Abhijit Bhaduri’s Blog
I write about careers, skills and the world of work. The cartoons and sketches are mine.
Earners-learners & rejection
Most people underestimate the value of likability in their career. When you make a mistake, people are likely to give you a second chance if they like you. Else they will pull out a rule book and tell you why you have not done what you must.
RIP Father McGrath
As you step into the world of work, you are bringing to it the freshness of ideas and the power to change things. And yet, there is the danger that all too soon you will forget why you came to a place like this.NO, you were not here to understand the corporate sector or the intricate theories of management. You came here to understand yourself and your strengths. To believe how easy it is to make a difference. That is the power of higher education. To instil in you the belief that you can make the world a better place.
Angels, Bosses and Demons
When you ask interns about their experiences with their project guides or managers, you get to hear some crazy stories. The insecure and moronic will always treat Interns as a form of life similar to amoeba and consequently low down on the food chain. While the smarter people use the interns to get a fresh perspective to some real life issues and problems. The evolved look at it as an opportunity to build the employer brand.The jobs are back. So are internships. Their cover story of 15 April 2010 is labelled Angels, Bosses and Demons. The article clearly identifies the ideal boss. You have to decide who they refered to as Demon or Angel. JAM's reporter Prachi Parekh wanted to know how I would treat an intern. Here are some excerpts...
The 6Bridges Interview
We have all heard about being separated from each other by 6 degrees of separation. With some people you wish the degrees of separation would be 600 instead and less than six for the ones you are desperate to meet. The group that started the website at 6bridges.com (their byline says it is "An exclusive global community of Indian Professionals") did it to connect Indian professionals across the globe. The site focuses on 6 key areas (another six) : Career growth, entrepreneurship, Re-skilling, money management, leisure and professional networking. We got chatting about this and that. Let us cross the 6bridges.
Writing In The Time Of Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is here with Facebook, Orkut, Twitter ets defining the day for many. It may not be mainstream yet, but it has certainly added a two way collaboration possibility to the erstwhile one way process of writing. It builds a relationship between the author and the reader before, during and after the process of writing. Can a best selling novel be written on Facebook? Can a novel have 1500 authors? Neha Tara Mehta of Mail Today newspaper writes about all this and more on 28 Dec 2008.
Media Recommends Married But Available
The Telegraph says, " Married But Available (HarperCollins, Rs 195) by Abhijit Bhaduri follows Mediocre but Arrogant and is likely to be followed by Middle-Aged but Active. It is the story of Abbey, an MBA in the Eighties, when MBAs were just beginning to be accepted as god’s greatest gift to the corporate world. The prose is hardly of Booker quality, but the plot could interest a film maker wishing to capture on celluloid the pains and dilemmas of a man the rest of the world calls successful." OK guys, I have made tentative plans of how I will spend those millions. Now let us get cracking on the deal, Bollywood ... unless they meant Hollywood."Low on heavy fundas and high on humor and a feel good read." says Times of India
Show and Tale
Do books that tell a great story also make great films? Are these two different forms where the twain shall not meet?While I can instantly think of films like Ben-Hur, Frankenstein, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest or for that matter most of the films made by Satyajit Ray who always chose great stories and turned them into visual delights on celluloid.
Interview: The Asian Age 6 Sep 08
Pramita Bose of The Asian Age asked me about my favorite books. That's a tough question. It is a bit like asking which one is your favorite movie or favorite city to live in. The answer to most of these questions changes or gets updated frequently. The latest book that one falls in love with often features in a list like this. Some books remain eternal favorites. They linger on. They haunt me. On a lonely evening those phrases and dilemmas set me thinking. Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning is one such awesome book. Spike Milligan certainly remains a benchmark when it comes to writing humor. Here is Pramita's take on the dicussion...
Management Compass: The Interview
Q: What is it about the B-schools that makes it a good backdrop for a story?A: An author must write about things that have a ring of authenticity. I went to a B-School and the story is therefore set in a surrounding that I am familiar with. The dilemmas of B School life make for an interesting combination for B-Schools.
Ask Abhijit
Is this story autobiographical? Is there someone called Rascal Rusty? Did you actually live in the Railway Colony of SP Marg, New Delhi? Why did you choose Jamshedpur as the city in which to base the Business School in? Who does Abbey love - is it Keya, Priya or Ayesha? If you want to ask some more questions, just go ahead and add them to the comment section below and I will answer them. - Abhijit Bhaduri
Abbey's Classnotes on Strategic Planning
Strategic Planning is an oxymoron says Rascal Rusty. But then I had to take serious notes while in class, says Abbey
