A group of us at our Teletrac Navman – Pleasanton, CA R&D location spent some time at the Pleasanton Senior Center in conjunction with the Open Heart Kitchen to prep and serve lunch to the elderly. Was great to spend some time and give back to our community, and we got to meet some great folks in the process.

Big thanks to our volunteer team: Irani Muni, Jennimel Ocampo, Jayalalitha Pallatadaka, Deepthi Kendyala, Gopinath Sundharam, George Chemparathy, James Buxton, Esther Howard, Rishabh Nanda, Vadym Strashkin, Vadim Shiryayev, and Tariq Ahmed.

#fortivecares #TeletracNavman

This weekend a bunch of us from #TeletracNavman (a #Fortive company) joined Habitat For Humanity (East Bay Silicon Valley chapter, #HabitatEBSV) for a Build-A-Thon in Fremont, CA.

With a huge turn out of volunteers, we split up into teams building the core housing units, fence line, and a large brick wall. We got assigned to wall duty, and the team was determined to build the best gosh-darn wall ever!

Learned that the houses aren’t giveaways. The owners pay a mortgage and are responsible for it like any other homeowner, but the amount is adjusted to something affordable based on the family’s income. One of the future homeowners who was there helping on the build gave a moving speech on how much this means to him, as well as a few prior recipients who have continued to volunteer on builds.

Habitat did a great job at organizing, keeping everyone energized, well-fed, and well-hydrated. Thanks to all who participated, it was a lot of fun (and now I know how to make mortar/grout/concrete)!

#BuildMore #FortiveCares

Shout out to our team: Paresh Nagda, Claude-Nicolas Fiechter, Rishabh Nanda, Esther Howard, Nathan Todd, James Buxton, Larry Freeman, and Tariq Ahmed (me).

Background: Recently I completed the CIO Pocket MBA program at Boston University. This was a fantastic experience that I highly recommend to any leader in the I.T space. The insightful and inspiring professors are reputable thought leaders who have spent years researching various aspects of technology, management, business, and financials. Additionally learning from industry peers was equally valuable. During my time there I feverishly took a lot of notes in order to capture and ultimately share the knowledge. Keep in mind – these are raw notes that only scratch the surface from multi-hour/multi-day long sessions. My intent is not to replicate the knowledge as it was presented, but more to quickly disseminate key points that stood out to me. To fully benefit I highly recommend you sign up for the next round of this program (http://bit.ly/1juJEIP).

[su_pullquote]The greatest danger as a leader is believing the past is a prologue to the future. Believing you’ve done it before, and rest on your laurels that you can do it again.[/su_pullquote]

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Earlier in April I had the pleasure of attending the CIO Pocket MBA hosted at Boston University.

The classes were fantastic, and if you’re in any kind of an I.T Leadership role I highly recommend attending this class.

It’s intense, fast, and covers a wide variety of topics presented by some of the most amazing professors I’ve ever seen. I was a bit skeptical over how current a university could be as I feel that most tend to lag (when it comes to technology) behind what’s happening in the real world.

Topics included:

1. Managing disruption and change
2. Economic position of the I.T organization
3. Performance KPIs for driving results (a financial analysis session)
4. Creating a customer centric organization
5. Building a strategy for getting things done
6. Leading change and innovation

Apart from the valuable coursework, there was value in the networking component where technology leaders from around the world attending (including Europe and the UAE).

For more information visit: http://smgworld.bu.edu/elc/open-enrollment/cio-pocket-mba/

I recently listened to the audiobook to Peter Drucker’s book entitled the Effective Executive. Here are my key take aways as to what makes an executive effective.

