Based on the legendary Russian folk hero, Elias the Mighty is a thrilling Arcade-Puzzle game based on shape recognition. Match the objects with their corresponding shapes to keep Elias and fellow characters strong. Use food to increase the power of your character. Their health will fade fast without your Puzzle expertise. Collect gems and spend your riches on more items. Fight alongside Elias the Mighty in a storyline steeped with tradition.

Fun shape recognition

Variety of locations to visit

Help Elias save his horse!

System Requirements:

OS: Windows XP/Vista

CPU: 800 Mhz

RAM: 256 MB

DirectX: 8.0

Hard Drive: 36 MB

It Takes Just A second To Say Thanks,

It Takes Longer To The Work On This.

Elias The Mighty

El mundo social

Expomanagement es un evento organizado por HSM México en el que se congregan los más altos ejecutivos del país para oír a algunos líderes mundiales y descubrir nuevas ideas para sus empresas. Desde Premios Nobel hasta lo más selecto de las mentes de negocios puede ser oído cada año en este evento inigualable en el pais.

Disclaimer: fui invitado a bloggear el evento en un esfuerzo por aumentar su alcance y distribuir el conocimiento a través de los medios sociales, pero no recibí dinero alguno, ni estoy obligado a hablar positivamente o promocionarlo como tal, lo hago de buena fe y, porque soy gran fan de los eventos organizados por HSM.

Este año no fue la excepción en la calidad tanto del evento, la logística y sobretodo, los exponentes del evento. No hubo una sola plática por parte de los 9 conferencistas que no causara revuelo, comentarios y emoción en mi y me atrevo a decir en todos los asistentes; hasta cobertura nacional de la prensa se llevó uno que otro. La lista de expositores principales la pueden ver aquí.

Además de las conferencias magnas, el área de negocios era impresionante, con participación de grandes empresas dándole un gran valor agregado al evento dado que no solo estaban ahi para promocionar productos sino que también se ofrecieron más de 50 pláticas en los 4 auditorios extra al cual podía ir el equipo de trabajo de los directores que atendían las conferencias magnas. Y en una buena táctica por parte de HSM se ofrecieron entradas gratis a través de Twitter. Me pude encontrar con varios conocidos de ese medio en el lugar y todos salieron con muy buen sabor de boca de las conferencias que vieron.

Los temas fueron desde estrategia, economía, creatividad y filantropía y cada personaje, aportó gran valor a las ideas de los empresarios presentes.

Creatividad, Innovación, Tema recurrente.

Thomas Frey, Gary Hamel, Venkat Ramaswamy concordaron todos en el tema de que el país, y las empresas en él, requieren mayor creatividad e innovación, pero no solo hablando de productos o servicios. La innovación más importante está en el modelo mismo de administración, en lograr que tu empresa cambie y se adapte a la misma velocidad con que está cambiando el mundo. Llevar nuestra cultura a una cultura emprendedora, de colaboración, sin jerarquías y con amplía libertad y reconomiento y “empowerment” para el empleado. Son temas claves de las nuevas tendencias de administración. Llevamos manejando nuestros negocios con los mismos métodos creados hace 100 años, cuando la tecnología y el cambio en el mundo han rebasado ya por mucho lo que veían esos pioneros del management.

Por otro lado Jack Welch, complementó el tema con sus ideas acerca de cómo debes dejar al empleado crecer, hacerle saber que te preoucpas por él y que es parte de una familia y de esa forma fomentar en él la pasión para que, sin necesidad de supervisión, cree cosas nuevas, haga crecer a la empresa y busque el bien de todos.

Pleito Económico entre Premio Nobel y Carstens

Otro gran punto fue por parte de Joseph Stiglitz, premio Nobel de Economía quien afirmó que no cree que México haya enfrentado la crisis como debiera, sus comentarios fueron tomados por la prensa y usados para atacar al secretario de Hacienda Agustín Carstens, quien replicó que el Nobel de Economía estaba equivocado por “no conocer méxico”.

¿Estamos listos para no ganar dinero?

Premio Nobel de la Paz, Muhammad Yunus, empresario de Bangladesh nos habló de cómo creó el sistema de microcréditos en su país y después como lo ha hecho crecer en un nuevo modelo de negocios llamado “Negocios Sociales”, presentándolo como una nueva opción al único modelo de negocios existente: el de hacer dinero. Simplemente nos pide entender que háy más allá del dinero, el comenta: “Hay más cosas en la vida que nos pueden dar satisfacción, les presento una opción de blanco contra el negro que ya existe, y se vale buscar grises”.  Una fantástica experiencia oír sus palabras y motivarnos a buscar un problema social y más allá de simplemente fundar una organización sin fines de lucro, crear una empresa que solucione el problema con productos baratos y sin ganancias.

