A 7.9-magnitude earth quake attacked Wenchuan, Sichuan Province in southwest China at about 2:28 p.m. Monday (6:28 a.m. GMT), May 12. It’s just 200 kilometers (124 miles) from my home town, Chengdu, the biggest city in southwest China.

I was waked up a phone call from my father in law Monday morning at my home in New Jersey. He briefly told me about the earthquake. It was quite a shock. Fortunately, my parents came to U.S. to visit me several weeks ago and they are still stay with me here in New Jersey. But, I still have many relatives back home in Chengdu including my 96 years old grandfather. We became very concerned and started to make calls to my relatives in Chengdu. The first half a hour was extremely tough since the communication channel seemed to be broken. Eventually, the phone was connected. On the other end, came the familiar voice of my aunt. She told us every one was all right. It was quite a relief to us!

My 96 years old grandpa is okay. He felt the earth quake also. But obviously he was not scared. When my aunt hurried home to see him, he was quite calm and still said to my aunt in a smile, “I think we just had an earthquake”. When my aunt urged him to leave the house, he simply reply, “Everybody has his destiny. You cannot run away from your destiny. I will stay in my bed to face it”. That’s the typical spirit of a “Chengduese”, calm and optimistic.

Two of my aunts are working in the hospitals in Chengdu. They are now handling a huge volume of patients from the towns close to the center of earthquake.

My parents and I have been watching the news closely as well as making frequent calls to my relatives in Chengdu. We can watch CCTV4, the official TV channel from central Chinese government, at home here in New Jersey. Looks like my home town will be all right and there won’t be more big earthquake coming.

It’s very sad to watch all the students and kids buried under the debris. We prayed for the people who died in this tragedy. Hopefully, the rescue team can save as much lives as they can. Fortunately, I saw our Prime Minister Wen Jiabao went to Sichuan just 5 hours after the earthquake. It’s very touching to see him working at the front line leading the rescue efforts. With him there, I am pretty sure the best efforts will be made to rescue people and settle the survivors. It’s also touching to see the soldiers were marching by foot to reach the impacted towns since the roads were totally blocked from all directions. I am so proud to have such a leader and such a good army with us at this tragic moment.

Unfortunately, I cannot participated in the big movement of saving lives in my home province. The only thing I can do here is to donate some money to the China Red Cross Fund to support the people in need and pray for them.

All the best to people who suffered in this tragedy.

My best regards to the courageous people who risk their own lives in saving the survivors in this earthquake!

If you would also like to help, here are some donation channels specific for this tragedy:

• China Red Cross Calling For Donations For Sichuan Earthquake
• How You Can Help from China Daily
• Donate to China Red Cross Fund (Chinese)
• Donate Channels by Chinese Consulate in New York(Chinese)

Recently, I am involved in a hibernate performance tuning project. We used to use Oracle Toplink as the Object-Relational mapping tool for our application. Several months ago, we decided to switch to the more popular JPA/Hibernate.

However, after the switch, we experienced wide-spread performance slowdown. To tune the performance of Hibernate, I did a thorough research in related articles. The more I dug in, the more I realized that performance tuning is a systematic effort. There are a lot factors contributing to the performance of Hibernate. I would like to list our experience here as a reference to everyone who use Hibernate.

Considerations for Hibernate Performance Tuning:

1. Database level

• Data Model: The data model design can significantly impact the performance of your OR mapping. Not all the existing data model fits the requirement of Hibernate. Some tables need to be restructured.
• Execution Plan: Hibernate uses its own set of queries. The execution plan for those queries need to be revisited.
• RBO vs. CBO: Did you make the best use of the Cost Based Optimizer in Oracle 10g?
• Full Analyze: Our DBA informed me this trick. Running a full analyze of Oracle may help Oracle to adjust to the new Hibernate usage pattern.

2. Connection/Sessions

• Driver: Are you using “thin” or “oci”? Still using Oracle 9i driver? That may be the issue.
• Connection pooling: Is the connection pooling set up appropriate?
• Session Management: Did you cache your hibernate SessionFactory? It worthwhile to review the hibernate configuration for the sessions.
• Flush mode: What is your flush strategy?

3. Query

• Hibernate vs. Stored Proc: In some of the scenarios, it’s better to use stored procedures instead of Hibernate.
• Tune your HQL
• Batch update/query
• Join: Revisit how you do the join.
• Fetch mode

4. Object Model

• Lazy loading: Without lazy loading, the performance may take a huge hit. Revisit your objects to avoid loading unnecessary objects in your object graph
• Collections: Revisit how the collections are loaded

5. Cache

• Cache Hit Ratio: The hit ratio of your secondary cache is an important factor of your performance. The more you cache, the better the performance, if you have enough memory
• Cache provider: You need to find the most appropriate cache provider for your application. Revisit the cache configuration to reflect the unique needs of your application.

