Monthly Archives: March 2012

Folks, this is a review of my workshop on Career Development for executives, who believe that their career is stuck. Have a dekko…

http://www.iitmentors.org/india/newsletter_online/Sampark%20Issue%203,%20Jan%202012/index.html#

I see a lot of my proteges / mentees having a lack-lustre linkedin profile and I am saddened by it.  Let me put it this way. To paraphrase an author I read some time ago (frankly I do not remember, but this is not my idea…) in your self-branding exercise, Facebook is like a pub where we meet a lot of people, have connections, but over a drink and then we all go home. Twitter is like a cocktail partywhere we speak a small sentence and then move on to the next person. Youtube is like MG Road on New Year’s Eve, everybody trying to get in front of the camera and vying for attention. Linkedin is like a trade show where we meet like-minded people.

Join the groups that talk about what we are interested in. Even if we are bystanders, we will learn a lot of what the world thinks. It is a faster way to get people’s opinions and trends that reading some boring author. I know, I am one such author.

Check the news. This news can be customised to give us articles across the globe on the topics of your choice. It is obviously a better way than perusing gadzillions of newpaper pages (online or offline)

Under the “More” section, there is “Answers” and “Skills”. We should use these more often. “Skills” creates the keywords necessary for a job search. “Answers” allow you to brand yourself as an authority as more of your answers get selected as “best” answers.

I am increasingly seeing a trend where recruiters are looking at our linkedin profiles. Apart from the ability to have an on-line rolodex for networking, it allows us to help others get jobs, and it allows us to meet people with the same interests and connect with them professionally.

 

Is it important to have specific and measurable goals? It they keep on changing, what is the purpose of having a goal?

The answer to the first one is yes, we need to have goals, that too, written goals (one study shows that written goals are more likely to be achieved). If we do not have any yardstick of measurement, how do we know we are progressing and therefore when we are likely to reach the goal?

But even more basic than that, what should be my goal? How do I determine the right goal?

Our goals should be determined by our needs. So we have to do a needs analysis of what we would like to have and what we would like to avoid.

• One way is to think back and remember those incidents that made me happy. Then for each incident, I do a ‘root cause’ on why it made me happy. This will show me my needs. Then I create those goals that satisfy these needs.
• Another way is to think of incidents that made me unhappy. A root cause on this – why did that incident make me unhappy – would tell me what I would like to avoid.

Once I have my needs (what I want and what I don’t want) defined, I have to do two things:

• determine the relative important of each need
• determine the maximum time frame in which this should be satisfied (urgency)

Now I can find out what I have to do and when, and this determines my goals. We have to remember that to achieve something, we may have to sacrifice something else, and the important/urgent matrix above will help us realise our priority.

Another aspect of needs analysis is to determine whether these are your goals or the goals of your influencers or loved ones. Sometime, we want to do something but our parents want us to do something else. The question is whether I sacrifice my happiness for my parents’ happiness?

For example, I remember the time I got an award.

• Why did it make me happy? Because I made my parents proud or because my effort was acknowledged in front of a crowd.
• Why does that make me happy? Because I need the approval of people
• Why do I need approval? Maybe I have self-esteem issues and I need to compare with others to define me

So if I am seeking a goal in terms of what type of job I should look for, I should look for a job that gives me a lot of approval, or allows me to do peer comparison and which does not lower my self-esteem. Sales would be a bit of an issue as a job, because it has a lot of rejection built in. However, advisory services based on my competency would be good, because a client would be grateful for my services.

I can now set up a time frame for creating a competency that can be appreciated by clients and to find a job that allows me to use this competency.

Since these needs keep changing, (refer to my article on mid-life crisis) our goals will keep changing.

Suppose there are two conflicting goals?

If I have done my needs analysis in terms of all the type of needs I have and the priority of each need, and have determined who in my life is important and considered their needs, then each goal can be analysed based on how well it satisfies these criteria.

Now this is a title that will attract attention. This document details everything that I have done or experienced over the last 18 months for weight loss.

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, and please do not flame me with technical data which proves that I am wrong. Most technical data seems to change over time, and the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
At least I am not recommending either a fad or something that will be irreversible.

How to eat like a pig and still reduce weight.pdf

Midlife Crisis (as defined in Wikipedia) “describes a period of dramatic self-doubt” when persons reach their forties. It signifies a passing of their youth and the imminence of old age, augmented by physical incapabilities, deaths in the previous generation and other such reminders of mortality. There are self-assessing questions on career, work-life balance, relationships, expenses and physical appearance.

Are these questions relevant only after we cross 40?  Do we not have similar questions when we cross 20? Do we not think of career, study-life balance, relationships, expenses and physical appearance.

So if we consider a life span of 80 years (arguable with medical advances, but do consider the balancing act of environmental contamination and genetic manipulation) we will have the following:

• At the start of our career, a quarter life crisis (Q1C),
• In the middle of our career, a mid life (Q2C) and
• At the end of our career, a three-quarter life crisis (Q3C).

The topics remain the same:  career, work-life balance, relationships, major expenses and physical appearance.

During college (Q1C), we are concerned about our career, how much to study and how much to enjoy life, our relationships at the peer level and with our parents, the expense and repayment of loans, and how we look. This quarter-life crisis is as painful as a mid-life crisis. Although I have not been though a Q3C, I am sure, the questions would be similar but more introspective – about things that we could have done and things that we have achieved.

The difference between the three crises is in terms of possibilities and choices – which narrow down over time. The difference is possibly between optimism and realism. We are more optimistic and hopeful when younger. Maybe those of us who retain our optimism and hope remain younger for a longer time. But we do become more realistic about possibilities and capabilities.

