KACHARAGADLA

Wise businesspeople and leaders listen carefully. They listen to their peers, they listen to their staffs and they listen to their friends and family. Carefully listening is especially important during business meetings. Many managers and leaders act as though they’re listening to their teams when they’re not. Often, the words spoken in meetings fall on deaf ears. Listening is an art, after all, and not everyone knows how to do it properly. But if you can master the art of listening, you’ll improve your leadership and business skills. A wise business leader knows how to listen and actually hear what others are saying. Epictetus, the Greek philosopher wrote: “We have two ears and one mouth -- for a good reason.” It’s more important to listen than it is to talk most of the time. How else can you learn about what needs to be done to improve a situation? No one ever stops growing and evolving in his or her business and one of the ways to learn is by listening to others. Ask

Respect is something not automatically given. It must be earned. When you’re in a leadership position, it is imperative that the people with whom you work respect you. They might respect your work habits, your intelligence, or your ability to close a deal. Yet, there’s more to respect than that. If you can earn their respect as a person,  then   you’ve really won the game. Here are some tips for earning more respect. 1. Be polite. Always be polite to  everyone  you meet during the day, from your family members to your co-workers, to the checkout person at the grocery store. Give others the same respect you’d like to receive yourself. Seek out actions you can take to offer politeness. Open the door at the coffee shop for the person behind you, or let the person with one item go ahead of you in the grocery store. Say please and thank you whenever possible. 2. Act respectfully. Eliminate disrespectful behaviors such as rolling your eyes, interrupting or talking negatively ab

Reports of the death of performance reviews are exaggerated IN RECENT months the business press has reverberated with cheers for the end of performance reviews. “Performance reviews are getting sacked,” crows the BBC. They “will soon be over for all of us”, rejoices the  Financial Times . Such celebration is hardly surprising. Kevin Murphy, a performance-review guru at Colorado State University, sums up the general feeling about them: an “expensive and complex way of making people unhappy”. The problem is, they are not in fact being scrapped. A survey in 2013 by Mercer, a consulting firm, of 1,000 employers in more than 50 countries reported that 94% of them undertook formal reviews of workers’ performance each year and 95% set individual goals for employees; 89% calculated an overall score for each worker and linked pay to these ratings. It is true that a number of big companies have announced that they are abandoning annual performance reviews; this month IBM did so, joining

The  iPhone SE  launches next week giving  Apple   AAPL +0.11%  fans the upgraded 4-inch smartphone they’ve long craved. But a beast will follow it…    The beast in question is the ‘iPhone 7 Pro’, a new 5.5-inch flagship device that will sit above both the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus when the three phones are released in September. It’s calling card? A  revolutionary dual lens camera . And now MacRumors  claims  to have attained the first photo of it. As you might expect for a device not due to be released 6 months, I suspect we’re looking at a prototype here but it ties in with the  growing consensus that the iPhone 7 models will carry over much of the iPhone 6/6S design. iPhone 7 Pro leaked photo (left) and matching Feld & Volk render (right). Image credits: MacRumors and Feld & Volk Interestingly the discovery has also prompted aftermarket iPhone modification company  Feld & Volk  to release its own iPhone 7 Pro renders. This paints a far more compelling p

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has planned to set up two manufacturing plants in India and the company would be launching more devices in 2016. The president of Xiaomi has said he would be spending a lot of time in India analysing the market. "We believe it (China) will be a flat market, if not, even decline," said Bin Lin, co-founder and president at Xiaomi. "We talked to Foxconn about opening two new factories, they are in discussions with some of the provinces (states)," the 48-year-old former Microsoft and Google executive added. Headquartered in Beijing, China, Xiaomi is the world's fourth largest smartphone maker. Xiaomi designs, develops, and sells smartphones, mobile apps, and related consumer electronics.

Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu met London Stock Exchange CEO Nikhil Rathi during his visit to London on first day. The Chief Minister held a discussion on financial district and development of world-class infrastructure in Amaravati with its representatives. Mr. Rathi informed Mr. Naidu that more than 500 companies with a total market capitalisation of $ 2 trillion were listed on the LSE. Mr. Rathi offered to work with the State government to help raise funds for Amaravati. During a meeting with representatives from Canary Wharf, the Chief Minister invited them to be partners in the development of Amaravati. Canary Wharf, being a major business district in the United Kingdom, he asked the delegation to adopt best practices to make Amaravati a hub of bustling financial activity. Later, the Chief Minister and his team participated in a presentation on UK smart city expertise. Greater London Authority, RICS, Aecom, Benoy, Arup, Mott MacDonald, Mace, Gleeds, Catapult, S

According to latest google trends, the country that has the maximum interest in angel investing after US, is none other than India. This should come as no surprise as the investment made in early stage companies at US$ 7 billion is almost 60% higher than in 2014 in the wake of unprecedented growth of entrepreneurial activity across India. This steep growth has of course created its own set of problems. While the availability of funds for startups has increased, there is also some confusion among first time entrepreneurs, many of them in their early twenties, about what the goal post really is for startups. Fuelled by media hype about huge fund raises by India’s unicorns, raising funding has become the end point rather than the means to build a sustainable and successful startup. This is really a dangerous trend and can lead to increasing number of failed startups. Not to mention, lost time and opportunities for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs who are currently in the midst of buil