6. Memory

• Heap size: Revisit your JVM settings
• Garbage Collector settings

The Process To Approach Hibernate Performance Tuning:

• Setup performance measurements
  • Determine which performance metrics (page to page speed, transaction execution time, top SQLs, etc.) to measure
  • Determine which resource utilization (memory, CPU, thread, connections, GC, etc.) to measure
  • Setup necessary tools to monitor those metrics. The best tool we use is CA Wily Introscope. You may also use Window Performance Monitor or other similar tools.
• Run the Stress Test with performance monitors tuned on
  • Identify the worst performance problems. Find out the top 5 worst performed business transactions. You may use the product of average execution time and total number of transactions to measure the overall “impact” of that transaction to your application’s overall performance.
  • Review the resource utilizations to identify possible bottlenecks.
• Run Profiler tool against the worse performed business transaction
  • Identify the bottleneck
  • Understand the root cause of the problem
• Make changes according to the Profiling result.
• Rerun the Profiling to see if there is any improvement. Repeat until performance is satisfactory.
• Apply the lessons learned in tuning the worst performed transactions to similar transactions project wide.
• Repeat the Stress Test to find more heavy transactions.

In my own experience, performance tuning is a long and iterative trial-and-error process. You may try a lot of things before you find the right solution. But once you find one problem and the solution for that, most likely, it’s applicable to many places of your project.

Another tip is you need to keep repeating the full iteration of test-diagnosis-fix-test. Fixing one problem may cause another problem. Or other deeper problems may emerge once you clean up the easy to fix problems.

There is no silver bullet to solve all the issues. Every application is unique and requires unique configuration and tuning. So, be patient and keep working.

Reference:

• Java Persistence with Hibernate
• Hibernate Performance Q&A
• Improving Hibernate’s Performance by Will Iverson

I talked about the two most important cultures for a development organization, Goal Oriented and Innovation in my previous two posts. For a development organization to survive, it must satisfy the goals of the business it belongs to. It must align all its activities with the business goals and strive to achieve those goals. If the development organization would like to play a more important role in the business than just providing “commodity” technical services, it must continuously innovate in technologies and processes, in development process as well as the business processes.

But how can a development organization achieves its preset goals and how can it innovate? What’s the ultimate strength of a development organization? Not the thousands of computers it possessed and managed, not the technologies it embraced, not products or services it delivered, or the intellectual properties it possessed. I can be one hundred percent sure to say that the core competitive advantage a development organization has is its people. People are the most important resource that a development organization can draw upon to meet any ambitious goals it may have. Innovations are like springs, flowing freely to all directions. But, if we seek its origin, we will always find one or several highly educated, talented and engaged persons. Thus comes our third ideal culture:

Ideal Culture Number Three: Humanism

The meaning of “Humanism” from Webster is a doctrine, attitude, or way of life centered on human interests or values; especially : a philosophy that usually rejects supernaturalism and stresses an individual’s dignity and worth and capacity for self-realization through reason.

In wikipedia, “Humanism” is declared as a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives.

Putting in the context of the organizational culture of a development organization, Humanism has the following meanings:

• Realize People are the most important asset of the development organization
• Respect each individual as a human being with human dignity
• Respect and welcome the diversity among individuals in terms of capacities, interests, values and cultures.
• Strive to satisfy the increasing levels of human needs, from physiological to self-actualization.

One of the goals of a development organization is to replace manual, tedious and error-prone works with fast and cost-efficient automatic process carried out by machines like Computers. But we need to keep in mind that the ultimate goals and results are not replacing humans with machines. On the contrary, the goals are to free human from repetitive, tedious and labor intensive jobs and enable them to move on to more innovative and more rewarding jobs. Just like that, all the goals of development tasks are to make the life of other people, customers or colleagues, easier, happier and in general, better.

All the development tasks are done through a group of people. Although machines and tools are heavily used and important, it’s the people who drive the cold and thoughtless machines to achieve the meaningful goals. Sometimes, we are too focus on the tasks, the machines, the technologies and forget about the individual human beings behind the scenes. No computer can code its own program. No database can design its own architecture. No router can connect itself to the network. Behind all the tasks, there are humans making them happen.

