Back from sleep

Well, the past two weeks have been busy or what? Have hardly had any time to think anything other than work... because its suddenly become extremely interesting... Being in a evolving organization that developing a matrix reporting structure is interesting. It all starts with a lot of micromanagement from the incumbents who setup the new facility. From then on, a gradual process starts where employees in the new facility come up to speed with the organization, with a lot of help from visiting expats (in the case of offshore centers). A stage comes in when the offshore center matures, starts delivering and is assigned more work and responsibility. But this is a dicey stage for the incumbents. How easy is it to start giving up responsibility or start offshoring more work, especially if you have not visited the offshore center? So, one tends to starts with a little pilot project to test the waters. Once that works, you begin to offshore more work, often appointing someone to assume responsibility for the delivery from the offshore center. But then, overcoming the mind block and being able to give up control completely to the delivery guy offshore is a challenge for most incumbent managers. It is akin to the ability to be able to delegate a significant potion of work for which you are answerable to your boss, to a new employee, who you know is good, but say, you cannot see working in front of you. Hence, you tend to retain some amount of the control and try to draw a line of power sharing, creating a matrix organization. Being able to draw this line clearly and to the satisfaction and complete knowledge of all involved is a very challenging task. If not done correctly, this can result in a lot of loss of productivity in terms of loss of motivation of the delivery guy offshore due to lack of power in decision making or due to the lack of clarity to the employees offshore in terms of who is in charge and whose commands have to be followed. Being in the middle of evolution of such a line is pretty exciting.

Now that today I have my free time, I was searching regd. social networking and found some interesting stuff, one which I have downloaded and am going to begin to use. Its called huminity (http://www.huminity.com/english/software.html) and what it does is amazingly interesting. Check it out. So is what the new ICQ universe (go to icq.com and click on universe under "Meet people"). The graphics are cool and I am still waiting for an invite into the universe. But then, the larger question of whether you can build a sustainable revenue model around social networking was still there. That was until I found spoke.com. These guys have been smart in addressing their products to a niche segment of the corporate market, the sales guys. Reminds me of my high tech marketing course, and all that talk about the product life cycle and crossing the chasm.