A Chat with Shankar Narayan

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!!!