Don’t be fooled by the titles, developers, testers, web designers, database administrators, system engineers…. They are not stereotypes. They are human beings just like you and me. They have families and personal life. After work, they are fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, cousins, etc. in their families. They have feelings. They want to be respected, appreciated, affirmed and recognized. They would like to have fun, be comfortable, relax and feel secure. They made human mistakes, like forgetting the passwords or mistype something. They have strength and weakness. They have talents and blind spots. To get the most out of them, treat them as human beings, not just “headcounts” or “hands”.

The more I studied the historical lectures of management, the more I realized unlocking the potential of people is the key to the success of an organization. This is especially true to development organization since it demands “intelligence-intensive” work instead of “labor-intensive” work. We are dealing with “knowledge workers“, as Peter Drucker pointed out 50 years ago, not manual workers any more. The more the organization attends to the human needs of the knowledge workers, the more it can expect to get out of them. In the other hand, as knowledge workers, we will gain our best achievements happily and cheerfully only when we work for an organization that cares us as human beings and satisfies our basic and advance desires.

In my first post, I mentioned that Cultures start with the Values and Goals and end up with Attitudes and Practices. The first three ideal cultures I talked, Goal Oriented, Innovation and Humanism, are the values and goals of a development organization. They are the underline principles. To achieve them, we need a set of practices, methods and policies to cultivate, realize and manifest those principles. I will continue to talk about those more practical ideal cultures in my future posts.

Do you agree or disagree my observation? I will love to see your comments!

In my previous post, I mentioned the reasons why I would like to write down the ideal culture in my opinion and explained the most important culture for a development organization, “Goal-Oriented”. It’s deeply embedded with the purpose of the existence of the development organizations.

If the purpose of a development organization is to help the business serve the customers, to grow the revenue and to improve the margin by cutting cost, how can it achieve that goal? The answer is sound and clear, through innovation. Thus the second ideal culture:

Ideal Culture Number Two: Innovation

A development organization should devote itself to innovation. That’s the nature of “development”. It provides “technology” solutions to the customers and to the business. It should actively participate in all the aspects of the business to make improvements through technologies. It should act as a “driver for innovations” in an organization instead of just providing passive supports.

Nicholas Carr asked a breath-taking question, “Does IT Matter?” It deserves some serious considerations from every one working in a development organization. If we are just providing “commodity” or “utility” services to our customers and to our business, WE DON’T MATTER ANYMORE! A foreseeable future for such a development organization is to be replaced by either outsourcing or offshore. The only way to survive is to act as the source of innovation for the business by constantly utilize the most relevant advanced technologies to provide the best products and services to the business.

Innovation is not only about keeping up with the latest technologies but also about continuously improving the business processes for ourselves and for the business. For example, we can innovate in the following areas:

• The software development process. This is about how we deliver the products. We can improve the quality and shorten the time to market by fine tune the delivery process.
• The operational model. When the product is deployed and serving the customers and the business, how can we make it run more smoothly? How can we fine tune it to satisfy business need and manage the capacities as the business grows? How can we prevent big outages which will cost us the trust from our customer?
• The interactions with our business partners. How can we better understand the needs of our business partners? How can we assess the satisfaction rate of our business partners?
• Grow the business. How can we help to grow the business by providing the best product and services in the market? How can we help the marketing people to better design the marketing strategy? How can we help the sales force to identify potential customers and finish the deal as soon as possible? How can we help the service division to give world class service to our customers?
• Cut the cost. Where can we replace the manual labor with more efficient and accurate automation? How to find the best supplier around the world?

Innovation in every aspects, everywhere, everyday! Only through Innovation, we can prove our values to the business. Only through Innovation, we can find the right position of the development organization in the big picture, the center for business improvement! Only through Innovation, we can claim we are the Profit center instead of the Cost center!

Being an engineer myself for almost 10 years, I can rightfully assume that all the engineers are very interested in innovation. We were trained in school to address real world problems with the technologies. For our career future, we need to constantly learn new technologies, new tools and new concepts. We like to fix things. We enjoy the challenges. However, since we are often disconnected with the business, it’s hard for us to fully utilize our skills and talents to drive business innovation. We don’t know the problems for us to attack and conquer.

To break that curse, we, the engineers, need to pay more attention to the businesses. There lie the best opportunities for us to innovate, to improve, to achieve something big. The management team should also work hard to better connect the talents of engineers to the needs of the business. And that also needs innovation.

Any thoughts, my dear reader? I love to see them in the comments. I will continue with other Ideal Cultures soon!

I thought a lot about the ideal culture for a research and development organization recently. Since I graduated from school, I have been in different development organizations. In each organization, there was something I like and others I dislike. Well, life is always like that. You almost have to swallow the sweetness along with the bitterness because they come together.

