Anuradha Sridharan

 A couple of weeks back, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine. He is happy in his current role, earns well and settled in his organization for 5+ years. But he wants to try out something different - a new opportunity that is quite different from what he has been doing so far, a complete shift towards a new career path. Our hour-long conversation was mainly around me asking him a few questions and let him talk and share his perspectives. Sometimes, we need to articulate to ourselves on why we are keen on certain decisions/life-changing opportunities. So if you are in a similar situation where you need to decide on a new opportunity / new direction in your career, sit down with a pen and paper and answer the following questions. Or if you don’t like to write it down, talk to someone whom you trust and can open up freely, without the fear of being judged/ridiculed. 1) Why are you interested in this opportunity? What are the goals of yours that this opportunity will he...

Twitter is my go-to source when I need some inspiration/learn new things/access interesting articles/stay up-to-date on what's happening in my areas of interest. On one such twitter browsing session this morning, I came across a story " the science of practice " from Hardbound. It is an excellent compilation on what goes behind the achievement of world-class performers. We have all heard about the 10,000-hour rule that was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Outliers".  The quantity of time spent in "deliberate practice" of a skill matters. But what is equally important is the quality of time spent towards building a skill or expertise. I have been curious to understand how one builds expertise/mastery over a subject/skill. Mastering a skill is not possible by just reading books/articles, taking courses, listening to podcasts etc.  This story link talks about a research by Dr.Ericsson that went into discovering the 4 elements o...

peteoshea / CC BY 2.0 For anyone dealing with knowledge work that requires deeper thinking, analysis, unraveling assumptions and developing solutions, writing is a must-have skill. Whatever be your role - a developer, designer, product manager, marketer, analyst etc, I would highly recommend that you develop writing as a conscious practice. I'll give you 5 reasons why you should invest diligently in this practice. 1) Provides clarity A vague problem for which I seek solutions becomes more clear if I sit down and write about the problem statement in actual words. It gives great clarity and helps me to think through the problem scenarios in great detail. 2) Gives directions As I write down the problem statement, I automatically reflect and think through the causes and context. It also helps me to go deeper into various aspects of the problem and the expected outcome. As a result, I have a good "approach" or steps that I need to take to solve the problem. It doesn't hav...

In the biography of Steve Jobs, I came across an interesting point made by Jonathan Ive, Chief Designer at Apple. He says, "Ideas are very fragile, so you have to be tender when they are in development". During the course of the day, your mind could be brimming with a lot of ideas. It could be a startup idea you want to explore, an idea for a book you would like to write, a thought process/framework you want to ideate upon based on an article you read recently, a presentation that you plan to give to an audience and many more. These ideas can be very exciting to begin with but at the same time, are potential areas where we might procrastinate, due to their inherent vagueness. David Allen, in his book "Getting Things Done" says that we tend to procrastinate on projects where we don't know the next action steps to be taken. Living in a world of distractions and its inherent busyness, it becomes even more challenging for us to dissipate the vagueness and gain clari...

Problem Statement A business problem doesn't have a right or a wrong answer. The solution depends on various factors - context, environment, dependencies, principles/ethics, goals/objectives, available skills and many more. Solving a business problem requires a collaborative effort within the organization. Often at times, because of past mindsets, conditional thinking and groupthink , business managers might not be able to visualize solutions from different perspectives. A third person's view point or a casual chat with an ex-colleague or a friend might open up new avenues of thinking and expand our scope. Sometimes, while attending a seminar or a discussion forum, new ideas might spark which could have a great impact at our workplace. Such is the importance of interacting with people from different backgrounds - be it education, work experience, thought processes or even ideology. In the current scenario, if we want to seek answers to certain business problems outside the o...

Years ago, when there were fixed timings for movie shows in cinema theatres (11 AM, 3 PM, 6 PM and 10 PM), a bag of popcorn and a glass of pepsi were an ideal combination to munch and enjoy the movie. With the proliferation of multiplexes, there are shows at different timings starting from 10 AM. Some of the screenings are at odd hours - for instance 12:30 PM show. It is too early to have lunch prior to the movie and too late to have lunch after the movie, especially if the movie runs for 3 long hours. The same problem occurs with a Sunday morning show at 10 AM. Sundays being the only days where most of us get a chance to enjoy sleeping until the sun rays start to peep in through the window. Mornings are also the times when the ticket rates are relatively less expensive compared to other show timings. So what do we do? We end up waking at around 9ish, have a quick bath and rush to the multiplex without breakfast. Although popcorn and pepsi is the perfect combo, that's not healthy a...