ZEN@WORK Through Mentorship!

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give - Winston Churchill

Above can be applied to Mentorship even in today’s Corporate millennial world ! I was one among the 8 mentees in 2011 Group Mentoring Program(GMP) by Sukumar Rajagopal(SVP, CIO & Head of Innovation at Cognizant).We were asked to come up with impossible goals for the year as the first step. (What it means!: Achieving 65% of the impossible is better than 100% of the ordinary - I have tried to cover the entire GMP program 2011 and my learnings in a single blog of readable size - Yet another impossible goal ) Here we go

To brief the year long mentorship program in short

• We had to come up with Top 3 goals for the year and had to beat it by 2X!
  
• Clear Implementation Plan to be drafted and reviewed with buddies and tracked year long
  
• Head fake Learning’s evolved in this journey of reaching our goals.
  
• We eight of us (Hari and Senthil, Sanjay and Saransh, Karthee and Aditya and Veena and myself - divided into 4 buddy pairs) met every fortnight for 90 mins at Sukumar’s cabin from Jan to Nov ’11.
  
• The sessions were so designed that changes occurred in us unconsciously and intrinsically

Below we shall cover on my top 5 head fake learnings from my mentorship journey.
Vision: Beginning of the GMP we were asked to come up with goals(to achieve 2X) for the year. This helped me draft a common vision for the whole team. Take aways around this were

• Aim for 2X – This thought process helps us think on newer lines and most likely we achieve atleast 1.5X than conventional 1X
  
• Draft a common Vision for the entire team – Ex. TCOE Implementation in a Testing Team
  
• Divide and conquer – Goals were subdivided among team leads/members to accomplish overall goal

Focus: Once you have a vision next is to Focus, focus and focus !! Key takeaways

• To think and dream of our goals in 2011. Aligning one's own yearly Performance appraisal goals, Department goals and own personal goals help focus more.
  
• Tailor on initiatives that do not fall under your goals and attend meetings only in which you can contribute or see if it can be delegated

Influence without Power: With a vision and focus next is to influence the teams we work with without using power Key take aways here were

• Power of expectations: Works wonders. Believe that your team would perform and trust them and they would. Its like the power of reflection!
  
• Collaboration: Reusing tools, techniques from other, reaching out to communities for help and giving them the visibility for their efforts
  
• Adopt a growth mindset: Give the team enough of time and they will indeed surprise you. Believing that the team will definitely grow past previous mistakes with the intention to learn does help

iLeadership: The next step of maturity in this path was to attain an iLeadership environment in the team. Head fake here were

• Engagement by enquiry: To adopt an approach of questioning and encourage a community feel than a hierarchical feel. Thanks to Sanjay’s workshops.
  
• Providing visibility to our subordinates with the Leadership team
  
• Get into Details: Apart from delegating also to ensure that the team is well equipped to complete by getting into the details.
  
• Upward Delegation: An interesting learning from Hari. When we are stuck to approach our boss for help
  
• Virtual Teams: Diversified teams across locations and striving to measure by outcomes
  
• Connect: Networking through KM community meets, eWIT summits brings in new ways of learning and new friends.

Towards finding Life’s meaning: Last but most important lesson was on finding life’s meaning ! Below are key takeaways on this line

• Passion: Apply passion as a skill. Thanks to Sukumar, the thinking itself gives new strength and hope. Have applied it and found successful !!
  
• Pay it forward: To look at ways in which we can help others be it through any kind of CSR activity/professional help.

All the above learnings are based on my piloted experiences or what I am striving to adopt for in the days to come !

Overall the mentorship program has given me a self transformation, self awareness and a sense of direction and sometimes I get a Zen feeling inside me in mostly anything I do be it at work or driving my car !

The journey would continue with me graduating to a mentor in 2012 to few mentees and creating impact in my own small way !

Thanks to Sukumar for creating this wave. Its extremely heartening to see that he has been doing mentorship programs for 14 years now. In fact this is also an Outreach program within the organization – to produce human impact by changing lives around us who seek for help/guidance.