Although any organization has its pros and cons, there is nothing preventing me from imagining a perfect organization which has the ideal culture, with my own standards. It can serve two purposes for myself.

First of all, it can serve as a benchmark for me to evaluate any organization I am part of or will be part of. Since, in my opinion, the culture is the most important factor that affects one’s effectiveness in an organization, everyone should seriously consider the culture if he or she considers job satisfaction and career achievements important in his or her life.

And even better, I can carry the culture with me. No organization is perfect. But, at least I can change myself to follow the principles that I deeply believe. Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the World”. By practicing the culture I desire, I am able to create a environment/atmosphere around myself anywhere I go. After all, it should be we change the environment, not the environment changes us.

But, what does “culture” means here and why is it so important?

Generally speaking, culture “refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance” (from wikipedia). Applying it to the corporate environment, it means “the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization” (from webster)

The organizational culture starts with Values and Goals and ends at Attitude and Practices. It determines the “characters” of an organization. It must be shared by all the members of an organization.

Imagine if one doesn’t share the same values and goals with the organization he/she works. If one totally cannot stand the attitudes and practices of his/her co-workers, how can he/she be productive in such an organization?

That’s why most of the organization have the “new employee orientation” for the new hires. One major goal for that training is to imprint the corporate values and goals into the new employee’s mind and to justify his/her attitudes and behaviors to fit in the organization. Or even earlier, a wise organization should evaluate the employee not only by his education, techniques, or experiences, but also by his values, goals and attitudes. So, the new employee can naturally “fit in” after he/she comes on board.

To define the ideal culture, we can start from reviewing the goals of a development organization.

As Peter Drucker sharply pointed out, “There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.” If there is no customer, the very reason for the organization’s own existence vanishes. We, who worked in development departments in a big organization, sometimes forgot that it’s the Customers who give us a job, not our boss, or even my boss’s boss. The reason we are here is to provide services to our customers.

An corporation needs a Information Technology department or a Research and Development department because it needs to provide better products or better services to the customers through the utilization of the most relevant technologies. The products or services may be directly used by the customers. Or they will be used other colleagues to serve the customer.

Ideal Culture Number One: Goal Oriented.

A development organization should have clear goals. Those goals should be tightly aligned with the business goals of the big organization we work for. They must be S. M. A. R. T. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely), as suggested by many management best practices.

For a developer, actually, it’s kind of hard to link his or her own goals with the business goals. We are not customer-facing (that’s why we are not required to wear a tie every day at work). We are too deep down in the “hierarchy”. We only focus on the programs in our screen and the data our programs manipulate in the database. Who is our customer and what do they need? We don’t know and we don’t care.

That’s the exact reason why IT job sometimes can be boring. We hardly see the meaning of our work. Why do we have to work 14 hours a day just to meet that stupid deadline? By the way, where is that deadline coming from?

Only when we are able to link our jobs with the customer needs and the business goals, we can rediscover the reasons and meanings of our everyday work. We can regain the dignity and happiness we deserve in our jobs. We are not coming to the office to “do time”, like a prisoner does in a jail. We are making meaningful impacts to our customers! We are making their lives better through our hard work. That’s something worth proud of. And that’s the reason we get paid for. We deserve that pay check we receive every other week!

Another reason why every one should align their own goals with the business goals is more practical than restoring the meanings back to our job. If the business is not doing well and the business goals are missed, we will be punished one way or another. Reorganization can happen. Layoff may follow. Bad things will fall from the sky.

You may say why we should care. We can always move on to another job. Yes, but it won’t feel as good as the you get promotion and salary raise when business goes really well. Believe or not, our job is deeply connected with the business!

You may also feel that who we are to worry about the business. We are only a developer or a system engineer or a database administrator. We are just the IT guys who do all the back office work nobody cares. How can we impact the business? How can we drive up the stock price? The fact is our impact is much more significant than we realize. The application we designed and implemented may be the best seller in the market at attracts more customers and generate more revenue. One bug we put in the codes might cause many of our customers a half-hour frustration. Just recall how frustrated we were when we received a bill with wrong number in it and the time we spent in the conversation with the customer representative to correct it. Those angry customer will leave. Along with them, gone the revenue.

One of the key functions of the management team should be to identify the business goals, translate that into the goals of every one in the team, and to communicate the goals clearly to them. Every one should understand how his or her job is affecting the customer and the business. All the activities should be centered around those goals. Once the goal is achieved or exceeded, one deserves a pat on the shoulder, a kind of appreciation or a celebration party!

