Well, it has been a while since I sat down to pen a few thoughts. Have I been settling down in my new 'avataar'? Has the unguided missile found a final direction? I don't know as of yet, but Yes, a lot of what I had thought of 5 years back before I left my uniform has still stood strong and I am actually living a life what I had envisaged.
As I read my blog written 5 years ago, I loved the statement "from the stale well into the seething oceans of sea state 5 and more". Well, an entrepreneurial life style is well described by this statement, only that I have stopped looking at settling down now and want to remain in action and keep learning each day how to grow and impact more people in this world.
The first few months of the 5 years civvy street life was experimental as I tried doing a job with a shipyard and realised the futility and vanity of it, fortunately much sooner than later and in six months I was out of it. I further did a lot of sensing around to get into the education system, primarily with an intent of impacting youngsters. I did teaching assignments in an Engineering college and also took some private tuitions. Something seemed amiss here too. I was not getting the feeling of happiness and satisfaction being a "professor" of fixed curriculum, though I considered myself pretty good at teaching and did get huge compliments on my teaching styles from faculty as well as students.
"The missile is still astray and seeking a proper direction."
I found an advertisement about career guidance that seemed interesting and immediately called up the number and enquired. They were talking about a structured mechanism of guiding young students and a training to become a mentor. I wanted to explore this opportunity. I visited the office and met a lady there who explained the process of training to me and said that post training I would be eligible to conduct a basic report explanation to students. I was pretty upset and told her that I considered myself much more than just a report explainer. She told me that I would have to go for advanced training to do that. I was not that convinced, but anyways, I was happy with the content and proposal shown to me, so I signed up for this 2 days training program.
And so my journey in "DHEYA" commenced with a 2 days training program where I got introduced to Anand Desai, the founder and CEO and Aditi Bhattacharya, the co-founder. Anand conducted the training and I got introduced to "psychometrics" and a tool to understand the nature of human beings.
It was an amazing tool and I was surprised to see how well it matched with my personality. I suddenly felt that there was a way in which a youngster can actually know what is their inner calling without much difficulty and can take their own decisions of career choices without getting affected by peer pressure and jumping into a rat race.
I was doing this as a part time activity and I got an immediate opportunity to conduct some sessions of students in an engineering college at Islampur and I spent two days there. It was an enriching experience and I was completely bought in by the concept. However, Dheya was a very small organisation and I was skeptical about how this would grow. I started visiting Dheya quite often to meet Anand and started conversations about how the education system needs to be reformed and youngsters need to be impacted. I would have met him more than 4 to 5 times and started visiting schools and colleges with the team for presentations. Anand offered me to consider joining the organisation as I was quite passionate and committed about the cause of inspiring youth in India.
But when he mentioned the amount that he could afford, I was taken aback as I was expecting much more and I was not ready to take such a big hit on the monthly remuneration. So I did not accept the offer and continued doing freelance work. After a month or so, in a meeting, Anand asked me what is the bare minimum that I can go ahead with. I was not too sure about this, because I had just shifted my parents with me and costs had gone up. So I mentioned a reasonable amount and Anand promptly accepted it and asked me to join.
As I joined Dheya, I went through a complete metamorphosis. I was just not used to an entrepreneurial organisation with complete openness and transparency and completely focussed on Results. Anand is a very jovial person, but when it comes to Business and Results, he is the most feared person in the office and he is direct and blunt and does not mince words in calling a failure a failure and openly in front of everyone. Coming from a structured hierarchial organisation and working in a small dinghy office with just 8-9 people, most of them very young in their twenties, it was a bit difficult to digest initially. The first few months was quite tormenting and I used to keep thinking if I have taken the right decision or not. But as I got to know Anand better, the one thing that kept me stuck on is the "value systems" and "principles" and "knowledge" that was displayed by Anand. He was not the typical business owner who only looked at the numbers, but wanted 'value' and "excellence" and I saw the opportunity of learning something new and growing here. I knew it was going to be tough to gain acceptance here as I was an outsider and completely exposed to my lack of experience and expertise in education market, as well as sales or marketing which happened to be the main focus here.
