Some useful windows time service commands

By raheem

Difference between w32tm and net time.
Windows 2000 used Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP) and the net time command for time keeping. Windows XP and 2003 uses Network Time Protocol (NTP) and w32tm service for time keeping. As with most MS product, w32tm is backwards compatible.

What time server is being used on a machine?
Check the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Parameters\NtpServer

How to update the time on a system?
w32tm /resync /rediscover

Configure a new time server?
w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:peer /syncfromflags:manual /update
Replace peer with the time server name.

Bear Stearns, PSDs and the Pursuit of Happyness

By raheem

Towards the end of the book, The Pursuit of Happyness author Chris Gardner chronicles the beginnings of his Wall Street career.  One such incident is when he is recruited away from Dean Witter to join Bear Stearns in San Francisco. He is offered a salary and bonus structure that reflects the perfect combination of “security, pressure, and incentive.” On his first day at Bear Stearns he receives a call from Ace Greenberg, the then CEO of Bear Stearns. The following excerpt from the book chronicles the conversation:

His call is to welcome me to Bear Stearns. To which he adds “We want you to know something, Chris Gardner. Bear Stearns was not built by people who have MBAs. Bear Stearns was built by people with PSDs!”

PSDs? I’m stumped.

But before I can ask, Ace Greenberg explains, “PSDs are people who are Poor, Smart, with a deep Desire to become wealthy.” That’s me, to a tee, a PSD. That phone call kicked it all off. It was on.

Reading this story makes the fall of Bear Stearns at once tragic and understandable. The PSD ethos exemplifies  deep ambition and a deeper hunger – the kind of energy that fuels entrepreneurship and capitalism. But its also a double-edged sword that can lead to reckless risk-taking and hubris – and the eventual demise of Bear Stearns.

Are you willing to fight Murphy’s law?

By raheem

I am reading The Pursuit of Happyness by Chris Gardner.  I have watched the movie starring Will Smith several times before and picked up the book from an upper west side dump – luckily for me, its a signed copy. A section of the book caught my attention today.

This is the part where Chris Gardner is trying to become a stock broker. He is facing several obstacles including having no college degree, being black, no industry experience, no connection, and no related skills. These ordinary obstacles are sufficient to break most normal resolve. However Chris faced additional hurdles. He had quit one job when he received an offer to join the training program of a brokerage house. But when he shows up on Monday morning, no one seems to have a clue about why he is there. He finds out that the man who had offered him the position was fired the week before. Around the same time, his wife walked out with his child and left him homeless. As if things could not get worse, the police arrested him just days before an interview at Dean Witter for unpaid parking tickets. Through all this, Chris Gardner was never willing to give up. He refers to those series of events as “the perfect example of Murphy’s Law.” He finally makes it thru the training program, the exam and gets an offer. But his ordeals continue. Here is an excerpt from one of those moments, when he and his son live in a shady motel:

Every now and then, kindness sprang up out of nowhere, and in the least likely places, as it did one evening when we came back to The Palms and one of the sisters working the street approached us. She and her colleagues had seen me and Christopher in the stroller every morning and night and probably figured out our deal. A black man with a little boy in a stroller, a single dad – it wasn’t anything they’d seen before.

“Hey, little player, little pimp,” she said as she came close, a candy bar in her hand to give to Christopher. “Here you go.”

“No, no,” I insisted, maintaining Jackie’s rule against sugar, “he don’t need any candy.”

Christopher, unfortunately, was dissappointed and started to cry. “Don’t cry,” she said and reached down into her magical cleavage and produced a $5 bill, handing that to him.

The same sister and a couple of other ladies of the night started giving Christopher $5 bills on a regular basis. In fact, there were some days when we wouldn’t have eaten without their help. At my hungriest moments, when we were running on empty, I would roll the stroller by their stretch of the sidewalk, on purpose, moving real slow just in case one of the familiar faces were working the street yet. There was a purity in the help these women gave us, with nothing asked in return. Kindess, pure and simple.”

Sometimes that is what entrepreneurship boils down to – a determination to survive and prevail over an unrelenting Murphy’s Law. Are you willing to sign up for such a fight?

Strategic vision is more important than operational chops?

