11 MISTAKES TO AVOID IN 2011

1. Focusing on power; Neglecting influence.
Flatter organizations, greater collaboration, shifting work teams, shared resources. If that’s not the present reality, it’s the near future for many workplaces and supervisors. It’s a scenario in which the power that comes from your management title isn’t as helpful as the influence that grows from your networking and relationship-building. Trust, respect and reciprocity will get more accomplished for you than brute force. In 2011, I plan to more study, teaching and writing about on this topic, because I think the most successful bosses and employees will be those who effectively and ethically build their influence.
2. Hiring in a hurry.
When an improving economy or answered prayers provide you the blessed opportunity to hire a new employee, do it with care. It’s not enough to plug holes or relieve overworked staff. Every new hire has to be seen as an opportunity to improve the team. What new skills, experience, or expertise can this person bring? How might you re-imagine your team or your work in ways that take this hire from a simple staff addition to an opportunity for meaningful change?
3. Demanding collaboration while actually obstructing it.
If you want people to work across old boundaries, set aside past habits, and share new ideas and duties, you have to do more than tell them it’s expected. You need to look at how you are clarifying roles, evaluating performance, sharing information, and assessing work flow. Otherwise, it’s like putting good people into a canoe and asking them to paddle against the current. The rushing waters are going to defeat your exhausted staffers. As a boss, your job isn’t just to demand collaboration, it’s to identify and remove every barrier to its success.
4. Believing a line like “Employees today should be thankful they have jobs” is a substitute for genuine feedback and motivation.
Employment is better than joblessness, of course, but staffers look to their leaders for more than just a paycheck. They want jobs that give them the chance to do their best work and be respected for it, to learn and grow, to be challenged and to believe their work has meaning. Great bosses understand true motivation, whether the economy is down or up.
5. Neglecting the care and feeding of change.
It’s tempting for bosses who’ve implemented changes to assume the “new normal” will stick. But individuals and organizations have a way of reverting to old processes and priorities unless leaders continuously restate, reward and reinforce that which they want to keep moving forward. Get good at this, because leading change is now an ongoing facet of your life as a leader.
6. Confusing “Being nimble” with “Avoiding planning.”
Not every manager is a born planner. Some say they prefer serendipity to structure. They feel too much planning keeps them from being nimble — able to seize an opportunity on the fly. That sounds good in theory, but having read thousands of feedback reports on managers, I can tell you without question that the best bosses lay out clear plans. Additionally, they know when to set them aside as new options surface. Their employees and their bosses appreciate and applaud that skill.
7. Assuming your “open door” policy provides staff with sufficient access to you.
By all means, let people know your door is open to them, but remember that some people hesitate to approach you. Their reasons vary, but they nonetheless need and deserve contact with you. It’s up to you to make certain it happens. Bosses underestimate the amount of feedback people need and overestimate the amount they provide. My rule of thumb: If you think you’re doing a good job of providing feedback — double it.
8. Letting economic pressures overshadow ethical principles.
I don’t mean to suggest you’ll lie, cheat or steal to buff up the bottom line. What I mean to suggest is that it takes courage to raise the topic of ethics and standards in meetings that focus on business competition — or survival. It takes skill to frame questions about safety, accuracy, service or fairness in ways that help you become a problem identifier and solver rather than an obstructionist. Help your organization avoid ethics traps at all times, but especially in a challenging economy.
9. Neglecting your best people.
Bosses often spend a disproportionate amount of time on underperformers, assuming they need far more attention than star players. But top performers — and those with the potential to be — give you far more return on your time investment. This year, commit to giving them more feedback and more opportunities to learn and grow.
10. Declining to delegate.
I see it time and again: bosses struggle with time management, and at the same time, they choose not to delegate some of their work to others. I can’t magically add more minutes in your days in 2011, but I can give you this assessment to help you determine what you can delegate to others. Here’s the best news: good delegation helps you focus on priorities while giving people new and often welcome opportunities.
11. Taking care of everyone — but you.
Being a great boss is a great goal and hard work. Promise me you’ll take care of yourself in 2011. I promise to keep encouraging you.

salute to sachin

PAK JOURNO REPLIES : Facts are facts but any inconvenience to Indians is regretted

Makhdoom Babar (Editor-in-Chief),  Daily Mail 

On December 7, 2010 The Daily Mail received dispatches from its correspondence stationed in different major cities of the world. The dispatches were regarding certain secret cables by the US diplomats about India, Israel and Afghanistan.

