SupraDigit Solutions

A decade back, when I was working on a huge enterprise program (with multiple projects) along with a big team (of close to 300 people), we were a group of managers who were evaluated and pushed by the senior management to “proactively” deal with issues and to work on finding new solutions. I used to think of how - we can become “proactive”, when we were already focusing our efforts on fighting our daily “fires” or urgencies of our project work. When I delved deeper into our daily work habits, it struck me that till the time we are not excited about “getting things done”, the willingness to explore more out of our comfort zone just doesn’t happen. The innate human behaviour is to follow a routine and establish a comfort zone over a period. The 1st factor – “an external stimulus” can upset us and force us to think or act out of our comfort zone.  The 2nd factor that can make us “move” out of our comfort zones is about having an excitement of a future or coming up with a vision th

In the last 8-10 years, I must have spent innumerable hours on the internet trying to figure out the cause of procrastination and lost productivity for my own tasks simply due to binging on social media and YouTube. I read many blogs, posts, videos by various celebrities, influencers on this and today, I do have a revelation to make specifically on the “ability to focus” . With greater access to huge amounts of information and specifically the well-made marketing videos that very easily draw our attention on the internet, I have found that our current generation is losing our abilities to “stay focused” for a longer duration of time. Let me elaborate this a bit with the levels of impact on the way we do things and the ways in which we expect things to happen: Different Expectations: Our expectations have changed with people we get in touch with, to give us immediate information or in a very short span of time. Less Patience: Our ability to “wait” (and / or being “patient”) with

"Do not judge me by my successes; judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again." ― Nelson Mandela When I started my career in the software engineering field 2 decades back, the only way to achieve success in my mind was – to do “hard-work”. From initial experience, I started believing, that it was not “hard-work”, but “smart-work”. I have been blessed, as I got opportunities to work with some of the best project managers and leadership teams. I was told, that “smart-work” combined with being flexible and taking new initiatives can take you to greater heights. I have been successful in following these mantras in corporate career, but then I faced a new dilemma. It took me many years to realize, that in-spite of my good programming experience, my daily-work (mostly managerial) was taking me away from understanding the core issues of my team members. My understanding of team-member real problems was no where near to what they were truly facing! I saw my leader

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” - by John Quincy Adams True Leadership… The Best Leader… The Star Leader… A Leader is Not a Manager… Leading from Behind… and the list just goes on for ‘being the best leader’ phrases. “True leadership” is hard to find. What makes it ‘hard’? Few years back, I used to work in a big program having 300+ human resources. I was one of the youngest project managers. I was looked upon by my team as a role-model on assertive leadership and a can-do attitude. This made me proud, but I later realized failure to understand the pulse of my team. I also went through a 360-degree leadership assessment during this period. I got my anonymous review comments (from my team) as part of this assessment. The feedback comments reflected how I was popular in driving my own agenda, rather than resolving my team issues. In a few years down the line, I managed a much smaller team of 5, where I also worked as

Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off. - Franklin D. Roosevelt In today’s world order, the word “competition” has taken far reaching meanings and consequences. When we are born, our parents compare our growth and behavior with other kids. As we grow-up and join a school, our teachers compare, teach and behave in perspectives of competition. Human perspective itself is formed out of wanting others to be like their own selves and then behaving accordingly. This may not be true of all but for majority, it is a definite case. Competition doesn’t end here. When we get a job, appraisals are done based on “competition” again (with the famous or infamous bell-curve technique). When we become parents, we again want our kids to compete. Most of us, also look at life as a competition with our neighbours or relatives accrued wealth, or it could be with that of a

Let me tell you… This has been my favourite subject of all! Not that I may want to do research in psychology but understanding people and how they behave so differently in different situations - just puts me in awe! So… What is EQ? A very nicely written post from psychcentral ( Psych Central Link ) aptly explains EQ as well as its 5 categories (or components), which are – Self-awareness Self-regulation Motivation Empathy Social Skills With even more detail, positivepsychologyprogram ( Positive Psychology Program Link ) provides even more details with the 4 dimensions of EQ, which for ‘emotions’ are – Perceiving Using Understanding Managing For further exploration on EQ, starting with Wikipedia ( Wikipedia Link ) is a great idea, since it also talks about the 3 models of Emotional Intelligence (or also referred to as EQ). The above 5 categories are coming from the “Mixed Model”. I am quite influenced by the ‘Mixed Model’ than other models. It is much more comprehensive and connect

Trust is built on credibility, and credibility comes from acting in others’ interests before your own. - Stephen Denny (Killing Giants) Effective communication – has been a buzzword in corporate circles for a long time now. I used to ask my team members… What do you think, is the meaning of effective communication? I used to get varied answers, such as – ‘the ability to read, write and speak English (or other languages) effectively’ or ‘the ability to clearly understand another person’s point-of-view’ or ‘the ability to concisely put or share your points across’ and so on… Communication is a subject, where not only our intelligence, but emotions as well, are deeply involved. We are amazing creatures on this amazing planet! Our bodies give out subtle signals, for others to create multitude of interpretations. It just puts me in awe about how, people try to interpret unsaid words / logic / thoughts of others by just looking at them! My write-up is not to share my ideas about effective co