IT Leadership, Architecture & Engineering. Cloud, AI, Data, Cybersecurity

Leadership has been studied from various perspectives. The first recorded approach to leadership was embedded in traits. It was believed that leaders are born not made, "Kings are born, not made", it was said. "Greatness is in the blood", was commonly believed. Several views on leadership emerged as our civilization evolved. Over the past 30 years our understanding of leadership went through a major shift. Our collective new understanding of leadership has been presented nicely by Peter Northouse . He provides a very good overview of leadership in his book Leadership Theory & Practice (LTP). Various perspectives on leadership have been acquired over time through scientific research. Northouse writes about several approaches to leadership in his book including the trait approach, skills approach, style approach, situational approach, contingency theory, path-goal theory, leader-member exchange theory, transformational leadership, and team leadership. The boo...

The thesis defense was succesful. I was looking forward to it. Tanya and Nikhil accompanied me for the presentation. Mark set up the projector, Dr.Newton, Dr.Latif, and Dr.Newton entered Knoy 569. I introduced all to Nikhil and Tanya. Dr.Elliott played with Niknil and said that they were gathered to meet with him and my presentation was just a side show. After everyone settled, the proceedings began. The light was dimmed, and I began. After about three slides into the presentation Nikhil started acting up. Tanya took stolled him out and waited in the lobby. For the next hour I was in the groove, slide after slide I talked and answered questions interactively. At one point, during the presentation Dr.Newton murmed, "This is important work". The professors were satisfied. At the end of the presentation, the lights were switched back on. Everyone was beaming with satisfaction. Dr.Newton asked if she could use the statistical part of my paper to teach her six hundered level cours...

Almost every engineer I talk with is riddled with apprehensions about EJBs. I can understand why they would consider Entity Beans as "useless", "c One benefit of SFSB is that they can receive transaction notifications by implementing SessionSynchronization interface. The transactions can span multiple methods, across multiple calls (with BMT). The interface provides 3 hooks "afterBegin","beforeCompletion", and "afterCompletion", these methods provide significant control over the transactions. Horizontal application functionality can be placed in these hooks for transactions. Several applications of this interface come to mind, one could log certain transactions, notify support on all rollbacks, add a simple layer of authorization etc.

According to Paula Caproni, author of "Management Skills For Everyday Life", there are six universal forms of influence. Reciprocation Committment & consistency Authority Social proof Scarcity Liking Power emanating from these forms of influence can be considered ethical. Founding principles: You should tell people explicitly what you want. Organization's interest and others' interest is at par or above your own. You treat everyone fairly, follow process and do not abuse. You leave yourself reasonably open to be influenced by others. You back your points with valid data. These founding principles and ethical form of influence is in direct contrast to the Robert Greene's "The 48 Laws Of Power" in which he shockingly suffocates any breath of ethics. The book is laced with a dark sense of human power perversion. For instance, #31 Control the options: Get others to play with the cards you deal. #32 Play to people's fantasies and #36 Disdain things yo...

Trust Breakers Here is a list of behaviors & traits you should demonstrate, practice and implement at work in order to break the trust of your employer, employees, co-workers and clients : Advance your own interest at the expense of others. Be blatantly and pompously self-promoting. Use inconsistent standards to evaluate employees. Allow some people to break the rules and expect others to follow them. Do not care about performance problems until the time to rate your employee. Enable poor-performers to stay in your organization unchallenged. Pigeon-hole your employees. Take credit of your employee's work. Withold important information. Be closed minded to diverse ideas. Act disrepectfully towards others. Lie or cover up, rather than admit to mistakes. Break promises, or use words cheaply. Betray confidence by saying one thing and doing another. Spin by communicating selective facts, and by lacing tone to imply a different context. Act inconsistently; be incongruent in body lang...

We have seen more advances in science and technology in the last 60 years than in all of previous history. The rate of technology diffusion has progressively increased as well. According to K.H.Hammond (2001), it took the telephone 35 years to get into 25% of all homes in the United States. It took TV 26 years. It took radio 22 years. It took PCs 16 years. It took Internet 7 years. It probably took cellphones less than 5, DVDs less than 3, and iPod, XBox, PlayStation, less than 2 years. In a hyper-competitive global market, technology will seamlessly cross boundaries quicker than ever before. By the end of 2006, I think that successful technology products will proliferate markets in months, not years.

Introduction An intriguing title for a book! This small book (less than 200 pages) is written by Nicholas Boothman. It covers a pretty broad range of topics. From my perspective, the book did a decent job of bringing body language, communication skills, and behavior together. It covers a lot of ground with everyday examples. One of the acronyms that is fascinating is KFC. Know what you want, Find out what you are getting, Change what you do until you get what you want. The key is the "K" know what you want. Once you know what you want, you can direct your attitude, synchronize appropriately, communicate effectively by using the preferred senses. Attitude The book focuses on achieving rapport when it does not come naturally. Boothman calls his technique "Rapport by Design". In this technique, you the reader, will assume the characteristics of the person you are engaged with temporarily,"The key to establish rapport with strangers is to become like them". He...