Abhijit Bhaduri’s Blog
I write about careers, skills and the world of work. The cartoons and sketches are mine.
Ignored by colleagues after returning from long leave
I had taken a sabbatical of 2 1/2 years due to medical reasons. I resumed work after full recovery. on my return, I am being treated differently by my coworkers and managers, who think I am still unfit. I’m not given key assignments. And whenever some crucial work comes my way, it is on sympathetic grounds. Even if they involve me in certain activities, it’s merely a formality. I feel very isolated. What should I do to ensure my career get a boost and I am treated equally at the workplace?
Nurturing da Vincis in the workplace
This is a new world of work, workers and workplaces. The systems that govern workplaces are still being run like the analog world. When movie making first came about, the movies were like stage productions put on film. It is only later that people experimented and found that the story did not have to be shot in sequential form. Cinema offered new forms of storytelling like flashbacks. Or the use of sound, silence and songs for storytelling. Workplaces must discover the new sounds, silences and songs before they can tell new stories.
Ep 9 In conversation with Pratik Kumar
There is something else besides the role dimensions, I think there is a very high sense of responsibility when you get into a business leadership role and the responsibility is about you realize your decisions are beginning to impact the careers of people, their whole livelihoods, the direction which you wish the organization to take and you bet on could come through, it need not, it could have an impact and you need to do it in a lot more responsible manner. And that sense of responsibility just gets accentuated when you step into this role which I have to admit was not there earlier.
Younger boss less experience
Reporting to someone younger is hurting your ego. Get over that mindset. It is archaic. You may had team members who had more experience or better qualifications than you. The work output is what matters. The years of experience and qualifications has limited value in the job market after a few years. The same goes for credentials. When a song becomes a hit, we do not care how old the singer is and if the singer holds a degree in music. Employers are no different.
Print media needs a new talent strategy
As a talent scout, when I went to various educational institutions, I got a great view of which sector attracted the best people. That changed every year. If Consulting got the prime slot in one year, the next year it could be Banking or Retail walked away with the brightest people. People with the same qualification chose different sectors every year depending on a number of factors. Print Media has to discover that element which will encourage them to compete head to head with everyone else for talent. They must, in turn, take a unified view of talent. When it comes to hiring engineers or designers or journalists, the print media has to compete with other employers. The fine balance between work, workers and workplaces is a great place to start.
Ep6: Anuj Kacker on New Age Careers
Many parents still go for conventional career choices like Engineering, Medicine, Law etc. These fields are crowded and the supply of talent exceeds the demand. Take Engineering for example. There are 16,00,000 seats in Engineering colleges in India and barely 800,000 of these get filled. Of these 800,000 students who graduate from Engineering colleges, 60% do not get employed and 20% do not get the right jobs. The average fees paid across 4 years of Engineering education is Rs 10,00,000 but the average starting salary is barely Rs260,000 per year. To repay a student loan at that salary level takes 3-4 years. The new age careers lie in fields like animation, cinematics, aviation etc
From stakeholder interest to societal interest
At the start of 2019, Oxfam released a report at the World Economic Forum that said, “Billionaire fortunes increased by 12 per cent last year — or $2.5 billion a day — while the 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity saw their wealth decline by 11 per cent.” That is the Power Curve for you. To put it more starkly — the 26 richest people in the world now have as much wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion people. That may well be the difference between the capitalist system and a system that attempts to minimise the disparities. What tilted our world view to say the Power Curve is the way things are going to be?
The Digital Mindset: Aquarium to Ocean
The organization is no longer like an aquarium that has a solid defined boundary wall. The organization is part of an ecosystem. Leading the fish in an aquarium is different from navigating the ocean. The digital organizations are as different from the legacy organizations as the butterfly is to the caterpillar. Leading these organizations needs not just new set of skills and competencies but also a different mindset. The hyperconnected customer is more aware and makes decisions and choices differently. The power balance has tilted in favor of the employees and consumers. They own the brand. The leaders role is now about helping the organization go from the aquarium to become part of ocean.
Genpact: Reskilling at Scale
Very often organizations launch an initiative with great fanfare. When the dust settles, people move on to their desk and carry on doing their work as usual. Genpact seems to have found a way to sustain this massive exercise. The leadership team has taken it upon themselves to celebrate learning and the people driving the agenda - the employees.The CEO of Genpact recognizes the gurus and experts in every town hall. He celebrates the guru who has done the maximum amount of skill building. The clients are told about this. The CHRO and the Chief Innovation Officer talk about Genome to the clients and the employees at every possible opportunity. The result is that skill building is not a metric tracked by the L&D team, the agenda is part of the business conversation every day.
Ep 5: Joshua Karthik on Succeeding as a Gig Worker
Joshua Karthik and his brother are behind the Virat Kohli-Anoushka wedding photos that got 10 million views. Their photos of Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas have been viewed 17 million times. When I invited Joshua Karthik to the studio of Dreamers and Unicorns I asked him how much money should one have in the bank to feel confident in quitting the job? His answer may suprise you.
Collaboration changes the experience of work
echnology has changed the way we experience work. Technology has made so many things accessible to everyone. Think about how photography has changed. The smartphone camera is getting better with each passing year. It has turned an average photographer into a shutterbug. The amateur photographers have access to different lenses in their phones. The phone uses computational photography to create images that are stunning. We all feel comfortable posting photos on Instagram thanks to the range of filters we can choose from to enhance the look of the photograph. Expertise has been commoditised. Amateurs are using technology to force experts in every field to move up the value-chain.
Ep 3 R Balki on Storytelling, Tech and Creativity
During the podcast I asked Balki what got him interested in movies. He said it was the music used in films that used to generate images in his head. These images were better than the images that he saw on screen. That was the magic of music. Specifically Iylaiyaraja's music. He spoke about his admiration for Ilaiyaraja's music. No surprise that Ilaiyaraja scored the music for Balki when he made Cheeni Kum. And Paa
Ep 2: Anita & Harsha Bhogle talk about lessons from sports
The Olympics motto is Citius, Altius, Fortius. That means faster, higher and stronger. That motto offers a great faith in human potential. Every four years, people gather together to redefine what is humanly possible. Every four years the record books engrave what is the ultimate achievement in every sport. Four years later athletes gather to break what was once defined as the outer limit of the human being. The world of work is getting reinvented. This episode gets the two talking about stories and secrets they have never shared before.
My boss does not have time to mentor me
Mentoring someone needs someone to have the skills as well as the desire to invest time and commit towards your success. Else many mentors simply use the time to tell the mentee about their own achievements. Being a good listener and having empathy makes someone a good mentor.Create a Board of Mentors from your own organization. Build a set of 4-5 people you will seek advice from. I have always had a group of mentors to learn from. I find it wonderful to get a variety of ideas and perspectives on the same problem.
Redesign the exit experience
“Organizations who wish to be viewed as employers of choice provide outstanding experiences at every stage of the employee life cycle—from onboarding through exit,” says Joel Paul, General Manager, Randstad RiseSmart. “Taking care of employees with compassionate outplacement has a direct impact on employer brand, and thus a company’s ability to attract and retain top talent.”
Your L&D strategy is missing one key element
To help employees build the habit of learning, providing them some slack time to learn and reflect plus the opportunity to try it out at work and get feedback.