Finalmente, los expresidentes de Colombia y España nos dieron sus perspectivas respecto al futuro de Latinoamérica. De notar fue la plática de Andrés Pastrana, quién en su tiempo a la cabeza de Colombia le tocó enfrentar a la FARC y a Pablo Escobar de frente. Le tocó ser secuestrado cuando era alcalde, y nos platicó cómo está de acuerdo en las acciones que toma hoy México contra el narcotráfico pero sin dejar pasar las alternativas de legalización como opciones viables de enfrentarlo, pero con una principal idea necesaria: la coordinación entre todos los países, tanto productores como consumidores como los de tránsito para poder realmente llevar a un nivel satisfactorio esta batalla.

En conclusión, un gran evento, con los speakers al nivel de lo prometido, la asistencia fue a Full tanto en las magnas así cómo en el área de negocios, me dicen que cerca de 6,000 personas asistieron y no creo que nadie haya quedado decepcionado.

Natives of the New Dawn return to the studio for their first full length of all new material in 5 years

Thierry Henry has clearly brought in a crisis PR firm, or at least his agent is working over time. After the debacle of Ireland being thrown out of the World Cup due to the Hand of Henry, Henry said replaying the match was the only fair thing to do. Albeit, he did say it after FIFA had already rejected the Irish request to do just that.

Now Henry says he was abandoned by the French Football Federation and seriously considered retiring from international football. Of course he has thought better of this and he is still going to South Africa.

Obviously, Henry is trying to sell himself as a victim here, but I don’t know how much sympathy anyone really has for him.

Will this PR campaign to lift his reputation out of the gutter work? Only time will tell, but I can pretty much guarantee the Republic of Ireland won’t be buying any Henry shirts in the near future.

Have you ever dealt with an employee whose mere presence seems to suck all the life out of a room? Or the individual who constantly complains, creates conflict, berates all ideas, or just simply walks around with a rain cloud over their head? These “bad attitudes” can destroy morale and derail creative and innovative ideas. These folks have got to change or they must go—quickly.

Talking to them about their attitude will never work. Merely mentioning the term will get them to recoil, followed by a sharp retort of “my attitude? What do you mean? I don’t have an attitude, but maybe we should be talking about yours.”

Since attitude is something you can’t see or feel, it is best to address the manifest behavior. What did they say? How did they act? What was their tone? Always focus on observable behavior. And be very specific.

When confronting the employee, be prepared and discuss how his behavior is impacting the organization, other employees or customers. And be prepared to tell them how you want them to behave, not just how you don’t want them to perform. Show how their actions turn off their fellow employees, kill new ideas, deflate teamwork, and offend customers.

You can expect that the employee will deny the actions or will feign cluelessness. But stay focused. Address the behavior, be clear about what you expect, outline the consequences of bad behavior.

Toxic behavior needs to be eradicated the first time it rears its ugly head. Left unchecked, it will continue to get worse until it overwhelms and contaminates everything that comes in contact with it.

This was excerpted from the book Uncomplicating Management by Rick Dacri.  Uncomplicating Management is available through Amazon.

Jason Hiner, one of my favorite writers on TechRepublic.com, pulls it all together in his assessment of business and IT collaboration efforts.

Here is the link to his article:
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=603

Muchas empresas piensan en vender como una operación puntual y de corto plazo. Aquellos ejecutivos que vencen la visión de corto plazo y van en busca de consumidores a largo plazo consiguen mejores resultados y una operación más armónica.

La compañía no debe solo pensar en como cerrar una operación, también debe analizar y planear como mantener la relación con ese cliente en el tiempo (MRI). La dificultad de esta tarea es que significa coordinar todas las áreas de la firma. La Optimización Comercial va más allá del sector de venta.

Muchos clientes cambian por un competidor por fallas en sectores ¨lejanos¨ al comercial. Resalto la palabra ‘lejano’  pues ese el principal problema de la empresa, la falta de compromiso o coordinación de todos los sectores con las necesidades del cliente o la oferta del vendedor. La solución a este problema la llamo Reorganización Pro Mercado.

Don Peppers, el creador del marketing uno a uno, encara algunos de estos puntos en la nota publicada por el Cronista Comercial (02/11/09) y menciona la importancia del trato personalizado del consumidor.

This past Sunday I took my 7 year old to his weekly hockey game.

That’s him in the middle. At this age it’s basically a helmet with a stick running after other helmets with sticks for an hour. Not pretty, but they gotta start somewhere! My son’s team is, unfortunately, not very good.

As we watched the teams warm up before their game this Sunday, the vision of the other team taking on-target slap shots from the point while our boys struggled to have stick meet ball, had one parent reminiscing about the Mighty Ducks movies and how while the other team always looked so good, the Ducks won in the end. (btw has anyone seen Emilio Estevez?) No such luck, we lost 1-0 and are now 0-4 on the season, but we have come really far over the past 4 weeks. The kids know where to go, the position they play and what direction to shoot. This was not the case the first week when we lost 7-0.

