Sudeep D'Souza

Effective Managers are those that can leverage the strength of their teams and achieve their goals. But to be able to do this they need to posses and showcase some important traits  Effective Managers are not focused only on short term wins. They have a growth mindset that focuses on the goal.  They are able to work through the difficult challenges and keep their cool. The task of solving the problem or achieving the goal is never easy and they are able to weather the storms by keeping theirs and their teams focus.  An effective manager has a curious mind, they are always thinking of different possibilities on either solving problems or possible paths to achieve the goal. An effective manager is able to make tough decisions and they are ready to face the consequences. Quick informed decisions are important to be made in order to move the team forward.  A good and strong manager should be able to inspire their team. They are effective communicators that can communicat...

 All managers want reports at varying frequency or even ad hoc. The question is why do they need these reports? I feel it is for anyone of the below reasons  They need them for decision making. This is mostly analysis of the past data or a report predicting the future based on various options.  To give them an understanding on the working of a process. Are the key metrics being tracked, maintained within agreeable limits?  Understanding the overall status of the project, how is it progressing against a timeline are there any risks or bumps ahead that can derail the project.  Most of these reports are expected to be done by subordinates and most subordinates find it hard to build these reports and end up spending hours if not days doing these reports, taking them away from crucial operational issues that might require their attention.  When managers request for reports they need to carefully consider the following  Are the current systems and processes ...

As a leader or manager ensuring that trust is built with the team is very important. Trust is what ensures the team works confidently and without any doubts.  Gaining the trust of the team is not easy and it takes time. It has to be gained through words and actions. The behaviors one must portray to build trust are  1. Being open and frank with your team As a leader one needs to be open with their team. Ive had managers that would give a deadline 2 days earlier than the actual deadline. The team is eventually going to find out and they will never believe in the manager again. A leader should be able to give bad news as easily as giving good news to the team. Its necessary to be open and frank with the team.  2. Showing courage in decision making A leader needs to have courage. Courage to make decisions, tell a team member when they are not performing well, tell stakeholders when things are not going to plan and so on. They should not shy away from the hard decisions and s...

13 years ago I wrote about how " Having pride is key to quality " and this was written in the context of the software services industry. But having worked since then mostly in the services industry, I have come to realize more and more that one needs to have "heart" in their work to give their best.  What do I mean by putting your heart in what you do? It essentially means you care. You care about how the service is delivered, you care about the quality of the service, the timeliness of the delivery, you care about the happiness of the customer.  When one cares, automatically every detail is addressed. This ensures a high quality of delivery, the customer experience is great and you end up with a happy customer.  Happy customers end up giving you more business.  Putting ones heart in what they do, has to come from within each one. It cannot be thrust upon or commanded. So find the job that you want to put your "heart" into what you do and excel at what you...

If one desires to be very good at what they do, they need to do their job with empathy. Empathy is defined as " the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. " Here are some situations When listening to an issue on the phone/in person/in an email put yourself in the customers shoes and think about how you would react if you had the same issue and what would you expect the response to be. That would help you formulate the right response to the customer. If a complaint has been outstanding for a long time and has not been resolved, imagine how would you feel if you had raised the same complaint with a service provider and it was not resolved for a long time. This will help you react and address the complaint a lot quicker, knowing that you would not have liked that to happen to you. You want to make the numbers look good for your manager and you end up closing a complaint even though it is not yet resolved. How would you feel if such a complaint you raised is clo...

In the last post I was looking at why is it important that leaders have good communication skills. But what do I mean when I talk about communication skills, does it mean just the fact that I can write a good grammatically correct email or can talk the fluently and clearly? Its far from that, yes those skill are important but leaders communicate differently, they have some additional skills that make them so effective. 1. Trust and Belief When leaders communicates, they communicate so that the team trusts and believes in what they are saying. It is the foundation on which all teams are built. If at any point of time trust of belief in the leader is lost, the team is lost. So when a leader communicates he should build the confidence of the team to believe in what he is saying and he should stand by his word.  2. Know your team  However big the team might be, leaders take the trouble to know and empathize with individuals in their team. They know how to engage each and everyone...

We all start our careers in the junior levels and then work our way up the corporate ladder. As you rise up in the hierarchy it is very important to have good communication skills and to keep improving them, this includes both oral and written communication skills. Here are some of my thoughts on why communication skills important Leaders need to inspire  The team is going through a difficult phase, could be tough deadlines, things not working according to plan, unexpected roadblocks and so on. It is at this time you see leaders stepping in and inspiring a team to march on, to continue to strive forward and overcome this tough period. A leader should be able to raise the morale of the team and to remind them that they are capable of overcoming all challenges. This is done by communicating with the team effectively and inspirationally.  Leaders need to show vision  Leaders should always understand the bigger picture. They should be able to communicate this bigger picture t...

We at Inforica had an interesting summer this year. Three students had to do a summer project and I had a project that needed to be done for a local church. As a first step a senior developer along with myself sat down and decided what the requirements, design and scope of the project should be. We then interviewed these students and realised that they did not know C# but they had an aptitude to compute. So we first gave them some assignments in C# which they quickly learnt and completed. We then trained them on the design of the application and gave them a sample page that made use of the design. We then asked them to code all the pages similar to the sample. We then told them to code pages that were a little different from the sample and in the end we asked them to code completely new stuff. What was interesting and a great learning experience was that how 3 students who did not know C# were able to develop a production application in 6 weeks. You can read their blog Summer at Infor...

I was reading an interesting set of articles posted by Joel on management methods in which he talks about three different management methods namely The Command and Control Method , The Econ 101 Method and The Identity Method . He then goes on to advocate that the Identity Method is the most suited method for the software industry. I totally agree with him now having had the experience of running a software development firm for the last year and a half. I would like to add some of my thoughts as to why I think this is the best approach in this blog article. If you apply Maslov's Hierarchy of Needs to the professionals working in the software industry they have all their basic needs met with the comforts and the security that a software job provides. What they look for are needs of Status and Self-actualization which basically translates into being recognized, appreciated and feel like they are learning each day and becoming better. This is what identity management method is as per...

I have seen this situation in a zillion books but when faced with this situation I just dont know what to apply from what I have read. For the last few days I have two teams that are battling it out over a problem. Each of the teams has their own way of doing it and both solve the problem and both have their pros and their cons. I belong to one of these teams. The deadline is drawing closer and closer and both the sides are getting desperate for their solution to get selected. And the best part is the two teams are seperated by 6000 miles in two different continents and their only medium of communication is telephones and emails. We have been arguing so much over which is the best way to solve the problem that it is becoming evident that both sides are getting fed up of each other and both the sides are succumbing to the "whatever" route. The result of this is that we are losing focus on solving the problem and we are ending up with a "whatever" kind of a solution w...