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Last year, during my fitness transformation exercise, my coach Ajay (who also happens to be a colleague) gave me the best gift ever

A Nike dryfit tee, size medium 

It sticks to your body. Showing all your contours. 

I called it The embarrassment tee

“Wear it everyday to the gym. Your bulges will show, that extra mass that needs to be worked upon. You should feel embarrassed” 

Because then, you have two choices

1. Stop wearing the tee to work
2. Work so hard on yourself that the tee now looks good on you

The easy path

The right path

When you say sorry to the customer, you wear the embarrassment tee

When you apologize on behalf of someone, you wear the embarrassment tee

When you tell employees that we fucked up, you wear the embarrassment tee

When you own up to who you really are, with your mistakes, your shortcomings, but determined to work hard to overcome them 

You wear the embarrassment tee 

And that is any day better than wearing a loose fit tee of an awesome expensive brand. 

When Facebook recently moved to their new office, Mark Z posted a video of the same. It was a walk through, of his desk, his discussion room etc.
Personal
No jazz
All content

I loved it
And remarked to my colleague that we should do the same when we start our new office
He replied “he is Mark Z. Any video of his will look good. We are not Facebook yet”

This is how most of feel. This is how most of us operate.
However, I am pretty sure that Mark Z doesn’t get up every morning thinking he is someone big. He gets up wanting to do the same things he wanted to do 10 years back. Just that the scale has changed. But never for a moment would he have thought he is any lesser.

When I was young I used to love chess. And everyone around me was better than me. But each time I used to start a game, I used to ask myself – what is it that they know that I can’t know.
Never for a moment did I used to doubt my ability to win.
And I used to fail.
Almost always
But this attitude made me learn much faster than I would have otherwise.

Every single day when you wake up
Tell yourself that there is nothing
Nothing at all
That can make you lose today
Except your own belief

Self doubt has killed more people than self confidence ever will

The nearbuy team was at ISB this Tuesday, for a PrePlacement Talk. 

We decided to follow an unorthodox application process. 

• We will not accept black and white resume. There needs to be some color added
• When you apply, you need to name one more candidate who you think deserves the role more than you

We are told this has created quite some activity on campus. 

Do I need to add color in spirit, or actually add some real color?

Does it need to be creative or colorful? 

Does font color qualify as color?

Will I be rejected if it isn’t colorful enough? 

The campus resume template was a comfort zone. They knew what they had to do. And it was easy to establish that you fit in. 

And we broke the template. We changed the format. 

And when formats are broken it makes people anxious. Or makes them work harder. 

Or both. 

Irrespective, the output is magically different from what would have been the case. It will reflect emotional labor. 

The world doesn’t need one more format. 

It needs one more rebel. 

When things are not going as per plan the easiest thing to do is to gain control. To review everything. To approve everything. To become the system through which everything has to flow.

If this process worked in the new world, things would never go wrong.

How about doing exactly the opposite.
Let go
Things are not going as per plan, but I trust you to fix them. I am there should you need my help. And I happy to sit with you every now and then to act as the sounding board.
Let’s make it happen

Control a person
And they will slacken when you are not around
Give them the autonomy to take their own decisions
And they just might become you

Peter Thiel mentions his favorite interview question in “Zero to One”

What is that one belief you have that very few people agree with you on? 

Here is my response, Peter

The best way to become great at something, is to do multiple things at the same time, all the time. 

It goes against the concept of specialization. 

Well, if you think about it, it goes against the concept of almost everything we all have been told, as part of our education and training. 