A meeting of the editorial board was held and a few questions were ‘given’ to the reporters filing the reports for the satisfaction and verifying of the sources after which it was decided to publish the detailed report that appeared in the newspaper on Wednesday, December the 8th, 2010.

Since the news was very juicy and attractive it was re-produced by a local credible news agency as well, the very same day. The news agency is a subscriber of The Daily Mail and the Daily Mail is a subscriber of the same agency.

However, someone at the releasing desk of the news agency, somehow or the other, forgot give credit to The Daily Mail the next morning, due to the authenticity of the report, all the major papers of the country carried the same report on the front page as the lead story, without realising that the same was published by The Daily Mail a day before as a lead story. On the other side, when the Indians came out of the shock of The Daily Mail’s report, they got another shock that a few Pakistani newspapers, which are actually projecting India’s agenda and are brothers in arms with the Indian media and Indian intelligence agencies, had also published the same story.

It appears that the first reactions of the Indians that suspected the media organisation was the proverbial Shakespearean ‘You too Brutus’? Now, here the particular newspapers, after realising that the story had already been published 24 hours ago by The Daily Mail and was reproduced to hundred websites with credit to The Daily Mail, took a somersault and in a double bid to appear Indian and to ‘down’ the rival newspaper The Daily Mail, took a somersault and termed the story as fake whereas, they were not supposed to publish anything without checks and verifications as was done at The Daily Mail.

Just in a bid to down and scandalise an emerging media rival they didn’t hesitate losing the nation’s pride as well as key professional esteem. In their bid to be embedded with the Indians and to make a failed attempt to embarrass a rival media organization, the shameless publishers went on to apologise for publishing something against India. The effect is enough to alarm everyone in Pakistan as to where our top media organisations get dictations from and also as to where they are told about what to print and what not to print.

The Daily Mail stands by its report, as before publishing the report it had made all verifications and still has the same trust in its reporters, who have never earned a denial in the last nine years. The Daily Mail also takes pride in the fact that none of its reports have ever been contradicted within Pakistan or for that matter any where in the world. As a matter of fact, the Indian media has in fact, been endorsing the investigative reports of The Daily Mail about India.

The Daily Mail also takes pride of having 28 reporters spread all over India who write under pen names, as they work in local Indian media organizations, under their original names.

The Daily Mail also takes pride that its WikiLeaks report of India has not been contradicted by the US government nor has it been contradicted by WikiLeaks too -- in the first place.

The Guardian and others are trying to behave like the proverbial devil’s advocate and are constantly trying to rescue India while they have left no stone unturned to damage Muslims and their allies in the world.

The Daily Mail also states quite vociferously that neither any Indian news organization, nor any Pakistani organization, has challenged the leaks of WikiLeaks -- when 80 percent leaks were made against Pakistan and the Muslim world, compared to just a few leaks about India and Israel which have perturbed a British -- not an Indian, Pakistani or Israeli newspaper.

The Daily Mail is of the firm opinion that the practice that has been exercised by a few media organisations of Pakistan: to apologise to India and to seek a source from the news agency has clearly exposed crystal clear about who is who and what is what when it comes to appeasing Indian and Jewish stakeholders.

The Daily Mail is of the firm belief that the readers are not that innocent nor are the Indians.

The Indians after getting it insured that their brothers in Pakistan will apologise have now started pretending as if they have been milk-washed.

The Daily Mail asks whether it is really true that in the last 10 years, no American official or diplomat did not send one single cable to Washington against India or the Indian government’s policies? This is only possible if the Americans are considered the goofiest nation of the world and their ‘officials’ are regarded as completely deaf and dumb.

The Daily Mail also argues if it is not true that the Americans have enough evidence of involvement in Pakistan? Is it not true that the Indians have failed to give any concrete evidence of involvement in 26/11 attacks?

Is it not true that Indian dossier on 26/11, based on Ajmal Kasab’s confessional statement, is not a fairy tale and also, is it not true that Assange has not sold selective WikiLeaks to different media organisations of the world of which The Daily Mail is also one purchaser? The Daily Mail claims that it has all the proofs and evidence of whatever it has published, regarding India and is ready to provide the same to any forum any time it is required by the law.

