Today during coffee break in our pantry I ran into our MD and started the conversation by thanking him about his blogs ( I regularly follow his blogs, and i find it very useful) and how I like them. This started off into an impromptu discussion, only to realize when we had finished, I had taken 1 hour of his time. This post is about our conversation.
The discussion was mostly about what books he reads, what motivates him to read so much ( he reads close to 40 books a year!!! and has finished ~800 books from his library of over 1K books) , how did it start about. One such thing he mentioned was how he regularly used to take 1 week break from office and go to secluded place (like home stays, cousins places in villages etc.,) to finish upon his reading. He benefited immensely by reading books. By his own admission, in his early days he wasnt so much of a driven individual (in his academic days) and he detailed how books have transformed him into one and how he is now driven by Excellence. Being such a nice individual he opened up and recollected some of his experiences and let me know some of the books he studied and how it all started...how reading has helped him and why he emphasis on reading..I was pleasantly surprised to know even he liked working in a remote corner as an individual contributor, though ( in my opinion) he is par excellence in his role as a managing director ( which involves lot of talking to build relationships, resolve conflicts, getting projects, advising to startups etc., ) .
As a bonus for me he also talked about how much he values his mentors, how much he emphasis on having mentors and how he benefited from them in his career growth. As a matter of fact, he has 3 full time (periodic) and 1 event based mentors . 1 within company 2 outside company...He also recounted on how having a mentor saved him from taking a misstep early in his career in the leadership role in my current company. Just like all great visionaries, he also spent some time in telling about his future thoughts about having mentors assigned for the team and how he thinks it might help them.
Over all quite a few takeaways.Its time for me to re-start on a few things that I had dropped out of (like having a mentor, finishing books that I have started a while ago, setting some specific goals for myself , all of these I have done for some period in my life...but Need to restart with greater energy) or to re-prioritise or to try out and see if I can pickup something and improve certain things in my life.
Thank you RamP :)
The discussion was mostly about what books he reads, what motivates him to read so much ( he reads close to 40 books a year!!! and has finished ~800 books from his library of over 1K books) , how did it start about. One such thing he mentioned was how he regularly used to take 1 week break from office and go to secluded place (like home stays, cousins places in villages etc.,) to finish upon his reading. He benefited immensely by reading books. By his own admission, in his early days he wasnt so much of a driven individual (in his academic days) and he detailed how books have transformed him into one and how he is now driven by Excellence. Being such a nice individual he opened up and recollected some of his experiences and let me know some of the books he studied and how it all started...how reading has helped him and why he emphasis on reading..I was pleasantly surprised to know even he liked working in a remote corner as an individual contributor, though ( in my opinion) he is par excellence in his role as a managing director ( which involves lot of talking to build relationships, resolve conflicts, getting projects, advising to startups etc., ) .
As a bonus for me he also talked about how much he values his mentors, how much he emphasis on having mentors and how he benefited from them in his career growth. As a matter of fact, he has 3 full time (periodic) and 1 event based mentors . 1 within company 2 outside company...He also recounted on how having a mentor saved him from taking a misstep early in his career in the leadership role in my current company. Just like all great visionaries, he also spent some time in telling about his future thoughts about having mentors assigned for the team and how he thinks it might help them.
Over all quite a few takeaways.Its time for me to re-start on a few things that I had dropped out of (like having a mentor, finishing books that I have started a while ago, setting some specific goals for myself , all of these I have done for some period in my life...but Need to restart with greater energy) or to re-prioritise or to try out and see if I can pickup something and improve certain things in my life.
Thank you RamP :)
Way to go. Good luck.
ReplyDeleteGood one.
Thank you karna :)
ReplyDelete