Abhijit Bhaduri’s Blog
I write about careers, skills and the world of work. The cartoons and sketches are mine.
I fought with my boss. Now what?
I was being repeatedly challenged to fix a higher target by my boss two levels my senior. Unable to take it beyond a point, I let off some steam and things turned unpleasant between us. This happened in an open office meeting. I now feel awkward facing him. He hasn’t spoken to me since the incident and my immediate superior has refused to intervene. How should I break the ice and maintain continuity at work?
Performance Management - beyond count and comparison
Advertising agencies are judged on two parameters. The clients evaluate them on the impact they had on the additional sales and trust in the brand. The peers compete on the number of awards won. The industry judges the agency on the thought leadership and breakthrough thinking. The senior leaders are judged on the number of awards the team members have won under their leadership. If work is going to be all about creative output, maybe it is time for performance management to be designed along with people who have figured out how to evaluate and nurture creativity – the mad men.
The Perils of the Parallel Universe
One look at Zuckerberg’s testimony before the European Parliament shows how powerless the lawmakers are because they do not understand how modern media works. The US senators were not much better when it came to questioning Zuckerberg. The lawmakers pose for selfies and photos with the very person they intend to grill. Part of the problem was the clear ignorance, if not befuddlement, in the face of technology displayed by most of the senators, many of whom are of a ripe vintage. At times Zuckerberg resembled the polite teenager who visits his grandparents, only to spend the afternoon showing them how to turn on the wifi.
Book Review: Great at Work
The way to do this is to redesign your work so as to focus on value, not goals. Looking at your work in terms of the impact you are creating for others helps you discover your passion and purpose. Spending just 15 minutes a day of “deliberate practice”. While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance – like Jiro crafting each piece of sushi.
Joshua Karthik's 6 Tips for Business
Joshua shares his business secrets. Try out BOLD ideas. Don't crave for every idea to get mass approval. You will never disrupt yourself if you are truly doing something new and original. Like Salvador Dali ...
Reimagine education for the new ecosystem
We often ask children what they want to be when they grow up. 85 per cent of the jobs that will exist in 2030 haven't even been invented yet. There were no jobs called Data Scientist, YouTube star, Sports Psychologists, even a few years back. The educational institutions have to stop being credentialing machines. My take on the Adobe Education Leaders Seminar 2019 ...
Trust in a hyperconnected world
When people put up videos that are slickly edited to leave out flaws and pauses, they convince us that they are not being authentic. It is your flaws – not your perfect self that makes you trustworthy.
Why should hiring be driven by social intelligence?
“Personality is related to every meaningful individual difference. Scientifically validated personality assessments can predict substance use and abuse, longevity, relationship satisfaction, job performance, criminality, and occupational choice, just to list a few examples. Beyond these applications, well-validated personality assessments provide individuals with insights into their own motives, reputations and destructive behaviours, many of which they may not be aware.
Cybersecurity - Should You Care?
Recent research by McAfee has found that less than a quarter of people (23%) realize that wearable devices and connected toys for children need to have security protection too. While your kid's smart watches or phones can tell you their whereabouts, the same information can be accessed by cybercriminals.
The New Skills Marketplace
We can no longer tell a first-time workforce entrant to find a stable job. The job market is in a state of “perpetual beta”. There are sectors and organizations that are collapsing because of new business models. Jobs are getting unbundled and being looked at as a set of skills. Some of these skills will be automated. Some skills will be done by humans. Definitely, constant skill upgradation is the new norm.
When Machines Begin to Learn Your Moods
Amazon has filed a patent that makes it possible to interpret users’ emotions and feelings. By analyzing the pitch and volume of speaker commands Alexa will respond to the user’s “feelings”. This could be a huge leap for ecommerce. But this also leaves you more vulnerable. Understanding emotions and moods helps build trust even with machines.
What will Career 3.0 and Jobs 3.0 be like?
Career 3.0 will be about bulk of the workforce becoming gig workers and operating outside the payroll of an employer. This workforce will come to the marketplace with multiple skills and offer it to multiple buyers and paid at different rates depending on the level of proficiency. This model will allow people to bring in all their skills, education and hobbies to the marketplace and monetize it.
How to be a Futurist
Futurists are experts in systems thinking. They look at socio-economic-political shifts and combine it with technology to create possible scenarios. With practice each one of us can get better at predicting how things may affect us. Thinking and information processing, such as market judgment, can be much faster, more reliable, and ---less subject to political forces than the deliberations of experts or expert committees. Give it a try.
How to Prepare for Your First Interview
The thought of going in for your first interview can be a daunting one. Nervousness is normal. But the key to a successful interview experience lies in the preparation you do for it ahead of time. Here are four things to remember and practice before your first interview.
Can a growth mindset enable success
The experiments in “growth mindset” were primarily done on children in the beginning and it was observed that intelligence does change in children and fluctuates the most during adolescence and then stabilizes. So just wishing for it to increase is not going to make it happen. Think of intelligence as the processor in a computer. Having a faster processor makes the programs load faster.
HR Must Be Designed for Irrational Humans
Look around and see how much has changed about work and the worker. It is a clear signal that we need to redesign HR. So drop the assumptions of rational human beings. Maybe we will call it Behavioral HR. Google already has taken a lead in this space by starting a lab called Irrational Lab. Maybe it is time for all organizations to start one too where HR will remove outdated policies and replace them with ones that assume people do not make rational choices (mostly).
How to get others to support your ideas
How do you get people to support your idea? Getting approval from the senior management is often about the language of you have used in the document or presentation. That's what experts say. When I speak about this, a lot of people believe that if the idea is good enough, it does not need selling. Several bright people look at selling an idea as the socially acceptable term for telling a lie. That is so not true. An idea - no matter how brilliant - has to be sold.
Innovation Resolutions for 2019
Social Psychologist Katherine Milkman speaks about the mental accounting that we do to create landmarks that show the passage of time. According to her research if you reframe any day as a fresh beginning, you can make significant progress towards achieving your goals. So the real magic does not lie in waiting for the new year to start on your goal. It can any day - even today. And especially today. All that it needs is a reframing in your mind to say that you are making a new beginning.