Thursday, October 01, 2009

Evil mail !!

Email has integrated with our daily lives so much. In the Corporate world, often we use outlook for purposes for which it is not built for / good at.

When I worked in DBA Chennai, our task allocation, clarification management etc were done only in using outlook. [When I quit, I gave my local PST file to another friend who took over my tasks. It would have been big pain for him to go over all those mails if he wanted to search for something.]

How many times we send a mail to our manager / some other dept and waiting for ages to get a response? I sent a mail to HR for a query on my payroll and he did not care for 1 month. Typical solution was to send a reminder CC ing his boss..in this case CEO ...Not a nice solution.

I think Email has been a culprit hiding lot of problems since mail box is not a centralized. When most of the communication is done thro' email, there is not much visibility on what is happening. Reusing any knowledge - an outcome of the communication - is also not possible.

Most of the enterprisey communications are better off using web applications designed specifically for purposes such as Project Managment, Knowledge management etc.,

Most of our requests are support tickets kind. Bugzilla - a Bug Tracker - can replace most of the Enterprisey emails.Instead of sending emails, if we raise requests using a tool like this, top management knows how many requests are pending on every dept and it is better for work allocation (provided the management really cares, that is). All these requests will by default send an email, if we want to. So email will be primarily used as a notification tool instead of carrying all the content.

Of course all the above is the how it has to be. But in reality it is very difficult to change our habit. Recently I came across a tool - Liaise (http://www.liaise.com) in beta - which add tasks with deadlines to specific persons as we type the email text - understanding what we are typing.Very impressive !

Have a look here.

PS: I predict MS would acquire this company and this feature would be in next outlook ;-)

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Personal MBA - An Alternative to MBA

For most of us, MBA is the ultimate course to do. Most consider that as a panacea of all the career troubles. Once Mech Madhusudhanan asked me - Are you planning to do MBA? If yes, when? - I declared, "I dont know when I will do it. But I will ensure those three letters will be there in my cemetery plaque". Hmmmm !

Recently I have decided not to give so much trouble for those who would be kind enough to build my cemetery. I am planning to slowly learn the management concepts taught in the course in alternative methods.

One interesting option was this.

http://www.personalmba.com/

Personal MBA Manifesto starts like this:

MBA programs don’t have a monopoly on advanced business knowledge: you can teach yourself everything you need to know to succeed in life and at work. The Personal MBA features the very best business books available, based on thousands of hours of research. So skip b-school and the $100,000 loan: you can get a world-class business education simply by reading these books.
Read more: http://personalmba.com/manifesto/#ixzz0SQoxjufG

For most of the Indians, the word 'manifesto' is worse than an expletive, given the way political parties treat their manifestos. Hopefully this will be different!

Of course, this is not going to give the personal experience you can only get when you meet excellent people. Still it can be one approach for those who don't have enough time /money (most importantly energy to bell the CAT)! - like me..

Will ping updates on how things go. First task is to see what books I can get in india and ask someone to transport it, if there is a cost differential (Do I need an MBA?) ;-)

Saturday, September 26, 2009

ReBlogging!

Longtime (2 years) since I blogged! Determined to keep blogging often (Let's see!)

Lot of changes in life.

Married [Biggest and Boldest change :-)] Swathi. Few Photos r in Orkut. Will post a public link later.

Moved to UK - Changed 3/4 jobs in a year as a contractor.Finally settled in Bristol now. Currently working for Nokia UK with their Music division. For those who are skeptical if Nokia Music can garner a good amount of Share in Music business, watch out !