Skip to main content

Career Lessons

Some learnings from my career... (an edited version of what I sent to my team)

Two things about trust. Trust is built by solving problems - especially unstated. Find a problem, and a solution and take it to your stakeholders – that builds relationships better than meetings and order taking ever can. And second, trust is reciprocal, always – and that is the only way to build it. Assume Goodwill – trust pays.

Two ways to work – one is to do what one is asked and the second is to go out there and take ownership and deliver. I am a big fan of the second model – and that comes with a risk of putting ourselves out there committing that we will deliver.

Value added work is never given – it is always taken. Value added work has a benefit – it gets you a chance to do more great work. Likewise for other categories.

Don’t befriend TINA. TINA stands for There Is No Alternative – and is the first line of defence to continue entrenched practices.  Always believe that an alternate way is possible especially when you see constraints  - it is also a good belief system to have in life as well – there is always an alternative.

Go put your strengths to work – yours, your teams and everyone has some strength that can be used. A collective force of individual strengths as a team is a far better way to go out there than using papered over weaknesses to appear uniform.

Walls and boundaries are for kingdoms and countries – not in teams. Break every wall you encounter.

While listening is a great skill to have – it is equally important to have a voice on every table – after all that is the reason you have a seat on the table. If seats do not get converted into voices – the seat is wasted. And if you have a seat but no voice, best to give up that seat.

Know your lines and draw them. If you don’t, you will find yourself framed in someone else’s drawing – and that is never a great place to be. Likewise for shoes. Never fill in someone elses shoes. Find your shoes and walk in them.

Never be afraid to ask – because if you never ask, the answer is always no – which is my second favourite line of all time.

And that brings me to the line I live by – which is – you never know until you try…
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Be Civil. Make nice!

Popular posts from this blog

The man who saved Pumpelsdrop

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Zero to One

Zero to One by Peter Thiel is a nice read. (Yes - if I sit down to write a book review - the book has to be worth it - and usually good - so most of my book reviews are about good books.You can stop here if that's the information you seek.) Where this book scores is in contrarian thoughts and contrarian questions that make you think. It starts with a four big lessons learned from the 90s dot-com crash that is, Make incremental advances, Stay lean and flexible, Improve on the competition and Focus on product, not sales. Just as you warm up to it, he says, the opposite rules are more correct - which are: It is better to risk boldness than triviality. A bad plan is better than no plan. Competitive markets destroy profits. Sales matters just as much as products. And finally leaves with a simple definition of contrarianism - it is not to oppose the crowd (or follow a smaller or newer or older crowd) but to think for yourself. "All happy companies are different"...
Post a Comment
Read more

Anti networking year

I dont usually go out of my way to network. But over the last few years, I ensured that I spend some time creating new connections. It is a small fragment of my time that goes into it, but what I realised was that some of those networking events were not really working out. I also took time to post about the things I do (mostly on Linkedin) and here (nobody reads this - this is more of a note to myself).  It seemed to be the same set of people saying the same set of things. So, this year I have decided to step back.  Unless it is a truly unique event, I wont be going to any event - and thats how the unconference happened.  Unless it is a really significant update, I wont be posting about it.  And spend time creating and doing the things I like to do. Perhaps read more. Or write more. It is April now and I have done well so far.  Managed to read a few books. Actively working on a few creations. And then some. Lets see.  So for all I know, I might write less ...
Post a Comment
Read more