I did not put too much thought into the improvement the team has made until I was walking out the door with my son, going over some of the key plays he made and trying to distract him from asking me to take him for the obligatory post game treat. As we were about to leave, his coach came running over, crouched down next to him and spent the next 15 seconds going over all the great things my son did during the game. He got up and ran to the next kid and did the exact same thing. Then another.

I was amazed at what he was doing, not that I haven’t been amazed by the coach before. Last Saturday he had a baby and was still at the game on Sunday. This Sunday he made a Bris in the morning and was at the game in the afternoon. What was amazing was that the coach was not only making each kid feel special, but he had figured out the key to elevating his team, recognition. Nothing is more of a motivation to repeat a behavior then being told that said behavior was the right behavior. When a kid hears that he did right, he can’t wait to come back the next week and do it again.

Employees are like kids, except for the whole paycheck thing. The best way to motivate an employee and get them to repeat the great things they do is to recognize them for it. As managers we need to get our from behind our desks more often and recognize our employees accomplishments in real time, not at performance review time. It doesn’t have to be a lot, just a timely, detailed message about something they have done well. Once they see and hear that they have been recognized there is little doubt that they are incentivized to do it again.

After the first game my son asked if he could switch teams, he couldn’t handle losing 7-0 every week. Since that first week he hasn’t asked again. Now he looks forward to having the chance to show his coach what he can do. They say the number one reason employees leave an organization is their manager. I’m sure this is true, but what part of management is it? I know one thing is for sure, if an employee feels like they are doing a good job and no one is noticing they are going to find someone who will notice. As long as they feel like their work is being recognized they will definitely stick around.

Un bun manager trebuie sa stapaneasca concepte si metode de marketing. In ajutor vine Philip Kotler, prin bestseller-ul sau Managementul marketing-ului. In cele aproximativ 900 de pagini, vei regasi urmatoarele teme:

Thus far we have spent some time “Rethinking our own leadership style” and “Discovering our informal leaders.” The next item on the agenda in the 25 Weeks to Building a Successful Organization series is “Creating explicit norms or protocols.”

Transformation in any organization has the potential to produce unwanted conflict, often leading to ineffective processes, reduced communication, and poor working relationships. It is inevitable and a fact of life. Change brings about tension and without managing the behaviors of individuals and the organization as a whole, you might see your organization’s ability to succeed plummet.

The impact is exponential. Again, we go back to the initial post “Rethinking our own leadership style“—in that, each employee’s actions, inactions, and interactions shape the environment of the organization, their cumulative effect can have much more dramatic results.

When it comes to the tensions hindering the progress of your organization, you can take two approaches. For one, you can take a BB gun line of attack by relentlessly documenting each employee demonstrating patterns of sub-par behavior, ultimately leading to disciplinary action. Word will get around that certain behaviors are not tolerated, and everyone else will get the hint. Yet, without a well-known set of “rules,” this approach might create more stress within, especially for you. It may even push many employees to stray away from working with their peers for fear of disciplinary action if things go badly in their own day-to-day dealings.

The second option, “Creating explicit norms or protocols,” can be linked to a shotgun approach. In effect, it is far-reaching and effective, yet it doesn’t dismiss those who are already doing things right. Creating explicit protocols is about you making a deliberate effort to engage your employees in the creation of shared and accepted expectations for employee behavior. In other words, you facilitate the proactive development and agreement of productive group norms. These norms serve as organization-wide commitments to act or behave in certain ways. Once these agreements are in place, your employees will have the capacity to turn conflict and tension into progress.

Spending the necessary time to eliminate any ambiguity in expected behaviors is far from wasteful when the aim is to provide a concise guide for individual and collective behavior. A systematic approach guarantees, above all, that everyone recognizes the values they share as a group. Explicitly developed productive norms have the advantage of helping employees deal consciously and conscientiously with any situation before it begins to impede progress.

Try this.

At your next meeting facilitate the creation of organization-wide norms or protocols. I offer you a simple nominal group technique.

1. Place everyone in groups of six to eight with the chairs arranged in a circular fashion.
2. Assign each group with a recorder to document the sharing of each employee’s desired norm on a large poster in the middle of the circle. (Note: You may want to assign the recorder. This has to be someone who is skilled in keeping conversations on track.)
3. Give everyone one index card and ask each employee to write one desired norm or protocol that will help create an organizational culture that is conducive to collegiality and group effort.
4. After each employee’s statement, the recorder asks the group if they understood the desired norm, agreed with the norm, or had some reservations about the norm.
5. Everyone continues to share their desired norms until all the cards within the group were read and clarified.
6. Once each group finishes, the meeting transitions back to whole-group where each recorder briefly summarizes their group’s dialogue and posted their respective poster for all to see.
7. Assign everyone a partner and give each group ten colored dots. Ask them to walk around the room (similar to a gallery walk), exchange ideas on the various norms, and vote on the ones they jointly felt would have the maximum influence on building a positive organizational climate and culture.
8. Count the number of dots for each desired norm, announce the top fifteen norms that would serve as the initial guideposts for accepted behavior, and ask if anyone would have difficulty committing to the newly established norms.