Life Lessons from Women Leaders for the young women of Corporate India ! – Part 1

How does this sound ! The department you work for in your organization plans to host a whole day summit exclusively for women to address topics such as work life balance, wholistic living etc!. Yahoooo! This is what every working woman looks forward to know and learn right !!

It was Nov 4th 2011 and the whole day sessions at the women summit were absolutely brilliant - Those that no work life balance books or any class room sessions would teach us. There were real life lessons from women leaders with recipes for both the "emancipated" and the ”I accept to work within my social system” lot. It was really great and I could not resist myself from sharing it with all my women friends(My blog title says so too !!) . In this part 1 post I will cover the morning session and in the part 2 the afternoon session. Here we go...

The session started with a welcome speech by Usha Shekar and Jayashree Sridharan who themselves were women leaders and who shared a lot of insights throughout the day. The morning session was on “How balanced is your Scale” by Priya Raju, an emancipated woman leader who has around 19 years of experience with working in top tier software companies. She currently works with few NGOs and makes human impact by giving back to the society..

The session started with an icebreaker. Try answering them keeping in mind with whatever organization you work for

1. Who are my top management – example CEO, COO, CFO and CIO.
2. What is my company’s Current Stock Price, Net Profit, Market Cap and Annual Revenue
3. What is the most recent noteworthy event in the past few months in my company in the news.
The key take away here was that women NEED TO BE AWARE of all this.

Next was a survey. Again try answering them from your side.
1. How many hours do you work in a week? Are you able to stay long & work at odd hours in the office
2. How many hours per day do you spend taking care of family?
3. Do you have a sense of guilt when you choose your career over parenthood/family?
4. Have you turned down opportunities because it required a transfer or travel?
5. Do you have a mentor? If yes, how did you find the mentor?
6. How much time do you spend every week networking with your colleagues?
7. What does it take to succeed in a company like which you are working for?

Have you answered? If not do answer :). It helps you introspect yourself. Only then have a look below at some of sample answers from senior management
1. Top Management in any company works on an average 55 – 60 hours !! Working at odd hours are taken from home
2. Max 1 – 2 hours on week days. Weekends are set aside for family. Support system is built strong for week days with extended family , cooks and maids.
3. Guilt is useless. Instead focus on quality time. Share interesting incidents from work with your children so that they don’t feel left out
4. Do not assume transfers or travels are impossible. Talk with your family and see
5. Informal mentoring works best sometimes. Also don’t restrict mentors within your organization. Find industry peers through networking
6. Networking is taken seriously. It happens through Golfing, conferences, get togethers, meeting old college friends etc.
7. Passion(Nothing comes stress free . If you have passion atleast you will enjoy it), Commitment, Hard work and an attitude to learn and innovate

What do successful People want – To sum up they want
• Career Growth
• Opportunities to Work on their Interests, Passions
• Successful affiliation with other people
• Compensation !

Next was on Networking: To give a background to networking the topic Productivity vs Creativity was discussed – Both indeed are necessary but instead of just working hard alone and achieving, when you network you connect with people and get novel ideas. You get to know what is most important and most relevant too ! Now on to What, Why, How and Where of Networking
• What is networking – It is to share information in simple words. In ancient days it used to happened near water pools and today it happens near the water cooler at office ;).
• Why Networking – To identify experts, to copy solutions for challenges already addressed, to see who shares common interest with you, to identify mentors.
• How to network – You could talk about where you work, years of experience, current happenings. If shy, you don’t have to be life in the party ;). You could just atleast move around and listen to others than talking with only people whom you know. Speak to one person at a time. Practice introducing yourself. You could talk about weather, sports stock market (Read Economist!!). Follow them through on requests made by others etc
• Where to network – in sports clubs, become a member in clubs like cosmopolitan club, gymkhana club (Maniratnam is a member here ;)), volunteer in an organization, attend industry wide symposiums. Do we hear “Ooooff. I don’t have the time for all this ;)”
•Then you need to do a calendar analysis ;). Classify your work as non work activities and work activities. The non work activities can be delegated. Introspect work activities – They can be again classified as productive and time wasters. Remove the time wasters. Take breaks for max of 10 to 15 mins. Have a coffee or a lunch on a week day with an acquaintance. You get to network and so also do not need extra time for the same
•Pay it forward – It is an act of kindness without expecting anything in return, good karma or simply only when you help others someone else will help you.
•Power of reciprocity – collect indebtedness
In brief
• Learn to introduce yourself in 30 seconds flat. (Elevator pitch !)
• Talk about what excites you to impress others
• If you find someone interesting/worthwhile, keep in touch.
• Don’t hesitate to call people from your network to get some help or advise.

