Recently Women 2.0 collaborator Jazmin Hupp and I met with Veronica Belmont, co-host of Revision3’s tech-centric show, Tekzilla, and Qore on the PlayStation Network. Got to know what you are talking about!! - strongly advises Veronica Belmont. Join us in this interview with Veronica where she shares her journey from CNET to Tekzilla along with her secret to a great personal brand.
Recently Women 2.0 collaborator Jazmin Hupp and I met with Shellye Archambeau, CEO of MetricStream.
Shellye shares how her experiences at companies like IBM, BlockBuster led her to where she is today. Shellye is a strong believer in power of planning & having mentors around you.
I was talking to one of my friends recently and one of the things we were discussing was how most of us define our identities purely via work. For many of us, just the fact that we have some place we can go for 8-10 hours is enough for our identity gratification.
I am not saying work does not define our identity - it does!! A big part of it but is it 100%? What happens when you stop working for a while. People feel depressed. It’s funny that in spite of having full days to themselves with choice of whatever they want to do, people feel low, depressed.
Being out of job is definitely concerning because of financial reasons or figuring out what you want to do next. But if that worry occupies 100% of your time then isn’t your identity defined 100% by your work.
It’s weird that when people have work they don’t have time to sit back, think & most importantly enjoy things outside work. When they are with out work, they don’t want to sit back & think & most importantly enjoy.
I am old fashioned when it comes to balancing personal & professional life. I believe to be really happy you have to have your identity balanced by your work & your personal life. Too much dependency on one or the other might mean moments missed out in life.
one thing I have learned from my experience (and I feel even stronger after reading First Break All The Rules ) is people are happier & more productive if they are set free.
By setting free I mean finding a talented person for a job, setting goals for her and let her do the job. Many times people/managers are so tempted to micro manage their people or set a “prove-yourself-to-earn-my-trust” period or just control them to feel the authority. In the end however I have seen such managers end up not reaching the full potential of their employees and after a certain period, employees either stop being creative or just leave the company.
It’s so hard to find talented people and if you are one of the lucky ones to find such people, manage them by remote control - set goals and trust them to do their jobs - you will be pleasantly surprised!!
I am reading this book First Break All Rules these days. This book is about what great managers do differently, it’s quite a good read.
One thing about great managers is that they care about their team members - both professionally & personally. I always thought that may be because I am a woman, I have this urge of talking to my manager about my goals & inspirations, but seems to me it’s gender neutral. A manager has to know each of its team members. For every team member he should know what’s her motivation in life, what does she want to do, how she needs to be rewarded, what’s her talent (talent is different than skills & experience).
Once you know her, you have to set goals around her strengths, set her free to achieve those goals & measure her performance in the end. On the way best you can do as a manager is be her mirror and show how she is doing, where she can improve.
For all this, you have to spend time with your team members one-on-one, once a week may be 30 minutes which means average 2 days in a year.
There has been too much Gandhi in my personal life since Christmas:
I read his autobiography 2 months ago during my Argentina trip,
I watched “Gandhi” movie just 2 weeks ago and
after watching movie I had this urge to buy Gandhi’s poster which says “My life is my message”
Gandhi & his character are so fresh in my mind that when I read all kind of news about auction of his belongings, I wonder about the irony of this whole situation. Of all the people, this is about this half-naked man whose whole life was about simplicity, truth& fight for things beyond material possessions.
Understandably all Indians,including myself, are feeling very passionate about his items not being in India. However sometimes I wonder how Gandhi would have felt if he had seen today’s India & situations like these. My guess is if he knew his sandals were worth so many millions he would have sold it himself and provide shelter or spinning wheels to people with this money. If he had seen today’s India he would have felt little sad that all his life & struggle was for a place like India is today.
Anyways, I wish Indians feel same passionate about truth & justice as they are feeling about his items. I wish Indians have conviction like Gandhi to believe in what’s right & what’s not and have strength like “Bapu” to fight for them. That will be priceless!!
Writing second post in a day feels like I am trying to be next Seth Godin. well, I am not. It’s just that I learn so much from other people on “the Internets” that I feel like I should share something worth their time to others too.
So I started thinking what’s worth while about my life style and one thing which I find valuable is my startup experience - after all I’ve been part of Supercool School since the days when Steli & I were just 2 of us at Supercool School.
While seeing it growing, one thing I learnt again & again is that communication is something you can’t have enough of in a team. I think what matters is the communication about journey - when your team knows that you are making efforts, they want to help you in every way so that you reach your destination. Problems & confusions happen when everyone is not on same page, when some people are informed while some are not, when some are more informed than others … yadi yadi yada…
In today’s world where people have more choices for who to work with, people tend to stick around longer when they feel they are part of something big and their actions are affecting bigger things for the company - and this has to be communicated very frequently.
As I transition from product development to other areas I always wanted to explore, I remember Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford where he talks about freshness of a beginner after he was kicked out of Apple at 30. Thankfully I am still around with people I love working with, however I am a beginner all of a sudden. I am moving to new areas, taking new responsibilities & doing new work I always dreamed of doing. I think of my work while walking, talking,eating and pretty much everywhere and for once I don’t want to complain about it. In fact I wish these moments for everyone because it’s moments like these which change people & things for better.
ps: for all those startups out there, give your people areas they love working in and your people will surprise you.
