Saroj Yadavadventures of everyday 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.

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.

Dear supercool underdogs, web socialists and hidden champions!

We are searching for Developers who would like to do an “Internship” at Supercool School.

Supercool School is a highly purpose-driven startup that was founded by a team of underdogs from Europe and India to change the world using the amazing powers of learning.
We are bulding the first demand-based online learning marketplace that empowers people to request classes, join them as students or teach them using a simple webcam. Launching our alpha version on Facebook five months ago, Supercool School has attracted over 3.000 users that requested over 300 classes ranging from “How to start a business in China” to “Advanced Java” and “Thai Soup Recipes”. We’re going to have our global website launch in January 2009 and are already involved in some super secret projects with well known global organizations.
We are driven by our believe in the power of learning. We believe that education is the answer to all the challenges that we face today. And even though we don’t have all the solutions yet, we believe that they can be found in the hearts and minds of the people. So empowering them to learn and to develop their true potential means empowering the world to become all it can be: a better place for all of us.

We don’t care for your degree, your age or your nationality …
BUT that you’re inspired and committed to accomplish great things with us.

Essential hard skills are:

- Experience with Windows and Linux development environments
- Basic knowledge of web based database driven applications
- Knowledge of especially Ruby on Rails + HTML, Javascript, CSS and SQL

Essential soft skills are:

- Purpose driven personality
- Constructive team player
- Independent, enduring and self initiative personality

Nice to haves:

- Project Experience
- Every language is a plus (especially: Greek, German, Russian, Hindi)

Responsibility:

- Modular feature and product development

Frame:

- You can start immediately
- You can work from home or in the office
- The office is in downtown San Francisco

We offer:

- A bad ass business model to change society
- An international team
- No hierarchy
- A T-Shirt
- Future full time employee in any business field + stock options
- Work with state of the art technologies (VOIP, video stream, API, Widget, Ruby, etc.)
- A lot off responsibility and challenges
- A bright future

Application:

- Send an Email with the subject “supercool internship” to bjoern@supercoolschool.com
- Attach a CV + any examples of your work
- Describe how you fullfill our expectiations stated above
- Tell us very briefly about yourself (1. What inspires you? 2. What are your goals? 3. Why are you different?)

Further Procedure:

1. You will receive an answer + quick feedback in 2-3 days
2. 30 min general Interview on skype (1st round)
3. 30 min specific Interview with extended supercool circle on skype (2nd round)
4. Final decision will be made asap but latest until the 24th of december (We will take 3-5 People)

Now that you know a bit about us, we would love to hear from you! Just contact at bjoern@supercoolschool.com

supercool vibes to all of you,
Saroj
Democratizing Education @ www.supercoolschool.com

so for my book club all I need is a social networking website where members can suggest books, can vote on books to reject or select for reading and yes, discuss the selected book.
I also want the widget for my blog where I can show off books I have read or am reading!!!

I bumped into Shelfari on somebody’s blog. The flash widget looks pretty neat!! I used it on my blog for my personal readings outside book club.
However if you are one of those free-Blogger-site using cheap users, Shelfari gives you 3 dirty widgets!! Why can’t I get the same look for javascript widget…

anyways so I jump to my next free choice – LibraryThing. I looks nice. It has tag features using which I can create book lists. Best is I can create widget for various tags. That’s how created my book-lists for books members suggested, books people did not want to read, books most poupar for future readings. Though it works for me I like Shelfari “book-shelf” look…I was just going to go ga ga over LibraryThing then I noticed something – if I add a new book to any of my tags it does not reflect on my website widget for that tag…God!!! what a bummer!!!

So now I have my blog using LibraryThing & free Blogger
www.ibooked.blogspot.com

After I published my blog I go home googling for book related web2.0 sites and then I notice couple of more of such websites
GuruLib
booktribes

By now I have already spent more time than I thought on book club blog. So I will take pleasure in postponing spending time on these 2 new websites. They look decent though..like everything else in life – things looks better when you decide to settle for some other things!!