Now that you have learnt a bit on Networking how do you project your accomplishments with subtleness and class without trumpeting ;)

Few examples of Accomplishments that matter
• Can they reuse your knowledge in another project? Have you created reusable tools?
• Have you added a feather to your department/organization
• Do you have rare skills?
• Have you achieved productivity improvements? Can they be replicated?

Now we will see Steps towards building a Story Around Accomplishments
• What was your responsibility in the achievement?
• Think of it as a very brief story – which means, it should have a Start, a Middle and an End.
• Quantify your achievement – For e.g. “Our tool increased productivity by 25%”.
• Did you blast through the numbers? Did you over-achieve?
• Did you win an award, get extra bonus or a much coveted promotion due to this accomplishment?
• How did your achievement help others? Think about your customers, management team, peers etc

Key Takeaways:
• Guilt is useless and being a role model is indeed important
• Keep yourself abreast with latest happenings and releases, gadgets, stocks, movies, music etc
• Expecting too much understanding from employer will make us be branded as “High Maintenance”. Instead focus on the end goal of good world class project and then our reasonable requests such as flexi, part time etc will all come automatically (You could sit in the beach and still code,test ;)).
• Assertiveness is a skill that is REALLY essential
• Feel less ashamed for competition. As you move upwards you need to COPE with competition.
• Delegate what possible and save some time for yourself
• Overcoming all these challenges is IN OUR HANDS. You paint your future :)

Thanks a lot Priya for all the hard work and efforts and truly the session was of a unique class very rich in content and with a penetrating delivery style and brought out the “strong woman from within” each of us. In fact this is indeed another form of human impact in the society.

All – I know it’s a little long blog but still all of the points were insightful and hence!. Stay tuned to part 2 for Shoba Sridharan ‘s talk on “Wholistic living” and Archana Raghuram’s “6 paradigms that balance my life”

eWIT – Do what you love :)

It was indeed an inspirational last week…Came across Steve Jobs video http://on.ted.com/9bj6. Explained to my 6 year old couple of key lessons from his video for her age as (i)Do what you love ! and (ii)Do things only if YOU want to do and not because someone else asks you to do

And she began to narrate a story her class teacher had told – The fox and sheep fable where a fox fell into a well and the passing sheep too falls into the well listening to cunning fox’s words and how finally the fox escapes from the well by climbing over the sheep and sheep is finally left stranded. Moral of the story she said was that – We should do things only if we want to do and not because someone else like the fox asks to do. Oooff…Children do grow up too fast !!

It was Aug 23rd 2011 and it was the eWIT(http://www.ewit.co.in/) monthly meet. Landmark’s founder Hemu Ramaish was the speaker and she was to talk on the topic “Bring out the Entrepreneur in You“

Wow ! It was a great feeling for Srividya, Nandhini and myself to go to a community meeting where atleast 85 % were women:) . It happened within the city too opposite to the Anna centenary Library !

Overall Hemu’s speech showed the amount of subject matter expertise she had based on one core concept – “her liking for books”. Here are some of the key lessons that I learnt from her speech

• Measure what you want to do in your own space
  
• No need to be a topper to become an entrepreneur (I liked this !!)
  
• Do not do something because of latest trends
  
• Stay in space that you Enjoy or Excel (Hemu always liked books and was used to libraries and decided her work was definitely going to be around books)
  
• Do what YOU want to do
  
• Trust your gut
  
• As you draft your business plan also plan for an exit plan (At 50 no matter what we have sell it was her decision)
  
• Pick up one feature that is different and cannot replicated
  
• In personal life depends on how convinced and determined we are with our lives that others will change to adjust to us
  
• If you have an idea, have a business plan and nail it till the base unit. Account for risk and whether you will be able to manage it
  
• Attend courses in topics where we think we are not comfortable or get a partner to complement (like how Hemu married a CA :) because she was not so comfortable with numbers as she says !)
  

