Bring out the Leader in you!!!

By Jayakishore Bayadi
Here is a worth event coming up for women to attend. Iam sure this is not going to be an ordinary event discussing about mere social issues or evils, which will automatically get vanished from our mind when we come out the venue. Here we discuss about ourselves to bring out the best out of us. I think that stays with us for long time. It’s like being bitten by a bug that reminds us constantly to grow. Needless to say, this may impact our society in a tremendous manner in a positive way! Hence, no doubt this is a forum to explore our selves, our capacities, and our hidden talents.

Yes. You got it right. Iam talking about the SmartTechie Women 2.0 Summit. Which is going to be held on March 10, 2008.Today, more and more women are taking on leadership roles. To prepare yourself to take your place at the executive table, it is crucial that you identify the need to shift your mindset so that you can be a powerful and effective leader be it in the work environment, social setting, or at home.

In the honour of International Women's day, the SmartTechie, a technology magazine being published from Bangalore is organizing an exclusive forum for women technology professionals. Whether you want to enhance the talent of female managers in your organization or want to develop your own career, the SmartTechie Women 2.0 Summit focuses on how to reach the next level. You will discover how to channel your expertise and creativity into an effective leadership style that delivers results and allows you to stand out from the crowd. This unique one-day Summit provides a platform for like-minded women to learn, develop, connect, and network so that you can harness your inner qualities and bring out the best in you as an effective and authentic leader.

At this summit, nearly 1000 women technology professionals will come together to celebrate the great strides women are making in their companies and in the business world. It's obvious that diversity has an enormous, tangible meaning. Highly successful professional women from the technology industry will share their knowledge, experiences and insights to help empower more women to achieve their goals.

At the Summit, there would be four panel discussions on:
Ascending the Corporate Ladder
The Lady Entrepreneur
The NextGen Developers
The Intrapreneurs
Also, this exciting summit will consist of lectures, skill building exercises, and group discussions. Highly interactive and engaging, we assure you that the one-day summit will be useful, insightful and lots of fun too.

Key speakers include:
Aparna Pujar, Director - Media Products, Yahoo! India
Bharati Jacob, Managing Partner, Seedfund;
Jessie Paul, Chief Marketing Officer, Wipro Technologies;
Mrinalini Ingram, Senior Director, Finance, Globalization Center East, Cisco Systems;
Sapna Maheswari, Developer, ThoughtWorks Technologies;
Sharada Satrasala, Director, Texas Instrument India;
Vani Kola, Managing Director, India, NEA-IndoUS Ventures;
Vasantha Erraguntla, Senior Engineering Manager, Bangalore Design Lab, Intel
Register Now.It’s FREE!!!
http://www.thesmarttechie.com/NextGenWomen/
WHEN: March 10, 2008
WHERE: Dr. Ambedkar Bhavan, Millers Road, Bangalore.
TIME: 9.30 AM to 5.30 PM
Come on!Let us bring new thinking to our life. Let us change for our own good first…Let’s bring out leader in us…for us and for all…

A ‘Lead’ lesson

By Jayakishore Bayadi

A day before yesterday, I got an old issue of CIO magazine while searching for some books in my office library. It was June, 2006 issue (U.S. edition). I was just glancing through the pages and the editorial written by its Managing Editor David Rosenbaum intrigued me, and made stop turning pages for a while. Though it was not so great piece of writing, I got enthused by the content.

At the first look you may notice a lot of ‘I’, ‘me’ et al in the write up. But David explains why ‘I’, ‘me’ becomes important, when it comes to leadership; when you are leading your team or people behind you. And he clearly discerns between self centric ‘I’, ‘me’ and cause centric ‘I’, ‘me’ in a fascinating manner. Below, I’ve provided article for you to read. Not to glance! If this Interests you too, please drop a comment.

By the way, I was ovewhelmed by the calls and mails from my friends,well wishers,virtual friends complaining why iam not updating the blog! Iam really sorry folks! Soon I will be a regular blogger again!Any way,today i got some time and this is my first posting in 2008.

Wish you a very Happy New year!
-JKB

No Time for Martyrs

A leader’s most important job is making sure he can draw on his inner resources top lead. And that means taking care of yourself!

Lately, I’ve been feeling lousy. May be it’s the change of season; may be it’s allergies; may be it’s germs. Whatever it is, for the past two weeks my head’s been aching, my nose has been running, my eyes have been burning, and I’ve been looking even pathetic than I normally do.

The doc put me on antibiotics and told me to take antihistamines, drink lots of water and take it easy.

But I haven’t been taking easy. Most days, I’ve been dragging my sorry butt into work. There’s lot going on right now at CIO. We’re deploying a new content management system. We’re building a new Web architecture and redefining our online coverage to make our award winning website even better. We’re reengineering our internal work processes to make our site and our magazine more timely. And I figured that without my physical presence, without my sterling, hands-on leadership, the whole kit and caboodle would go to hell in a hand basket. So I showed up to work and led the troops with my noggin noddin’ and my rheumy eyes half closed. I deferred decisions and radiated martyred misery. I led with a whisper, a whine, a sneeze and a sniffle.

Very inspirational. I should have known better.

Recently, in conjunction with last month’s CIO Leadership Conference, I had the opportunity to interview Pulitzer Prize –winning historian David McCullough. Among many things, McCullough said that made a tremendous amount of sense to me was that leaders needed to be energetic. “You can’t be in second gear all the time and be much of a leader,” he said.

In order to summon that energy, in order to be the engine that drives the endeavor, in order to provide a positive example for the people who look to you to see how they should conduct themselves at work, executives and leaders have to take care of themselves. They need to stoke their own engines and do whatever it takes to feel good about themselves, mentally and physically. And while at first blush that may sound selfish, it is actually one of the most important parts of the job: making sure that you can come in to work each day with the enthusiasm, optimism and vitality and necessary to lift the spirits of the people around you.

If you can’t do that, you might as well stay in bed.

-David Rosenbaum
Managing Editor, CIO