Startups have open offices – mostly. Everyone from the twenty year old founder to the twenty one year old employees are all sitting around in open cubicles. It is a visible symbol of a non-hierarchical work culture. In a country where hierarchy is everywhere, this comes across like a breath of fresh air and becomes a great draw while hiring. But are they really productivity boosters (because the boss can keep an eye on you) or creativity enhancers?
Pursuing an unusual goal is not the sign of having a jagged resume. It is usually an accomplishment that makes you wonder, what motivated the person to take up the challenge. It usually is something that brings out the desire in a person to persist despite setbacks and hardships. The person may finally not even have succeeded. But it is quality of persistence that a jagged resume will show far more effectively than a regular resume.
I was always told when I was growing up that those who need style do it because they lack substance. Be good at your work and that is good enough. This belief is not true anymore. Both are important. Branding is really about “the truth told well” as a well-known agency used to say.
I remember meeting someone from the fashion industry who had explained to me the many shades of black that she could differentiate. All through that flight, my co-passenger educated me about the different shades — carbon black, ebony, charcoal black and outer space black, to name a few. The specialist can see the subtle differences while a novice like me would describe all of them as ‘black’. Maybe the same goes for the people agenda.
Disruption is a leadership phenomenon. Past success is the most effective predictor of future failure. Most disruption occurs not by making the wrong choices, as much as failing to choose at all. When the Ritz Carlton's head of training professes to be unaware of Airbnb, or when the publisher of a newspaper depicts future strategy in terms that disown past strategies we can begin to see the magnitude of the challenges ahead. What is needed is close to a complete reworking of our leadership model.
When a crisis of trust hits the organization, the public relations machinery swings into top gear and tries to tame the media before they go on a rampage. In this mayhem, it is easy to forget that the bruises and dents also affect the employer brand. The most valuable employees of the organization may worry about future prospects and jump ship. Potential candidates may think harder before joining the firm. I was with a food and beverage company during such a controversy. That crisis taught me powerful lessons on how to protect the employer brand during a crisis. Leaders need to address this from two perspectives – the head and the heart.
Even a small connection to the people who benefit from your work not only will improve productivity, it makes everyone happier. The single strongest predictor of meaningfulness is the belief that the job has a positive impact on others. That may be a terrific way to rethink your talent strategy.
Talented people are like magnets. They attract other talented people. These talented people have their own hangouts. The Coffee House in Kolkata was a hangout for the poets, artistes, literati and people from the world of art and culture. Film makers like Ritwik Ghatak, Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Aparna Sen used to hang out there. The writers and poets like Sunil Gangopadhyay and Shakti Chattopadhyay used the coffee and cigarette smoke filled atmosphere to fire up their imagination through debates. The cafes of Paris have served to inspire many philosopher and intellectuals from Sartre to Simone de Beauvoire. The Coffee House is still not a talent community.
Imagine writing the biography of a sixteen year old. Could it be interesting to someone who is a stranger? Would the life lessons be useful to someone who is much older? What if the sixteen year old happens to be Google? If Eric Schmidt's book How Google Works told us about the hardware and architecture of Google, then this one is about the source code.