Now, as the leader, it is essential that you hold others accountable for the newly established ideal behaviors. Ultimately the aim is for each and every employee to begin holding one another accountable. That takes time, persistence, and modeling by you.

Try this.

If you observe an employee failing to adhere to the agreed upon protocols meet with them. During the meeting “describe the gap” by stating the following—almost word for word.

(Employee’s Name) on (date) we all agreed upon (the protocol for the behavior they failed to follow). On (date/time their uncooperative behavior was observed) I noticed that you (their specific negative behavior). What’s going on?

Now just sit and listen intently; trying to “hear” the root of the problem. Is it motivation or ability? Both require a different response. Oftentimes a failure to meet expectations surrounding agreed upon behaviors tends to be a motivation issue. If this is the case you want to make the invisible visible; in other words, explain any inherent consequences they may not see.

I always like to challenge their values. Check this out.

You know (Employee’s Name), we all agreed to (the protocol for the behavior they failed to follow). When you don’t follow through with this your colleagues might wonder if they can trust you. Everyone was there and agreed.

Ouch! You know how much employees yearn to keep the respect of their peers. It takes you out of the equation.

This approach stems from skills outlined in the book, Crucial Confrontations; a resource all leaders should explore. The book works to give people the tools to hold others accountable without damaging relationships. Check it out.

Final Thoughts

No doubt bringing all your employees together can help achieve a positive context. They can go a long way toward building a collaboration-filled culture when they put effective processes in place to draw the system as a whole into creating protocols agreement. With agreement comes the institutionalization of productive norms. This is an ongoing process, which takes persistence, time, and effort, because agreement is constantly changing as the organization faces new internal and external challenges of change.

Activities in a nutshell

1. Work with your employees to create, and agree upon, explicit norms or protocols.
2. Hold employees accountable for these expected behaviors.

Upcoming

The next post in the 25 Weeks to Building a Successful Organization is “Re-inventing organizational values, beliefs, and goals.” Everyone comes to the table with diverse experiences, worldviews, and beliefs. How can the leader tap into these individual ideals and translate them into organizational values, beliefs, and goals?

Cheers!

Perry Wiseman, author, Strong Schools, Strong Leaders: What matter most in times of change

In teorie suna foarte bine, chiar convingator: te angajezi, ajungi sa negociezi cu cei mai mari clienti, si te astepti ca pe tot parcursul relatiei sa exista fairplay de ambele parti. In realitate lucrurile difera, cu atat mai mult la noi in tara, sau mai bine spus in aceasta regiune. In relatile de business nu e valabil proverbul “buturuga mica rastoarna carul mare”. Cei mari au putere, cei mari se folosesc de putere, cei mici supravetuiesc. E si normal daca ai putere sa te folosesti de ea, dar nu sa abuzezi. Voi da din nou exemplu ralatia furnizor indigen – hypermagazine. Marile retele de magazine au o putere mare in piata FMCG-urilor. In mod natural, puterea este folosita pentru a obtine cat mai mult, in cazul de fata bani, prin taxe de raft, de marketing s.a.m.d. Presiunea este atat de mare pe unii furnizori, incat acestia ajung in cazul nefericit de a sustine o CA cu profit mic sau chiar negativ. Oare o retea de magazine se intreaba in ce dificultate este furnizorul ei daca va cere taxe suplimentare? sunt sentimente la mijloc? In nici un caz. Cu toate acestea, este foarte important ca sa iti protejezi partenerul in business, dar din pacate sunt putini cei care imbratiseaza aceasta idee.

“It’s like déjà-vu all over again” Yogi Berra famously once said, and yes, it is. We’ve been here before.  The promise of a new technology the will create so many efficiencies – too many to count.  It will make everyone’s life so much ‘easier’ and allow the organization to make unprecedented gains.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, and the consultants that sold them, promised us the moon.  While a few (and very few) made their mark, most would fall into the ‘failure to launch’ category.  If they did get off the launch pad, they didn’t make it very far.

While everyone generally accepts the definition of insanity as ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result,’ organizations and leaders of organizations continue to repeat mistakes from the past despite warnings from many.  They rationalize it to themselves by saying, “our industry is different.”  The only thing to say to that is, “Yes, you’re different – just like everyone else.”

They then make the same mistakes done by those in different industries, but implementing the same concept, and wonder why the new technology failed to meet expectations.

So now, we have Electronic Health Records (EHR) [Electronic Medical Records (EMR)].  We’ve been told that this will help solve some of the issues that create so many problems in healthcare, and improve patient care, efficiencies, eliminate medical errors, etc.  Sounds a lot like the ‘moon,’ and if any industry feels they are ‘different’, it’s healthcare.

But the question is – what are you going to do different?

