iPhone 5 inspired by October Sky / Rocket Boys

 

I was watching October Sky (one of my favourit movies) the other day and I noticed a scene which inspired them at Apple !!  So I put together this original creation….

8 Secrets of Pulling Your Team to Greater Productivity

8 Secrets of Pulling Your Team to Greater Productivity:

How do you get your team to get more done?
How do you get them to go beyond their limits?
Do you drive them? Do you push them hard?
And then push them harder even once they are resenting the efforts?
You may get the work done, but you probably won’t have much of a team afterwards.
If you want your team to be successful, you can’t push them… you have to pull them.

Pushing Your Team

True story.
When I was an officer in the Navy, one of my first Captains coached me during my annual review by saying…

“You don’t yell enough.”

What? Excuse me? What do you mean?

“You don’t yell at your team enough. I’ve never heard you raise your voice at them, I think you need to be harder on them.” 

After sitting in stunned silence for a moment, I decided to answer with a question or two…
I asked,

“Do we get our work done?”

and then

“Do we finish projects ahead of schedule?”

and finally

“Didn’t we get an overall grade of “Excellent” on our most recent operational evaluation?”

It was obvious that we had differing styles of motivation and leadership.
Getting your team to work hard is not about pushing them.
Rather, it is about pulling them.

Pulling Your Team to Productivity

There is an old leadership maxim that dates back to the early 1900s.
It says…

“You can’t push a string.”

Think of a physical string on the table. If you push it, it simply bunches up and goes nowhere.
If you pull it, it lines up and goes wherever you gently direct it.
It means that to make progress, you can’t push a string. You have to pull it forward.
The same is true for high-performance teams.
You can’t push them incessantly. You will only cause friction and discord.
You may get them to the finish line, but they will be a jumbled mess.
Instead, try pulling your team to success.
Motivate them by pulling them forward to accomplish new things and reach levels they did not know they could reach.
This is was good leaders do.
Here are 8 Secrets to Pull Your Team to Greater Productivity:

1. Tell Them What You Want Done, Not How to Do It - Motivate your team by letting them determine how to get the work done. Tell them the objectives and goals, and let them impress you with their creativity and initiative.
2. Praise Your Team - Surveys show that most employees are lucky if they receive any praise during the course of their job. Recognize hard work and success and make sure that you call it out. Publicly praise your team members. It doesn’t have to be fancy, it just has to be sincere.
3. Make Them a Team – Make sure your team is a team. Pull them together. Do activities and events to allow them to bond as more than just co-workers. Trust and understanding are things that have to develop, you can’t force them. On a side note, if someone is not part of the team, you may need to remove them in order to let the core team thrive.
4. Give the Team the Authority to Make Decisions – Some managers don’t let their team make any decisions without their approval. This does not lead to a productive environment. You should trust your team to make day-to-day decisions on their own. Good leaders don’t lead by giving permission on each simple task. They lead by knowing when to gently course correct their team along the way.
5. Keep Them in the Know – Let your team know the big picture. Don’t withhold information unnecessarily. Your team can’t perform at their best if they are wearing blinders.
6. Let Them Have Skin in the Game – In many companies, teams feel like they are simply working to make the boss more successful. Great companies know that teams produce better results if they are vested in the outcome. Make sure the team has incentive in the overall outcome… win or lose.
7. Hold Them Accountable – Pulling your team does not mean not holding them accountable. In fact, they want to be held to high standards. Teams suffer if a leader does not hold all team members accountable for their role.
8. Positive Attitude – As a leader, you set the tone for your entire team’s operation. The team takes their cue from the top. If the boss is having a bad day, so is the entire team. Bringing a positive attitude can be crucial to your team’s success.

Pull Instead of Push

Pushing your team only goes so far. In the end, it causes discontent and strife.
You might get the work done, but it will take double the effort and produces half the results.
If you want your team to get more work done and be more productive…. pull them.
Pull them to greater limits. Pull them to greater achievements.
And of course, pull them to success.
Question: Do you push or pull your team to get work done?

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prostopleer.com New site for MP3 listening and sharing

Its amazing what you find on the net. I was searching for a copy of an old song and I found it shared on a new site : prostopleer.com. It’s a new site where people can upload and share their song collection, and also download for free ! The interface is super smooth and fast, no need to provide email/facebook details, at least not yet.

Use the services before this site is also taken down like other mp3 sharing sites !!!

tv.burrp.com–Best site to view Indian TV channels listing

 

I have been using this tv.burrp.com to find out programs on TV channels in India. It is the only site I found which displays a comprehensive listing with customizations in a gantt-chart applet. All the programs are displayed next to each other and shows are classified into kids/sport etc.. You can create your own listing of favorite channels and even setup SMS alerts for your favorite programs.

