Serendipity and Learning

This is the time To put in your share Of work at home, while you work from home Cooking, cleaning, clothes and floor everything is a chore Go you champions, Set an example to the minions Designations dont matter, when life's a scatter Do your part That sets you apart Let your kids see you as a worker shoulder to shoulder Be the role model as you work and yodel All Diversity and inclusivity starts from home Lets do it together in town as we stay in lockdown

I attended two Diversity and Incusivity trainings in the space of about a year. Done by two different vendors. They were exactly the same. And if it had been by a third or a fourth person, it would still be exactly the same. Why? Why are these trainings exactly the same? Why are they unable to think beyond a certain set of topics? I believe it is because people are lazy and dont read enough. The second, perhaps more importantly, is that they believe so strongly in DnI that they believe their conviction will see the day through. And in the process, they end up sounding sanctimonious and all questions are answered with that sanctimoniousness than actual data. The examples that the esteemed people shared were what we read in whatsapp forward 5 years ago. #fail. The so called business case with riddled with fundamental data errors. They said colleges have a 50-50 ratio of men and women. Truth is most colleges dont. A simple google search gives you this data  for IIMs. MBA colleg...

I was talking to a friend who does a lot of work in the Diversity and Inclusivity space and she mentioned to me that a senior executive from a company (MNC) stated "All this diversity work we do here - where is India in it?" This is something I have experienced throughout my working career and now even more so as I interact with companies of different backgrounds. Not one company that I have come across is 'Indian' or has anything Indian. Be it start up, tech firm or captive. Yes, meeting rooms may be named after freedom fighters or Indian rivers or they may celebrate Indian festivals or wear traditional clothes a few times a year or they may have a sculpture in their lobby, but in general, we shy away from anything Indian. If at all there is any reference, it is fairly self deprecatory or apologetic. And I love that question posed by the senior executive. And it is a very good question to ask yourself as you put together your shining new diversity program. Is ...

Diversity is a buzzword these days. Anybody and their uncle are after diversity. If you can talk about diversity, rest assured that you will have an audience that will eat out of your hands. Last week, I met an interesting person who argued that diversity the way we see it  - especially from a gender perspective often just involves making a woman compete in a race where the rules are set by men. His point was that while we talk diversity, we often want the woman to be more like men - driving hard deadlines, setting tasks etc etc. The larger discussion was about masculinity and femininity and perhaps even larger around the 'left' and 'right' brain. And that begets the question - what exactly is diversity. Is it just hiring a few women into the workplace - which is the easiest thing to do - especially when you want to show numbers. But (and this has been my view for a while), is that diversity really resulting in thought diversity? And I dont mean you hire sociopat...