People management in an MNC has become most
sought after role in the industry today. Leadership roles on observing people,
appraisals, deciding the careers have become a trend even though one may not
possess apt skills for the role. It may not be an easy decision to quit one
such role in an MNC and pursue what your heart wants.
Only few take the road less travelled when
encountered with such situations in life
Let me introduce to the group Shankar
Narayan. He is an enthusiastic embedded engineer with a passion for writing,
philosophy.
Over to his words.
How did
you raise to the role of group manager from an engineer role?
To be honest I was not a geek at all. I was
an average engineer with a bit of more commitment and willingness to act upon
things to complete them. I had a very good communication skills and also I
could quickly understand and analyze people and the different behavioral
aspects. I was given ample opportunity by Sujay my then boss to
play the role of his deputy and I enjoyed doing it. I also learnt a lot from Mr
Vishwanath CR the then Chief engineer on how one can empower the team to work.
All put together I was able to identify myself as a good people manager and the
opportunity came right in front at Volvo.
On your
decision to join start up.
After taking inspiration from Steve Jobs
biography, his speech at Stanford and a personal guidance from Vishwanath, the
idea initially was to quit my job and do something on my own full time that
would satisfy my passion to help people learn electronics and breed the culture
of innovation. However, that was a big risk for me personally. Then I met Mrs
Subasree Venkatesan a friend of Mr. Vishwanah and I was excited to hear what
she and her team was doing in her startup. When she heard my aspirations to be an
entrepreneur, she offered me to work with her if I was interested and that was
when I started seriously thinking. I also expressed my wish with them to have a
small firm of my own in the field of learning along with my job. She agreed on
this and thus my journey started with Sriveda Emsys as a product manager and
also as founder of Gluevity labs my learning center.
Few thoughts on career and leadership and job
satisfaction:
Career is a word that will have changing
definition at times! If at one time it is about earning enough money for bread
and butter and other time it could be money or position. then there could be a
phase where career means to set a bigger purpose to identify yourself. That is
when hell would break loose :-)
Leadership is a subjective term. You can develop
it only by finding more about yourself. I believe that no classroom learning
can bring in the leadership. It is made of several ingredients like trust,
decision, risk, empowerment etc. You cannot declare yourself a leader, you can
only exhibit leadership and its for the world to identify you as a leader.
Job
satisfaction
If you can go to your job happily on
Monday morning then you are satisfied with your job!
Wasnt it brilliant and inspirational!!!
