Are you Hungry??

Hunger is to want more…to achieve more...to perform more...to explore more

Look around yourself and you might find people hungry for knowledge, right opportunity  and other such intangible and worthy experiences .No wonder why Rashmi Bansal  titled her book ,”Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”!! Letting yourself want something will keep you hungry and realizing that you haven’t all that knowledge required will keep you foolish and this would end up in a success story…

When you find a profile updated on a portal, the first things which strikes you is a job seeker. But honestly it’s not always that though the idea of being successful is always at the back of one’s mind and we all in one way or the other are trying to settle our careers northwards. Looking for a job change is a career decision and many time job interviews however good, tricky or difficult they might be, is not right way to decide on this life changing event. I find many people changing jobs for reasons they themselves are not convinced and by the time they realize it’s too late even to run the ‘Rat Race’. For though we look forward for a bright career but wrong move makes us end up with a job. Now why do we attempt to jeopardize our future and just like me and you there are many others who would not like to re-invent the wheel

There is a section of our society who keeps itself updated with the general happenings in and around through different media and they are people who yet hungry but believe in ‘Better be safe than sorry ‘.And what they miss is the first hand experience on that risk. What would have happened if?? And this ‘if’ most of the times remains unanswered. Again the question is “What’s more important and is it worth it?”

So whether or not you a job hopper…

Whether or not you have an appetite for risk…

Whether or not your love your work…

You still are hungry!!

Interesting on an average we would agree that we not just crave for information but also self assessment and further the best option we find for the same is job interviews. Have come across people attending interviews in order to assess their knowledge though job change is not always the real reason. Frankly, what are the other options??But job interviews too cannot be an ideal way for such discussions. A typical interview will always revolve around the specific requirement and it hardly will let an attendee explore his/her grey areas. In such formal discussions we land up only to know what the other party requires and not what our capability is. So here the need was understand your strengths and analyse your past decisions but on the contrary you either land up with a job offer without still exploring those untouched areas or with an unsatisfied and confused feeling of what went wrong?.Ironically we never come to know the right answer.

You are always looking forward to conversation on similar frequencies as yours. There is always a need to let people know,”what you did last summer”. It’s always welcoming to know that there are people travelling in same boat and you are not a loner. Appreciation coming from your fraternity counts more that from unknown.

plugHR knows just how to do it. …

We brings ‘Career Café’ in different cities for the HR folks who believe they are hungry and what can satisfy it better than ‘good food of discussions’. Catching others for a casual coffee break will not just bring you out of your dilemmas and inhibitions but also a clearer picture of your inside, one you have been seeking and longing for.

So next time when you are hungry, let’s catch up for a coffee!!

My Tryst with Distance Running

It’s 5am on a Sunday morning, a God forsaken hour for most of Mumbai.. What am I doing? Donning my running gear to hit NCPA for a 15km run. Not a jog… a run.

Who am I? Entrepreneur, Head of User Experience at plugHR, mother of 2, artist.. What the hell am I doing, you wonder? I am training for the Mumbai Marathon, due in January 2013. And… I run with a 300+ strong group, all in their mid-40s (I am not necessarily talking about myself here!); all running enthusiasts, not sportspersons.

My initiation into distance running was a freak accident. However, I never, in my wildest dreams, thought of it as such a life changer.

Distance running, in as much as it's a physical sport, is also a mind game. It is a play of mind over body, a willing mind over an unwilling body if you will. The mind is setting a seemingly unrealistic goal for the body to deliver.

What does it take for the mind and body to deliver on this goal? To break it down simply, I will say:

BELIEVE – ACHIEVE – BELIEVE more

BELIEVE you are upto the task, believe in the training you are putting in.

Then ACHIEVE intermediate goals, win some mind battles,

Hence BELIEVE some more that you will achieve the bigger goal too.

So, when you smoothly run 5km without major heartburn, you convince yourself that another 3k is not such a big deal, so on and so forth.

Its not all smooth sailing mind you. There is the occasional calf pain, knee pain, twist in the ankle, there are bad running days, there is bad weather, there are shoe bites, there are late nights, and there are bad terrains.  At times, the body simply refuses to take direction. Be kind it says!

Therein lies another lesson… very early on, it is amply clear to any runner, that a good run is just that - ONE good run. You understand that “Past performance is no guarantee of future return”. If and when you begin to become smug in your achievements, nature very quickly deals a sobering effect. So, you learn to take each day as it comes. Each run is “the” run, each run has its own outcome. There is no time to celebrate one good run, and no time to gloat over a bad one. You just basically get on with it!

Of course, this also takes other kinds of preps:

1.    There are the groaning and back breaking stomach crunches, knee exercises,  pushups – yes, those too!
2.      .    Don’t forget, the carbohydrate loading, throwing all weight loss dietary habits to the winds
3.     And then, and this is the tough part, no partying late into the night, watching the booze intake, watching meal times (all the boring stuff)

The focus always being on conditioning the mind and body to endure the rigors of training and the mental and physical strain you are about to inflict on them.

Why endure all of this you ask? Well, the buzz and the adrenalin rush that you experience on crossing the finish line, with breaths to spare, are altogether something else!

So - and here is where I get philosophical - are there lessons here to use in a corporate setting? The lesson, to my mind, is in the area of performance management, goal setting, motivation.

·      How do we create an environment where people are able to experience and live out the cycle of BELIEVE – ACHIEVE – BELIEVE more?

·      How can rewards and recognition be fine-tuned to not only pat a good run on a bad day but also support a bad run of an otherwise smart runner?

·      How do we put enough stress on fortification while all the hype is on the run?

Would love to hear view on some of these.. 

Writer is Entrepreneur, running enthusiast, artist.

Employees on Social Media?? ....Are you losing sleep??

Social Media at the workplace HAS to be the biggest dilemma facing CEOs today. Are these to be viewed as a bane or should they be embraced as superb tools for collaboration.

There are too many questions and not many easy answers.

For one, what should the policy be on use of Facebook at the workplace? If permitted, should usage be monitored? If not, is this a policy that can be enforced? And do you risk alienating employees rather than boosting their productivity? 

What about Linked-in? How do you view employee profiles? Are these threats to the organisation or are they marketing tools that showcase your company and its talent?

The collaborative powers of social media in cultural and marketing contexts are well known and do not require reiterating here. That it can unleash the true potential of an organisation through seamless collaboration and sharing between employees is an idea that's biding its time. 

While companies are increasingly articulating their social media strategy for customers, not enough attention has yet been given to social media for employees. 

A Report by McKinsey Global Institute argues that companies could improve productivity of "interaction workers" by 20 - 25% through improved collaboration and communication using social technologies. To my mind, however, there are some basic building blocks in getting there:

1. Does the organisation have a truly open and trusting culture and does it have the bandwidth to engage with employees in a democratic setup?

2. Is social media an entrenched management and communication tool within the company or just another dashboard available on the company's intranet?

3.  Does the top management truly embrace social media or looks at it only as an internal "PR" tool?

So where are you on all of this? Do you have the stomach for it???