Lessons from the World Cup

Sharing leadership lessons from 'Team India' which captured attention of Mr Vineet Nayar. The way Team India played and won this cricket world cup has indeed taught lot of lessons to us...Here are 10 things on leadership that we can learn:

1. Think global
2. Ignore the naysayers
3. Articulate clear goals
4. Bank on experience
5. Build the right support system
6. Renew yourself, constantly
7. Hold onto to your belief through adversity
8. Have a larger purpose
9. Stay calm in swirling waters
10. Play as a team

Here is the original link to Lessons from the World Cup from Vineet Nayar's Scrapbook.

Lessons from Randy Pausch

This is from the speech given by Randy Pausch entitled “Guide To a Better Life".He had been diagnosed for cancer and when he made this wonderful speech, he knew that he had been given only a finite span to live. Below is the extract from the speech which gives 30 valuable lessons for all of us.

Personality:

1. Don't compare your life to others'. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
2. Don't have negative thoughts of things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment
3. Don't overdo; keep your limits
4. Don't take yourself so seriously; no one else does
5. Don't waste your precious energy on gossip
6. Dream more while you are awake
7. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
8. Forget issues of the past. Don't remind your partner of his/her mistakes of the past. That will ruin your present happiness.
9. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Don't hate others.
10. Make peace with your past so it won't spoil the present
11. No one is in charge of your happiness except you
12. Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn. Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.
13. Smile and laugh more
14. You don't have to win every argument.

Community:

15. Call your family often
16. Each day give something good to others
17. Forgive everyone for everything
18. Spend time with people over the age of 70 & under the age of 6
19. Try to make at least three people smile each day
20. What other people think of you is none of your business
21. Your job will not take care of you when you are sick. Your family and friends will. Stay in touch.

Life:

22. Put GOD first in anything and everything that you think, say and do.
23. GOD heals everything
24. Do the right things
25. However good or bad a situation is, it will change
26. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up
27. The best is yet to come
28. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful
29. When you awake alive in the morning, thank GOD for it
30. If you know GOD you will always be happy. So, be happy.

To the above, Ashok Soota adds:

31. Never do something which you would not like to see in newspaper headlines.
32. “When you say something you shouldn’t have said – something that you didn’t mean or that was unkind – apologize right away. The longer you wait the harder it will be.”
33. We need an optimistic approach to life. Soota is a strong believer that things will invariably work out for the greater good of all concerned and it is an attitude to have whenever things don’t appear to be going the way we would like (Point 27 flows from above).

Wishing you a Happier & more contented life!

Organisational culture change from the bottom up

Organisational culture change from the bottom up: "The changing culture is a complex problem faced by many organisations. It's a lot like repairing the engine of a moving vehicle. While new firms have the luxury of gradually building the culture that best serves their interest, larger The changing culture is a complex problem faced by many organisations. It's a lot like repairing the engine of a moving vehicle. While new firms have the luxury of gradually building the culture that best serves their interest, larger"

Consistent Messaging | Mainframe | IBM Systems Magazine

My article on MQ in IBM System z Magazine...
Consistent Messaging | Mainframe | IBM Systems Magazine

The new zEnterprise mainframe career path

The new zEnterprise mainframe career path: "

There has been a lot of angst on various mainframe discussion forums about the career prospects of mainframe professionals. Between the recession and, at best, a limp recovery combined with the offshore outsourcing of traditional mainframe jobs, these haven’t been happy discussions for the most part. You can sample one here at LinkedIn.

Several moves by IBM in regard to the mainframe over the past few years, such as support for Linux on z, and with the recent introduction of the new zEnterprise suggest what the new career path for mainframe professionals will look like. This doesn’t look like the traditional COBOL/Assembler career that sustained earlier generations of mainframers, although COBOL and Assembler and the like will continue to be part of it.

A better picture of the new mainframe career path was on display at SHARE this week in Boston when a dozen university participants in IBM’s seven-year-old mainframe academic initiative touted their programs, including a variety of certificate and online (distance learning) programs that may fit older mainframers who want to reinvigorate their careers with new skills. Here is some background on the initiative.

Sure COBOL, Assembler, JCL, IMS, ISPF, and other traditional mainframe technologies are part of almost every curriculum, but it is the new offerings that will fuel mainframe careers going forward. The truth is that mainframe jobs revolving around hardcore coding have been shipped offshore, and even when the economy eventually recovers don’t count on those jobs coming back. Mainframe careers in North America and Western Europe in the future will require a wider set of skills.

DancingDinosaur has referenced a number of those skills over the past few months. According to the academics participating in IBM’s System z Academic Initiative they include WebSphere and Linux on z, SOA, Web 2.0, SOA/XML/CICS, Java, virtualization through z/VM, and even Hadoop for massive data sets and RD/z to build the latest mobile phone apps for the mainframe.

Of course the z will continue to do what it has always done well–high volume, high performance, and highly secure and reliable transaction processing. But, according to the academics speaking at SHARE it will take on more business-related, as opposed to transaction-oriented, work. These workloads will involve the data as information, business intelligence, and new types of user interaction.

Even the term for what the z does has changed, which, not surprisingly, is reflected in the name of the new mainframe, the zEnterprise. Increasingly companies will want people who can deliver enterprise computing or large-scale computing (think cloud). Mainframers—that’s you.

The zEnterprise, with its ability to take on diverse and non-traditional mainframe workloads and interoperate with POWER7 and x86 platforms, was designed for this new mainframe role. It can scale and perform as never before, and it is more versatile than any previous mainframe.

So, how can traditional mainframers get involved in this new enterprise computing? Here are the first three steps:

1. Sharpen your z/VM skills since virtualization is quickly becoming pervasive throughout enterprise computing and the cloud


2. Develop Linux skills, both on and off the z


3. Get familiar with business-oriented workloads like business intelligence and computing approaches like SOA, web services, and cloud

OK, maybe it isn’t exactly the career you signed up for as a mainframer. But, unless you somehow manage to cling to a traditional mainframe job, it is the most likely career path you’ll find going forward. And you will get to play with all the sexy new technologies from Hadoop to cloud computing. Plus there are things like the latest mobile phones. Want to build a mainframe iPhone app using RDz/Eclipse plug-ins? It’s possible. Go for it.

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