SME (Subject Matter Expert)

We were at a friend's house the last weekend and there was a discussion on Knowledge. What is knowledge and when does on get "enough knowledge"?

Interesting thoughts. When you apply this philosophical discussion to real life business you have the same questions. When do you classify someone from your work-team as a Subject Matter Expert (SME)? I see this happening all across the world - corporations looking to hire SME's, grooming someone to become a SME and lastly having an official designation as SME !! Sure we have people who have "enough knowledge" to be an "authority in their own field" however what makes a "commoner" a SME?

Here is something to consider - Can you do something repeatedly, over and over again in order to gain mastery? Yes, you will gain mastery over that task however will you be a SME over that task or will you be a Master over that task. There is this fine line that people often overlook and state that because I have done a task repeatedly I am a SME where as if you were to perform a analysis of the tasks then you would find that there are a lot of masters.

So, the next time around, you meet someone in your business world and they say that he / she is a SME then you might consider asking them what are they the master's of. Can you guess what would be their answer? Think about it?

Its good to be back

Its been a very very long time since I wrote. Plenty in the world has changed since then. The worldwide financial collapse, the new president-elect in US, the terror attacks in Mumbai-India and so on.

While all this was on, I was at the Harvard Business School (HBS), learning new skills, broadening and deepening my knowledge on how companies across the world function. It was an interesting place to be while the financial collapse occurred. With that being said, the professors at HBS are outstanding. Each and everyone one of them. I read their books / case study (HBS uses the Case Study Method to teach) and always wondered how it would be to meet them in person and believe me, all of them are down to earth and really humans !!

I had a very very diverse set of classmates at HBS. Each of them accomplished in their field and open to new ideas and suggestions as we learnt new skills together and being awarded the Harvard Business School alumni status.

I was telling quite a few folks that while it was a great experience to have studied at HBS, it would really not have been possible without the support of the woman in my life.

This has not been a regular "business" blog however I thought I should let everyone know what I have been up to in the recent past.

Also, I would really appreciate if everyone took a moment and prayed for the innocent people who lost their lives in Mumbai. Does this meaningless killing accomplish anything? Think about it !

Core Competency

Here is something I wrote for another publication
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Every era is marked by a fundamental shift - In power, In Economy, In technology. This new era is exactly what you say about it being a global, borderless community. We need to take a step back and analyze that why there has been a shift in the "power-bases" as have rightly pointed. It is the burning desire (if I may) about the "have-nots" to succeed. This is not just relevant in the global IT ecosystem. It is across countries, cultures, industries and economies.

Now, is this a good thing or a bad thing? I believe that it is good (a challenge is always good) because when we feel that we are not in the driver's seat anymore we tend to re-focus on our core competencies. We tend to look at what can we do better (see the theme of the burning desire to succeed) and therefore we innovate. Yes, the transition is difficult to deliver results almost immediately however during the transition we need to ignore the noise (outsource / job-loss etc.) and focus on what we can do the best - become the center of global IT. That should be the goal. There can we a number of various strategies to achieve this goal however I feel the primary strategy should be coopetition.
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Goals

I had an interesting presentation this morning to my team. I was articulating our YTD results based on the goals that we had agreed upon at the start of the year. We met almost all the goals and I presented a "improved challenge" (management speak) to the team which they gladly accepted (more on MOTIVATION in another blog)

Once we were done, I was thinking about "RESULTS". We always want "good" results. We never want "bad" results. So then why do we even want to call them results and not call them as goals. Maybe it is just semantics but think about it: You have a problem, you have a solution. You have an issue, you have a resolution. You have a risk, you have a mitigation. However, in case of a GOAL - you have a RESULT.

Next time around, I believe that we need to set-up an objective (of meeting a target) and then measure the result rather than use GOAL as the objective of achieving something because you can achieve quantify an objective but can you quantify a goal? Think about it!

Shift

Every era is marked by a fundamental shift - In power, In Economy, In technology. This new era is exactly what you say about it being a global, borderless community. We need to take a step back and analyze that why there has been a shift in the "power-bases" as have rightly pointed. It is the burning desire (if I may) about the "have-nots" to succeed. This is not just relevant in the global IT ecosystem. It is across countries, cultures, industries and economies.

Now, is this a good thing or a bad thing? I believe that it is good (a challenge is always good) because when we feel that we are not in the driver's seat anymore we tend to re-focus on our core competencies. We tend to look at what can we do better (see the theme of the burning desire to succeed) and therefore we innovate. Yes, the transition is difficult to deliver results almost immediately however during the transition we need to ignore the noise (outsource / job-loss etc.) and focus on what we can do the best - become the center of global IT. That should be the goal.

There can we a number of various strategies to achieve this goal however I feel the primary strategy should be coopetition. Think about it !

Round and Round

I was in a meeting the other day with a few executives deciding on a strategy to implement a new tool. My role was to advise on what were the potential pit-falls of choosing one over the other.

Anyway, the meeting was scheduled for one hour and I observed that after the first 15 minutes, we were going round and round in circles repeating the same thing again and again, however using different words which basically meant the same. I am sure all of us have seen this happen - more so when there are peers at a leadership level without one trying to pull-rank over the other. I told the folks in the meeting that I needed to step out and could be called once they got their act together.

Here is something to think about - why do we go round in circles trying to decide? Is it because we are not strong enough to decide? Or is it because we want everyone to win and not have a heart-burn? Or is it because there is lack of leadership in a meeting? I would want to say that lack of leadership which translates to decision making capability is usually the reason that no one makes the "executive decision" and move on.

So, the next time you find that your team / peers are going round in circles, will you step up to the plate and make the decision or you will let someone else make the decision for you? Think about it!

Pressures

I've been away for a long long time - going through a transformation, re-focus and re-calibration of sorts for myself. Anyway, last week I was meeting a friend of mine and he was telling me on how his executives sign-up for timelines and then later give him a 24 hour window to turn around his deliverables !

This got me thinking, as executives what are our major roles? We need to be able to perform more with less (and therefore the 24 hour window for deliverables) but more importantly, we should be able to motivate our teams.

What is the point of training someone to run lean-and-mean and then giving them 24 hours to deliver just so that we as executives can take the credit on "how difficult it was to deliver but we still made it"

As executives, we need to manage expectations both ways - above and below. In one of the companies that I am associated with, we deal a lot with the government agencies worldwide and believe me, there is no one better than those government officials who manage expectations by giving enough headway and articulating, sometimes one too many, on what is needed.

How does all this fit into the Pressures topic? It is simple, as executives we think that we can pressurize someone to deliver faster, deliver better however we ignore one of the basic laws of physics - there is always a breakpoint which means that our resources will take the pressure only up to a point and then quit. So, did you gain or lose by this pressure tactic? Think about it !