Friday, February 15, 2008

Leadership in the Twenty-first Century

The qualities of great leadership are integrity, respect, and responsibility. These core qualities are what others would see in a person having leadership character.

As Myles Munroe has written in his book Becoming A Leader, Everyone Can Do It, “True leadership is born out of a guiding vision and a passion to accomplish a noble task, and to inspire others to develop and release their potential. It derives its fulfillment from the success of others.” It can be said to have the skill of influencing people to work enthusiastically toward goals identified as being for the common good. Very simply put, a leader is interpreted as someone who sets direction in an effort and influences people to follow that direction.

Leadership reflects a wide spectrum of traits and as the study of leadership in an ongoing one, there will never be full agreement on what constitutes leadership traits. But there are certain characteristics that all leaders seem to possess.

Courage: Leaders who dare to do something are prepared for opposition. Leaders have the courage of their convictions and are ready to be ridiculed, opposed, and ultimately agreed with.
Pride: Not only does the leader take pride in his accomplishments, he also creates an atmosphere that allows others to do the same.
Sincerity: Leaders manage to convey sincere concern for other people, genuine interest in subjects other than themselves.
Adaptability: The leader is able to see both sides of the picture, to maintain a balanced perspective of the complexity.
Influence: Leaders know how to influence others, to persuade them to a higher calling. If you intend to lead others, you can’t depend on the authority of your managerial position.
Vision: A vision is the leader’s ideas and plans for the organization’s future. It gives a sense of the differences between the present and future states of an organization and builds a sense of bonding in the process of a shared vision.

To some degree we have all of them -- some more so than others. We must work to strengthen these qualities in ourselves to become effective leaders.
Moreover the position of the leader also has three key functions:
Authority: the right to make decisions.
Responsibility: assignment for achieving a goal.
Accountability: acceptance of success or failure.

Normally it is perceived that it is enough for a manger to have authority for the success of an enterprise without considering any other aspects of the enterprise.

A person in the leadership position is faced with the dichotomy between power and authority. Power is the ability to force or coerce someone to do your will because of your position of might. At the same time, authority is getting to do so willingly due to your personal influence.

The role of leadership in management is largely determined by the organizational culture of the company. It can be stated that managers' beliefs, experience values and assumptions are of critical importance to the overall style of leadership that they adopt.

While there are several different leadership styles that been identified. We consider the prominent styles of functioning of managers. Each technique has its own set of good and not-so-good characteristics, and each uses leadership in a different way.
The Autocrat: he dominates the team-members, using unilateralism to achieve a singular objective. This approach to leadership generally results in passive resistance from team-members and requires continual pressure and direction from the leader in order to get things done. Generally, an authoritarian approach is not a good way to get the best performance from a team.
The Laissez-Faire Manager: exercises little control over his group, leaving them to sort out their roles and tackle their work, without participating in this process himself. This approach leaves the team floundering with little direction or motivation.
The Democrat: The democratic leader makes decisions by consulting his team, whilst still maintaining control of the group. The democratic leader allows his team to decide how the task will be tackled and who will perform which task. A good democratic leader encourages participation and delegates wisely, but never loses sight of the fact that he bears the crucial responsibility of leadership. He values group discussion and input from his team and can be seen as drawing from a pool of his team members' strong points in order to obtain the best performance from his team. He motivates his team by empowering them to direct themselves.

Leadership is about behavior first, skills second. Good leaders are followed primarily because people trust and respect them, rather than the skills they possess. Leadership is different to management. Management relies more on planning, organizational and communications skills. Leadership relies on management skills too, but more on qualities like integrity, honesty, courage, commitment, sincerity, confidence, empathy, wisdom, determination and compassion. Some people being good managers are also effective leaders, which all managers can’t claim to be.

By G Ravi

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Motorola: Savors The Taste Of Old Wine

Motorola stepped out of the Symbian family in 2003 with the thought of bettering their performance through the Linux and Windows Mobile platforms. What they might not have thought about was that they would be getting into the Symbian fold eventually. By picking up a 50% stake in UIQ technology from Sony Ericsson, Motorola has been the prodigal child that has returned to the Symbian family.

Now what’s this UIQ Technology all about? To put things in perspective UIQ develops and licenses an open software platform to the world's leading mobile phone manufacturers and supports licensees in the drive towards developing a mass market for open mobile phones. UIQ-based phones are powerful and give access to enterprise applications such as email, multimedia clips, and web pages.

