Tiger, grief, job-decoders and gigs
If you like the newsletter, do consider subscribing to it. Share it with your friends. That would be music to my ears. We have some music for you in this edition of the newsletter.
With Christmas and year end coming up, today we start with a song that is much like a Christmas tree. It gets noticed much more during Christmas. This Market Shaper of a Christmas song has been viewed 97 MILLION times on YouTube.
“All I Want for Christmas Is You” was released in 1994 as part of Mariah Carey’s first holiday album, Merry Christmas. The track eventually hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in December 2019 after 25 years.
Maria Carey’s song snowballed to 309 million on-demand audio and video streams last year, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. That helped push it to No. 1 on Billboard’s all-genre Hot 100 songs chart for the first time. What a Market Shaper of a song this is. Dig deeper and listen to the song. It is lovely.
Rethink CSR - Tiger’s View
Corporate Social Responsibility is often not what you think of when it comes to innovation. That is why listening to this conversation between the CEO of SHRM and the CEO-CHRO combo of Genpact was so fascinating. Tiger Tyagarajan, the CEO of Genpact and Piyush Mehta, the CHRO of Genpact were talking about dealing with a crisis. They have 95,000 employees in their global workforce. Keeping the employees safe and keeping the customer’s business running were the two principles they used to take all decisions.
What they did as CSR that was unique.
They used their deep expertise in Analytics to help hospitals predict the amount of PPE equipment they would need.
They opened up their skill building portal Genome to the world. Now anyone can use the portal to take classes and learn from the same resources that Genpact employees have access to.
I wrote about this conversation in the newsletter on LinkedIn. I am thrilled that more than 125,000 people have subscribed to it and it is only two issues old <Read it>
The more CSR is integrated as part of the business (eg using their skill in Analytics to solve a community problem) and building skills, it is probably the best way to impact the social sector.
Balancing the needs of employees and customers is the polarity leaders have to solve for.
My dream
If you are a corporate leader (as I know so many of my readers are), pay for a few extra summer interns this year to work for an NGO. It will give NGOs access to a talent pool they would not have usually. Think about it.
Unresolved grief
Unresolved grief is a leadership derailer that impacts one third of the people in leadership roles. People in senior roles need to have a coach whom they can speak to without fear of being judged. We need to find people to share our grief with, for our mental health.
During the pandemic, we have all experienced losses. There are funerals and life events we have missed. Separations that we have stoically lived with. Lived with job losses, financial bumps and health issues that have scarred us. There has been much cause for grief.
What causes grief?
Grief stems from a natural resistance to change in familiar patterns. It can be triggered even by positive events. The birth of a child, moving to a new house, a new job can all mean leaving behind something familiar. Grief can come from many sources.
We mourn the loss of connections, belonging, structure, identity, meaning and control. How do we address it?
Become aware
Accept the pain
Let go of the past
Find new meaning
Share this post with someone who could be helped by this.
My email is abhijitbhaduri@live.com You can write to me.
Decoding job complexity
When the job complexity gets decoded, the current systems often miss out on the new context in which everyone is working. I don’t just mean working from home, I am referring to the need for everyone to influence without authority, to learn new skills of building the company culture, dealing with the mental health challenges that are rising. Isolation is the new context in which work happens. Every job now has a new element of emotional and relational needs. Some jobs demand multi-disciplinary collaboration. We need new ways to decode jobs.
Jobs will have to be decoded to rank them on these additional parameters.
Decode your own job
Grade your current job by using this scale. Plot the complexity from low to high along the six dimensions. If you are adventurous, create a scale to rank the job from 1 to 100 along each dimension where low complexity is rated 1 and most complex is rated at 100.
Ranking someone on this can tell you the extent of the job fit. Making career choices based on a simple decoding of the job can be powerful.
Read how to decode your own job complexity on these dimensions
Tapping the new talent pool of gig workers
With 15 million gig workers, India is one of the fastest growing markets for gig workers. Two companies FlexingIt and Upwork have all seen growth. Indian companies like Axis Bank, Mahindra & Mahindra etc. all have announced intentions that sound great without really having to make drastic changes. What comes in the way? People, Processes and Technology. All three need to change.
Gig Workers or Freelancers are still hired by the Purchase Department - not HR ! So the Purchase Departments bring their entire skill in purchasing staplers and chairs to this gig worker and negotiate the “rate”. To add insult to injury, the gig workers are paid after 30/60/90 days. Would the company get top talent if they paid their employees after 30/60/90 days?
I was quoted in this story by Business Today <read more>
‘In give and take, give comes before take’
That is what was my biggest take away from PK Gulati, one of the MOST networked people I know. ‘I HATE the word networking.’ He is a Venture Capitalists who straddles the startups in India, Dubai and Silicon Valley.
Listen to this podcast with the ever fascinating PK
If you like the podcast please like and share it. Here are the previous episodes
My diary for 2021
To be fair, I do not use a paper diary. So when this diary came to me, I was not sure if I would even use it. Then when I opened the diary I realised this was a diary to celebrate Sahir Ludhianvi’s life and poetry. Be sure to mark 8th March 2021 as a special day to celebrate Sahir’s centenary.
The diary is full of rare photos of Sahir and anecdotes painstakingly curated by Nasreen Munni Kabir. There are excerpts from some of Sahir’s poems.
I would absolutely recommend you buy the diary now before it runs out This is a collage of images from the diary to give you a feel of the treat you are in for.
I have picked the ten best songs of Sahir Ludhianvi. Each one is a gem.
Leave a comment to tell me which song you enjoyed.
Stay connected. Stay curious.
