I am tired of well read people who say the most politically correct, business centric & sensible sounding things and voila have no individual thought nor drive of their own. I have to constantly guard myself against this as well – it is easy to fall into the trap of just generally saying the ‘right’ things because that is what the ‘industry’, ‘peers’ or everyone else needs. Some how a lot of people just fall into the trap of knowing ‘everything’ and doing ‘nothing’.
One of the joys of doing business for me is that I can question those behaviors and rules. The challenge is to ensure that the company does not have people who just make all the right noises, but people who also step up and push themselves forward to find more answers. I consider it my challenge to build such a company.
We keep looking for these three characteristics in people when we hire and it is saddening to see how less we see of it. In the last year we have gone through over 10K resumes and have interviewed a couple of thousand people and I see very few people with real talent, interest and curiosity. Almost no drive to be the best at the something they like, virtually no need to be on top of their game and no driving interest in life. What it all adds upto is a lot of mediocrity. lots.
I’ve blamed everyone at different times for why people turn up this way – parents, colleges, peer pressure – the full monty. We all live in a setup where experimentation is frowned upon, the need to be happy is shafted at the altar of making money and people even if they are driven haven’t found others quite like them to follow and be inspired from. Amidst all the pressures of life, we still tend to find people who want to make that change, take that risk, live a life where they can meaningfully achieve things they’d never dreamt of – but all these people are so rare that I wonder if India will ever have a human super-power company – the world class MNC where the very best with all their nuttiness can come together and make magic happen – while finding others like them.
May be companies are to blame – may be they don’t allow people to dream large enough and even if people dream large enough they get shot down really fast. May be companies are afraid of ’the individual’, may be companies never thought it necessary to worry about taking care of the things that really bother people and found that money acted like a good enough proxy to buy silence from talented individuals.
May be parents are to blame – may be they have too much say in what career a person chooses, may be they force you take the calls you do in the name of getting ’settled’, may be it is your peers – the people who make 5K more per month than you do. Whoever.
Hopefully a generation of people hit back hard and become the change. Else we will all be forced to work with idiots, act like idiots and sacrifice happiness at the altar of mediocrity.
Ever since I started PG, I’ve always wanted to have masseurs full time at the PG HQ. That goal has now been achieved 
Foot massages, back rubs, head massages – now all free at the PG HQ, all with trained masseurs. There is priceless joy in receiving a foot massage while you are reading stuff on your laptop. Too much. BTW, this experience comes with soft music, temperature control and scented oil.
Too much happiness @ work.
1) Dance on stage
2) Launched a book while dancing on stage
3) Troubleshooted half a dozen servers
4) Caught for not stopping at a signal (who the beep keeps signals at the end of flyovers!)
5) Attended the awesomest AIPGM ever
6) Woke up early morning – everyday
7) Read 3 novels
Vented.
9) Bought a camcorder
10) Finished GTA IV
11) Got interviewed
12) Found out I had lost a little weight (musta been that dance practice!)
13) Worried about if I remembered how to fly an aircraft
14) Promised to gift myself a simulator setup to practice (hint, hint!)
15) Planned to build a campus office for the new PG HQ
16) Gave up on hiring
17) Found hope 5 minutes after that
18) Spent 8 minutes crafting this useless blog post.
I’ve been home for the last few days thanks to an extended holiday due to Diwali. Now this is the kind of a break which causes a mayhem with my system. I am your average joe who likes to work, head home, work, head home – rinse repeat. But four days of doing NOTHING except watching movies and reading and .. um..err.. well doing nothing got me bored to new unimaginable levels. At some point I was ready to pay to find a job and do something.. somewhere.
All this free time also gave me too much time to think. Now I like to think once in a while but thinking every day for a couple of days have pushed me over the brink. Until March 2010, I want to do the following:
1) Run a Marathon. The full one.
2) Build a 100+ people company.
3) Learn to do some rifle shooting
4) Play a couple of songs on the guitar
5) Continue teaching at NASEOH or elsewhere 
6) Learn programming. At-least one language 
Let me revisit this page later to see if I do end up heading down this path. That programming thingie. Time to go and read some
Every great leader has had an instinct for execution. He has said, in effect, “Unless I can make this plan happen, it’s not going to matter.” But the selection, training, and development of leaders doesn’t focus on this reality.
Judging from our observations, a high proportion of those who actually rise to the top of a business organization have made their mark—their personal “brand”— as high-level thinkers. They are the kind of people who get caught up in the intellectual excitement of each new big idea that comes out and adopt it with enthusiasm.
They are articulate conceptualizers, very good at grasping strategies and explaining them. This, they know, is what it takes to get ahead. They aren’t interested in the “how” of getting things done; that’s for somebody else to think about.
Judging a person’s intelligence is easy for people who hire and promote others; it’s harder to research a person’s track record and gauge their know-how about getting things done, particularly when the performance is the result of many people working together. But the intelligent, articulate conceptualizers don’t necessarily understand how to execute. Many don’t realize what needs to be done to convert a vision into specific tasks, because their high-level thinking is too broad. They don’t follow through and get things done; the details bore them. They don’t crystallize thought or anticipate roadblocks. They don’t know how to pick people for their organizations who can execute. Their lack of engagement deprives them of the sound judgment about people that comes only through practice.
Bossidy and Charan (2002)
The above lines by Bossidy & Charan show insights I would never be able to articulate.
Exchange with a friend:
F: PG is such a huge part of your life, is there life or an identity for you beyond PG?
Me: mumble mumble
After the exchange I did wonder if I really thought of anything other than PG (food doesn’t count) since I am back from the US – MBA & all. I think I am lucky. I have something on my mind all the time – its either dreams, worries or just the sheer happiness of managing something as beautiful as PG.
