vijaya gandhi mandadi

Leadership is the ability and willingness of a person to perform a specific task. Here ability is the persons own ability of doing things. It depends on his skills and the Personel experience. Willingness is his commitment to work. The person should be dedicated to what he is doing and he must have faith in his work.

There are leaders who always give much information which is sometimes not related to the topic. But much information falls on unready ears. They never know when some valuable piece of information is going to come out from a leader’s speech. The speakers are ready to send out the information at all the time but the receivers are not ready.

When a new graduate student steps in to the real corporate world there are many things he will come across like management, leadership, responsibility, deadlines, weekly status etc. The best way to start is to know your instructor and start taking the responsibilities slowly.
Analysis is one of the key ways of thinking. “Analyzing the available information and rank ordering this information from most important to least important” (Johnston, 2007)
One should remember that he is not in an entry level in a job. He is already in an escalator when the moment he chooses to enter the graduate school (Dr. Gillette, Personal Communication, June 20, 2007). He should find his responsibilities and start talking the notes from his advisors. Seniors can give the best guide lines when one enters into a new company/ organization.

The average person occupying a position of leadership should exceed the average member of his group to some degree in the factors like capacity, achievement, responsibility, participation and status.
The leadership is a phenomenon which exists between two persons in a social situation. “It is the process of influencing the organized group towards accomplishing its goals” (Roach & Beling, ). It is a working relationship among a group of members in which leader acquires status through active participation and demonstration. If there is any problem regarding anything in an on going project or in a meeting then the group leaders can follow some simple steps.
1) Identify problem: one should identify the problem and the root cause of it.
2) Gather information: collect as much information as you can on that problem and see that the information can some time lead to a solution then and there. “Understanding the information also points us in the direction of getting more data. It points us to where the data will be most useful.” (Johnston, 2007)
3) Develop course of action: start talking actions and plan how to eradicate the problem. Some time’s it might take years to clear the problems.
4) Make a plan: It’s the basic plan how to proceed towards the solution. There might be several phases of executing a plan. Analyze and compare the course of action.
5) Implement the plan: start implementing the plan accordingly. In an organization there are different types of leadership among them the leadership style is the most important one. The style comes into play when the team is handling the projects. The leadership styles are
 Autocratic
 Participative
 Delegative
 Autocratic: This type of leadership is not often in any kind of organization. Usually the leaders will not allow the followers to think or take decisions. They only give orders and the followers are only supposed to execute them. This type of leadership is usually abusive all the time. This is called “bossing people around”. This is one of the bad types of leadership in an organization.
 Participative: This type of leadership is most commonly found in the organizations. The leaders and the followers exchange their ideas before taking the final decision. This is the strength of an organization. The employers will respect that.
 Delegative (free-rein): In this type of leadership the employees are free to take the decisions and the leaders are supposed to know what is going on in the company and have all the knowledge regarding the projects going on in the company because if the things go wrong at some point of time then the leaders are not to blame the employees. They must mot think in anger but should think wisely. When a person steps into the organization he should find out the next immediate boss and his higher laud of people and try to fit himself in the chain. The basic essence of the leadership is to have a vision unless you have the team and become an effective leader.
It is not necessary that a leader has to be a leader in all the situations. He can be a follower in some situations and some other might lead him.(Gardner, J.W) This might be one of the key opportunities to study the strategic leadership refers to the study of executives who have overall responsibility for the firm and how their decision effect organizational outcomes.
“Servant-Leadership is a practical philosophy which supports people who choose to serve first, and then lead as a way of expanding service to individuals and institutions”(Almora, 2007). This type of leadership is practice in all the corporate companies. It is true that people serve first and then they take charge to expand their services to the organizations and to companies and the organizations.
There are four components of strategic leadership that will lead to enhanced organizational performance.
1) Purpose or vision of the firm: Leaders must make a realistic statement about why the firm exists and what is distinctive about it. The statement will then empower members of the organization to develop and execute strategies that are inline with the visions of the firm.
2) Find or explore the core competencies: The core competencies are resources and capabilities that give firms and edge over their rivals.
3) Developing human capital: Here human capital refers to the knowledge of the employee who is actually working for the firm. It is all about the skills, knowledge and abilities of the firms employees.
4) Emphasizing ethical practices: Top managers who use honesty, trust and integrity on their decision making are able to inspire their employees and create an organizational culture that encourages the use of ethical practices.
Strategic controls are accomplished through information exchange that helps to develop strategies where as financial controls are accomplished through setting objective criteria such as performance targets.
Strategic leadership is the ability to influence others that enhance the long term viability of an organization. Strategic leadership is a combination of managerial leadership and visionary leadership. Managerial leaders influence only actions/decisions of those with whom they work and are involved in. Visionary leaders influence the opinions and attitudes of others within the organization. They are concerned with insuring the future of an organization through the development and management of people.
Even in an organization when a leader fails to exercise his duty he is never down or will not hesitate to accept new challenges. Because it’s not how many time you knocked down (D) but it is how many times you got up (D+1)(Dr.Gillette). As long as a person have a clear vision of what the organization’s goal should be and can lead or inspire people towards the goal. You can learn all the technical skills, but you have to have the will to succeed. It’s not what you know in an organization. It’s who you know in the organization.
Some times as a leader, while making decisions you actually have to think how a employee wants to get things done depending on the resources made available to him. This helps to get the work done in an orderly fashion and avoids confusion. What a leader really should do when a project was assigned to him is he should manage complexity first by planning and budgeting setting targets or goals for the future, establishing detailed steps for achieving those targets and then allocating resources to accomplish those plans.
Conclusion: It doesn’t matter whether leaders are born or made or some combination of both, it is clear that leaders are not like other people. Leaders do not have great men or women by being intellectual geniuses to succeed but they just need the right information at right time and this information is not present with all the people. We need to carefully choose the leaders and train them effectively, because every individual does matter.