With all these changes in the air Motorola seems to be emphasizing more on upgrades rather than just launching new phones with stereotypical abilities. All of 2007 witnessed the launch of the ‘Q9h’ smartphone and rumors are rife that the ‘W’ series in the offing. Might sound strange from a biggie such as Motorola which is home to the Razr range of phones but its clear to me that their pushing in a statement that says ‘Upgrades First, Phones Later’.

Also, Motorola is shying away from older handset platforms such as the P2K on the original RAZR. Motorola may have committed to the UIQ platform, but they're not necessarily showing it in their handset lineup as of now. The last instance we have heard of UIQ on Moto phones was on the Z8. Let’s watch out to see what the stake in UIQ has in store!

Where does Moto see itself from here? Only time has an answer as to whether customers would queue up to clasp their hands on their favorite Razrs with those fully loaded apps which could very hold the key to Motorola in a rather fiercely competitive mobile market.

By Ashok Kumar S

Monday, February 11, 2008

Nokia: ‘Sticking Itself Out Of The Herd’

Nokia has always portrayed itself as the maker of the best-in-class mobile devices be it the N-Series range targeting multimedia enthusiasts to the E-Series which is aimed at business users. However, the story doesn’t end here. My eagerness to learn more about Nokia and their strategic ploys never fail to fascinate me. It has been a company that constantly replenishes itself with the changes in its environment.

The harsh environment encompassing Nokia has ‘Horn Locking’ opponents in the likes of the iPhone whose touch screen interface is perceived to be light years ahead of the N-Series. The iPhone has in the real sense created a disruption in the marketplace. Now, would that mean Nokia has given into the iPhone’s supremacy..No!! One must just know that the N-Series outbeats the iPhone on every flank when it boils down to the overall phone functionality. This only goes to show that Nokia as a company doesn’t rest on the laurels of the past but makes continuous strides in an effort to set new benchmarks each time the opposition closes in.


However, at this juncture in time Nokia definitely feels the need for a ‘Unique selling proposition’ that would keep it in good stead for the future. It has realized that connecting with the user in a intuitive and innovative way merely by the device is no longer the mantra to success. It has to offer something more than just taking pictures or downloading music. Here’s where it has conceived upon the thought of moving out from being a mere phone manufacturer to a provider of a host of services on its mobile phones.


Nokia’s goal is to move beyond its barriers, and the only way it could do so is by picking up a few lessons learnt from Nintendo’s Wii which completely changed the rules of the gaming industry in its own terms. While game consoles became more and more sophisticated Nintendo moved ahead by focusing on a completely novel way of interacting with games. Nokia recognized this trend and thus aims at reshaping the mobile phone market by becoming more than just a maker of mobile phones.

Keeping this example at the forefront Nokia is aiming at creating a renewed focus with the device by connecting it with web services such as navigation, music and email and supplementing these offerings with a slew of acquisitions in 2007. Nokia’s gobbling up of mapping company Navteq made headlines as one of the noteworthy acquisitions of 2007 which stamped its position in the location based services arena on GPS enabled phones

Similarly Nokia is leaving no stone unturned in the ever hotting up music market as it launched the unlimited free download service “Comes With Music” in an effort to provide a range of tunes for people to download directly on to their Nokia mobile devices. It might sound ‘simplistic’, but from Nokia’s point of view it aims at driving the sales of Nokia handsets via the music it provides

Last but not the least Nokia is packing in an array of content into its devices in an effort to differentiate itself better from other manufacturers.

No one knows whether these moves by Nokia would ultimately be the nails in the coffin for its competitors, but one thing that seems imminent to me is that Nokia would definitely keep throwing its hat into the ring each time it feels challenged.

By John Rajiv

Green Tip for Mobile ‘Prosumer’

I came across an interesting article, which stated that mobile manufactures are trying to provide a platform for delivering web-based content and applications to mobile devices rapidly and cost-effectively - with minimal recoding. Well, this is good news for professional mobile users.
With almost one-third of the U.S. workforce on the road or working from home, the ability to extend enterprise applications and Web content to mobile devices has become a business imperative. Just as client/server and desktop software systems have evolved from native coded environments to open, standards-based systems, so too has the software for mobile devices “grown up” to incorporate the latest advances in web and security standards.
Web developers are influenced by the growing need which is making them to develop and deploy fully interactive mobile web applications with ‘sync & go’ (technology that helps in sharing, viewing, talking, listening and collaborating with other devices with one keystroke ) or wireless capabilities. So no matter where users are, they'll be able to access the information and applications they need to make more effective business decisions in the field without any hassles. Mobile companies are thus in a new era to develop, deploy, and maintain mobile web applications rapidly and with the fastest speed to browse and lowest total cost of ownership as possible with all other main features.
By Rohith R.R