Am sure I am going to see Landmark in a new paradigm the next time I visit the place !!

Currently among the many things she does Hemu also runs the “Chennai angels” whose inspiring caption is Nurturing Passion, Mentoring Success :)

Next speaker was LS Ganesh Sir from IIT Entrepreneurship cell. Below are the key lessons from his speech

• All progress depends on unreasonable person (Really liked this ;) )
  
• Our efforts needs to be Purposeful, directed and Persistent
  
• Entrepreneurs are of 2 kinds – Pioneer Entrepreneur (with a unique concept) or” Me too “entrepreneur with a slightly different variation to an existing concept
  
• An aspiring entrepreneur needs to possess
  
• Competence/be persistent/risk taking capability
  
• Energy - Need to have both physical and mental energy
  
• Expertise - Complement strengths and form good teams – people skills
  
• Enthusiasm or passion
  
• Effort or hard work
  
• Empowered – No power can stop you
  
• Endurance - Do you have it in you!
  

After the session (which we really did not want to end ) Ganesh Sir was also so patiently listening to our questions and giving us advice. Guess this is also another form of social outreach – giving away knowledge for free :)

Overall it was a very inspiring session and we parted with the thoughts – No matter what “Do what we love and follow our intuition and Gut”

Thanks to eWIT for organizing these meets. Look forward to much more.

One morning at the Chennai Museum !

Dreams do come true !

May 21st - Had a dream that I was on an elephant safari trip and I vaguely recollect seeing atleast 7 elephants.
May 25th - Had a dream again on Elephants - This time 2 of them with those BIG ears like African elephants !
May 26th - It was my birthday (Now the date is for all your future reference :)). My cousin Anitha who had been on a trip to Nepal for her paper presentation, had got me a gift. The minute I opened the wrapper, I almost threw it off shocked - It was "One Big elephant along with 6 small elephants around it - 7 elephants.” Unbelievable!! Yet true !!

June 30th - It so happened that myself and my buddy Veena had an opportunity to visit the Chennai Egmore museum as part of our mentorship program. We chose the topic “Greco-Buddhist Sculpture”. Now on to a little bit of history based on the sculptures that we saw there.

Greco-Buddhist art resulted from the confluence of classical Greek culture and Buddhism. Around 600 AD, Alexander the great’s kingdom extended from North Afghanistan to Punjab(Then this region was known as Bactria). Same was taken over later from Bactrian rulers by Seythians and then Parthians. Greco Buddhism spread and art was a form of expression.
There were sculptures of Adoration of Buddha at Peshawar, Buddha's head dress, bowl, Elephant – head of Bodhisattva, Hercules in Peshawar, Bodhisattva’s birth

Veena and I were so engrossed in looking for Buddha at the Bronze section that we saw Manikavasagar‘s hair style !! and mistook him for Buddha

Chennai Museum – Bronze Section
There were also sculptures excavated from Velipalayam, Nagapatinam around 10th century showcasing that Buddhism had spread over till there.

Buddhism then was almost taking place like a reform movement. Hinduism was looked at by some as a culture with excessive ritualism. Moksha was seen as the freedom from all rituals. In Hinayana Buddhism – symbols were used to denote Buddha while in Mahayana Buddhism human form of Buddha was used. It was also believed that a person’s previous births were looked at as a training ground. Based on punya, higher life forms would result else in lesser ms.

Overall it was an eye opener on this new form of Indo Grecan Buddhist culture and we hope to explore more in the months to come.

So what does the past teach us
1. Helps us understand the present !!
2. Gives new meaning based on collective knowledge that one possesses
3. For some of them gives natural fascination and energy high

July 4th DLF – The day I moved from my beloved WCB to DLF. It was an auspicious day and I decided to decor my desk inspired by Veena.(Its really good to see all her awards, her kids snaps etc :) at her desk). In the morning I was searching for something a little religious ….may be a small Buddha I thought. Searched a bit and unfortunately did not find one. . I did take the 7 elephants with me that Anita had gifted and placed at my desk. Around lunch Kavitha S came to my desk and enquired on the 7 elephants statue that I had placed in my desk. She asked me where I had got it and I told her the entire history !!. She then exclaimed “ A Pillaiyaar should be there on the back”. I searched on the back and Ghosh I found “Buddha’s face carving !!!” - something that I had not noticed in the past 1 month that this 7 elephants statue was with me .