There is an increased angst of unfulfilled desires versus capability. When we are younger, we believe that the whole life in there in front of us to fulfil our desires. However, we are impatient to get our desires fulfilled. This impatience drives us, but also creates stress, and makes us take a short-term perspective. By the time we learn patience and a long-term perspective, we are no longer young, and maybe our desires have changed. We also learn that desire and capability are distinct, and we start accepting our limits in capability.

This acceptance also helps in handling peer comparison. Earlier, we are concerned about what anyone thinks of us. Later, we are concerned about the thoughts of only those who matter to us. Even later, no peer evaluation matters.  It is about what we leave behind us. Whose opinion matters, in fact, even who matters – also changes over time.

When we are young, we are overconfident and, I dare say, brash. This drives us to do things, which in the cold light of day, would make us exclaim, “What were we thinking?” But these actions creates consequences that make changes happen. As we grow old, we think (twice?) before we act, we think of longer-term implications, and therefore do not contribute too much to change. But we have the confidence of experience. People who have this confidence and still desire to make a difference are the persons who impact this world.

It is paradoxical that when we have the experience to do things right and we are not so concerned about peer approval, we lose the desire to do so.

Would it not make sense to inculcate the advantages of each stage of life in the first quarter. Suppose we have the desire and the experience and the disregard of peer approval, we could do wonders. In fact, people who do not shy away from experiences (good or bad), who maintain their desire, and care only of the opinions of people they trust are the ones who get ahead in life.

We all need to examine ourselves with respect to these three characteristics:

• get hands dirty,
• remain motivated despite failures and
• high self esteem.

When we did manual labour and did not have labour-saving devices, we worked from morning to night creating the same output that we can now deliver in a fraction of that time. By manual labour, I do not mean physical labour, it could also be accounting, computing, research, even reading (dare I call it studying?)…

There was an element of Zen mindfulness (being fully in the present), as mistakes would require a great deal of redoing.

Think about writing a letter. An MS Word document can be automatically spell-checked and mistakes can be corrected. No one would know and appreciate, by looking at the final document, how much labour has gone into it. Compare that to the pain of writing a letter by hand, and the final sense of accomplishment we had of finishing a product that was created with minimal corrections. We were more aware of ourselves, what we were doing, what the world around us was doing, and we appreciated the fruits of our labour.

Consider food. Our moms take time to cook and be mindful of the final product with all its nuances of taste as determined by the preferences of the family members. When we eat, we are mindful of that love and we appreciate the subtlety. Compare that to a fast food, even instant noodles, which we mindlessly eat in front of the TV. We are, in general, no longer aware of, let alone appreciate, what we eat. No wonder, we need to go to a five-star restaurant to appreciate food, maybe because we pay so much for it that we have to extract all we can from the meagre morsel. The five-star chef put salt and pepper in front of you, which our moms never needed to. Maybe the love compensates.

This is the virtue of ‘Karma-yoga’ or the sense of fulfilment that comes out of mindfully executing work. Some persons  do ‘Jnana- yoga’ where the sense of fulfilment comes from mindfully thinking about knowledge, its acquisition, its uses and its relevance. It is a desire of most young adults to move from ‘Karma-yoga’ (execution) to ‘Jnana-yoga’ (strategy). Often, they wish to skip the execution part.

With the advent of technology and labour-saving devices, the mind has become free. We no longer need to focus on the job at hand, because much of what our mind would earlier do has now been programmed into the device. Therefore the mind is unoccupied and looks for other ways to occupy itself. Instead of evolving from Karma Yoga to Jnana Yoga, taking time to ponder over various short term and long term strategies, we tend to keep the mind busy by entertainment.

Entertainment is a funny thing (no pun intended). Our mind gets used to a novelty and then craves newer and better sources. The need to keep the mind occupied and the addiction to entertainment leads to a craving for more time to get entertained. This creates a need to obtain more labour saving – or shall we say, time saving devices – faster and stronger cars and machines. This creates a vicious cycle of dependency. Entertainment devices is not just about TVs and such electronics, it also about ambience – from lazy-boys (the uber-comfortable armchairs) to sound-proof rooms.

If we look at peer comparisons about our possessions, it is primarily about the labour saving devices or entertainment devices or the means to purchase them. It is rarely about knowledge – when was the last time someone said, “I have a better dictionary than yours,” it was more like, “I can afford a more expensive dictionary than yours!”

These devices leads to less physical activity and a lazy mindset. This leads to lifestyle diseases. We compensate by buying faster and stronger gym equipment and devices for injecting chemicals and measuring bodily functions. We  create a dependency on these chemicals and measuring devices. Because these chemicals help alleviate our problems, we are free to revert to our craving for entertainment.

Would it be fair to say, therefore, that technology has actually helped in reducing awareness of our actions and their consequences; which, in turn, has led to lifestyle diseases – a contamination of the purpose of life itself?

The use of the word buttering implies that we are falsely praising a person. A few people (with very low self esteem) may enjoy being buttered, but others do not.

Consider this. We do not like criticism from anyone – except from those we respect and when we know the persons have a genuine interest in their hearts for me. However, we like praise from anyone. Sometimes, we wish that people notice our work and achievements and talk about it.

So if I am giving positive strokes to my boss for all the good things he has done, or the effort he is putting in, I am simply acknowledging his work. Similarly if I refrain from criticising; and, in fact, support his work with additional data or timely support, then it is not false. I am talking about fetching tea and coffee, polishing his shoes and acting as if he is God, but a genuine appreciation and support goes a long way in creating rapport.

People crave recognition and empathy and providing that makes a person positively predisposed to you. It is not possible to consistently deliver results (due to no fault of ours, but accidents happen) and this positive disposition helps during those times.