We, ourselves, should also constantly think in lines of the business goals. Think about what are important to our customers and our business. What can we do to improve the customer satisfaction, to grow the business and to save cost? Once we think like that, we will soon find out how important our work is to others, to the business. And we will soon find many opportunities open up for us to make meaningful impacts. The rewards will be both spiritual and material.

Aligning all the activities with the business goals are the most important culture for a development organization, in my opinion. What do you think? I will to see your opinions in the comments.

I will continue with other Ideal Cultures in my future posts. Stay tuned

After working 7 years in one organization, I finally made the move and joined another team. I am still working for the same company, but different location, totally different project and different colleagues. It’s like a new company to me.

It’s always hard to move into a new environment and start to work with new team mates. I need to learn the new project, new technologies and new ways of doing things. The worst part may be that I have to rebuild my reputation. I need to earn my credit again as well as make new friends in the new organization. In the first several days, I really missed my old work place and my old friends.

However, after I thought it over, I considered the current situation a new challenge for me. As we all know, only challenges make one grow. If one always stays at the familiar spot and never goes out to the adventure land, he/she will never grow. It’s the response to the challenges that brings the best out us!

I did well at the first two weeks. Accomplished a bunch of good things and got some positive feedbacks from my manager and colleagues. However, soon, I met some bottlenecks. Things were not moving along as smoothly as I expected. I became a little frustrated. What happened to me?

When I took the regular walk after dinner by myself, I suddenly realized the reason of my frustration. I am too eager to prove myself in the new organization. I am expecting too much of myself. That violates the law of “Growth”. Rome cannot built in one day. It took me SEVEN years to earn my current position in the old organization and earn the trust of my colleagues. I cannot expect to do it in three weeks in the new organization. I should give myself some time.

As I pondered through my recent days, I realized that the one thing that made me feel a little uncomfortable was the culture difference between two organizations. That might be another commonly encountered issue for new comers. Two different organization usually have different ways of doing things, based on different value systems. The culture conflicts makes it harder to achieve the same output as I used to.

Honestly speaking, the new project I am involved now is a much more complicate project than my old one. There are a lot of things I can learn from it. When I first joined the team, I was pretty ambitious that I was going to make big improvements in the project. However, after I really dug into the details, I found things were much more profound that I used to imagine. Many talented people have been working on this project for more than 6 years and they all made great contributions. My co-workers are very smart people. They worked so hard for such a long time to achieve the status quo. I felt I was too naive to think that I could turn things around in a short period of time. That’s impossible and that very thought could get me into big trouble.

Having said so, I still think I can make positive impact to the project. Everyone should expect that from oneself.

What I concluded so far is this organization doesn’t lack of talents and technology expertise.  The only thing that hinders it from achieving bigger successes is the culture. Bringing in a new culture that can fully release everyone’s talent and energy will have much more significant, profound and lasting impact to this project and to the team, than merely fixing one or two technical issues.

Organizations don’t need heroes. One I-work-alone type of hero may discourage all others and damage the team morale. A facilitator who can glue every one together as a team, a cheerleader who can motivate others and a visionary who can point out the right directions will be much more helpful than a stand-alone hero.

I will talk about the culture changes I plan to drive and how I plan to implement those changes in a future post.I am still thinking of ambitious goals cause I believe that’s the only way to bring the best out of ourselves.

Any suggestions for me? They are very welcome. I will love to hear that in the comments.

As a developer and later a technical architect, I have been doing software development for almost nine years after I graduated from school. I witnessed the fast evolvement of new technologies, for example, from Java Applet in the early days to AJAX recently in front end field and from EJB to Spring in the business logics field. However, the process we do software development changes much slower. In one organization, the same process is usually used for all types of projects, from new and complicate multi-year projects to simple and repetitive bug fix releases. I feel the knowledge we have in software development processes are way behind the knowledge we have in technologies. To me, the software development process and methodologies are more fundamental and important than specific technologies. Because it affects the entire lifecycle of software development project, the entire software development team and every aspects of the software product.

I did some researches on this field and would like to list the most popular software development process frameworks here. A more comprehensive list can be found in here.

