The Zen of Zen

I have tried, many, many times, to read books on self-help, management, zen and “How to Keep on Writing” topics. But except for the wisdom I found in the stories in books like Shiv Khera’s ‘You Can Win’ or in ‘The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey’ and the one immensely powerful book – ‘The War of Art’ by Steven Pressfield – which was more of a conversation with a fellow writer than the inept preachings of a management ‘guru’, I have never been able to finish one of these so-called ‘life altering’ guides. Continue reading

Who Innovates?

Recently, I read an article labelled An Open Letter to the Prospective Indian Employer. This May 25th article was a scathing response to the India Ink OpEd called “An Open Letter to India’s Graduating Class” in the NYTimes by Mohit Chandra, a partner in KPMG, an advisory services firm. Both letters, apart from demeaning the value of employers to employees and vice versa, talked about a couple of traits that are missing in the Indian workforce. One of these traits is innovation, or thinking out of the box. While the KPMG partner claimed that the ability to think out of the box was hard to find in Indian students-convert-graduates, the responder claimed that companies do not do enough to encourage people to ask questions and think out of the box. Continue reading