References
Johnston, B. (2007). The impact of wisdom on decision making process Retrieved on July 16, 2007, from Center for information and Communication Sciences, CICS Weblogs website: http://www.cicsworld.org/bcjohnston/2007/06/the_impact_of_wisdom_on_the_de.html#more
Kotter, J. P. (1990). What leaders really do. In Wren, J. (Eds.). (1995). Leader’s companion: Leader’s Companion Insights on leadership through ages. New York: Free Press.
Burns, J. M. (1980). Transactional and transformational Leadership Leader’s companion: Leader’s Companion Insights on leadership through ages. New York: Free Press.
Stogdill, R. M. (1948). Personal factors associated with leadership. In J.T Wren,(Ed.), (1995). Leader’s Companion Insights on leadership through ages. New York: Free Press.
Gardener, J. W. (1987). Leaders and follower Leader’s companion: Leader’s Companion Insights on leadership through ages. New York: Free Press.
Rost, J. C. (1991). Leaders and followers are the people in this relationship. In J.T Wren, (Ed.), (1995). Leader’s Companion Insights on leadership through ages. New York: Free Press.
Butler, E. A. (1996). Leadership and direction: Problem Solving: Retrieved on June 26, 2007 from Art and Science of leadership http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leaderdir.html
Butler, G., & Hope, T. (1996). Managing your mind. New York: Oxford University Press.
Tannenbaum, R. & Schmit, W. How to choose a leadership pattern. Havard Business Review. Retrieved on June 26, 2007, from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leaders/leadstl.html
Alamro, N. (2007, June 6), Servant leadership. Retrieved July 07, 2007 from Center for Information and Communication Sciences, CICS Weblogs Website: http://www.cicsworld.org/blogs/nalamro/2007/06/servantleader.html#more

Posted by Vijay at 06:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“A competitive advantage is an advantage over competitors gained by offering consumers greater value, either by means of lower prices or by providing greater benefits and service that justifies higher prices.” (Michael Porter, 2001)

A program whose benefits exceed more than an average in its curriculum is said to have competitive advantage over its competitors. An academic department hold its competitive advantage over in terms of their curriculum, faculty, students, corporate alliances, technology and resources they are providing and interaction with the corporate world.
CICS is a program that has a competitive advantage over the other program with respect to its strategy and commitment. (CICS value statement). Strategy is a long-term plan of action that is created to achieve a particular goal.(Strategymag.com)
An academic department should see what resources they are providing to the students and how good the students are prepared for the corporate world.
In business, it is usually associated with the charging the premium price of the product which is often reflect the production costs and extra value-added features provided for the customer. For Example: Mercedes and BMW cars. They differentiated themselves in the market by introducing the i-drive system. This is a good example for competitive intelligence.( Working knowledge: Product Managers dilemma)
One of the key competitive advantages of CICS students is that they use weblogs to keep their status updated. By this way the students keep in touch with the corporate world and they the people can see the progress. In other words, they are advertising themselves with help of blogs, just like a resume.
CICS is a unique program that many other universities don’t have. It offers a wide range of courses form telecommunications to human communications. It has a very strong alumni communication, which many universities do not.
Training students to be professional and industry- ready needs is what separates CICS from other programs. Corporations know that CICS develop professionals; therefore, CICS graduates have achieved a 95% placement value since 1986. Students work with the faculty in a Human Factors Institute will be able to understand how the research work is done.