• Cowboy coding: Follow no rules. Totally up to the individual developer. It’s good for a quick prototype or proof of concept. Not good for teamwork and big projects.
• Waterfall Model: A sequential software development process. It goes steadily through the phrases of requirement analysis, design, implementation, testing, integration and maintenance. It was widely followed years ago and still followed in many software shops. It’s useful for developing small scale software with a relatively stable set of requirements. But, obviously not suitable for large scale software in current fast pace business world.
• Rational Unified Process: An iterative software development process framework created by Rational Software and later part of IBM. It is a refinement of the Unified Process and have many variations like AUP and OpenUP.
• Extreme Programming (XP): It’s a set of software development practices that embody and encourage XP values (Communication, Simplicity, Feedback, Courage, Respect). It’s considered as a form of Agile software development.
• Agile Software Development: It’s the most popular conceptual software development framework. It’s a umbrella of many methodologies that follow the same set of principles announced in Agile Manifesto.
• CMMi: It’s a process improvement approach to help organizations to achieve effective processes. Many software consulting/outsourcing companies seek to be appraised by CMMi, using an appraisal method like SCAMPI to proof their maturity in software development process.

Each framework listed above follows a set of underline principles and have a set of practices/methodologies. Each organization should pick the right one that fits into its culture. Different types of project can follow different practices based on its unique nature. The key is find the most suitable one for your project instead of blindly repeating the old ways of doing software development.

I started to work for a new manager last year. The first thing my new boss asked me to do is to buy this book, “StrengthsFinder 2.0“, and take the test online. He assured me I would like that. Obviously, he took the test himself before and it has been tremendously helpful to his own career growth.

I bought the book, certainly. The introduction section explained why they think people should focus on their strengths instead of their weaknesses.

Their reasons are simple:

• No one is perfect. We are all naturally good at something and fall short on other things.
• It’s our talents and strength that makes out standout, in a good way. Not the shortcomings.
• We are more engaged and happy when working with our strengths than working with our shortcomings.
• It’s more efficient to develop our strengths than to remedy our shortcomings.

By the way, they are a group of psychologists working for Gallup, holding Ph.D and Master degrees in Psychology.

I think this concept have great value in current world. It has a underline assumption that somebody else will cover your shortcomings. So you don’t need to worry about them.

We are living in a inter-connected society and we are inter-dependent with each other. Nowadays, almost nothing significant can be accomplished only by ourselves. Teamwork and organization are the most common ways of working and living. We don’t need to worry too much about what we lack. Our team mates, colleagues, or partners will compensate us through their strengths.

This assumption may not work all the time in all circumstances. A extreme scenario is to put a stock trader to an disconnected island by himself. His strengths in financial arena hardly matters anymore. On the contrary, if he so focused on developing his financial skills and neglected his skills of making everyday living, his shortcoming in living skills may be the killing factor to him in the island.

This is just an extreme counter case. But the points are clear. We still need to spend sometimes on our obvious weaknesses to avoid them from dragging us down. Once our base is covered, we should follow the advice and focus on developing on our strengths. After all, our strengths are what make differences! They are why we are unique and they are what we are born for!

On the back of the book, I got this secret “access code” that led me through the door of the online tests. It’s a regular psychology test we all have been through. Usually, a scenario/statement was described and you needed to choose how you agree or disagree. However, the question was kind of vague and it’s hard to pick yes or no. To make it even worth, the time was really limited. I didn’t even have time to think everything through. Later on, I figured they deliberately designed so to test your intuition, which can most accurately reflect your underline characters.

After I took the tests, the test report was sent to me in an email. I was amazed by the accuracy. When I read the descriptions, I could see myself in it. It accurately described a lot of my behaviors and motives. Now, eventually I could have a clear mind on what I am good at and what I want to do.

I sent the report to my manager. It was helpful to him since he could fully utilize my strengths when he assigned job for me to do. He did that and it worked out well both for me and for him. Who don’t want to come to work everyday happily working on something we are good at and interested?

I consider it’s a good personal development tool and a good management practice. Strongly recommend it to anybody wants to know more about self and people around you.

Focus on your and others’ strengths, not shortcomings, will help you live a happier and more effective life!

Strengths Discovery Report:

LINPEI ZHANG

Your Top 5 Themes

• Connectedness
• Input
• Developer
• Learner
• Positivity

CONNECTEDNESS

Shared Theme Description

People who are especially talented in the Connectedness theme have faith in the links between all things. They believe there are few coincidences and that almost every event has a reason.

Your Personalized Strengths Insights

What makes you stand out?

It’s very likely that you bring people together. You form a bond with each individual as you begin to understand his or her circumstances. You naturally identify with someone’s situation. You have a gift for helping people discover what they have in common. Often this frees them to communicate and cooperate. Chances are good that you may convince certain people that a particular project or cause improves humankind’s quality of life. Occasionally you persuade them of the importance of protecting the planet’s resources for future generations. Perhaps you help people realize they can accomplish more good as a group than they can as individuals. By nature, you routinely take time to listen to the philosophies of people. You prefer to associate with individuals who share your optimistic outlook on life. You undoubtedly avoid people who complain, gossip, or blame others for their endless misery.