Here is my rationale to this belief

• No one in the world knows what they are good at. What is their true calling
• We supposedly are meant to find this elusive thing, to have a shot at being successful 
• And once we find it, just spend hours and hours pursuing it. Mastering the art
• However,
• What if there was something else better out there, that you didn’t even discover, or
• What if delving into something else, even if to explore and not master, would have helped you master the original skill

If I look back at my life, I have been so many fascinating things 

• An astrophysicist 
• A statistician 
• A photographer 
• A consultant 
• An entrepreneur 
• A public speaker 
• A fitness convert
• A singer
• A DJ
• A product manager, recently
• An HR professional too recently
• A multi country manager 
• A writer 
• And am sure something else too that I am forgetting 

But the thing that I am best is, is none of these. I think I am good at connecting with people. That’s where I find peace, that’s where I draw my strength from. 

And all of the above roles have helped me exponentially in doing so. In ways I couldn’t have even imagined. And still can’t. But I know they helped. 

And that makes the multidisciplinary path fascinating. 

It’s amazing how many people begin to slow down discovering new things, as they grow old. When it should be exactly the other way round. 

Come to think of it, there is a reason why the best intellectuals the world has seen, from Newton to Archimedes to Leonardo were all so many things in one. 

Come to think of it, the people you look up to, are so many things in one. 

Ask yourself “who am I”

And hope that you don’t have a single answer

At nearbuy, as we grow super fast (we have gone from 260 folks 3 months back to 540 people today), the need for communicating and ensuring consistency of our value system and beliefs hasn’t be higher before.

I can spend time speaking and engaging folks, and I will continue doing so. But something has to act as a constant reminder.
So we launched the “Little Book Of Big Things” – a visual compilation of what we stand for. What we should stand for.

Here is a glance

How you feel and how you react to this feeling is often different, and misunderstood to be the same 

You feel hurt but your reaction is that it anger

You feel scared but your reaction is that of control 

You feel happy but your reaction is that of tears

Only the mentally strong can control what they feel. And that’s fine. It isn’t such a bad thing to feel whatever is it that you feel. 

Here is what is bad, though. 

Reacting the way you react. 

Do yourself a favor and chose NOT TO react the way your heart is suggesting you to react. Pause and chose another reaction instead. 

Surprisingly, the second reaction, even if worse off, never impacts negatively as much as the first instant reaction. 

Our first reaction to things, especially when we feel negative, are almost always wrong! Just wrong. 

First reaction is the worst reaction 

At the AllHands call last Friday, I got asked this question

A few confessions to make, while I answer this. 

By personality, I am a paranoid person. 

I bite my nails. All the time.  

I hate losing. 

I get scared imagining that someone out there might be working harder than me and I am not doing enough. 

I worry all the time of whether I am taking the easy path. 

I worry that I will be wrong, if I don’t invest in myself. 

So I am emotionally very hard on myself. I feel like my heart is always full of emotions. Of things I want to say. Of moments I could cry for. Of just wanting to work so hard that even life bows down. 

So the hardest part about being a CEO is to feel the moral responsibility of 540+ people every single day. 

I feel responsible for them. For their safety, for their happiness at work, for their career opportunities. 

I wake up every single morning with a nagging thought in my head of some incidence yesterday involving the unhappy state of an employee. Something someone wrote. Something someone felt, experienced. Which didn’t make them feel respected or loved. 

It’s this journey that is the hardest. 

It’s this feeling that is the hardest. 
The easiest thing to build is a company 

The hardest thing to build is an institution where people love to come to work

Over the weekend, a conversation digressed over to discussing the super wealthy. A close friend heads the strategy function of one such billionaire and has seen their life up close. 

Despite being worth billions of dollars, they lead an unpretentious life. Their homes, spread over acres reflect class. Their daily routine shows how money is an output of their life. Not the outcome. 
There is also another section that believes in public display of money. Of lavish lifestyles, of making friends that only care about this side of yours. 

I have my preference over which life to lead. 

Neither is right or wrong. It is a way of life. For every warren buffet there is a Donald trump as well. 

However the distinction is clear. 

One side makes money work for them. It is part of their life but not the factor that determines it. They know they are wealthy. And it ends there. 

The other side lives for money. It is a large reason for them waking up every day. It defines them. 

And this starts defining the way they act

Money shouts. Wealth whispers.