So far as the security of the sources and the staff is concerned, The Daily Mail will never abandon its staff and its sources. We challenge everyone including the ‘sweet’ Indian media to prove us wrong. If they have enough water somewhere in their body organs they are welcome to be our guests.

Pakistani Newspapers Apologize for Fake Cables Stories

PHOTO CAP : After Pakistani newspapers incorrectly reported that leaked U.S. cables contain damning information about India, Pakistani nationalists condemned the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and burned American and British flags on Friday.

As the Guardian’s Islamabad correspondent Declan Walsh reported, several Pakistani newspapers appeared to fall for a hoax on Thursday, by publishing articles supposedly based on leaked American cables obtained by WikiLeaks that turned out to not exist.

The fake cables described by articles, including one on the front page of The News, were said to contain damning information about India and generally supported the worldview of hawks in Pakistan’s military and intelligence services.

The Lede explained on Thursday that both the Guardian and The New York Times, which have copies of all of the leaked cables, performed searches of the full archive and were unable to find any cables even remotely like those described in the Pakistani press.

On Friday, two Pakistani newspapers that published articles based on the fake cables, The News and The Express Tribune, published retractions.

The Express Tribune apologized to readers for its article, “WikiLeaks: What U.S. Officials Think About the Indian Army,” explaining: “It now transpires that the story, which was run by a news agency, Online, was not authentic.”

The News blamed a local news agency, reporting:

A story filed by a news agency about purported WikiLeaks cables disclosing India’s involvement in Balochistan and Waziristan, carried by The News, Daily Jang and many other Pakistani newspapers, has been widely criticised as not being accurate. The prestigious British newspaper The Guardian described the report as “the first case of WikiLeaks being exploited for propaganda purposes.”

The report said that US diplomats described senior Indian generals as vain, egotistical and genocidal, and that India’s government was secretly allied with Hindu fundamentalists. It also claimed that Indian spies were covertly supporting Islamist militants in the tribal belt and Balochistan.

The story was released by the Islamabad-based Online news agency and was run by The News and Daily Jang with the confidence that it was a genuine report and must have been vetted before release. However, several inquiries suggest that this was not the case.

The News added, “A check on the Internet as well as The Guardian report showed that the story was not based on Wikileaks cables, and had in fact originated from some local websites such as The Daily Mail and Rupee News known for their close connections with certain intelligence agencies.”

Pakistan’s Daily Mail, which is an Islamabad news site unrelated to the British newspaper of the same name, has a reputation for reporting unreliable conspiracy theories that serve to deflect blame from Pakistani officials. In September, The Lede pointed to a post headlined, “How To Plant Idiotic Stories,” on Cafe Pyala, a blog that looks at the Pakistani media. In that case, Cafe Pyala traced a fake news story suggesting that a Pakistani cricket scandal was actually a nefarious Indian plot back to the local Daily Mail, which it called, called Pakistan’s Daily Mail, “the purveyor of all conspiracy theories headquartered in Islamabad which pretends to be a global paper.” Cafe Pyala added, “its focus seems plainly to be crude propaganda about India. No points for guessing who’s probably behind it.”

In a post about the articles based on the fake cables on Thursday, Cafe Pyala noted that the newspapers reported their source as simply, “agencies,” before asking, “How stupid do the “agencies” really think Pakistanis are?”

On Friday though, one Pakistani blogger stuck by the idea that Islamabad’s Daily Mail, alone among the world’s news organizations, had somehow come into possession of cables obtained by WikiLeaks that no one else has seen. Ahmed Quraishi, a Pakistani journalist, blogger and conspiracy theorist, refused to admit that the Daily Mail story he had made so much of a day earlier was based on cables that do not exist.

In a post headlined, “Ignore Guardian’s Claim Of ‘Fake’ India WikiLeaks,” Mr. Quraishi, citing no evidence, insisted that the Guardian and The Times must be lying, writing:

Substantial parts of the story in Pakistani media is correct. It’s only that The Guardian and the other newspapers are misleading the world public opinion by a selective focus on the things they want from WikiLeaks cables.

WikiLeaks did a good job of exposing US bully diplomacy, and here comes NYT, Guardian and 2 or 3 other ‘partner’ newspapers of WikiLeaks to selectively release the material to suit US policy objectives.

Source : Guardian