Orchid Show 2014

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Appreciate Growth, Focus on One, Be Compassionate

Actually this post is a long pending one and thanks to Jeff, who prompted me to post this without any further delay. One of the big wins in my life is to get an offer from LinkedIn and to be part of the awesome Talent Community. It surely has been one of the key decisions in my life considering the fact that I got an opportunity to work with one of the dream companies of mine. Having read both the books of Reid Hoffman, I was very tempted to work for LinkedIn for its inspiring set of culture and values. It has been little over a month at LinkedIn and right from the day one, I have placed myself in a ‘curiosity’ mode and I am truly enjoying the new phase.

Before joining LinkedIn, I had watched several videos of Jeff and have been his fan since then. He is one of the coolest CEOs I have ever seen and listened to. I am fortunate to join him and his efforts of creating a world with immense economic opportunities. I was awe-inspired watching his talk on creating the global economic graph and his vision for LinkedIn for the next 10 years. And after reading Reid’s new book ‘The Alliance’ I was convinced that LinkedIn, with its inspiring set of culture and values and an energetic CEO like Jeff, is one of the coolest companies in the world. (By the way, I had read the book before I joined LinkedIn)

What prompted me to write this post is the recent ‘Fire Side Chat’ with Jeff happened at our LinkedIn office in Sydney, Australia. Jeff answered a lot of questions and one of the answers that got me hooked onto is for the question on ‘fun’. It was absolutely interesting when he said that he likes ‘growth’ everyday and ‘growth’ is fun for him. Jeff went on to the extent of explaining how he likes growth by giving examples of him getting up early in the morning, going to his garden and deeply appreciating the growth of the plants, flowers, the whole garden etc., he likes to see them grow and likewise he likes to see growth around him all the time (everyday, every minute). It was particularly interesting for me because I could easily relate to what he said.  Me being a nature enthusiast, what I observe in nature is the same. It is a natural phenomenon to grow everyday. Nature does not wait for anything; it just follows its cycle. We all see growth all around us and no one can stop it. It takes some effort to appreciate the growth around us and to understand the philosophy behind the same. 

All of us expect ourselves to grow everyday; we like little improvements in everything we deal with on a daily basis.  We always like to see our gardens giving more flower blooms every year; we like to see ourselves moving higher in our career graph; we are always ecstatic to see our bank balances progressing north and we never like to see any graph seeing south.  But calling it ‘fun’ takes a lot of courage and craziness for anyone. And Jeff is surely as crazy as he sounds for sure. 

The next thing he spoke about was focusing ‘one thing at a time’. He said those who have read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs knows the story of how Apple flourished because of Steve’s philosophy of ‘focusing on one thing at a time’.   Even though Apple had started working on iPad before the iPhone, for a good reason, they had to stop everything they worked on iPad for a long time until they shipped their first iPhone. They never did work on both the things simultaneously. And they became successful and working on ‘one thing at a time’ became their mantra. Investing the whole energy on that ‘one thing’ is the key for any business to flourish. And for that matter, (I should not be saying this given the gamut of things I am part of) every individual will succeed by doing ‘one thing at a time’.

The next thing that was very enticing for me was when Jeff spoke about this interesting topic ~ ‘managing compassionately’. Drawing his experience from his ‘Yahoo’ days, he gave good examples of how he evolved to this philosophy of building a culture of compassion. It takes a lot of courage and honesty to share transformative stories and having heard some of the examples Jeff gave us, made me think that we seldom realize the fact that without ‘compassion’ or ‘being compassionate’, it is very difficult to work with people around us.

Well, I already like this new phase of mine and thrilled to have listened to some awesome stories from the people I admire. I guess the three interesting points listed above are absolutely cool to reflect upon and they are much evident in every success story we come across everyday.

 Cheers,

Srik

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welcome

It was a very humid morning when I started from home yesterday to give invitations to the guests attending our NGO's camp - Free Health Camp for Differently Abled - happening this weekend. My first visit was to invite Ms. Pavithra Y.S, CEO of Vindhya eInfomedia. I had spoken to Ms Pavithra early in the morning and because she was traveling, she asked me to drop off the invitation at her office. Also it was a chance for me to visit her place and witness the kind of work they do. 

I troubled one of the senior person who was coordinating with me in her absence to make sure I get the route map to their office right. After 2-3 calls, I finally reached the building and parked my bullet in the parking area. As I reached the reception I started observing a lot of different things that gave me very positive energy. As I took my visitor pass and reached the 2nd floor reception, I opened the door and I was welcomed into the office. The person who welcomed me looked very confident, dynamic and a well trained person to take care of the guests. I was so moved by the welcome that I did not for a moment think that the person was disabled. He was differently abled. It is just that he did not have both his hands. I think that was the most inspiring moment and the most inspiring welcome I got till now in my life. I just came out of the building and cried.

Vindhya eInfomedia is into IT Enabled Services company based out of Bangalore and gives employment to differently abled people. They are an inspiration!

More power to them.

Cheers,
Srikanth

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all human beings are entrepreneurs

Quote from the book 'The Start-up of You' by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha

All human beings are entrepreneurs. When we were in the caves, we were all self-employed... finding our food, feeding ourselves. That's where human history began. As civilization came, we suppressed it.We became "labor" because they stamped us, "You are labor." We forgot that we are entrepreneurs. 
~ Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner and microfinance pioneer

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Sigh. When things become too comforting to live with, I guess we will end up in hibernation.

Cheers,
Srik

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standing tall

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single act of dishonesty

Excerpt from the book The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty by Dan Ariely

The bottom line is that we should not view a single act of dishonesty as just one petty act. We tend to forgive people for their first offense with the idea that it is just the first time and everyone makes mistakes. And although this may be true, we should also realize that the first act of dishonesty might be particularly important in shaping the way a person looks at himself and his action from that point on-and because of that, the first dishonest act is the most important one to prevent. That is why it is important to cut down on the number of seemingly innocuous singular acts of dishonesty. If we do, society might become more honest and less corrupt over time. 

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Sigh!

Come to think about it now, I do agree that we tend to forgive people (and ourselves) for their first offense, and at the same time we unconsciously gain the chalta-hai-attitude I guess!

Srik

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honesty

Excerpt from the book The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty by Dan Ariely

When our ability to rationalize our selfish desires increases, so does our fudge factor, making us more comfortable with our own misbehavior and cheating. The other side is true as well; when our ability to rationalize our actions is reduced, our fudge factor shrinks, making us less comfortable with misbehaving and cheating. When you consider the range of undesirable behaviors in the world from this standpoint - from banking practices to backdating stock options, from defaulting on loans and mortgages to cheating on taxes - there's a lot more to honesty and dishonesty than rational calculations. 

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Can't agree more!

Also talk about doing stuff when no one is around. Checking out whether people stare at your monitor when you open your facebook or youtube page at office; ordering more stationary at office so that you can take some for home use; quickly printing personal pages only when no one is around; signing out early when boss is on leave; and more such... :)

Srik

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