Abhijit Bhaduri’s Blog
I write about careers in the AI Economy and about the world of work. The sketchnotes are my own.
Abhijit's Sketchnotes No 14
Being a team leader very often means transitioning from being an individual contributor to a people manager’s role. That often comes with a salary bump and a career path that gets more attention everywhere. Doing well as an individual contributor has no bearing on how well the person does as a people manager.
Richard Branson: Decoding His Charisma
It really boils down to what an "experience maker" is. They make you feel stronger. They make you feel optimistic. They make you feel safe because you trust them. Charismatic leaders have the ability to make people feel optimistic and hopeful. They make success look within reach. Just what Branson does. I heard him live at The #AdobeSummit in Vegas. Read on ...
360 Degree Review: Does It Help
Rate yourself and four friends on emotional stability, generosity, intelligence, creativity and assertiveness. Then ask your spouse and friends to rate you on the same traits. What you discover may surprise you.Find out which traits are you better off getting feedback from others. Are there some traits you know about yourself better than others? Read this to find out.
Turn Employees into Brand Ambassadors
Saying "All tweets are personal" and "retweets do not imply endorsement" may sound impressive but it does not prevent the reader from assuming that the organization shares the same belief as the employee. So employees are representing your brand 24x7 with their social media presence. They are leaving behind digital footprints of your brand anyway. How can organizations leverage the employees to be brand ambassadors?
How To Hire Someone Who Is Not Good at Communicating
Although most of us spend more time communicating online than offline, recruitment methods are still heavily skewed towards analogue or physical communication skills, particularly the job interview. Indeed, interviews favor those who can communicate their ideas fluently and come across as likable. How can we discover talented people who are not good at communicating but are otherwise terrific at delivering top-notch performance?
The Digital Tsunami: Talent Management
When the entire talent pool consists of a few thousand people in the world, the demand and supply equation does get skewed in favor of the experts. In case of Artificial Intelligence, the talent pool is limited to less than 10,000 people across the world. These people are being tapped by everyone from Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft as well as every other industry. The MD of Daimler Benz recently said their competitors are no longer other car companies like Tesla, but Google, Apple, Amazon etc. The same holds true for talent. If Artificial Intelligence is on its way to becoming like electricity, there are not enough electrical engineers being churned out.
How Office Politics Corrupts the Search for High-Potential Employees
Few topics have captivated talent management discussions more intensely than potential. But how good are we at evaluating human potential? The answer is, it’s mixed. In the real world of work, organizational practices lag behind, with 40% of designated “HiPos” — high-potential employees — not doing well in the future and at least one in two leaders disappointing, derailing, or failing to drive high levels of engagement and team performance. Despite the tools being available, political processes derail how talent is identified in organizations.
3 Secrets of Hiring Effectiveness
What makes someone an effective hire then boils down to three characteristics. Do they have the knowledge to do the job? Are they motivated to work hard? Do they have social skills that will make it easy for them to work with others?How can we assess for these during the hiring process?
The Humanities Advantage
Business education seems to leave gaps in skills that demand human interaction and working across geographies and diverse groups. The entrance examination of a B-School is such that it is hard for a non-engineer to compete. Hardly any Humanities graduates can make it past the entrance examination that is tilted in favor of quantitative skills.It is no surprise that many of us struggle in the workplace to influence colleagues who do not report to us. Or to work with the matrix structures where power lines are fuzzy and influence lines matter.This is just what Humanities teach us. How to interact with human beings. To deal with ambiguity and fuzziness.
Why 2 Pizza Teams Work Better
A smaller team helps improve execution. Amazon’s stock has risen more than 36 percent this year. If you had invested $1,000 in Amazon in July 2002 — and had held onto your shares — that money would be worth $83,000 today. In real terms it would be $61,000. Can all this be attributed only to 2 Pizza teams or is there something more.
How to Handle Underperformers on a Team You Inherit
How to handle underperformers in a team you inherit? The manager is responsible for the success of the team. It is not fair to top performers when the manager ignores the underperformers and lets the others pick up the slack. How can the manager help?
What they do not tell you about class toppers
If you were the top student of your class, does it mean that you will land up being the CEO? To answer this question, Karen Arnold, a researcher at Boston College, followed 81 high school toppers and those who were top of the class after they finished academics to track their progress. Are they doing well? Are they successful? Find out for yourself.