Mile sur mera tumhara

A small Comparison - Part II

A Small Comparison -Part I

Work Culture: In my current company, Except for one or two people, rest of the team leaves the office exactly at the scheduled logout time. Whereas at my previous company only one or two leaves at the scheduled logout time. The relationship with my manager is more professional/formal in my current organization. In my previous organization its more informal and bit personal. Even after quiting my previous company I still have contact with my managers.

Linguistic Split: At the time of leaving my previous organization, of the 25+ people only 2 were non Tamilians. In my current team Telugu speaking people forms the major part of the team followed by Tamil, Hindi and Kannada. People from groups based on the language they speak. The entire team looks bit polarized :(. Each group is further divided into sub groups.

If a team has 10 Telugu speaking people there will be a maximum of 3 groups, if a team has 10 Mallus, all the 10 will be of the same group. If a team has 10 Tamilians then there can be more than8 groups :). Tamil people lacks unity among them. People fight like kids in the team. I have never seen these kind of split in my previous company. It was only top management versus others :).

A postmortem.

Today at my office we had small session with the HR peoples.And as usual this session too had some games. I was made as a captain for one team. The game and its rules were very simple. But still we lost all 3 the game. After the session, I just did a postmortem of the entire game that we played. Here are the mistakes that I/We did

1. At first game we didn't have any game plan/Strategy. Every team member was in offensive mode. If a strike is successful then we will get maximum points, but the probability of getting a successful strike is very less. Few made good score, many missed (including me).

2. In the second game, we were given a target and asked to achieve it. Now we started to feel the pressure. But still most of the team members played offensively. The members who had good score in the first game failed to get same or a greater score in the second game. They had over confidence over their skills. When I asked them to play defensively they were not ready to hear my words. We were not even able to complete the game :(.

3. Even in the third game we were give a target and asked to achieve it. The pressure was immense. We were a team of 13, each one has to score at least 12 points to get the achieve the target. Now I made the entire team to play defensively. But still the people had over confidence over their skills. Most of the team members didn't follow the strategy that we devised. And even in this game too we lost.

The main problem that we had was we didn't bother about winning the game. We are not going to lose any thing if we lost this game. This was our/my mindset. Second thing was, most of my team members were senior to me. I couldn't force them to obey my words. Or to tell in other words I couldn't get the work done from the team :(.

The lesson that I learnt from this game is when we take the leadership role and start a new project
1. Have a plan/strategy.
2. Make sure that the entire team follows your word.
3. Have the determination to win

How J.P. Morgan steered clear of the credit crunch

An interesting article on how J.P.Morgan escaped from the sub prime crisis. http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/29/news/companies/tully_dimon.fortune/index.htm

Problem after installing SP3 for Excel 2003.

After installing SP3 for Excel 2003, I'm not able to open Lotus 1-2-3 files. When I try to open/save a .wk3 or .wk4 file we get the following error.
"You are attempting to open a file type that is blocked by your registry policy setting".
When I googled for the above problem, I landed in Microsoft site. The below extract is from Microsoft site.

Excel 2003

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
322756 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756/) How to back up and restore the registry in Windows


An administrator can restrict the types of files that you can open in Excel 2003. This ability was not provided in Microsoft Office 2003 when it was originally released. To restrict the types of files that can be opened in Excel 2003, install security update 933666.

For more information about security update 933666, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
933666 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933666/) Description of the security update for Excel 2003: May 8, 2007

To restrict the types of files that you can open in Excel 2003, an administrator can use one of the following methods: • Use the updated Office 2003 Administrative Templates to configure the registry on the client computer.
• Modify the registry by adding a registy key setting on the client computer. To download the Office 2003 Service Pack 3 Administrative Template (ADM), OPAs, and Explain Text Update, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=BA8BC720-EDC2-479B-B115-5ABB70B3F490&displaylang=en (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=BA8BC720-EDC2-479B-B115-5ABB70B3F490&displaylang=en)
The following table contains the DWORD names that an administrator can add to the registry to restrict certain file types by using the FileOpenBlock subkey. Additionally, the table contains the corresponding file types that are restricted. DWORD name File types that are restricted
BinaryFiles .xls, .xla, .xlt, .xlm, .xlw, .xlb
HtmlandXmlssFiles .mht, .mhtml, .htm, .html, .xml, .xmlss
XmlFiles .xml
DifandSylkFiles .dif, .slk
TextFiles .txt, .csv, .prn
XllFiles .xll
Converters All file formats that are available by using a text converter (including the Office Compatibility Pack)
DatabaseandDatasourceFiles .odc, .udl, .dsn, .dbc, .dqy, .iqy, .oqy, .rqy, .mde, .mdb, .dbf, .ade, .adp, .cub
LotusandQuattroFiles .wk1, .wk4, .wj3, wk1 FMT, .wks, .wk3, wk3 FM3, .wj2, .wq1, .fm3, .wj1
LegacyBinaryFiles Microsoft Excel 4.0 Charts (.xlc) files (Office 2003 SP3)
LegacyDatabaseAndDatasourceFiles DBF 2 (dBASE II) (.dbf) files (Office 2003 SP3)
To enable the FileOpenBlock subkey settings, follow these steps: 1. Exit Excel.
2. If you are running Excel 2003, install security update 933666 if it is not installed, and then go to step 3. If you are running Excel 2007, go to step 3.
3. Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
4. Locate and then click to select one of the following registry subkeys:

Excel 2007
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Excel\Security\FileOpenBlock HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Excel\Security\FileOpenBlock
Excel 2003
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Excel\Security\FileOpenBlock HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Excel\Security\FileOpenBlock
If the FileOpenBlock subkey does not exist, follow these steps to create it: a. Click to select the Security subkey.
b. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click Key.
c. Type FileOpenBlock, and then press ENTER.

5. Point to New on the Edit menu, and then click DWORD Value.
6. Type the DWORD name that you want to restrict, and then press ENTER. For example, type BinaryFiles.
7. Right-click the DWORD name that you typed in step 6, and then click Modify.
8. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
9. On the File menu, click Exit to exit Registry Editor.
For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
945797 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/945797/) You receive an error message when you try to save a file type that was blocked by your registry policy settings in Excel 2007 or in Excel 2003 .

For full details check here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922848/