 

For instance, here is a part of my favorite list at the moment of writing this.

Nandakumar R: 'Libra Showers'

Nandakumar R: 'Libra Showers':

In an early post here I wrote the following brief description of Tulavarsham (literally "the Showers of Libra"), the Keralan name for the North East or Retreating Monsoon:

"In late October - early November, Kerala experiences a very unique weather regime called 'Tulavarsham' - the mornings are sunny and clear; by midday it gets very sultry and the afternoon sees a rapid and massive buildup of clouds followed by a thunderstorm, which clears up in a couple of hours. The evenings are usually clear and humid."

And there are any number of other online pages which repeat: "During Tulavarsham, it commonly rains in afternoons with thunder and lightning".

That the Advancing (South West) Monsoon blows in from the Arabian sea due to the subcontinent getting hyper-heated in summer is no mystery. That the monsoon has to retreat once the temperature gradient levels off and then inverts in autumn is not hard to understand either. The Coriolis force explains why the air current advances and withdraws along a South-West to North-East axis rather than a North-South one - undergrad, if not high-school, stuff.

But there still remains plenty about the Thulavarsham phenomenon that I find very puzzling.

First up, why does it rain almost exclusively in the afternoons/evenings? Afternoon thunderstorms are quite the norm in equitorial rain forests (this again is school gyan). But there, what happens is local convection with no large-scale *horizontal* currents of air; here we do have a major and steady drift of air masses from the north-east.

One could guess: the moisture laden monsoon (the moisture having been collected from the Bay of Bengal) blowing in from the north-east collides above Kerala with the afternoon sea-breeze and this causes the disturbances and violent showers. The sea-breeze does set in in the afternoon. But is it strong enough to cause such precipitation? I really don't know.

There are other issues: Why does it not rain anywhere else on the western coast during Thulavarsham (rainfall is utterly scanty on the coast beyond north Kerala; Bombay, which gets much more rainfall from the main south-west monsoon than most places in Kerala, actually suffers a brief but sharp summer called 'October heat'!)? Why don't the Western Ghats cause a rain-shadow effect over Kerala for the North-East monsoon (they do cast a rainshadow over western Tamil Nadu during the South West monsoon)?

The first question is perhaps answered by the shape of the Indian peninsula - a triangle with apex at Kanyakumari. This coupled to the North-Easterly direction of the withdrawal of the monsoon suggests that over say Bombay or Goa, the withdrawing monsoon would have hardly any moisture since it would not have passed over any waterbody. In the south, the Bay of Bengal provides enough water to the withdrawing monsoon to drench a good half of our eastern coastline in pretty steady rain - and even after traversing Tamil-Nadu, the winds have enough moisture to give Kerala a sharp rainy spell.

I have no good idea why the Western Ghats have such an asymmetric rain-shadow effect. Unlike in Maharashtra/Karnataka where the mountains drop sharply to the west coast and slope much more gently eastwards, along Kerala-TamilNadu border, they are steep in both direction. A possible explanation could be the narrowness of Kerala which allows the sea-breeze to play a major role in causing precipitation - the Bay of Bengal is quite far from Western Tamil Nadu.

A legend from medieval Kerala relates: the Portuguese stealthily took away some pepper wines; the Zamorin remarked: "Nothing will happen! They can't take away our 'Edavappathi' (the South-West Monsoon)"

I beg to differ with Zam. the Edavappathi gives no *exclusive* benefits to Kerala - it gives good rains to Kerala all right but it gives much more copious precipitation to Coastal Karnataka, Konkan and so forth. But, the Thulavarsham is a different matter altogether; ignoring the west-coast above Kasaragod, it extends the Keralan rainy season almost to December. And this is precisely why Kerala has, by far, the most persistently lush landscapes in the country. One can see drought-resistant scrub and cactus hedges in the hills near Bombay but they are unheard of anywhere in Kerala except perhaps the farthest corners.

And seeing the rapid buildup and awesome approach of a Tulavarsham thunderstorm from the Ishanya (North East) corner of the October sky, one can't help recollect the inspired imagery of medieval Keralan poet Poonthanam's hymn addressed to Kali (Thirumandhankunnil Amma):

"Ghanasangham idayunna thanukanthi thozhunnen!"

("I behold and salute thy fearful form, a vision of dark, swirling rainclouds thunderously colliding with one another!")