References:
http://www.chennaimuseum.org/draft/gallery/01/02/buddh1.htm
http://www.chennaimuseum.org/draft/gallery/01/05/051/budd1.htm
http://www.chennaimuseum.org/draft/gallery/01/02/buddh2.htm#

Self Realization of a Software Millennial :)

Somehow I have never felt so good about atheists from child hood. I always thought religious people are only good(as I grew up I knew I was wrong !!). But still I had this little negative feeling about atheists until a couple of weeks back !

I always wondered how an atheist like Kamal Haasan could do a movie like Anbe Sivam which I would acknowledge as one of the best movies in Tamil worth watching. Off late have been coming across and closely observing people who called themselves atheists/agnostics etc. On introspection I found that they do work for social causes, do counseling and overall work for the motto only to help others!!!.....Oh boy ! but they are so similar to so called religious persons too !!!

Being a cusp millennial software engineer that I am, in one of the meetings last week at my office I had to do a presentation (no techie stuff here !) to my leadership team through a video conference. Normally I would go to the rest room just before a meeting and pray and call the divine and say prayers like “ God I should do well and do to my own best satisfaction atleast ”. But on that day I had to rush up to the meeting and did not have the time to go and talk to my own GOD.

Seated there in the video conference I was contemplating “Should I go and quickly come in 5 mins” (since my presentation was only second).Then a thought emerged – "Anyways even if I go to the rest room I will not have a physical God to talk to. Why not try to say the same prayer from where I am – In this meeting room itself". At this my next chain thought rippled “ So what am I doing. Am actually talking to myself". I do not know what an atheist does before a presentation but am sure the person also talks to himself/herself and sends IN positive thoughts just like what I did. So God or No GOD is in fact WITHIN EACH OF US. We are THE DIVINE! (Neeyum Sivan, Naanum Sivan - In Kamal Haasan's words)

Personally for me it was a day of self realization and I am now able to appreciate the positive side of atheists/agonostics too.

Have you also had similar experiences. Would like to hear ..

TEDxVIT 2011 – Miles to go before I sleep....

Thanks to Archana Raghuram who spread the word about TEDx events (http://archanaraghuram.wordpress.com/2010/11/21/tedxyouth-lyric-engineering-to-making-india-trash-free/).

I made it this time by attending the TEDxVIT yesterday at Chettinad Health city, Kelambakkam and it was worth all the drive!

In this blog I talk about the TEDxVIT speakers who shared with us life lessons from their own personal experiences which ideally is the essence of TED events.

It was Sukumar Rajagopal's (SVP, CIO & Head of Innovation at Cognizant)first TEDx talk and he spoke on the topic “Microsuccess – Success for the rest of us”. The topic not only applied for the student community but for all of us who aspire to become successful.

• He attributes his success to being at the right time at the right place, his team mates and colleagues, friends and wife. As is his trademark next was a video with the message “If you do not fail you do not live.” (Life = Risk)
• From the Black Swan book he quoted that only about 1 – 5 % of people are extremis tans who take high risk while the mediocristans are the rest with lesser risk quotient. Based on his own experience he derives that” Success = Risk factor * func(talent or nature + training or nurturing)”
• Also consoled us (!) with the fact that the concept of A/B/C players (A being a player like Bill Gates or Sachin) is not really to be believed and anyone can really become successful if we put in our efforts and do it with passion.
• He traced his life path from how being a 15th rank holder in class in 10th board exams, he put in more efforts based on his father’s words in 12th standard and got a seat for Engineering, learnt on passion for doing the job from one of his friends in college, at work learnt the art of empowering people keeping in mind their growth and now in a position of powerlessness (in his words!) gets it done through influence and change management. Hope we get to see his presentation online which describes it best.

