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Thumbrule: You seek value, useless products seek you

Let me tell you a secret.

I have read some great books. In fact, I have read some rather exceptional books. And seen some great cinema and content. 

Because, I ignored the reviews and the bestseller lists. 

The most striking examples I can think of are a murder mystery based on an Indian sleuth, and a series of books about an African ambassador who is also a good sleuth. The plots were borrowed sometimes, but the reading was rather refreshing. 

And Bodies in the Library. Bhaas ke Natak, which is totally gripping. 

All these books, I would not have read, if it wasn't for the fact that: 

A. I go to the bookstores and browse books myself. 

B. I patently ignore all recommendations and bestseller lists. I have said this earlier - most good writers are not good marketers, and vice versa. You will be sad to know that the first series - based on a lady Indian sleuth, is no longer in print. It was a series of 4 books, and when I tried to look for more books by the author, I realised that there were 4 books, but they were out of print. 

Long ago, we decided that the job of a search engine is to find the best content on the internet and present it to its users. It is not our job to apply to the search engine and hope that they will include us. 

Apply that principle to life - go looking for value. It is your job to seek value. I cannot overstate this. 

 There are two kinds of professionals. They are: 

A. My-best-effort

B. Whatever-it-takes

Let's say you are looking to party on Friday night. The boss calls you and asks you to submit some test results by Saturday noon. 

Here is how the two professionals will respond to that: 

A. My-best-effort

"Sure, no problem!" 

Then you go on and party the night away, forget all about the test results. When your manager messages you at Saturday 5 pm to check if you have uploaded the test results, you say something like, "Hey, not yet." 

You then get to it on Monday, in a business as usual mode. Apologies are for losers(Meaning, you do not apologise because there is nothing to apologise for) and if entire projects can get delayed, why cant simple test results be delayed by a bit? Whats the big deal? 

B. Whatever-it-takes 

You tell the manager - "I am sorry, I am meeting friends tonight and have plans this weekend. The earliest I can get to this is Monday afternoon. Will that be ok?" 

The manager thinks you have a bad attitude and gives it to the my best effort person. On Monday  morning, it lands at your desk (on account of Hey-Not-Yet) and you give a timeline of Tuesday afternoon to submit the test cases. 

Monday 1600 hours you realise this is going to take longer than that and you gave a wrong estimate. 

You then work to complete it, submit it by Tuesday afternoon, and never give a wrong estimate on a task like that again. 

7 questions to get to know the organisation

The mandate is to have an exploratory chat with people across levels and locations to "get a sense" of the organisation and how different people view the company. 

As an HR consultant working with Indian companies, this has been a standard ask. Clients want us to do this exercise in addition to any data gathering exercise that we might anyway do. This qualitative exploration helps us too. 

So, here is my secret set of 7 questions to get to know the culture of an organisation. The first question is what is called the classification question in research: 

1. Tell us about your career trajectory.

This question helps us set some parameters – functional area, total experience, education, tenure with Fateh, etc.

2. What is the best thing about being here?

3. What is it that, if changed, would make this organisation greater/better? 

4. If you had to use 5 words to describe this organisation, what would those be?

5. If you could make one change to the business model of the company, what would that change be?

6. If you could make one change to the culture of the company, what would that change be?

7. What would you never change about the company? 

Memes on Gender Equality

It started with a simple share on the WIIM NCR group. I had seen the article already, so there was nothing new for me and ignored it. 

But then, the modern day stories started appearing. How women are still expected to serve food to their husbands, procreate at the mil's will, remain presentable at all times, hide their frustration and not expect the men to share the chores (while there is no issue with the women sharing the earning), women

 who stand near the door to hand the man his kerchief and wallet on his way out, women who pick and iron the man's clothes before he leaves for office. 

I have absolutely no issue with ladies who wish to do these things, just as I have no issue with ladies who don't want to. The issue is with forcing an image of ideal on the unwilling. 

And that, then, gave rise to this series of memes. I have no idea where the creative surge came from, but perhaps the captions will help. All captions - both on the meme and in text, are real things reported by women in 2022! 

And this is the learned helplessness of men 

The mother in law said, "Please wear some make up early in the morning so that your husband feels nice when he sees you in the morning": 

My mil wants us to have children right after marriage: 

\

I had a fight with my wife because i called her 10 minutes before reaching and she did not turn on the AC to chill the room by the time i arrive: 

This one is a depiction of women in cinema. The man is the change maker, the woman is the supplementary caregiver. 

Next time we want to address a subject like gender or privilege, perhaps memes should do the communication. 

I will seriously use these and other memes to bring gender to the discussion table. 

The challenges of monetisation - Crazytok podcast

 ST12 | Nidhi Arora | Challenges in Monetisation (crazytok.online)

This podcast was about our experience at The Children's Post - how we managed to create a great product, build audience, but failed to monetise the offering. 

Podcast on all things Nidhi

 Nidhi on manifestation, braille and children - Small, Big Wins. (hvj.coach)

There are conversations and there are conversations. This podcast is one of the most special conversations I've ever been a part of.

Talking with Harsh Vardhan Jajoo gives us conversation goals. Some day, I hope to be able to draw out my speaker one tenth as well as Harsh Vardhan Jajoo was able to do here.

This has been a masterclass. Thank you!

For the listeners: In this one, I was able to mention, for the first time, how spirituality contributes to all my work. If you're trying to sync your personal and spiritual pursuits with your professional ones, this podcast might be very helpful. Spiritualism and work are not antonyms. They're synergistic.