Anand on the other hand, gave me the upper hand and involved me in all decisions and took me along for all business meetings as well as trainings. I used to wonder whether I could actually deliver to the expectations of handling the business, because he used to tell me that I was a Business partner and therefore would be looking after the Business also as a Research Director. After a couple of failures in launching some business models as well as some cardinal critical mistakes I made, I gradually gained confidence in "mentoring" and the "psychometrics" field and started my foray into "CDF Training", which happened quite organically. I had the privilege of shadowing Anand and learnt on the job by watching him and just following the processes, initially. Things started happening very rapidly thereon and I was travelling most weekends across India conducting training programs and certification of mentors. I also started negotiating and discussing business proposals and have learnt the art of negotiation and sales to a large extent today.
As I worked at Dheya, I have conducted more than 70 training programs for senior professionals from the industry, conducted more than 350 mentoring sessions for students along with their parents and have developed a good reputation as a career mentor and a Trainer of mentors. I am well known for my energy levels during training and the passion as a mentor and trainer. I have a deep level understanding of the work we are doing and now have dreams of taking this to the next level of going much deeper as we work with students as their "Life Mentors".
One thing is for sure, I have a good night's sleep each day and transfer a lot of the positive energy to my family when I get back home from work. As I read my previous blogs before I left the uniformed service, I realized that the reason I joined Dheya was because it resonated with what I wanted to do and I was not ready or did not have an idea as to how to implement the idea that I had in my mind to reform the education system. Now, being a Director at Dheya, I have realised that slowly, I have metamorphosed into an entrepreneur, who has learnt and still learning the "art of living" with positive aspirations and hope of an infinite growth while impacting the entire nation. I am living my dream and am fortunate to be part of a revolution that will rock India very soon.
Jai Hind!!
So Far, So Good... Lots of learnings happening and intend to continue learning and growing......
As I read my blog written 5 years ago, I loved the statement "from the stale well into the seething oceans of sea state 5 and more". Well, an entrepreneurial life style is well described by this statement, only that I have stopped looking at settling down now and want to remain in action and keep learning each day how to grow and impact more people in this world.
The first few months of the 5 years civvy street life was experimental as I tried doing a job with a shipyard and realised the futility and vanity of it, fortunately much sooner than later and in six months I was out of it. I further did a lot of sensing around to get into the education system, primarily with an intent of impacting youngsters. I did teaching assignments in an Engineering college and also took some private tuitions. Something seemed amiss here too. I was not getting the feeling of happiness and satisfaction being a "professor" of fixed curriculum, though I considered myself pretty good at teaching and did get huge compliments on my teaching styles from faculty as well as students.
"The missile is still astray and seeking a proper direction."
I found an advertisement about career guidance that seemed interesting and immediately called up the number and enquired. They were talking about a structured mechanism of guiding young students and a training to become a mentor. I wanted to explore this opportunity. I visited the office and met a lady there who explained the process of training to me and said that post training I would be eligible to conduct a basic report explanation to students. I was pretty upset and told her that I considered myself much more than just a report explainer. She told me that I would have to go for advanced training to do that. I was not that convinced, but anyways, I was happy with the content and proposal shown to me, so I signed up for this 2 days training program.
And so my journey in "DHEYA" commenced with a 2 days training program where I got introduced to Anand Desai, the founder and CEO and Aditi Bhattacharya, the co-founder. Anand conducted the training and I got introduced to "psychometrics" and a tool to understand the nature of human beings.
It was an amazing tool and I was surprised to see how well it matched with my personality. I suddenly felt that there was a way in which a youngster can actually know what is their inner calling without much difficulty and can take their own decisions of career choices without getting affected by peer pressure and jumping into a rat race.