Because of your strengths, you frequently engage in laborious tasks. You yearn to dedicate yourself to worthy causes or noble purposes. Fortifying the bonds between yourself, the people you know, or even those you will never meet gives your life special meaning.

INPUT

Shared Theme Description

People who are especially talented in the Input theme have a craving to know more. Often they like to collect and archive all kinds of information.

Your Personalized Strengths Insights

What makes you stand out?

Instinctively, you usually are quiet during conversations, taking in everything that is said. You are particularly attentive when intelligent people toss about their ideas, theories, or concepts. Often you acquire more information and gain more insights than the speakers do. When you choose to expound on a topic that interests you or pose pertinent questions, many individuals listen carefully to every word you utter. Driven by your talents, you have been described as someone who reads a lot. You probably carry reading material with you just in case you have to wait in line, eat alone, or sit beside a stranger. Because the printed word feeds your mind, you frequently generate original plans, programs, designs, or activities. Chances are good that you are determined to keep abreast of the news. You probably satisfy your hunger for current information by habitually reading newspapers, magazines, correspondence, memos, files, or Internet sites. By nature, you are willing to spend time sharing your ideas with intelligent individuals. Of course, you want them to tell you their latest thinking. Conversations that involve a lot of questions and answers stimulate your mind. You know you have spent your time wisely when you have a number of new ideas, theories, or concepts to somehow file away or remember for future use.

DEVELOPER

Shared Theme Description

People who are especially talented in the Developer theme recognize and cultivate the potential in others. They spot the signs of each small improvement and derive satisfaction from these improvements.

Your Personalized Strengths Insights

What makes you stand out?

By nature, you place more importance on the purpose and value of what you do than on the monetary rewards that accompany success. Because of your strengths, you naturally tune in to the moods of group members. You can read the emotions individuals are experiencing. This increases your chances of responding to the person appropriately and at the right time. It’s very likely that you can ease the tension, anger, and agitation people experience in their dealings with others. You soothe the frayed nerves of individuals. This enables them to act more reasonably. In the process, you affirm their humanity and their dignity. You help numerous people find ways to handle problems without sacrificing their self-respect or eroding the confidence others have in them. Chances are good that you usually put aside what you want to do and even inconvenience yourself to serve others. People probably say you devote yourself to the welfare and interests of many individuals. You routinely put their needs ahead of your own.

LEARNER

Shared Theme Description

People who are especially talented in the Learner theme have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. In particular, the process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them.

Your Personalized Strengths Insights

What makes you stand out?

Instinctively, you have little difficulty giving intense effort to projects, problems, or opportunities that capture and keep your attention. Driven by your talents, you sometimes enroll in difficult or demanding classes. You might aim to expand your knowledge or challenge your thinking about certain things. It’s very likely that you see yourself as a contributing member of the group. You enjoy partnering with intelligent people. You like to exchange information, share observations, or offer tips for doing things more easily, efficiently, or swiftly. You are happiest collaborating with individuals who are not stingy with what they know. You have an ability to figure out how everyone on the team can benefit from each other’s knowledge, skills, experiences, or wisdom. Chances are good that you acquire knowledge more easily when you can talk with others about ideas, concepts, or theories. Thoughts come alive for you when questions are posed and answers are proposed. You have a delightful time thinking out loud and listening to intelligent people express themselves. You naturally document or store in your mind bits and pieces of discussions. You want to refer back to these insights or facts whenever the opportunity presents itself.

POSITIVITY

Shared Theme Description

People who are especially talented in the Positivity theme have an enthusiasm that is contagious. They are upbeat and can get others excited about what they are going to do.

Your Personalized Strengths Insights

What makes you stand out?

By nature, you realize life is good after you have shared your knowledge and skills with novice players, students, teammates, or associates. You probably are most gratified by individuals who want to improve personally or professionally. Because of your strengths, you probably consider yourself an idea person. Your job, studies, or life in general are more exciting when people ask you to generate novel assignments, activities, or campaigns. It’s very likely that you customarily take on additional duties or tasks when you feel optimistic about yourself and your life. Instinctively, you genuinely feel better about life when you can take the mystery out of complicated procedures. Often you outline in detail the steps to understand exactly what is happening and why.

In the summer of 2002, I was promoted from a senior developer to a manager leading a four person team. I was thrilled.

As other technical managers, my thinking was really natural. Since I was promoted, that means my way of doing things was the right way. Now, I just needed to require everybody to behave like myself and my team would be the best!