Like a baby that has grown healthier & is growing fast – I am realizing how fast I need to let go of things at PG to ensure its own growth. At last count there are 15 folks working at the HQ and the number will be doubling in the next couple of months.
Every waking moment, I think about what to do better at PG, who else to hire, how else to do things better, how to manage the resource crunch and yes .. the ever elusive question of ‘where is all this heading’.
I do wonder if I have a separate identity beyond PG, but honestly I am not sure I care. I consider myself lucky that I get to do the things I do, touch the lives I can, help build a beautiful workplace, help people make their educational choices, work with world class folks and continue to dream.
F: Do you like the way the world is?
Me: No
<brief pause>
Me: I have PG.
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.- Albert Einstein
There is this sense of desperation deep within. I wonder who or what I am and what I want to be. Its this sense of uneasiness within that is driving me up the wall. Know how it feels when you leave everything behind and then find yourself all lost again? I think, I do. Every cell of mine is revolting – kind of stopping me from making that leap. I for one know, once I make that leap – I will grow and won’t remain what I have been.
I feel constricted. That feeling in your throat that never lets you complete your thought or your sentence.
Everytime I’ve been challenged in my life and I’ve lost myself – I’ve hit back. Brutually. It has been like making a point, but over a period of time, you tend to forget to whom the point was being made and that is how I have grown through my challenges and my pain. I stand at another crossroad this time – not knowing where I will land if I start. May be the fear of starting pulls me back – the safety of the known. I haven’t run in a looooooooong time, just lazed and ambled around… I don’t know if I am going to start running again. But if I do, the next time I stop, I hope I have grown to be a better man. The thing about running, I’ve always run for myself – that has to change. I have nothing to prove to myself now – I need to run for my people. Lots of promises to keep and lots of people to take care of. I hope I remain worthy of what I have received all my life.
Signing off this blog.
Will start a thread in the PG forums and continue about my Life at W there.
Bah! That dreaded derivative, integration thing I hated for all my life would be my nemesis on the 15th of Aug. Hope to clear that test. I am surely having a tough time matching up with the genuises here. Heck, forget about matching, my friends here are like leagues ahead and are spending an inordinate amount of time bringing me upto speed. Coaching me, counselling me and teaching me math. People are giving so much out, that I am feeling like a leech. I am overwhelmed by this place! Time to give back? Can’t wait to get my bearings right…
I’ve simplified my blog theme. Comments?
Preterm is on and voila .. time flies by. Actually, I still have a lot of spare time on my hands. But the trouble is I dont have an internet connect at home. It involves, getting cable tv and then an internet connect and guess what, they dont provide cable tv connects to people without SSN. Grrr.. so I will have to make a scheduled pit stop to the nearest cable tv hq a dozen miles away and identify myself before I can lay my hands on a good net connect at home.
Stuff done in the last week.. umm..
Attending more parties. Wharton junta seem to party a LOT. On any given day there are 3 parties you can attend. Plus with 800 people around, you can rest assured at its someone’s b’day, anniversary or whatever. Plus the junta parties like its got no other business. I attended a couple of parties, and most of them are held in pubs. Now there is this thing about noise levels – I dont’ like em to skyrocket :p . So I guess I meet more people at school than at the pubs. Plus ofcourse there are so many parties are people’s homes….
Then ofcourse I spent some time auctioning! AHA, At Wharton courses are auctioned and every junta has a fixed set of points so that they can bid on their favorite courses. Auctions are put into place because every class has a limited no. of seats available and students need to bid on courses that are of utmost interest to them. But there are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO many courses that its humanely insanely impossible to attend all of them. So I decided to take up a couple of faculty lectures and trips that would help me figure out the insanity of business at the best business school [ self plug ] . Mwahahahhaa
Some of the courses/lectures/events I bid upon for preterm and won are:
| |
Industry Chat: Consulting |
| |
Industry Chat: Private Equity [JMHH - G06] |
| Tuesday |
| |
Business Etiquette for Success [JMHH - F85] |
| |
LECT004001 – Deals: An Introduction [JMHH - G50] |
| |
Technology Intelligence for Competitive Advantage [JMHH - 260] |
| |
LECT010001 – Competitive Advantage [JMHH - 240] |
| Wednesday |
| |
Opportunities for Entrepreneurship at Wharton [JMHH - G06] |
| |
Negotiating in Times of Crisis (TICKET REQUIRED) 8/23 & 8/24 & 8/26 [JMHH - F85] |
| Thursday |
| |
Generating Venture Ideas [JMHH - 250] |
| |
|
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Leveraging Insights from the MBTI [JMHH - F60] |
| |
The Electronic Business Library [JMHH - G50] |
and these are events/lectures that will be done in two weeks and is in addition to the preterm courses am taking! So these are the events I am filling and fitting into my schedule whenever/wherever I find a lil spare time
There were around a 100 events/stuff to chose from and therefore I guess no two people would have a similar schedule! Fin guys have stuff from trading simulation to hedge fund lectures to what not and guys like me have again equally interesting stuff to delve in. That kind of hints at the vast resources available to the junta here. Pick an area and you can find enough stuff to indulge yourself for the next two years!
Off the Wharton front.. I bought a 27″ TV and a surround 5.1 speaker system and a 5 CD/DVD/MP3 Player with changer and stuff for 250$ .. beat that :p .. the joys of purchasing second hand stuff from a guy who was leaving town .. now I am not sure if these things are gonna help in the long run.. but hearing music from those towering speakers..sheer bliss!
As you can see I havent started studying.. yet.. wait, I’ve never studied. I just got lucky that I even got there. Do I have to study now ? Um.. I’ll adopt a wait and watch approach before I answer that