The traditional approach to implementing new technologies (like EHR) has been to focus on the Technology, glance at the Process, and be blind to the People.  We have traditionally centered everything we do around the new technology, treating it as a panacea; all we need to do is install it, and our problems will be solved.  To this end, we may take a brief look at how the process will be with the new system (rarely ever at how we currently perform it), and typically ignore the people who actually perform the process (we interview and train them, but do we listen to them?).  This approach has produced less than stellar results, with some pundits claiming up to 75% of technology project fail to meet expectations (this approach being only part of the many reasons for failure).

To approach an EHR in this manner would be doing the same thing over and expecting a different result.  A different approach (which I continue preach) would be to focus on the Process, while involving and engaging the People to prepare for the Technology.

By focusing on the process, we can get a true understanding of the way things really get done – how the people actually perform the tasks that move the organization each day.

With the people engaged, involved, and focused on the process, the organization will get a solid understanding of what needs to be improved, and have created the buy-in and ownership of the people who perform it each day to improve the process.

By cleaning up the current process, the organization will be prepared for the new process the EHR will bring and fully understand how to effectively integrate the technology and the process into a new way of operating.

So, are you going to repeat the mistakes others have made in the past when implementing technology, or are you going to try a new approach?

Let me know your thoughts!

Glenn

Over at StorageNerve, and on Twitter, Devang Panchigar has been asking Is Storage Tiering ILM or a subset of ILM, but where is ILM? I think it’s an important question with some interesting answers.

Devang starts with defining ILM from a storage perspective:

1) A user or an application creates data and possibly over time that data is modified.
2) The data needs to be stored and possibly be protected through RAID, snaps, clones, replication and backups.
3) The data now needs to be archived as it gets old, and retention policies & laws kick in.
4) The data needs to be search-able and retrievable NOW.
5) Finally the data needs to be deleted.

I agree with items 1, 3, 4 and 5 – as per previous posts, for what it’s worth, I believe that 2 belongs to a sister activity which I define as Information Lifecycle Protection (ILP) – something that Devang acknowledges as an alternative theory. (I liken the logic to separation between ILM and ILP to that between operational production servers and support production servers.)

The above list, for what it’s worth, is actually a fairly astute/accurate summary of the involvement of the storage industry thus far in ILM. Devang rightly points out that Storage Tiering (migrating data between different speed/capacity/cost storage based on usage, etc.), doesn’t address all of the above points – in particular, data creation and data deletion. That’s certainly true.

What’s missing from ILM from a storage perspective are the components that storage can only peripherally control. Perhaps that’s not entirely accurate – the storage industry can certainly participate in the remaining components (indeed, particularly in NAS systems it’s absolutely necessary, as a prime example) – but it’s more than just the storage industry. It’s operating system vendors. It’s application vendors. It’s database vendors. It is, quite frankly, the whole kit and caboodle.

What’s missing in the storage-centric approach to ILM is identity management – or to be more accurate in this context, identity management systems. The brief outline of identity management is that it’s about moving access control and content control out of the hands of the system, application and database administrators, and into the hands of human resources/corporate management. So a system administrator could have total systems access over an entire host and all its data but not be able to open files that (from a corporate management perspective) they have no right to access. A database administrator can fully control the corporate database, but can’t access commercially sensitive or staff salary details, etc.

Most typically though, it’s about corporate roles, as defined in human resources, being reflected from the ground up in system access options. That is, human resources, when they setup a new employee as having a particular role within the organisation (e.g., “personal assistant”), triggering the appropriate workflows to setup that person’s accounts and access privileges for IT systems as well.

If you think that’s insane, you probably don’t appreciate the purpose of it. System/app/database administrators I talk to about identity management frequently raise trust (or the perceived lack thereof) involved in such systems. I.e., they think that if the company they work for wants to implement identity management they don’t trust the people who are tasked with protecting the systems. I won’t lie, I think in a very small number of instances, this may be the case. Maybe 1%, maybe as high as 2%. But let’s look at the bigger picture here – we, as system/application/database administrators currently have access to such data not because we should have access to such data but because until recently there’s been very few options in place to limit data access to only those who, from a corporate governance perspective, should have access to that data. As such, most system/app/database administrators are highly ethical – they know that being able to access data doesn’t equate to actually accessing that data. (Case in point: as the engineering manager and sysadmin at my last job, if I’d been less ethical, I would have seen the writing on the wall long before the company fell down under financial stresses around my ears!)

Trust doesn’t wash in legal proceedings. Trust doesn’t wash in financial auditing. Particularly in situations where accurate logs aren’t maintained in an appropriately secured manner to prove that person A didn’t access data X. The fact that the system was designed to permit A to access X (even as part of A’s job) is in some financial, legal and data sensitivity areas, significant cause for concern.

Returning to the primary point though, it’s about ensuring that the people who have authority over someone’s role within a company (human resources/management) having control over the the processes that configure the access permissions that person has. It’s also about making sure that those work flows are properly configured and automated so there’s no room for error.