I failed in no time. It’s impossible to require everybody to behave like myself. I was young and single. Just got my master degree of computer science from a good university. I can adapt to new technologies easily. I can work 12 hours everyday including weekend. All my team mates were married and have family to take care of. They were much older than me. They couldn’t frequently spend their after work time working over time and learning new technologies. And they had their own ways of doing things and learning.

Fine. I would take all the work. Whenever they didn’t know how to do the job, I took over. Gradually, I found this wouldn’t work either since I barely have any free time left. The output of the team was not satisfactory.

I was very strict on every one’s job, maintaining a very high standard. I constantly criticized my team mate’s work and asked them to redo it multiple times. Eventually, I found that they started to ask me for very specific instructions and wouldn’t start the work until they get the instructions. I felt I was exhausted and couldn’t handle it anymore.

Why didn’t they listen to me? Why couldn’t they do the good jobs as I did? Why did they keep asking questions? Why cannot they work independently by themselves?

At my darkest moment as a new manager, I started to question myself. Maybe it’s because ME? Maybe I am not a good manager?

In a Sunday afternoon, I still remembered very clearly, I was visiting one of my best friends. On one of her sofa, lied a little booklet. I picked it up, randomly, and read the title, “How to Win Friends & Influence People”. “Influence People”? That was exactly what I wanted then! There was a BOOK about it? Wow! I started to pick some chapters to read. It blew me away.

At that very day back to home, I ordered this book from Amazon.com, overnight delivery. I finished reading it first time in a week. And about 5-6 times afterwards.

It opened up my eyes about how to effectively interact with other people. The first time, I realized that there are knowledge about relationships with other people and it’s actually a skill that you can learn and master, as other technologies.

Here are all the skills talked in this book. They are exposed as Principles that you need to follow. Violating those Principles may resulting in a disaster in relationships.

Fundamental Techniques In Handling People

• Principle 1: Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
• Principle 2: Give honest and sincere appreciation.
• Principle 3: Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Six Ways to Make People Like You

• Principle 1: Become genuinely interested in other people.
• Principle 2: Smile
• Principle 3: Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
• Principle 4: Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
• Principle 5: Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
• Principle 6: Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.

How to Win People Your Way of Thinking

• Principle 1: The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
• Principle 2: Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, “You’re wrong.”
• Principle 3: If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
• Principle 4: Begin in a friendly way.
• Principle 5: Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.
• Principle 6: Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
• Principle 7: Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
• Principle 8: Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
• Principle 9: Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.
• Principle 10: Appeal to the nobler motives.
• Principle 11: Dramatize your ideas.
• Principle 12: Throw down a challenge.

Be a leader:

• Principle 1: Begin with praise and honest appreciation
• Principle 2: Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly
• Principle 3: Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person
• Principle 4: Ask questions instead of giving direct orders
• Principle 5: Let the other person save face
• Principle 6: Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise. “
• Principle 7: Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
• Principle 8: Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct
• Principle 9: Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggested.

Dale Carnegie was a great public speaker. He conveyed his ideas strongly in this book via vivid examples. Although the book was written several decades ago in 1930s, it is still very applicable to today’s world and circumstances. Just read each principle and think about it. It’s easy to understand why each one of them should work. All are common sense and tap into the deep human nature. They are all simple and straightforward. Easy to put into action.

I learned a great deal from those techniques. However, I found out soon applying those techniques on my team mates didn’t work too well. They soon suspected that I was playing some games with them. The harder I tried, the more suspicious and less cooperative they were. Something was missing here.

My puzzle was resolved when I read Steven Covey’s “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People“. All Dale Carnegie’s techniques are correct and good. But you need to drive them with a sincere heart. Otherwise, people can easily see through your techniques and sense your underline motives.

To really make those techniques work, you need to change yourself first before you even try to change others. You need to adopt some new principles, deeply believe them and communicate them explicitly to people around you. You need to earn people’s trust. They have to believe you are doing all this for mutual benefit and for their own good before they will willingly work with you, Only until them, those techniques will become handy and can smooth out the process. But, not before that.

The matter of fact is people are willing to be led and influenced. People are willing to have someone to help them be a better person and live a better live. You just need to know how to do that.

Remember, change yourself first before change others. Trust come before techniques! Good luck with your journey among people!

Wish everybody a very happy and prosperous Chinese New Year!

In Chinese Zodiac, this year is the Year of Rat. It’s the beginning of the 12 Zodiac. So, this year will be a good new start for all of us. Rat is a smart animal in Chinese culture. We believe the Year of Rat will bring wisdom and success to our life.

May all of you have a happy Year of Rat!