Azim Premji's 8 Steps to Excellence

        Among others, Wipro has recently won the prestigious 'Risk Management Award,' instituted by the Financial Times-The Banker magazine. What is that which makes this company so successful? "An obsession for excellence," says Azim Premji, Chairman & Managing Director, Wipro Limited.
Excellence endures and sustains. It goes beyond motivation into the realms of inspiration. Excellence can be as strong a uniting force as solid vision.
Excellence does not happen in a vacuum. It needs a collective obsession as I have experienced the benefits of excellence in my own life. Excellence is a great starting point for any new organisation but also an unending journey. What is excellence? It is about going a little beyond what we expect from ourselves. Part of the need for excellence is imposed on us externally by our customers. Our competition keeps us on our toes, especially when it is global in nature.
But the other driver of excellence is internal. I have found that excellence is not so much a battle you fight with others, but a battle you fight with yourself, by constantly raising the bar and stretching yourself and your team. This is the best and the most satisfying and challenging part about excellence.
Azim Premji lists the 8 Steps to Excellence
    1) Create an obsession with Excellence
    2) Build a collective Self-Confidence
    3) Understand the difference between perfection for its own sake and excellence
    4) Realise that we cannot be the best in everything we do. Define what we are or would like to be best at and what someone else can do better
    5) Create processes that enable excellence
    6) Create a culture of teaming
    7) Invest in excellence for the future
    8) Excellence requires humility
    Read Azim Premji's 8 Steps to Excellence

BlackBerry, for the people on the move

   With the introduction of BlackBerry, the email mobile which uses GPRS for sending/receiving emails by AirTel, the indian businessmen and top executives can be always connected to their enterprise information on 24x7 basis.
   The Advantages to the BlackBerry users are :
      • Quick sharing of information
      • Effective management of e-mail
      • Accepting meeting requests while out of office
      • Easily accessible web information
      • Promptly respond to urgent messages
Read how BlackBerry has stormed the Indian Corporate World.

ClamWin - A Free Open Source Antivirus for Windows

   ClamWin has been selected as Project Of Month for February 2005 by sourceforge.net. For more information, visit ClamWin's website

India's IT Leaders talks

At Nasscom 2005 in Mumbai, India's IT leaders talk about the future...
   Read Infosys's Narayamuthy on Brand Building
   Read Wipro's Azim Premji's views on Future for Indian IT

B-schools can't teach you common sense

Salil Kapoor Head, Marketing, LG Electronics says:
      A B-school education helps you grasp concepts and in analysing situations. But it does not prepare future managers for the practical part of business.
      I believe that in other countries, especially in the West, management students enjoy longer and more effective interaction with industry. But essentially in India most students come in with no work experience and therefore, there is no sharing of experience with their peer groups.
   I had already worked for four years when I joined the part-time MBA programme at Delhi University's Faculty of Management Studies. That held me in good stead.
   I am convinced that freshers cannot relate fully to what they are taught -- they can't visualise the situations that are being explained in class.
   And it doesn't help that the people teaching them have no practical experience of corporate life, either. Most of the teaching fraternity has little experience of real business.
   And research projects are very different from actual work with industry. I earnestly believe that all lecturers at management institutions should be practising managers.
   Read B-schools can't teach you common sense

ICICI's K V Kamath on How to manage change

ICICI Bank's MD and CEO Mr. K.V.Kamath's interesting prescription on How to manage change ?
      1) Learn how to deal with people who are stagnating
      2) Look for proxies, observing what happens elsewhere
      3) Bias for action
      4) Organisational structural changes
      5) Timing and how you deal with uncertainty is an important part of success
      6) Simplify the complex
      7) Be bold
      8) Indian Managers Paradox - Employee Productivity vs Technology Productivity
      9) 90-day rule
    10) Put ear to the grapevine
    11) Mix entrepreneurship in a professional context
    12) Identify the leaders from the crop coming in
    13) New Ideas
Read more on "How to manage change"

Azim Premji's Four Pillar for Creating a world class firm

Azim Premji, Chairman, Wipro says :
     To create a world class firm
      1) Quality is the first pillar and it can be seen through the eyes of the customer.
      2) Importance of choosing a direction and sticking to it.
      3) Creating an enterprise that is sensitive to various cultures.
      4) World-class enterprises need world-class leaders.
    Read the text of lecture on "Creating a world class enterprise with diverse growth engines" organized by Confederation of Indian Industry, in New Delhi.

Want to suceed ? Harvard guru's tips

      Mr. Robert S Kaplan along with Mr.David Norton has developed "Balanced Scorecard" Concept to stir up your organization.
      The world is changing with trade barriers disappearing and competition becoming fiercer than ever.
      Robert S Kaplan says that to succeed, you have to change the way you operate. Measure performance, think strategy and use the Balanced Scorecard to stir up your organisation. It's worth it.
They have five simple mantras to create a strategy-focussed organisation:
    i) Translate strategy to operational terms,
    ii) Align the organisation to the strategy,
    iii) Make strategy everyone's everyday job,
    iv) Make strategy a continual process, and
    v) Mobilise change through strong, effective leadership.
   Read Robert S Kaplan's interview 

Compassionate Capitalism & How to build a great Company

Mr. N.R. Narayana Murthy, Chairman and Chief Mentor of Infosys Technologies says on Compassitionate Capitalism....

      "Embellish the spirit of capitalism with fairness, decency, transparency and honesty, and the result is compassionate capitalism."

   Read also his ideas on how to build a great company