Quick Summary: I was recently profiled in Indian daily Mid-Day for a story on how online and offline relationships have merged for young people in India.
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I was recently profiled in a Mid Day story on how online and offline relationships have merged for some of us.
Ever since I started blogging three years back, my blog has been at the core of my social life. I have met some of the most fascinating people I know through my blog, or, in the last year, through Twitter. Some of my closest friends, including my last three girlfriends, are bloggers and some of my most important professional connections were made online.
The other day, I was talking to my girlfriend about how the center of gravity of my social life has further shifted online since I started my off-consumption experiment.
“Sometimes, I ask myself: what would I have done without my blog this year?”, I said.
“The question you should ask yourself is: who would you have been without your blog?”, she reminded me gently.
Friday, December 14th, 2007
Read about how a soft-hard-soft leadership style works best in an environment that is constantly changing.
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Management literature is littered with debates on what is the right leadership style. Most of these models recognize that there is no right leadership style, that different leadership styles work in different environments.
Based on my own experience over the last few years, I have found that a soft-hard-soft leadership style works best in an environment that is constantly changing.
Simply put, a soft leadership style is focused on people and a hard leadership style is focused on targets and processes.
According to my Soft-Hard-Soft Leadership Style Model, managers need to adopt their leadership styles to how easy or difficult their environment is.
There are three stages in the Soft-Hard-Soft Leadership Style Model model –
Stage 1 - Soft-Soft
When the environment is soft and targets/ processes are not under pressure, managers should adopt a soft leadership style to maintain the feel-good factor in the team.
Stage 2 - Hard-Hard
Saturday, November 10th, 2007
David Armano on the importance of being an office influential –
Make no mistake, office influentials are self-educating themselves in ways that can be beneficial not only to themselves but to their organizations. Being an active participant in social media means you learn how to custom design web pages and profiles, manage your personal brand, network and communicate with people from all business and backgrounds.
That sounds a lot like yours truly, but I don’t think my Technorati rank will be a factor in deciding my annual bonus anytime soon. 
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
The line between “you must be mad to do this” and “you must be mad not to do this” is a very thin one… and you know what… it shifts.
Stuck in morning rush hour traffic on Mumbai’s Marine Drive, on way to work, I found myself next to a Mercedes and a Maruti 800.
In slow-moving bumper-to-bumper traffic, the bigger Mercedes was at a disadvantage to the much smaller Maruti 800. The Mercedes stood still in its lane, while the Maruti 800 maneuvered itself into small openings and got ahead. I found myself calculating how much costlier it was for the Mercedes to be stuck in heavy traffic because of higher fuel consumption. I also found myself thinking what a waste it was for the Mercedes to be stuck in rush hour traffic on Marine Drive, when it should be doing 150 km per hour on the Mumbai-Pune highway. In fact, I almost felt sad for the Mercedes because it was on the wrong road.
Now, think of people instead of cars and careers instead of roads. Or, think of businesses instead of cars and industries instead of roads. I’m sure you have heard of hundreds of brilliant people who are stuck in the wrong career. I’m sure you have read about dozens of interesting businesses that don’t do well because the industry they are in is too crowded.
I have written about Seth Godin’s soon-to-be-released book ‘The Dip’ before and I have also been following The Dip Blog with utmost fascination. Here are some of my favorite pieces from The Dip Blog -
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Seven reasons you might fail to become the best in the world -
- You run out of time (and quit).
- You run out of money (and quit).
- You get scared (and quit).
- You’re not serious about it (and quit).
- You lose interest or enthusiasm or settle for being mediocre (and quit).
- You focus on the short term instead of the long (and quit when the short term gets too hard).
- You pick the wrong thing at which to be the best in the world (because you don’t have the talent).
Even worse than quitting in the first six cases: not quitting. Settling. Sticking with it but not succeeding.
On hyper-competition -
Thursday, April 19th, 2007
As part of my 30-by-30 quest, I’m asking my friends to write guest posts on my blog offering tips on how I should go for one or more of the thirty goals in my list.
Today, using my Technorati Favorites Exchange, I managed to get Gauravonomics into the Technorati Top 100 list, one of the more ambitious goals in my list.
There won’t be a better day ever, then, to have the first guest post in the 30-by-30 series, on the other very ambitious goal in my list - have assets of more than a crore.
Ranjan Varma writes about business and finance at Weblog on Business and Finance where he has cross-posted his advice to me.
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Gaurav’s post on the thirty things he wanted to do before he is thirty was a brave one. I wondered at his bravery and wished him all the best only to land up in trouble myself - he wants a way to build a net worth of one crore before he is thirty and now wants me to find it!
Also filed in 30 by 30, Guest Posts
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Tagged 30 by 30, Assets, Finance, Goethe, Guest Posts, Investment, Money, Personal Development, Risk, Shares, Steven-D.-Strauss, Stock-Market, Technorati-Favorites-Exchange, Technorati-Top-100, The-Big-Idea, Trading
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