal-mart after they had both been on the street for ten years. Our fifty-plus wal-marts and elevent variety stores were doing about $80 million a year in sales compared to kmart’s five hundred stores doing more than $3 billion a year. but kmart had interested me ever since the first store went up in 1962. I was in their stores constantly because they were the laboratory, and they were better than we were. I spent a heck of lot of my time wandering through their stores talking to their people and trying to figure out how they did things. Now the situation has reversed. I had a Kmart near where I lived – parking lot used to be empty, whereas nearest Walmart used to be full – enough sai...

Couple of quotes from one of very few blogs I follow since number of years:- The traits of work that makes someone happy: 1. stretches a person without defeating him 2. provides clear goals 3. provides unambiguous feedback 4. provides a sense of control Your level of optimism and quality of relationships impact your level of happiness more than your job does. Obvious I guess. But of late I am finding that stating the obvious is an eye opener sometimes.

The day was a complete disaster, until that point. I called home to let them know I started from office. She picked up the phone and said “I recognized the phone number. I was waiting for you. I will start getting ready, we can dance”. When I reached home, she was wearing four different colored beads, one necklace, red, pink, purple, orange, gold bangles, all with a blue dress. She said something in rapid fire fashion; I understood something like she will dance three times, one to teach me, one to dance together and one solo. Her mother was going to put on the radio and we will dance to whatever music that comes on. So we danced the weird dance, she was twirling and doing all sort of stuff with her face and hands and I had to repeat after her. It was too much for her mother / my wife to pass, so she recorded it. Thus it went on for couple of hours – her best friend called in between, she was all excited, she gave me a dictation, sang some songs, we played two varieties of hide and see...

Was reading this :- Take the September 24-30 issue of The Economist. Page 76, opened at random, offers some startling statistics about how companies work inside. According to a study commissioned by Dov Seidman, author of "How," 43% of American employees surveyed say their company works on a command-and-control culture–management by coercion. Another 54% say their employers are top-down, but with a dollop of carrots and sticks, and talented leaders who try to inspire followership–a category Seidman calls "informed acquiescence." Only 3% actually practice employee self-governance, where a shared set of values and principles guide employees in their work and align them with the company’s larger purpose. The Economist goes on to report that, unlike the employees in the belly of the beast, the bosses at the tops of companies who were interviewed saw a very different picture. Bosses, according to the study, are 8 times more likely than the average to say that their...

I was looking for what is recommended as the must reads for an “IT Professional”. Below is the most recommended ones I came across, not in any particular order. If you know any other must read, do leave a comment. Code Complete – Steve McConnell The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master – Andrew Hunt, David Thomas Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code – Martin Fowler Introduction to algorithms – Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs – Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman, Julie Sussman Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software – Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides (Gang of Four) The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering – Fred Brooks Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams – DeMarco and Lister The design of everyday things – Donald Norman The Timeless Way of Building – Christopher Alexander Psychology of Computer of Programming – Gerald Weinberg ...