So what’s missing – or what’s only at the barest starting point, is the integration of identity/access control with ILM (including storage tiering) and ILP. This, as you can imagine, is not an easy task. Hell, it’s not even a hard task – it’s a monumentally difficult task. It involves a level of cooperation and coordination between different technical tiers (storage, backup, operating systems, applications) that we rarely, if ever see beyond the basic “must all work together or else it will just spend all the time crashing” perspective.

That’s the bit that gives the extra components – control over content creation and destruction. The storage industry on its own does not have the correct levels of exposure to an organisation in order to provide this functionality of ILM. Nor do the operating system vendors. Nor do the database vendors or the application vendors – they all have to work together to provide a total solution on this front.

I think this answers (indirectly) Devang’s question/comment on why storage vendors, and indeed, most of the storage industry, has stopped talking about ILM – the easy parts are well established, but the hard parts are only in their infancy. We are after all seeing some very early processes around integrating identity management and ILM/ILP. For instance, key management on backups, if handled correctly, can allow for situations where backup administrators can’t by themselves perform the recovery of sensitive systems or data – it requires corporate permissions (e.g., the input of a data access key by someone in HR, etc.) Various operating systems and databases/applications are now providing hooks for identity management (to name just one, here’s Oracle’s details on it.)

So no, I think we can confidently say that storage tiering in and of itself is not the answer to ILM. As to why the storage industry has for the most part stopped talking about ILM, we’re left with one of two choices – it’s hard enough that they don’t want to progress it further, or it’s sufficiently commercially sensitive that it’s not something discussed without the strongest of NDAs.

We’ve seen in the past that the storage industry can cooperate on shared formats and standards. We wouldn’t be in the era of pervasive storage we currently are without that cooperation. Fibre-channel, SCSI, iSCSI, FCoE, NDMP, etc., are proof positive that cooperation is possible. What’s different this time is the cooperation extends over a much larger realm to also encompass operating systems, applications, databases, etc., as well as all the storage components in ILM and ILP. (It makes backups seem to have a small footprint, and backups are amongst the most pervasive of technologies you can deploy within an enterprise environment.)

So we can hope that the reason we’re not hearing a lot of talk about ILM any more is that all the interested parties are either working on this level of integration, or even making the appropriate preparations themselves in order to start working together on this level of integration.

Fingers crossed people, but don’t hold your breath – no matter how closely they’re talking, it’s a long way off.

UNT will now offer degree options at Collin Higher Education Center in McKinney due to a new partnership between UNT and Collin College.  President Bataille participated in a signing ceremony on November 9^th to formalize the creating of the center.  Degree options include:

1. Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences — Two concentrations:  Alternative Dispute Resolution and Non-Profit Management, Volunteer and Community Resource Management
2. MS in Engineering Systems — Two concentrations:  Construction Management, Engineering Management
3. Ed.D. in Educational Administration (includes superintendent certification)
4. M.Ed. in Higher Education

What is a holiday representative?

Holiday representative

Most of the UK based tour operators recruit the staff for working in the resorts that they use. The holiday representative acts as a liaison between the tour operator and the customers, who are the holiday makers. One of the common types of overseas representative is a person who works for mainstream companies like the Thomson’s.

There are some resort representatives that are referred to as kiddie representatives. Some of the holiday representative is brave souls who can actually take care of the young rascals. This is because; they get to enjoy the odd moment of quiet and peace whilst drinking cold coke near the pool. There are also lots of specialist overseas representatives. Some of the representatives are the tour operators who are geared towards the youth market.

What is the whole recruitment process?

For a person, after a hectic nine to five job, it can be very hard to wonder whether there is something he can do to enjoy his work. The person can catch few glimpses of representatives on his holidays and also get to reckon that his job is a piece of cake. The first step to becoming a holiday representative is to apply for the tour operator of his choice. Most of the tour operators complete their application on line and the application form is standard, which is to list the previous employment. There is one good thing about being a holiday representative and this is that one does not need any specific formal qualifications in UK. It is possible for a person to come from all fields of employment backgrounds.

Experience required

However, it is quite helpful if the person has some customer service experience and the importance is one the fact that he has dealt with the general public. This does not necessarily mean that he has to have face to face conversation to get selected. There are chances that they can call the person to know his ability to deal with difficult and angry people even if it is through the telephonic conversation. Another employment history which they can look out for is salesmanship skills. There is a provision of application form, wherein most of the tour operators require latest photo copy and for the same profession, one has to be smart and confident.

What holiday or hotel management want in a holiday representative?

To start with, there are whole lot of applications that the resort management receive. They interview around five percent of candidates who apply for the post of holiday representative through online manner or through the source of ads. The tour operator interviews are not exactly for those who are faint hearted. They usually consist of group interview and one to one interview. The main motto or aim of the recruiters is not to see how funny the candidate is but to see how he interacts with his fellow groups. The management wants to see that the candidate for the holiday representative post is an objective listener and despite his own personal beliefs, he has to ability to understand other people.

