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Last week, i was speaking with Chris Fleck, VP and Technical Fellow at my organization. The conversation was around careers, how they evolve, what works and what doesn't. If we divide careers into 2 halves- one being the early to mid-stage and second being post mid-life, it would be fair to say that comparatively, it is easier to succeed in the first half than the second. In the first half, armed with the shiny college degrees (that largely prepares us to become good to solve the problems individually), one tends to solve technical problems of reasonable difficulty and in it find satisfaction and growth. In the second, the metrics of success takes a dramatic shift and while individual brilliance is taken as a given, success is often driven by how we manage relationships and people, and how we embrace complexity- among other things. That's why picking Chris's brains on this subject was enlightening for me as only a handful of people traverse through to the peak of technical ...

In January, I h ad the privilege of listening live to Michael Phelps, an Olympics legend (23 Olympic Gold medals, 28 medals overall) at Citrix Summit in Orlando. hashta # CitrixSummit . Thank you hashtag Sharing some nuggets of wisdom he shared during an inspirational panel talk: On Goal setting: 1. Broken down goals to 100th of a second. 2. I wasn't afraid to dream as big as I could. 3. You don't know what you can do unless you dream and do On importance of practice: 4. Practice is what you control. 5. I made sure I was over prepared. 6. If I prepare one more day a week, I get 52 more days a year than anyone else. On raising the bar higher consistently: 7. Stay at top is harder than reaching top. 8. Help each other become better. I couldn't have done what I did all by myself. 9. Attitude: If I fall short, I will come back stranger. 10. Learn from losses. On focus: 11. When I stand up on block, I can't see anyone. Just focus on next step. 12. Music helped me focus...

"After School Snacks"- this is how the title of a routine email reads in my apartment mailing list. A couple of friends of ours started this service where they offer snacks to the kids after they come from school in the evening around 3:30 PM-4:00 PM. From what i hear, they are sold-out on most of the days. On thinking about it, the reason i feel this initiative has worked is because school kids are hungry when they reach and most of the families have both parents working, hence it is a convenient option for them to give instructions to the care-taker of kids to get these snacks (which are healthy) and give to kids. If i really think hard i tend to converge on a single reason why they are successful. "After School Snacks" focus is laser-sharp. Their target-market is crystal clear- kids returning from school. Their delivery timings are set. Their menu is aligned to target audience. They addressed a very specific need. I was reading the book- Platform Revolution – How...

Not so long ago, Google researchers set out on a project code-named Project Aristotle - a tribute to Aristotle’s quote, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts". Their goal was to answer the question: “ What makes a team effective at Google? ” The key findings from Google's research can be found here . For the rest of this article, I want to focus on one of the 5 findings that this study brought forward about building an effective team, Here goes: Psychological safety: Psychological safety refers to an individual’s perception of the consequences of taking an interpersonal risk or a belief that a team is safe for risk taking in the face of being seen as ignorant, incompetent, negative, or disruptive. In a team with high psychological safety, teammates feel safe to take risks around their team members. They feel confident that no one on the team will embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea. In other words ,...

Work doesn't speak for itself. These are some of the lines i recently read in Austin Kleon's book-'Show Your Work'. I will share a couple of stories that ran through my mind on reading this: First one.... A while ago, during my early days as a manager (i am no longer a practicing manager), i had one reportee, lets call him Amit. Amit had a belief that I do a great work (which was true) and he also believed that if i continue doing good work, my work will be eventually heard and i will get my due. Second one... One of the Innovation programs that i lead in my current organization is the Technology Fair. This program has a high visibility demo day where execs participate and review the demos. Great demos that align with business and project value and impact for the organization gets rewarded and lucky amongst those wins prizes under different categories. In the build-up to this event, I plan impactful demo presentation trainings and subsequently the demo pitch practice se...

I recently listened to the 'Play to Potential' podcast , in which Deepak Jayaraman hosted Suresh Narayanan, the Chairman and MD of Nestle India. Among many things that they discussed, one of the questions Deepak asked Suresh was his advise to younger generation that is joining the workspace. Deepak shared these 5 points: 1. Work to your strengths. 2. Work with commitment. Work with passion. 3. Don't keep looking across your shoulder (don't compare). When you take away the fear of being as good as someone else, you become successful. In a world of diverging paths, it doesn't make sense to compare with how your peers are doing or your cohort at work. 4. Have courage to speak up or speak out, especially when things are going wrong. 5. Work for your people - I succeed because of strength and competence of people around me, irrespective of the size of organization. If you take care of your people, they take care of you. These are all actionable and well-intentioned point...

I had written about my earlier meeting with Utkarsh Rai that i wrote about here . We had an interaction again recently and that led me to a few more learnings. After have a successful professional career, Utkarsh decided to disrupt his life in the spirit of exploring the unknown and improving himself. After leaving his job as Managing Director of Infinera India (he wrote 3 books during this tenure), he became a certified coach and also took courses in acting and recently acted in a high profile Bollywood movie with a renowned director and actor. That is what i call as 360 degrees disruption. Simply put, it is excelling in a totally unrelated field in a very short timeframe possible. In my span, i haven't seen any corporate leader of a large organization making such a dramatic shift in profession, in such a short time. This actually reminded of something very riveting i read a while back. It was about Max Deutsch, a Chess novice who challenged Magnus Carlsen , the greatest chess pla...

I recently drive a presentation for the work/project i am involved in executing. It was for an audience that did not have much inkling about the project. To establish a connect with people, i tried and gave some analogies about the building block of the project i.e. the APIs.  Wikipedia definition of API is: In computer programming, an application programming interface (API) is a set of subroutine definitions, communication protocols, and tools for building software. In general terms, it is a set of clearly defined methods of communication among various components. For anyone unaware about APIs, the above definition can turn out to be quite overwhelming. So i resorted to giving analogies to explain the concept.  I picked these up from this thoughtful  a16z podcast. Analogies for describing an API: #1. Door of the house. Software is the house and door is the one that gives you access to all that's inside. #2. Say you are building a castle (analogous to software product) an...

This one's really a blast from the past. I had attended a Leadership Summit back in 2010, which had a positive impact on me. I remember this conference for a couple of reasons. First reason was obvious- various sessions at this conference were chaired was industry leaders including a few luminaries. In addition to the learnings i gathered , it was a sort of fan boy moment to hear them live. A more inconspicuous  reason was related to my note taking skills. I remember that I managed to note most of the stories and key points I gathered in this conference. It may sound like a routine thing to many and you may wonder why I feel proud about it. I have a perspective on this and I wish to share it here. I feel note-taking is one of the most underrated yet most effective skills. The fact that almost 9 years later I am reproducing my learnings via this blog is a reason enough to consider note taking as a serious skill. Without these notes, I may have had these learnings hidden at some corn...