Aspen - Its Color before Fall #Fall Foliage

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!!!

Why relationships matter in corporate?

Eshwar and Raj are two engineers working in the same team in a company. Although both of them have similar qualification, the personalities are completely different.Eshwar is a merry go loving friendly guy with an open mindset. He works smart at his job , has his share of fun with his set of gang at work. Raj is a conservative, shy person. Although he is good at work, he finds opportunities to put down others and boost his self image with the higher management.

    During recession, as projects were being cancelled and people were laid off in the company, Eshwar and Raj look for opportunities outside their organization.

  

     Raj finds a prospective job, resigns the current organization and joins the new one. Eshwar also eventually finds a promising offer and lands in a new company after a short span of time. To their surprise , Eshwar and Raj ends up being in the same team in their new organization. With background familiarity and being strangers in new office, both exchange greetings and hangs up with one another during breaks and share the work details often.

    As Raj joined the new organization quite ahead of Eshwar , He was bit more familiar with the new set up and people. To his favor, the  team leader resigns due to personal reasons and as there were no one other candidate other than him with similar experience Raj now gets the opportunity to lead a new team. Raj was always waiting for such a moment and makes use of this opportunity completely. He puts in  more  effort at work, projects his work to his manager and establishes his control in the new setup.

   Eshwar ends up in a project activity that is quite stable with good learning and not very high on visibility.He starts his work with his own style and delivers what ever is required for the job.

   Raj feels accomplished as he is in a better position compared to Eshwar. He gradually adapts to bossing instincts, works less and concentrate on monitoring people and spying about his team to his manager. His attitude towards Eshwar also changes and both of them turn hostile.

    Though initially new members of the team are unaware of his nature, they gradually understand the kind of person he is and limit their talks with him. Over a period of time, the project activity which Raj was responsible for is delivered. Raj's team is split due to completion of activity and now Raj has no team member to monitor for.

   Because of his untrustworthy nature, not many colleagues exchange friendly greetings with him on a day today basis. Also, Feedback of unsupportive leader is provided about him by one of his team member.

His manager who had promised him a promotion and a rosy picture of the organization now is unsupportive of him. He encourages another new member who has just joined the team and openly criticizes Raj to contribute more for the team. Raj now has all his hopes of being a manager doomed.

Meanwhile Eshwar takes a up new activity and establishes himself as a go to person in his team. He slowly builds the team, develops good rapport with his seniors and brings more work to his manager both in terms of quality and quantity.

Being good natured, he develops a cordial relationship with all team members and he solves issues quickly when ever support was required. He also receives good feedback as a trust worthy person among his team members. Now Eshwar is a prospective candidate for the next promotion.

This situation strongly send out a lesson

No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team

Hence

Relationships matter to your career no matter the organization or level of seniority because every job boils down to interacting with people

Its 9:30 AM

Its 9:30 AM, 
DTL meeting started as usual in our team with all my fellow colleagues. As a routine each one of us brief about every day activities. I was surprised to get an update on social psychology course in one of my meetings. From a team that does core electrical work pertaining to micro controllers, it was a very different experience to understand human psychology and behaviours associated with it after work hours.

        A short face to face interaction with every colleague gives good start for the day. It’s important to come out of one's cocoon and understand others work to lay hands beyond spectrum of one’s own work.

       Many personal growth books have an overwhelming focus on efficiency which is self-focused and includes vision creation, goal setting, being disciplined but it’s only the relationship that takes one forward along with one's efficiency. As we spend most of the time around office space, it’s important to build valuable relationship that takes one beyond the length of work and create a value system and synergy in the organisation.

     

  Emphasizing a famous quote that says it all "If You Want to Go Fast, Go Alone. If You Want To Go Far, Go Together"

   As I drive to my office every morning amidst personal calls, traffic jams, pot hole filled busy honking roads, one thought continues to be in my mind, 

“Reach office by 9:30 AM”

Made My Move!!!

Thinking on what to move next, I was fully engrossed with my game of chess.

it was my second round and my opponent was Raghavendra. it was 5:22pm when the match was started and at 6:15 pm , both of us had hardly any powers left out to attack with just a horse and rook and few pawns. After 15 more mins, I got an edge on the game when my pawn was promoted to Queen and it was very close finish. Oh what a match it was!!!!

As an adage states Journey is more important than destination, i thoroughly enjoyed the game as it was being played with complete intent and focus with many of my colleagues as audience. The game just uplifted my spirits for rest of the day and I was revived of enthusiasm.

As the experience in the job increases, somewhere monotony sets in and it drains one's energy levels. At that point, we start to drudge about the regular routine work and kill our creativity in our day today hectic schedule of deliveries, meetings and more deliveries.

Once in a while a fresh breeze to instigate creativity is so refreshing and sets the tone for next set up regular activities with enthusiasm.

Appreciate the coordinators and all participants of the employee engagement for creating such an ambience.