Writing can help clarify and polish your VISION!

Background: Take some time-off and write/publish Blogs.

This is going to be my first article on Linked IN, so I will try to make it concise.

We know technical resources in the field of Information Technology are extensively involved in various projects and deadline tasks on daily basis and hardly get time out of their hectic schedule for anything else, even interaction with family and friends gets rare with time; sometimes it’s the extent of involvement and passion to accomplish certain technology or domain knowledge which decides when you take time out from work.

In addition to this present-day technology has introduced various diverse tools in the form of mobile apps on smartphones/tablets and other gadgets which keep us engaged with work-environment even when we’re miles away from workplace. In my opinion every now and then (may be once in a month or two) we should at least take some time-off from our stressed work schedules and use the same tools to write articles and blogs.

Writing can give you clear VISION:

Yes, Writing articles & blogs can help one clarify goals and focus thoughts at times and clarify VISION.

From writing; I mean to convey what’s in your mind into an article or blog that purely represents yourself. I can be simply an idea, observation, concept, positive suggestion or just any variant of your thinking etc. in you’ve to do some brain-exercise. It doesn’t mean to open Google or any other search engine and look for results to copy/paste & post. In case if you had to depend on search engines to get some content or inspiration then always try to give credit to those who should be recognized of their thoughts.

I know it will be hard initially to take some time-out, but if you develop a practice of writing articles/blogs in some kind of frequency, it will help you to think (and get clarity) about your direction of life, where you are going towards or being dragged.. and where you wish or want to go!

Some basic guidelines to review:

Well you can get various articles online that can help you guide how to format and distribute your content into various meaningful section while blogging, I would like to give some guidelines from my experience:

1- Everyone should have a GOAL with some milestones in life; similarly there has to be a goal or purpose while writing something, without setting a goal we can’t get focused and our work or life will be governed by external factors/demands/influences more than ourselves.

2- Obviously before writing something, one should be a good reader as well. Reading doesn’t merely mean to start at the beginning and going through word-by-word; one can adjust reading pattern and behavior and adapt various reading strategies.

3- Try to write in the field you belong to or have practical experience in, this will help you write about something you know. One of the many reasons I started writing is; I used to find lots of articles with incorrect or irrelevant information in them, so I thought I should write on the same topic myself with my angle of view and add the key points I felt were missing.

4- It also helps in beginning, if you try to ask someone in your colleagues or friends to review your writing and give you suggestions for improvement.

So I urge readers to start and try to make a habit of writing articles/blogs; do not hesitate from mistakes or how much time and editing you may have to put in or how people will criticize your blogs, trust me if that happens it will give you more chances to polish yourself in lesser-time.

 

Thanks and Peace,
Nabeel Shahid (NabeelShahid.com)

An insight to Employee Motivation (building Team Spirit) for effective Managers!

Employee motivation (Intrinsic motivation) can be one of the challenging tasks for an effective Manager; it needs continuous efforts and inter-personal skills in order to truly motivate your employees or a team of resources as motivation doesn’t last long.

Keeping your employees organized at work can be achieved through a process-oriented approach, but getting employees engaged at work and evolving a sense of interest in employees at work requires different level of skills and efforts.

 

Motivation Generates Quality:

Motivation drives quality of work, no matter how much talented or skillful your employees are but without true motivation they cannot produce quality work at regular intervals. For an effective manager creating quality work is an excellence, now the definition of quality work various depending to job role and industry.

Is it a One-Time Job?

Motivation is not a one-time job, it needs continuous efforts and requires re-evaluation after a while with time. With the changes in employees’ life (lifestyle) or level of maturity or experience; factors that motivates an employee are most likely to change, so an effective manager needs to keep re-evaluating these factors that can help his/her employees motivated at work.

There may be many tips and tricks for a manager to help achieve employee motivation, but I’m just putting some of them based on my experience.

1- Share the BIG picture

Sharing the BIG picture with employees help them visualize how they are contributing to organization goals. Obviously not all employees can grasp it clearly but that doesn’t mean that managers hide the BIG perspective from employees or teams. To perform better employees need clear correlation between their efforts and objectives (success) of organization.

