Deb Dutta

Technology Executive and Mentor for Leadership Development, Workplace Readiness and Personal Branding

Mar 04

Guts and Glory – The Success Recipe

Daniel Soh is an old friend of mine in the executive search business. Over the years, he gave up the hopes of placing me within the burgeoning Asian technology sector as I was focused on building my business at Brocade. As time went by, we switched our association from being a ‘headhunter’ and ‘client’ to being good friends and trusted advisers. We met a couple weeks ago to discuss an article he was writing for one of his internal publications and he asked for my views on what it takes to build a successful organization.

Over the last 10 years Asia Pacific has grown in stature as a strategic and significant market for Brocade. We rapidly grew revenue, share, people, footprint and infrastructure. To respond to Daniel’s question, I cannot concoct a panacea that will deliver surefire results for every organization – I wish I could!

My formula for success is more a blend of many small thoughts and practices coupled with incredible execution. After persistent probing from Daniel on what the driving factors for this transformation were, I put my mind to work. I realized that the transformation rode on a set of common and consistent principles that most people are aware of but honestly lack the guts or even the desire to practice. No doubt ‘Success’ is a limited membership club!

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Feb 22

Of Farmers & Hunters

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My wife was a loyal Nokia mobile phone user. I saw her migrate from one Nokia phone model to another when her subscription with the carriers came up for renewal. Nokia enabled her to make phone calls, check her calendar, take an occasional photograph and send SMS messages conveniently… Life was good!

While my wife tinkered with the basic facilities on her Nokia, there was a worldwide revolution brewing in the field of social networking, e-publishing and music. Along came 3.5 inch phone screens with 960×640 resolution, incredible graphics, 5 mega pixel cameras and access to a gazillion video, music, game and published content, paid and free from highly marketed repositories. Suddenly, the Nokia phone despite all its familiarity paled in comparison to this barrage of user friendly offerings aimed at satisfying every user craving that rolled out from its competitors’ warehouses. My wife flipped her years of Nokia loyalty and switched to using the Apple iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy tablet running on Google’s Android engine. The incumbent Farmer has largely been displaced by the Hunters who have disrupted the conventional playing field through large scale innovations that have shifted the customer’s expectations.

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Tagged with: balance • disruptions • Drive • Farmer • Growth • Hunter • Patience • Sales • Skills

Sep 06

Expanding Business Real Estate – what is viable?

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Photo provided by Wikipedia.org Keyword "Singapore"

Alternative business hubs are an important planning agenda item for the governments of all hot Asian economies. Hong Kong and Singapore have evolved traditional residential quarters like Taikoo Shing & Tampines in recent years into residential, business and recreational destinations. Gleaming with great infrastructure, glitzy commercial and retail outlets and satellite offices of prominent organizations from financial services, technology and media. These hubs help average out real estate valuations providing alternatives to owners and tenants and drive a more holistic economic development process.

What normally makes business districts sought after are location and critical mass of businesses, shopping and entertainment options. While building new business hubs might ease the congestion and soaring rentals, they will need to provide suitable alternative value propositions, similar to what the original business district does, to be considered as an alternative.

See Singapore’s Property Guru or iProperty for resources guides in the Singapore market; and Service Corp. for help in Hong Kong.