Learning Digest

At some point in our corporate journey, we arrive at this point. Some may experience this in the early stages of their career, and for some it might take a while. But it will happen. We are expected to lead a team. It certainly is exciting in those initial days. The new found power makes us feel invincible. We seem to control the careers of a few fellow colleagues. We feel all powerful. This feeling dies over a period of time. We then are left to fend for ourselves to figure out a way. From that point on, most of our career is spent in ‘Handling’ team members, peers, and at times the boss. Managing people in short makes most of our time in our careers. Most business leaders will agree. It is the not the complexity of the project or the business, it is the challenge of managing people, that keeps them occupied most of the time. Samit faced this challenge early in his career. In this case, his own team was a part of the problem he was trying to solve, and were not convinced of his leadership. They showed it in action while at work. This is a classic case of the team relationship with the boss under stress. Listen to this episode to find out what Samit did to overcome the challenge and the lessons he learnt from it.

As a young professional Hariraj was sent to Chicago for a project. Only upon landing at the client site, did he realize that the technology skills he had, were not the ones that the client needed for the project. For a young budding programmer, this is a certain bad start to his career. This story is about how he overcame the challenge, and managed to turn adversity into success, and went on to do great things in his career. His last corporate job as the global head of learning & development at Cognizant was the crown jewel in his career. His 3 years as its head earned Cognizant, the best learning & development team from ATD. Am sure every young developer or any corporate professional will relate to his predicament of career uncertainity, dependency on the supervisor to decide what's best for your career among other things. I hope you will pick a lesson or two from this story and apply it in context to your career.

Around the World for a great career - The corporate nomad by Learning Digest

In this 3rd episode of conversations with business leaders, we talk to Pratap Gopalakrishnan the Global HR head for Maersk Global Services. This is a story of how passion, conviction and believing in yourself can do to your career and steer it to success.

In the 2nd episode of Business Conversations, we met up with TN Hari, the CHRO of Big Basket, a leading retail grocery company that changed the way Indians bought their monthly supplies. He was also a part of disrupting businesses like Taxi for sure. This is his career story. The story of a small town boy, who went on to achieve great things in the corporate world.

This is where I talk to established business leaders, learn from their experiences, and share that with others, to help young and aspiring corporate professionals in their careers and help them grow professionally. If you liked what you heard, please like, share or comment. I am trying to create such short podcasts that will help young professionals in their careers. If you have a set of questions that I can ask to these leaders, or have a leader that I should talk to, or any other ideas that you might feel will help professionals like us, please do let me know.