I was doing this as a part time activity and I got an immediate opportunity to conduct some sessions of students in an engineering college at Islampur and I spent two days there. It was an enriching experience and I was completely bought in by the concept. However, Dheya was a very small organisation and I was skeptical about how this would grow. I started visiting Dheya quite often to meet Anand and started conversations about how the education system needs to be reformed and youngsters need to be impacted. I would have met him more than 4 to 5 times and started visiting schools and colleges with the team for presentations. Anand offered me to consider joining the organisation as I was quite passionate and committed about the cause of inspiring youth in India.
But when he mentioned the amount that he could afford, I was taken aback as I was expecting much more and I was not ready to take such a big hit on the monthly remuneration. So I did not accept the offer and continued doing freelance work. After a month or so, in a meeting, Anand asked me what is the bare minimum that I can go ahead with. I was not too sure about this, because I had just shifted my parents with me and costs had gone up. So I mentioned a reasonable amount and Anand promptly accepted it and asked me to join.
As I joined Dheya, I went through a complete metamorphosis. I was just not used to an entrepreneurial organisation with complete openness and transparency and completely focussed on Results. Anand is a very jovial person, but when it comes to Business and Results, he is the most feared person in the office and he is direct and blunt and does not mince words in calling a failure a failure and openly in front of everyone. Coming from a structured hierarchial organisation and working in a small dinghy office with just 8-9 people, most of them very young in their twenties, it was a bit difficult to digest initially. The first few months was quite tormenting and I used to keep thinking if I have taken the right decision or not. But as I got to know Anand better, the one thing that kept me stuck on is the "value systems" and "principles" and "knowledge" that was displayed by Anand. He was not the typical business owner who only looked at the numbers, but wanted 'value' and "excellence" and I saw the opportunity of learning something new and growing here. I knew it was going to be tough to gain acceptance here as I was an outsider and completely exposed to my lack of experience and expertise in education market, as well as sales or marketing which happened to be the main focus here.
Anand on the other hand, gave me the upper hand and involved me in all decisions and took me along for all business meetings as well as trainings. I used to wonder whether I could actually deliver to the expectations of handling the business, because he used to tell me that I was a Business partner and therefore would be looking after the Business also as a Research Director. After a couple of failures in launching some business models as well as some cardinal critical mistakes I made, I gradually gained confidence in "mentoring" and the "psychometrics" field and started my foray into "CDF Training", which happened quite organically. I had the privilege of shadowing Anand and learnt on the job by watching him and just following the processes, initially. Things started happening very rapidly thereon and I was travelling most weekends across India conducting training programs and certification of mentors. I also started negotiating and discussing business proposals and have learnt the art of negotiation and sales to a large extent today.
As I worked at Dheya, I have conducted more than 70 training programs for senior professionals from the industry, conducted more than 350 mentoring sessions for students along with their parents and have developed a good reputation as a career mentor and a Trainer of mentors. I am well known for my energy levels during training and the passion as a mentor and trainer. I have a deep level understanding of the work we are doing and now have dreams of taking this to the next level of going much deeper as we work with students as their "Life Mentors".
One thing is for sure, I have a good night's sleep each day and transfer a lot of the positive energy to my family when I get back home from work. As I read my previous blogs before I left the uniformed service, I realized that the reason I joined Dheya was because it resonated with what I wanted to do and I was not ready or did not have an idea as to how to implement the idea that I had in my mind to reform the education system. Now, being a Director at Dheya, I have realised that slowly, I have metamorphosed into an entrepreneur, who has learnt and still learning the "art of living" with positive aspirations and hope of an infinite growth while impacting the entire nation. I am living my dream and am fortunate to be part of a revolution that will rock India very soon.
Jai Hind!!
So Far, So Good... Lots of learnings happening and intend to continue learning and growing......
Pretty inspiring..best wishes
ReplyDeleteNaveen I have read through all the three blog posts.... and I thought you have beautifully penned down your thoughts.... Wishing you all the very best.... Regards
ReplyDelete