Requirements: CICS can increase the competitive advantage in the following ways: more technology courses and outside project with Corporate CICS is a very competitive with a social learning program. The center could provide more technological courses such as video editing, web developing, increase student work competencies to further differentiate. Students must be able to participate in the on-going projects with the companies outside so that they will know what the company is expecting from them. This can be a competitive advantage over some other institutions that are providing the similar degree.

Conclusion:
CICS is a program through which students can not only learn the technical communications but also human communication. In my view, a student can benefit as much form the program.

References

Hunt, B. (2007), Using blogs as a source of competitive advantage over your Ecommerce rivals Retrieved July 07, 2007, Mind valley labs Ecommerce research center website: http://blog.mindvalleylabs.com/marketing/source-of-competitive-advantage/

Bsu.edu About CICS Retrieved July 08, 2007, from http://www.bsu.edu/cics/article/0,,34055--,00.html

Porter, M. (2006), Strategy Competitive advantage Retrieved July 09, 2007 Tutor2u supporting teachers: inspiring student’s website: http://www.tutor2u.net/business/strategy/competitive_advantage.htm

Winsor, J (Dec 01, 2004) Competitive advantage of blogs Retrieved July 06, 2007, cross dispatches website: http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/2004/12/heres_more_food.html

Posted by Vijay at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Relationships are an Important Part of Being an IT Professional
There are many business workers whose duties, background and training and work could qualify him as a professional. The IT industry recognizes people from a wide set of backgrounds, education, and personal experience in many different roles as IT professionals.
IT professionals typically get involved in many different relationships: professional-client, professional-supplier, professional-professional, as well as others.

Ethics are Integral to Quality Relationships and True Professionalism
A code of ethics states the principles and core values essential to the work of a particular operation. For example, doctors take the Hippocratic Oath, a 2000 year old ethical code, in varying versions from which medical school they are graduating from.
Only by understanding and adopting the principles behind the code, one can achieve true professionalism.
The benefits of code of ethics are to:

• Improve ethical decision-making
Professional code of ethics means that practitioners will use a common set of core values and beliefs to serve as a guidelines for ethical decision making.

• Promotes high standards of practice and ethical behavior
The code also defines the behaviors that are acceptable and unacceptable to guide professionals in their interactions with others. Strong code of ethics has procedures to penalize professionals, including loss of the right to continue practice.

• Enhance trust and respect from the general public
Clients often find themselves placed in a position where we must depend on the integrity and good judgment of a professional. A code of ethics enhances the trust and respect of the professional and their profession.

• Provides an evaluation benchmark
An organization should always establish a bench mark before taking the next step in the project. Otherwise there is a chance of getting lost of you don’t know the starting point of the race.

Information can be obtained from an IT organization through periodicals, web sites, meetings, conferences and e-mails. In need of professional standards of competency and conduct, many organizations developed a code of ethics. Two such organizations are the Association for Computing Machinery and the Computer society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Case Study: The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)ACM computing society founded in 1947 serves more than 80,000 professionals in over 100 countries. The ACM has a code of ethics and professional conduct with supplemental explanation and guidelines. The code consists of general moral imperatives, specific responsibilities, organizational leadership imperatives and elements of compliance (George Reynolds pg. 34).

Case Study: The Computer society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
IEEE is concerned with number of engineering disciplines other than computing. The society promotes an active exchange of information, ideas, and technological innovations among its members through it many conferences, technical committees and standard working groups. (George Reynolds pg. 35).

Conclusion:
A professional is some one who requires advanced training and experience, must exercise discretion and judgment in his or her course work and whose work cannot be standardized. A professional is expected contribute to society, to participate in lifelong training program.
A professional code of ethics states principles and the code value essential to the work of a particular occupational group. Such a code serves a guideline for the decision making and promotes high standards of practice.

References
Reynolds, G. (2003) Ethics for IT professionals and IT users. Ethics in Information technology. Thompson Course Technology.
Tavani, T. H. (2004) Association for computing machinery(ACM) code of ethics and professional conduct. Ethical issues in an age of information and communication technology. John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Tavani, T. H. (2004) IEEE/ACM software engineering code of ethics and professional practice . Ethical issues in an age of information and communication technology. John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Posted by Vijay at 04:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)