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We live in a consumption economy. The whole digital revolution seems to built on the premise to offer the contents (in the form of news, updates from friends, images, videos etc.) to us as effortlessly as possible. We now have smartphones that are 24x7 content broadcasting machines. As a result of this, human beings are always in content consumption mode. While access to information is good in one way (it has made us more aware) but largely it has also robbed conciseness from the day-to-day communication. The emails tend now to be longer, verbal updates muddled up and our white-boards more busier than they have ever been. One of the pieces of writing that recently inspired me was the blog-  Create less, Consume more  by Tanmay Vora. Sharing couple of pieces of advise from this blog: Consume mindfully by  having right set of filters  that help you decide if something will *really* add value and increase your ability to create.  When you consume mindfully, less is...

It has to be a special day when you get to moderate a session with two champion Olympians. I got this privilege last week when the former Olympians Viren Rasquinha (Former captain Indian Hockey team) and Neha Aggarwal (First Indian female Olympian for Table Tennis) visited my organization (Citrix). Left to Right: Viren Rasquinha, Anuj Magazine, Neha Aggarwal I have been personally supporting Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ) for a long time. OGQ's mission is to enable athletes to win Gold medals for India at Olympics. Citrix supports OGQ as well. After meeting with Viren and Neha, we had organized an employee interaction session with them. Till the last minute, I wasn't aware that I would be moderating the session so it was a sort of last minute plan. But eventually it turned out to be a good one. Some lively conversations and candid stories from their sporting careers kept the audience engaged, entertained and spellbound. Sports has this unique power that makes comprehension of lif...

Sharing more perspectives on the core career principles taking the sequence from  my previous blogs ( this and this )  forward: 5. Focus on managing relationships: There are a few skills that are as much force multipliers in your career as is managing relationships well. On this subject, I am reminded of my post at techwell.com , which i will reproduce here: While leadership and management are traditionally thought of top-down, there is a lesser-known aspect of leadership that's  referred to as "managing up."  Managing up allows you to positively influence the boss—or even the boss’s boss. Few people consider this aspect of leadership as a skill and therefore fail to make necessary connections with bosses. How do tech leaders manage upwards? In his book  Behind the Cloud , salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff talks about his relationship with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison during his tenure at Oracle. "I had many long conversations with my boss, Larry Ellison, about ...

Sharing more perspectives on the core career principles taking the sequence from my previous blog forward: 3. Embrace Intrapreneurship : Despite all the attention that entrepreneurs gets, it is arguably not possible for all of us to become one. There could be myriad of reasons for this but many of us consciously find our calling in working for the organizations. If an entrepreneur creates a vision, it's the employees who make it a reality. So this choice is absolutely fine and legitimate. Source:  https://christopherwaldner.com/defining-intrapreneurship/ Being an employee doesn't mean that you cannot exercise the traits that make an entrepreneur. In my career journey, I discovered that one can embrace those traits anytime at work and create a dent in the universe surrounding your organization. Simply put, Intrapreneurship is the act of behaving like an entrepreneur while working within a large organization. I am reminded for a story that I had narrated in one of my previous blo...

In the Career Stories Panel Discussion at my organization last week , I was asked this question: "a couple of weeks back you mentioned about some core career principles that have worked for you" I thought it would be apt to articulate some of the principles I shared. Before I delve into the principles, it bears stating explicitly these principles are mostly a work of recollection based on the key phases/events of my career. Of course, I do have a  benefit of hindsight in sharing these but I do sincerely hope these helps you in navigating your career.  I will try and answer this in multi-part blogs. Below is the part-1 on this subject. 1. Learning ability vs Learning agility: When i started my career, I was told by my early managers, team leads that your growth in IT industry is directly proportional to your ability to quick learn and grasp new concepts. I recall we used to get measured on how quickly were we able to learning a new technology, or a work item and deliver on the...

Why do you write ? This was one of the questions put forward by the moderator during the  career stories panel discussion recently. To be honest, I didn't anticipate this question being asked. I did respond to it then but felt like I should elaborate on it by means of this blog. My reasons to write have evolved over the years. This blog has been in existence for more than 10 years now. I recall that when I started I was doing my bit towards sharing the experience I was gaining. At that time, it was focused mostly for sharing perspectives on software engineering. As I grew in my thinking, so did the list of topics I wrote about. I have to be honest in sharing that I didn't stop during this time to ponder 'Why do i really write ?'. Though the frequency of my blogs remained inconsistent, I did develop a sort of internal clock which periodically nudged me to consider writing. These internal nudges greatly contributed to the continuity of these blogs and my other writing end...