There may be team building exercises and the management definitely wants to see whether the candidate has the capacity to use his own schemes. However, they do not want a person who is quite bossy. Further, one should have the ability to stand up in front of people and talk about anything. The way the management do this is to give a candidate the card with a specific subject written on it and his task is to talk on the nominated subject for the allotted time. Overall, the resort hotel management look for a friendly face and for an easy smile which can be more favourable.

Chapter 4 105-108  Lead With Love By: Gerry Czarnecki

 Not all development should focus on job skills. Personal growth is also important. Encouraging personal growth is not just good for an associate, it is good for the organization. The whole person comes to work each day, and associates who know and understand themselves have more time to know and understand their work. Far too many staff members spend half their lives searching for themselves and the rest of the time just “getting by” at work. An associate cannot be productive if his day is consumed by self-doubt or worry over personal inadequacy. It is not the leader’s responsibility to fund such efforts to find inner-confidence, but the leader does have an opportunity to encourage them.

 Deciding how to encourage these efforts for personal discovery can be a challenge. On one hand, we must avoid appearing to act like amateur psychologists; on the other, we actually need to do just that. As leaders, we are not therapists helping people work through their personal identity and psychological-well-being issues. We are, however, in many ways diagnosticians. We must be able to recognize psychological challenges that negatively impact an associate’s performance. How we use the diagnosis to facilitate resolution of the problem is a sensitive and difficult matter. Once again, it is much easier to be sensitive to the psychology of your associates if you love them enough to probe what makes them “tick.”

 As a leader you should get all of the professional help you can to facilitate increased wellness of your staff. This is one of those times when consulting with your superior is probably the best advice. If your organization has a human resources department, then go there for counsel. If the problem is important enough, it may be necessary to rely on or establish an organizational process that refers individuals to a therapist, social service agency, or even private-sector support such as a minister or counselor. If you have a relationship with the associate or the associate discusses the problem with you, then you might be able to suggest he or she seek help. It is imperative that you not damage your working relationship by appearing to interfere in the personal life of an associate; hence, getting professional support in handling this type of situation is always the best course of action.

 What responsibilities do your staff members have for their own development? Have they created their own development plans? Have you asked them to write out those plans and then commit to accomplishing them? Have you reviewed and approved the plans? How do you decide what extraordinary training or development your staff requires? Do you have those programs already established? If not, you should create a program that can be used as a general development tool for the entire unit, not just one or more staff members. Your commitment to supporting the continual development of associates should also extend to broadening their knowledge beyond what is required for the day-to-day tasks of the job. A course in art history may have very little to do with your work environment, but it can have everything to do with the development of a person who appreciates aesthetic beauty. In turn, it can influence an employee’s ability to appreciate the value of the organization and its support of the arts in the community. The same  could be said for a course in biology, which can help an individual appreciate the need to preserve the environment. In turn, it can help that same associate recognize, and even get involved in, the efforts of the organization to preserve the environment at the workplace. In short, seldom does a learning experience go to waste. Organizations should encourage general educational development. Those that can afford the expense should continue to subsidize advanced education as they are able, but they should also encourage learning in any formal or informal setting that helps associates grow.

 Don’t just allow your staff to self-improve, encourage it. Expanded knowledge helps your associates grow. On the job, you must allow them to learn tasks they do not need to know. One day, their knowledge may have a profound impact on your ability to fulfill the organization’s needs. Today’s seemingly extraneous knowledge may lead to tomorrow’s promotion from within. Let the B clerk learn about the A clerk’s job. Someday you may need another A clerk. The added cost of satisfying the intellectual curiosity of an associate is trivial in comparison to the cost of ignorance. Just as important, if you believe workplace improvements can and should come from the people in the workplace, then increased knowledge and skills will enhance associates’ ability to contribute to employee-driven change through suggestion systems, quality control circles, and other employee participation systems. Harness the power of staff members instead of stifling them. Their growth can enhance the organization’s growth.

Do you have a staff member who has received all the training your organization requires but is still not performing to expected levels? What do you think you could do to facilitate a development experience that could make a real difference for that staff member? Why have you not done it? If you could do anything you wanted, how would you develop or train your staff member? Weak performers may well be the result of inadequate training and development. Your weak performers can be a clue to a failure of the development process, and that should be the first place you look for improvement. Create a list of your weakest staff member’s shortcomings and create a development plan that will provide the changes required to improve his performance. Compare that plan to the training and development plans already in place. If there is a disconnect, then talk to the training department about the problem. Continuing growth is essential, even when excellence has been achieved. Keep the pressure on and push your associates to continuously improve. Complacency is a serious problem for a developing associate. The need for continuous improvement is never greater than when the staff members are fully comfortable with their current level of knowledge. As they lose the thrill of growth, they will become bored and may decide to leave to find something more exciting. Those who stay will settle into a comfortable rut, and inevitably their performance will deteriorate, or worse, they will fail. Standing still is not possible. The choice is between moving forward and falling behind.