This doesn’t mean that Managers keeps on discussing the BIG picture in each and every team meeting with employees; it just needs to be shared with employees but not a recursive topic as it will de-track them from short-term goals or project milestones.

2- Discuss Combined goals and achievements as a team

After organizational goals, managers should also discuss team goals and achievements with employees; to clarify where they all stand as a unit (team).

Not all employees perform same; every employee has it’s own capacity and motivation level that drives him/her at work. That is why to effectively manage employees in a team instead of selecting an individual employee’s failure, managers should discuss failures as generic as possible in a group discussion or team meeting. In addition to this replacing the words like “I“, “You” with “We” really helps in communication with struggling team members.

3- Focus on leadership by setting examples, instead of micro-management

Due to time-constrains, when results are not coming up as expected some Managers switches to micro-management mode to control efforts of employees. To me micro-management is not an efficient way of dealing with situations; rather it can bring long-term effects and dis-satisfaction in employees.

Micro-management brings negative impacts and restricts an employees growth as well, spending more time with employees and inspire them with leadership and initiating of sense competition among employees is a better approach to solve various issues.

In addition to this, it’s important to evaluate employee motivation level and issues using one-to-one meeting sessions and address them accordingly. Obviously Managers in their role cannot resolve all kind of problems, but by using their experience managers can help employees guide and if required become a bridge by putting relevant issues to next level for resolution.

4- Be transparent to employees

Effective Managers are transparent to their employees to gain trust. False urgency or deadlines are a huge deterrent to morale and easy way to lose credibility. Sometimes with being transparent with employees; Managers also needs to be flexible..in today’s world, a modern workplace can be mobile and virtual, which gives tremendous opportunities for companies to scale without expanding office locations.

So for an effective managers, first it’s important to find out what factors motivates each employee or team member, then apply above generic suggestions to keep them motivated in order to product quality results.

 

 

Thanks for reading,
Nabeel Shahid (NabeelShahid.com)

SQL Server Machine and AntiVirus / AntiMalware and other malware scanning applications.

The purpose of this article is to enlist recommended items that needs to be excluded from AntiVirus or AntiMalware scanning software’s on server machine where Microsoft SQL Server is installed.

This can also help improve the overall SQL Server performance, these items will apply to both realtime and on-demand scanning schedules configuration.

1. SQL Server Data & Log Files (You need to look for files with extensions like .MDF, .NDF, .LDF)

2. SQL Server Backup files (You need to look for files with extensions like .BAK and .TRN)

3. Full-Text Catalog Files (This is the FTData folder in the SQL Server installation path, located by default at \Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQLX.X\MSSQL\FTData on the SQL Server installation drive)

Please do check each MSSQLX.X folder, there will be multiple FTData folders which need to be excluded from antivirus scanning

4. SQL Server Analysis Services Backups Files (Recommended is to exclude entire Directory that is holding Analysis Services files that is used for processing Cubes)

Note: If Analysis Services are not configured, the OLAP folder will not be present.
These locations contain the Analysis data files, Analytics temporary files, Analysis Log files and Analysis backup files. The default locations for these files on the SQL Server installation drive are:
\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSASX.X\OLAP\Data – Analysis data and temporary files.
\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSASX.X\OLAP\Backup – Analysis backup files.
\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSASX.X\OLAP\Log – Analysis Log files.

5. Trace/Profiler Files (You need to look for files with extensions like .TRC)

6. SQL Server Query Files (Extensions like .SQL)

7. Exclude SQLServer.Exe file, ReportingServicesService.Exe, MSMDSrv.exe application files

• %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.<Instance Name>\MSSQL\Binn\SQLServr.exe
• %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.<Instance Name>\Reporting Services\ReportServer\Bin\ReportingServicesService.exe
• %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.<Instance Name>\OLAP\Bin\MSMDSrv.exe

8. Cluster Directory (Usually it is C:\Windows\Cluster)

9. SQL Server Audit Files (You need to look for files with extensions  like .sqlaudit)

Thanks for reading,
NabeelShahid.com