Not just Human Resources...

Really??????? Is that a term? Sometimes I feel like a kid in a candy store with a crazy pick of self-serving terms coined by genius wordsmiths that give it a legitimacy and power beyond anything it should ever be allowed to command! Wow… anecdotal evidence …. Really? Meaning that I can record one instance of the person in a not so positive light and hold it against him for the rest of his life???? Cool!!! I’ve got to get me one of those!!! Its like a paparazzi masterminded sneak attack on a poor hapless celebrity! It has every exhilarating element possible… from the mystery and the suspense, to the sneakiness and voyeurism, to the manipulation that is such an essential element, to finally fully engaging the creative instinct in the form of the final story telling… I have recently acquired a renewed empathy for my fellow corporate denizens who crunch through mounds of data, facts and figures just so that the rest of us can make some sense out of the world we operate in… mainly because I...

On an especially mind-numbing day at work… I found my new muse. I came across a training company’s website that offered a variety of programs that were ‘going to change your life’, ‘help you realize your dreams’, ‘give you the edge that would leapfrog your career’… on the whole.. almost everything, short of rewriting your DNA! They were going to achieve all this and more by showing you some videos of famous people and getting you to fill out a workbook! Wow! The interesting thing of course is that these terms are so overused – if only I had a penny for everytime I heard them, I’d be really rich by now! Everywhere you look there is rhetoric, and then there is branding – it has become difficult these days to figure out where one stops and the other begins. The reason why we want to believe in the rhetoric, apart from the fact that it sounds nice is that we believe that there must be a system in synergy, that is putting its might behind realizing the potential of the rhetoric. Bu...

Thank God the coin has 2 sides. There is some divine logic and poetic justice in this fact. It gives the impression that somewhere in universe there is a delicate balance – there is multi-dimensionality, as against polarity. That alone is enough to make me happy… confused… but happy. I like the fact that there are multiple explanations and alternatives for everything. Human beings have too much ego to believe in simplicity I think, and am no exception. A while back now, I was completely taken up with Gladwell’s ‘Tipping point’ and particularly enamoured by the Broken-window theory. Its such a cool concept and has such instant and universal appeal. Here’s an excerpt from Gladwell’s book ‘Tipping Point’ (since there is no way that anyone else’s words can do justice to the brilliance of the author): In 1992, there were 2154 murders in New York City and 626,182 serious crimes, with the weight of those crimes falling hardest in places like Brownsville and East New York. But then something...

Recently I had a very interesting and rather amusing encounter that was so moving that I just had to write about it! Like normal people I tend to enjoy my Sundays and guard them rather zealously against invasion by the ‘weekend warriors’. Recently I was approached by a couple of HR professionals who wanted some very simple info from me regarding the business unit I work with. The info required was as simple as simple gets – no of people in the organization, some policies etc. – basic stuff you know… This info was required for a proposal they were working on for a client. So they call me on a Sunday when I am at dinner with some guests in the midst of an interesting conversation… no apologies for the disturbance or anything, they launch into a detailed account of what they need despite my feeble attempts at requesting a discussion later in the night… but of course… I want to be helpful since it is an ‘emergency’. Well… as I later found out they had not gone through the info ev...

I have been wanting to write a book for a decade now. I had no idea what it was going to be about, but I knew I was going to do it… And then a year passed, and then 2 and soon a decade had gone by, and I hadn’t even started... Have you ever wondered why there are so many unfulfilled dreams in the world? Is it because we are afraid of what will happen if they actually come true? We dream… it is the child in us who has stars in his eyes… and suddenly we grow up and realism in its worst form takes over. ‘What if’ becomes our driving force? We become experts at giving ourselves reason as to why the dreams cannot be achieved. Why do some people chase their dreams and others not? Whether it is the Wright brothers and their dream of flying even though they were bicycle mechanics, or Gandhi’s dream of independence for India, or Mandela’s dream of the end of apartheid, or King’s dream of progressive civil rights, or Lance Armstrong’s dream of winning the Tour de France even after debilitating d...