One of the most frequent questions I get asked in my training sessions around leadership is how to balance leading staff, managing their performance and coaching their development without losing the integrity of any one of these activities.

Many managers have grown up through the ranks amongst the teams they lead and the transition from team member to leadership is rarely an easy one to navigate.  I have even listened to a number of leaders downplay their role in order to retain the warm and comfortable relationships they have previously enjoyed with their erstwhile peers.  Whilst this shows a great and laudable degree of empathy and support for their people, it can be tough to lead from the middle and it’s worth making the essential psychological step of recognising that if your name is on the door with “manager” written underneath…then you cannot help but play your part.

There are a number of things that can hold leaders up in this transitional period.  The first comes from the fact that many leaders are promoted because they are the best at their particular role;  They are great with customers, they thrive on the challenge, they bring in the highest sales.  They are motivated primarily by the desire to do a brilliant job and gain recognition for that.  Sadly, the recognition they often receive is a promotion to a role where they are no longer the highest performer, they do not speak to customers or have nice numerical KPIs with which to measure their performance.  In short, the very activities that lead them to love their job, are now done by the people they are expected to motivate and manage.  Many many leaders then find it all too easy to slip into treating their people like an extra pair of hands and try to achieve through demonstration, advice and micro-management.  They want to stay close to the action and be in control and their teams respond in one of two key ways: they become dependent and simply follow, or they feel constrained and play up or leave. Helping new leaders to shift to leading rather than managing means finding them new goals and new measures for success and helping them to understand the new behaviours that will enable them to develop the autonomy of their teams and performance on a higher stage.

The other thing that holds back new leaders is the fear of not being taken seriously by staff who may often have applied to the same position that they have been granted.  Such managers resort to passivity and platitude rather than authority and leadership and often create the very conditions that they fear. It is not easy to juggle empathy with authority but one sure way to maintain closeness with your team at the same time as providing sufficient separation to retain authority is to engage in coaching discussions.  I’m not talking here about one to one long term therapeutic sessions or once a year performance discussions, but simply the day to day act of listening and facilitating rather than telling and directing.

Whatever your history in the organisation, you will have a different perspective and different information than the person you are leading.  Most managers I have trained find it almost impossible to avoid using that perspective to provide answers and suggestions as the first response to staff questions.  If you can hold back all your incredible wealth of knowledge and experience and instead adopt a coaching curiosity, you may be surprised to find that your team have the capacity to advise themselves…and that the added confidence they gain from you biting your tongue so that they can explore their own potential means that you get more time to lead and less time spent managing. It may not be as instantly gratifying or self-assuring…but it will make you a more inspirational and connected leader in the long run.  You may also be surprised how much less your people need to be “managed” and motivated by you and how instead they take accountability for their own performance.

As every honest entrepreneur will tell you, starting any new venture is always more complicated than you think.

The book version of “It’s Your Business” rolls off the presses this week. Publishing a book was certainly a new venture for me and it offered several important reminders of value to anyone getting started.

1) It’s a lot easier to talk about doing something than to actually do it. Good ideas are fun and exciting, but real value lies in implementation. In response to reader’s requests, I began talking about putting together a series of articles in a book format nearly four years ago. Eventually commitment and effort supplemented all the talk and good intentions to get the job done.

2) Everything takes longer and costs more than you initially anticipate. This isn’t a reason not to start or to give up too soon, but it is a dose of reality. No one starts a new venture without being an optimist, but even the biggest optimist must plan for worse case scenarios or they run the risk of running out of time and resources prior to reaching their objective.

3) While the driving force behind any new venture often comes from just one or two people, the success of any new venture is dependent on a matrix of contributions from a number of people. While it’s my name on the cover of this book, there wouldn’t be any book without the support and efforts of friends, family, editors, printers and many others. If you fail to recognize how dependent you are on others, you become even more dependent.

4) Use experienced professionals whenever possible. Starting a business, writing a book or getting involved in any new endeavor is an infrequent event for most of us. It only makes sense to draw on the experience and expertise of someone who specializes in those activities. With no experience at marketing a book, I’ve been fortunate to have an experienced editor and the professionals at Thunderbird Books to assume the important responsibility for marketing the book.

5) If there’s something you really want to try, stop talking about it and give it a try. Despite the effort, the time and the stumbles along the way, the enjoyment of picking up that finished product made all the work worthwhile. As Bo Jackson the business consultant advised us in an earlier IYB article, “Just Do It.”

6) Most importantly, remember that the final shape of any new venture is determined by the needs of its intended customers. I never started out with the thought in mind that “It’s Your Business” would someday become a book. If it weren’t for a lot of interest and requests from loyal readers, it probably never would have happened. I’m glad it did and I thank you all for your encouragement.