BLT Diaries - My management credo (part 3)

Pardon me, but even after having long shed the role of a BLT, i’ll continue to call this series of posts “BLT Diaries”.

the decrees so far..
Part 1 - http://ohnewoerter.blogspot.com/2009/07/blt-diaries-my-management-credo-in.html

“Anything can be, and everything that can be, will, very likely be, uncertain”
“Ye all shall learn the most sacred art - Follow Up”
“Earth calling moon rocket” - if you can’t figure this one out, read the full post :P

Part 2 - http://ohnewoerter.blogspot.com/2009/10/blt-diaries-my-management-credo-part-2.html

“Thou shall beware the wrath of the P-R Vortex”
“Thou shall ‘be the ball’”
“Ye shall always be the puppeteer short of strings”

and now...  My management credo (part 3)

“Confluence - lest thy predicament persist” 
Remember “12 Angry Men”?? When in conflict, it does work!! Decisions can be arrived at simply by getting every person involved around one table to talk on the subject matter!! (ok travel budget cut, i hear ya… over a conf-call will still do :P). Easier said than done... expect about 5 of the 12 to be involved, 3 to be disinterested, 2 simply questioning every line that comes outta your mouth (valid or not :| ), 1 texting (or these days playing angry birds on their smart phone) and 1 (you) moderating!!!  But get this done, and rest assured, the issue will be at a better place than where it started from...


“‘TO-DO’ or not ‘TO-DO’”
While I curse microsoft’s powerpoint, I adore its Excel. Don’t get me wrong here, i am not a numb3rs person - am not commending the over abused ‘macros’, multiple sheets of valuations (will all formulae plugged in already :/) i am talking about a simple “ToDo: What-When-Status” sheet. I believe vehemently that the human brain (mine for starters) is not meant to multitask. There are times my thoughts run like traffic in Bangalore - changing lanes every few minutes at the end of which i am left wondering where i am headed... This, when one’s worrying only about what they are supposed to do... Now add on to this all the stuff the same person has to “Follow Up” on lest it gets... well, you know what.  
Another version of this when “confluenc’ing” is the “Go where no one has ever gone, But be sure to make a tracker”

“Ye shall know your Freak-hold”
When to start freaking out?? This stands out as one of the two major learnings i take back from B-school. No problem is as big as it seems at the time… not passing a paper, not having made it thro one interview... it doesn’t seem so grave in retrospect does it?  Having said that, I admit - this is one of those decrees I know, but when needed, find really impossible to remember!! Also, that said, if you have a job  where you can ruin the world economy, work with viruses that could destroy the world, please freak out more. Else, take a breath n a walk before crossing over to freak-out zone.


i realize my decrees are becoming less funny and more morose... hazards of being buried under work i guess, but will try and flex those humour chords and hit those notes soon enough.. till then adios.

Life across W-A-M

Yes, i am a bit of a geek… Yes, i work in the technology space.. but nothing manages to wreak my day like having to work on my W-A-M setup i.e. my Windows XP office laptop, Android smart phone and Macbook personal laptop.

Of course, there is a distinct advantage to having the set-up i do ... as someone who works in an environment creating applications its a fantastic thing to be exposed to the best and worst of all that is available in these application oriented platforms. But then again, the hassles of trying to live with these does drive me wild now and again.. 

Its almost as if my digital space is dyslexic.. what i suddenly think of and note down on my mobile (on a fancy app that has awesome mind mapping etc), i cannot work on on the W and M machines! Worse, Mac informs me that i cannot write onto a HDD that is NTFS formatted and asks me “Do you wish to format” at the cost of losing my life’s collection of music and movies!! And of course, google and OEM who work on Android seem so completely assured that no MAC user will ever buy an Android phone that all mobile connect software made available for macs are “Lite”, crappy and near impossible to work with!!

I have moved on to sticking to plain text and pdf’s which partly solve the problem whilst unrealistically looking forward to the day when i may be rid of these and manage to work seamlessly in a W-A-M space...

PS: I am talking disconnected computing here where my work does not hang on the “cloud” yes it clears the W-A-M dyslexia a bit, still it nowhere near ‘seamless’.