By raheem

The latest issue of Fortune magazine features a list of the most powerful women in business. It includes an interview with Indra Nooyi, the CEO of Pepsico and this year’s chart topper on that list. She mentions something quite striking about a CEO’s ability to run a business versus defining a strategy for the business:

The most overrated skill is “running a business.” To me, the single most important skill needed for any CEO today is strategic acuity. [Former PepsiCo CEO ] Roger Enrico believed that.

When I was going to run the European business in 1996, he said, “I’m pulling that. You’re going to stay back.” I said, “Why? I put my kids in school. I rented a house. Why do you want me to stay back here?” He said, “I can get operating executives to run a P&L. But I cannot find people to help me reconceptualize PepsiCo.” That’s the skill in shortest supply.

Although strategic vision is certainly important, surely it is no more important than the ability to run a business well. One could arguably develop an effective strategy by hiring the best management consultant.  But the really hard stuff involves executing on the strategy within current operations.

One reason Nooyi may value strategy so highly is because of the strategic shift that Pepsico has been involved in during the last 10-15 years. In 1997 then CEO Roger Enrico took the bold step of spinning off the fast food division of Pepsico consisting of Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut. It reduced Pepsico’s revenues by 30%. That followed by acquisitions that included Gatorade, Quaker Oats, etc that has diversified Pepsi into the convenience snack foods business. It has shifted Pepsi’s focus from being a soft-drink and restaurant operator, both of which are highly competitive and low-margin businesses towards an arena where it is the market leader.

Nooyi is continuing that strategic shift by moving Pepsico more into the healthy snacks category. Such major shifts are certainly difficult to pull-off because of the operational challenge of  assimilating large acquisitions. Strategic vision and operational mastery go hand in hand and it speaks highly of Pepsico’s management talent that they are able to execute so well on a good strategy.

Top 5 Tips For Startups On Surviving The Recession

By raheem

Several great companies were born during recessions. HP began at the tail-end of the great depression, SAP and Microsoft were started in the mid 70s recession. And most recently Wikipedia and Google grew out of the recession of the early 2000s. Recessions are a great time to implement turnarounds and prepare for the next upturn. This is the time to implement what I call a recession workout – tactics that can make your startup stronger, faster, better.

Get the Big Picture – your finances, your strengths and the competition
Get a pulse of your startup’s financial health. Are you spending more dollars than you bring in? Can you slow down the burn rate? How many months of cash do you have left? What are your strengths and weaknesses? How are your competitors reacting to the recession? These things can be done on a notepad or thru a week long strategy session. Armed with the relevant data you can now begin to plug the holes and develop a strategy. 

Give your startup an internal overhaul – reduce weakness and build on strengths
Axe unprofitable marketing initiatives. Prioritize product improvements and get your engineering team focused the core strengths. Move your sales team to a more performance based compensation. Reduce the deadweight. If your cash flow situation is dire, take a sobering look at mergers and strategic partnerships. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he streamlined the product line and sought help form long time rival Microsoft – accepting a $150 million cash infusion. At the same time, Jobs invested heavily on software and used Apple’s design skills to create an early win with iMac.

Communicate & motivate – turn your assets into catalysts
Communicate your plan of action to your staff. Recessions are a great booster of productivity. But maintain morale and motivate your staff. Do frequent one-on-ones and be honest with your team. If you need to implement pay cuts – make them temporary and show them what it will take to return to profitability. An entertainment company in LA recently asked its employees to take one unpaid day-off for the rest of summer so that the company could maintain its credit lines. A tough situation was made better when the CEO promised to pay for these unpaid days as soon as business picks up. 

Grow – Find new users and protect existing ones
For every company that goes thru a recession workout, there are many more that remain in denial. This presents an opportunity to gain new market share from your competition. Use tools such as social media for marketing. Equally important is to ensure the satisfaction of your current users. Nurture your user community to reduce your own customer services costs. 

Build your warchest – Find new investors
Approach new investors. Show them the discipline you have implemented and how it is allowing you to remain strong and a better bet for the eventual upturn. They will either invest with you now or keep you in their radar for future investments. 

Note: The above post was written and submitted to Silicon Alley Insider’s free ticket give away for Startup ‘09. No dice. I ended up winning two tickets