I care, so I criticize...

Have you criticized people? Have you criticized your spouse, kid, peers or even boss? Were you comfortable doing that? What's their reaction?

I have criticized people many a times in the professional circles and official meetings. When other's reactions were not so receptive I have lamented myself why these people cannot be professionals and open minded, after all I am doing it for all the good reasons. But there were occasions when I was in the receiving end, and I had struggled to become the same 'professional and open minded' which I wanted all others to be :)

It's not simple, not simple at all- criticizing others and being criticized by others. So what's the way out?

Can we avoid criticizing and be nice and goody-goody to people? Can we see that we don't discuss contentious issues and pre-empt a possible confrontation?

If you want to do that or already doing that then you don't care others; you don't want others to improve and come up; you are selfish

Criticism is like a double edged sword. You MUST do it, You MUST face it. Real challenge is how are you going to do it? Shiv Khera gives a few tips for constructive criticism.

Are you specific while criticizing others? If no, then people may suspect your motive. There has to be a clear, constructive purpose

Are you doing it with care and compassion? Are you able to make eye-to-eye contact?

Are you telling others the benefit of correcting the issue? Are you showing the loss from not correcting?

Are you sarcastic? Then you don't care

Are you questioning the intent of others while criticizing? Then you don't trust

Does criticism give you pleasure? Are you bringing personal grudges while criticizing? Then you are sadistic  and you have no business criticizing others

Are you giving others the opportunity to explain?

Are you open minded enough to consider other's suggestions?

Are you cool and firm while criticizing? Obviously you have to be

Are you closing the conversation on a positive note?

Are you congratulating them when they realize their folly and ready to correct?

There must be some tips while on the receiving end too. (but this is by 'yours truly' :))

Are you open minded enough to face criticism?

Are you looking to who's doing that rather than what they are doing? Obviously you should not

Are you attributing motives to the person doing that? Then you don't want to improve

Are you unnerved or tensed while facing criticism? Then you lack confidence

Do you respond by targeting personalities rather than targeting ideas? You need to have the tenacity and courage

So do you care others and want to help them out? Criticize them constructively

Do you want to improve yourself? Face criticism with a open, positive frame of mind

Happy criticizing!! (of course, constructive)

Top 10 Motivators

Last week I had been to Bangalore to participate in the 3 days 'Hi-Impact Leadership Workshop'  conducted by Mr. Shiv Khera, the Motivational Speaker &  Leadership Consultant.  He was able to create a big impact on the attendees with his passionate speech and ability to influence your thought process. Not to exaggerate, the work shop was a clear blue-print for success. I recommend this program for all, current and to-be leaders.

I thought of blogging a few interesting topics of the workshop. The first one is the top 10 motivators. This was a study conducted at Ford Motors for management and rank and file separately. I have listed out the 10 parameters.  You shall rank between 1 to 10 with 1 being the top motivator and 10 being the bottom one.  I have given results of the survey too and you shall compare your ranking with the actual survey results (Please don't see the results before you finish the exercise) 

One important conclusion I came into was rank and file of the organization is much more responsible and loyal to the organization than the management. It may be surprising but that's what the result shows

Motivators	Your Rank (1 to 10)
Tactful discipline (conveying your message without offending)
Personal loyalty of the supervisor
Interesting work
Job security
Feeling of belonging
Appreciation of work done
Help on personal problems
High wages
Promotion in the company
Good working conditions

Finished the exercise? Now compare it with the actual survey results given at the bottom

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Motivators	Management	Rank & File
Tactful discipline (conveying your message without offending)	7	10
Personal loyalty of the supervisor	6	8
Interesting work	5	6
Job security	2	4
Feeling of belonging	10	2
Appreciation of work done	8	1
Help on personal problems	9	3
High wages	1	5
Promotion in the company	3	7
Good working conditions	4	9

Do you agree with my assertion that there are more good people in the rank and file than the management?  :)

Who is a real cloud service provider?

Being an IT guy, it's very difficult to control our temptations to talk about cloud and we do that everyday. But if you ask the question whether there is consistency in the understanding of 'what is cloud' and 'who is the real cloud service provider', the answer is a big NO. There is nothing wrong with that inconsistency, because it brings new perspectives. Cloud means different things to different people- for some it's a technology, for some it's a new business model, for some it's a new IT services delivery model. Irony is all these definitions  are true and that doesn't help solve our confusions.

Let's try to identify who is real cloud service provider amidst a battery of 'pseudo' providers. Check for yourself whether your provider meets the following criteria

• Entire IT capability (whether it's the knowledge/expertise of the IT person or resources like computing power or storage or whatever) is provisioned as a service, on-demand basis
• There is no up-front fixed costs that you need to pay while registering for IT services
•  Your IT provider has pooled-in all the IT resources using virtualization. He doesn't talk in terms of how many servers he has got, but talks like 'I have got XX terrabytes of storage, YY terrabytes of memory' etc.
• You have got a great self-service portal through which you demand the IT capabilities.
• The self-service portal lists all the available services, SLAs associated with each service, cost of each service etc.
• You have the power to specify what the minimum units you need (say 6GB memory) and how much 'elastic' it can be (means it can go up to 64 GB since X-mas is round the corner).  In other words, it's auto-elastic within the range set by you
• When you demand any IT capability, the portal takes care of the approval workflow, auto-approval limits etc.
• When approved, the IT resources are provisioned dynamically without manual intervention (most of the cases, if not all) 
• Are you able to make a 'templated' request? Means common demand patterns are studied and consolidated and available as templates. You can demand a VM for the developer of Bank of America XX project and the portal readily knows what it is
•  You are provided with regular mailed reports on SLA performance
• You get regular reports on the agreed metrics trends
• You are continuously kept informed about your consumption levels just like the CAB or call taxi meter unit
• You get the 'charge back' invoices regularly and you are invoiced only for your actual consumptions
• You have the power to discontinue service at any time without any penalties
• You have friendly hand-shake parting terms when you try to move to another cloud provider