My First Blogpost

Webneetech.com is interviewing bloggers especially those who can share the secret of how to quit your day job and start making money by blogging. I am very jealous of people who make money in this fashion. If I am unable to do it, how can someone else do it – kind of jealousy. Or is that called envy? What’s the difference between the two? Anyway… they asked me about my first blogpost and why I started blogging in the first place.

My first blogpost was on the Blogger platform. It was push button publishing and it helped me build awareness about my book. My second blog was born while I was working for FritoLay. It was about the People and Happenings at FritoLay and was one of the first Corporate blogs. Here is the first post for the FritoLay blog. The third blog was at the OD Collective – which was fundamentally a group of friends from the HR fraternity who would meet to discuss common HR issues (usually hosted by one of us in the office!). The group got Dave Ulrich to come and address the group. He spoke about the ned for our group to influence others through our writings. He suggested that we blog. Thus was born the first post called People Are Our Most Important Asses oops Assets. I had written for some othe sites as well.  I participated in a contest called India Smiles that was hosted at Sulekha.com. It was a post called 15 Minutes of Fame. Needless to say I did not win that contest, in case you are wondering. Here is the interview… Read more

Inclusion Not Just Diversity

Several organizations have launched initiatives to promote Diversity. Why do we need to build diversity in the workforce? If the consumer group is diverse, having the same diversity represented in the employee groups makes it easy to develop the product which is aligned to the consumers. This makes sense for consumer goods but how does his pan out in case of industrial goods. Taking the argument further, if the buyer group is not diverse, does it still make business sense to drive diversity in the organization?

In my opinion, the single reason to drive diversity is about providing a non discriminatory employment experience. Equal opportunity is the strongest reason. To be denied employment based on any criteria other than merit is discriminatory and illegal in many countries. How do we implement this in the workplace?

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A Horoscope Pisces Me Off

There are days when you are the pigeon and there are days when you are the statue. The trick lies in getting an early warning especially on the “statue days”, so that you can take in a deep breath and last out when your head is being held underwater. In my case the pigeon days are few and far between. It happens ever so suddenly and if I do not immediately take advantage of that tiny sliver of an opportunity I have only myself to blame. Horoscopes are helpful to take a sneak peek into the future. I read them regularly. My newspaper carries two of them (written by two different blokes) on Sunday. If you miss one of them while being stunned by their editorial, you can always read the other one without having to flip back on the pages. Tip for you: If you do not like the prediction for your own zodiac, try reading the one which says what you are looking for. If being a Scorpio does not bring me money this week, I am OK taking the prediction for Pisces if they are the ones with cash in the wallet.
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Married But Available and The Hindu

This year I had received a Valentine’s Day gift. Only I did not know I had got a gift. My second novel Married But Available had hit the bestsellers list of The Hindu newspaper – a leading daily newspaper in English in India. According to the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) 2008 The Hindu is the third most-widely read English newspaper in India (after Times of India and Hindustan Times) with a readership of 5.2 million. I have often wondered if commercial fiction and literary fiction should share a common bestseller list. Is that fair? Then again, can bestseller lists be made for different genres? Probably not. If so, we are back to where we started – lists are made across genres. So here are the bestsellers in fiction from the Hindu newspaper’s Vishakhapatnam edition dated 14 Feb 2009 (need I add that I love the people of Vizag for their great literary choice … see proof below. Read more