His parting thoughts were

• Can you spot mediocristan parts of extremistan careers
• For the entrepreneurs on how to evolve a model for the microentrepreneurs like Farmers, Mechanics, Kiranas etc and make them profitable and lead a decent living.

The other speaker of the day who spoke on life lessons was Kirubshankar(CEO of business blogging(www.businessblogging.org)). Again it was his first TEDx talk. It was just after lunch and he gave a warm up for the crowd of atleast 300 with SriSri Ravishankar’s yoga mixed with slapping the person to the extreme that the right hand can go to ! followed with a chikubukku train of students from the last rows to fill up the front rows. Real Innovative and that was enough to get everyone awake and attentive. He correlated this TEDx talk of his to the Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.(Do not miss this in you tube).

His life lessons

• Whatever is our expertise knowledge we should give it away for free
• One must have a mentor. Mentors make one feel comfortable and make us do what we should and not just what we like.
• Before doing a task to think of 3 reasons why we want to do something. He correlated this to a stool which can stand only if it has three legs.
• He quoted the “Power of taking time off” by Stefan Sagmeister ( Upon a google this article describes the essence of it - http://www.lifeoptimizer.org/2010/03/01/way-to-recharge-your-life/)
• Meet people from other fields and you will see that you evolve better in your own field.
• To go beyond and not be a well frog.

At a TEDx conference I imagined there will be more white hairs from whom we can derive knowledge but it was actually the millennial presenters who were more!

If you want to laugh your heart out do not miss Nitin Gupta’s talks. He was the last speaker and all you could hear from the crowd was a nonstop “HA HA HA “

To get the complete list of speakers please visit http://tedxvit.org/speakers.html

Overall I felt there was “Miles to go before I sleep”

Launch of Third Eye Trust - Vision without Boundaries

It was a great way to start the New Year by participating in the Launch of the Third Eye Charitable Trust at the Anna centenary Library yesterday Jan 4th 2011. Kudos to Mahua Seth ,Vishnupriya Duvvru and Mohan Ganesh from the IT Industry for having taken this noble initiative with so much of commitment.

Launch of Third Eye Charitable Trust(Few moments captured):
The event started with an emotional welcome speech by Mahua Seth, Trustee with Third Eye who dedicated this trust as a Gurudakshina to her visually impaired music teacher of her school. Invocation was by Padmashri Dr.Gayathri Sankaran (visually challenged)who started with the touching “Kurai Onrum Illai song”.

This was followed with a great speech by Mr.S.S Jawahar IAS who manages the Department of Welfare for DifferentlyAbled Persons also as one of his portfolio among others. Some excerpts

• UN has advocated that the visually impaired are given complete support based on rights based approach instead of charity based.
• Employment quota with Govt is only 3 % and hence private sectors should step in to create more job opportunities for visually challenged people
• It is a paradigm shift from "Survival of the fittest" in the world to "Survival of the fastest" and the 3 factors that account for this are 1.Critical Thinking 2. Communication and 3. Collaboration. From a “Command and control “ we are moving on to a collaborative world.(In IT industry same is called moving from a Hierarchical organisation to a cloud based organisation :) )

Gandhi Kannadhasan, Proprietor, Kannadhasan Padhipagam who has been instrumental in conducting the Chennai book fair for the past 31 years promised that once we ramp up the publication to atleast 100 to 150 books we could arrange for stalls at the book fair and create more awareness and thereby get more sponsors for this noble cause.

Next was address by Shanthi Bhattacharya, Co Founder with Chetana Charitable Trust who spoke about the importance of non academic books for visually challenged.She insisted that books should actually provide an easy and pleasant means to explore the world instead of scaring them with only academic materials !

This was followed by distribution of Braille books to the visually challenged students and they were pretty excited to receive it and even started to touch and feel them once back at their seats.



What we can do for Third Eye:(Based on Vishnu Priya's inputs):

• Corporates can help provide sponsorship for the creation of the material in the various formats such as Braille, audio, e text, large print etc.
• CSR arms from Corporates across India can help distribute Third Eye's non academic materials and spread the awareness.
• Help Collaborate and introduce them to publishers who are willing to give permission to publish their list of publications in above format

Please visit their website http://www.third-eye.org/ to know more about them