1. They ask what needs to be done?
• Do not ask “what do I want to do?”
• Concentrate on just one task, two at most, and never more than two at a time.
• Set priorities and stick to them.
• After completing tasks 1 and 2, instead of moving on to number 3 ask again what needs to be done as new opportunities may present themselves.
2. They ask what is right for the Enterprise?
• Not what is right for stock holders, employees, or themselves.
• A decision not right for the enterprise will eventually result in something that isn’t right for anyone.
• It won’t guarantee the right decision will be made, but failure to ask the question guarantees the wrong decision.
3. They develop action plans.
• Knowledge is useless unless you translate that into action.
• Before springing into action, plot a course of how you want to get there.
• Think about desired results, constraints, restraints, check-in points, and implications.
• The action plan is a statement of intention rather a commitment.
• It shouldn’t be ridged in that once sealed you’re locked in.
• It should be revised often as actions result in new opportunities.
• Time is the most scarce and valuable resource.
• Use check-ins to examine results vs. expectations, and revise the path.
• Without an Action Plan you are a victim of events.
4. They take responsibility for decisions.
• Decisions require an owner, deadline, those affected by it, those who need to approve it (or at least not oppose it), and those who need to be informed.
• People decisions (hiring and promotion) are one of the most important decisions.
• 1/3rd of people decisions have the desired positive result.
• The conclusion to make in cases where a people decision didn’t work out is that management made the wrong decision by not putting the right person in the right place (as opposed to viewing the person as “bad”).
• If someone is promoted into a job where they are underperforming, it may very well not be their fault as it wasn’t their decision to be placed in such a role. So if it’s not working out, offer them the previous job they held where they were successful. Odds are they won’t go for it, but it does send the message to the organization that it’s ok to take career growth risks.
• After making a people decision, set a check-in date to re-evaluate if it’s working.
5. They take responsibility for communicating.
• Effective executives make sure their action plans and informational needs are understood.
• Executives need to make sure that subordinates have access to the information they need.
6. They are focused on opportunities instead of problems.
• Problems can’t be swept under the rug, so don’t ignore them.
• However problem solving doesn’t produce results, it just prevents damage.
• Exploiting opportunity produces results.
• Changes present opportunities. For example changes in market conditions, economic conditions, consumer behavior, etc…
• Don’t let problems overwhelm opportunities. Find a way to promote opportunities over problems.
• Put your best people on opportunities instead of problems.
7. They run productive meetings.
• Make meetings work sessions (vs. a blab-a-thon).
• Decide in advance what kind of meeting it will be (press release, team meeting, etc…) as your preparations will differ, and what the desired result of the meeting should be.
• Terminate the meeting the moment the objective of the meeting  has been completed. Don’t introduce additional topics.
• At the beginning of a meeting, state its purpose.
• Follow up with meeting notes summarizing decisions, assignments, owners of each task, and deadlines.
8. They thought/said “we” instead of “I”.
• An executive only has authority because they have the trust of the organization.
• The needs of the organization come before the executive.
9. They listen first / speak last

I’ve been working on another post on the theme of vision & goals, and saw a posting on the StrikeFish blog referencing Steve Jobs’ 1997 WWDC closing keynote, and there’s a 5 minute segment at the 4 minute 30 second mark where he talks about focus – and how Apple had suffered from the lack of it.

Context: He’s answering a question regarding a bunch of products Apple killed because although they might have been great technologies, it didn’t fit with where Apple needed to go.

“…Apple suffered for several years from lousy engineering management, I have to say it. And there were people that were going off in 18 different directions, doing arguably interesting things in each one of them.

Good engineers! Lousy management…

And what happened was you look at the farm that’s been created with all these different animals going in different directions, and it doesn’t add up, the total is less than the sum of the parts.

So we had to decide what are the fundamental directions we’re going in, and what makes sense, and what doesn’t. And there were a bunch of things that didn’t. And microcosmically they might have made sense, macrocosmically they made no sense.

And you know the hardest thing is, when you think about focusing right, you think well focusing is about saying yes. No. Focusing is about saying no. Focusing is about saying no. And you got to say no no no. And when you say no, you piss off people…

…and the result of that focus, is going to be really great products, where the total is much greater than the sum of the parts.”

 

Steve Jobs – WWDC 1997 Closing Keynote