Serendipity and Learning

Scott Galloways point that " Follow your passion" is bad advice somewhat resonated with me and I set thinking about it. I agree with him broadly. It took me a long time to realise what is my passion. And I realised that my passion is a stack - and has a couple of things at the core.  For one, I had to do something that was difficult for me - speaking in public in front of people and training them. It was through a fairly complex route that I reached here. This was neither natural not did I have a flair for it - it was pure effort and practice of getting better at it. It was also a derivative of something else - since I am not a natural speaker nor an extrovert.  The starting point was the design element of the training which I enjoy the most.  I remember from school times - I would read Brand Equity - the Economic Times supplement on advertising. And the creative side of advertising attracted me. But marketing was not something I was sure I enjoyed, so that fell by the waysi

Here is a list of books I enjoyed in this year. Most of the books I liked are here. I generally read non-fiction and do a lot of reading in the course of my work - in fact it is one component where my work and my passion intersects. I read fiction when it is recommended by a few people on whom I rely. So, a shortish list of the books I read in 2020. Note to myself (need to do a better job of tracking this list) To start with, Loonshots is a fantastic read on what it takes to create something truly innovative.  From the Beginning of Time - is a brilliant attempt to decode ancient Indian stories (Puranas) and map them to current day science. The Great Mental Models and Superthinking - something I read when I had to speed up my knowledge on mental models.  On Writing well - a book on writing that lives up to its promise.  Creative Selection - a fantastic book on designing a product/s.  Banaras - the city of Light - a book that makes me want to go back to Varanasi sometime! Unusual Billion

 Caveat: I tend to suffer from a bit of narrative fallacy .  As I read Upstream, I couldn't help but think how Learning and Development in any organization has to reinvent itself more and more as an Upstream process than a Downstream process.  It is something most LnD professionals know - that LnD has to be proactive, not reactive or that LnD must solve problems before they appear. But alongwith however, one question LnD often ends up discussing is about the metrics and there never seems to be any agreement on what metrics LnD should deploy since most of the metrics being looked at "reactive". Reactive metrics cannot work on Proactive work.  Upstream has many business, social, consumer and other examples of upstream thinking. As someone who is deeply passionate about the LnD process, I felt this is a must read for all of us to understand how to see the Org. And perhaps more importantly enable our stakeholders to embrace the Upstream view of LnD as well.  Would love to hea