K Srikrishna

The Entrepreneur Life

Tag: goals

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Personal branding and other Sisyphean endeavors

March 17, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Be authentic, we are told. Bring your whole self to work is another exhortation we hear often. What do these mean?

Karthik Srinivasan points out several issues that (Indian) CEOs face, and at times create for themselves, in the pursuit of a personal brand.

One of the big challenges of the ‘always online’ and ‘everything online’ is in figuring out, for ourselves first, what is authentic and what is performative.

One way to not fall into the trap of a social media treadmill and the emotional rollercoaster associated with the (non-)performance of a post, reel or video is to:

Know Thyself
Whilst answering the question “Who am I?” or “What do I want to be known for?” might be a life-long question, its worth attempting to answer it before you invest a lot into “personal branding” or social media.

In important part of knowing yourself, is not just what you want, but how emotionally sensitive you are—are you a dopamine junkie; does one bad comment or rant send you to a dark place? How would you respond?

Why are you on social media?
Also ask yourself WHY are you doing it? As Karthik points out for a corporate CEO likes/engages may not make sense as they would for an ad-revenue driven influencer. And once a quarter or year is worth revisiting if it’s still true.

Corporate vs personal
This is the professional vs social quandary we’ve faced even before social media. How separate do we keep these two spheres—clearly national and local cultures play a part in this. And social media has torn many of these walls down.

This is where the “whole self” problem presents itself. As we’ve seen with the war in the Middle East, being authentic has been a minefield as many a social issue has turned political. Yes there are no definitive right answers but only answers that are right for you, in a set of circumstances.

What are these for you?

Mental & emotional wellbeing
The only thing that matters is your mental & emotional wellbeing. The mental health issues that teen girls face due to social media are well documented. As are issues of YouTubers facing burnout and the mental health challenges of startup founders. Joshua Doležal, Ph.D. and others have written about the pressure writers face to build a personal brand whilst trying to make a living.

Being ‘successful’ whatever that is, whilst not having your health, family or lasting community is a pyrrhic victory at best.

Team Work
Photo Credit: torbakhopper

3 Tips That Can Make You Accomplish A Great Deal More

January 2, 2019 / / 0 Comments

The family and I had to make an unplanned trip overseas due to a parent’s minor medical emergency. Shutting down our house, packing for travel and all the other many minutiae of last minute travel was stressful. So to keep our sanity, the wife and I made list of the top 1, 2 and 3 things we’d like to have accomplished during the trip. This is an exercise we’ve found helps us both stay focused and reduce the stress of dealing with change that’s inevitable from having aging parents and young adults.

Many unexpected and not-always-pleasant things happened during our trip—from one of our kids getting a nasty strain of flu to home aides quitting making parental post-operative care difficult. So our way back to the airport, as we listed all that we got accomplished and were surprised at all that we’d been able to accomplish, despite the low bar we’d set for ourselves. As we dug deeper, we realized that as always we had much to be grateful for. Some of these lessons are applicable just as much for our businesses as to our daily lives.

TL;DR

  • Goals – have few, finite and clear goals and de-prioritize all else
  • People – put people first and this will always pay off
  • Self-care – take care of yourself; short breaks go a long way

Goal clarity By keeping three things, as the primary outcomes, whenever we encountered a fork (or plain temptation) we were able to pick the right things (or say no) without dithering or guilt (both hard when family’s involved). Surprisingly, this provided us sufficient wiggle room to get other things accomplished (eight at last count on the airplane back).

People focus By keeping people as our primary focus, we not only had fulfilling and meaningful interactions but once again got more accomplished as the people we met with sought, often of their own volition, to get things off of our plate. In a few instances we were able to actively help them, but in most instances, the joy of meeting one another was both fun and de-stressing that our productivity bloomed.

Self-care While visiting India is always enormously enjoyable, between others and one’s own expectations, real-world constraints not limited to traffic, bureaucracy, and inertia can render the simplest thing challenging. And that’s when the family is not involved. So accepting that there are constraints and it is okay to retreat and seek some time for yourself to recharge is not easy. Even the occasional 10-minute power nap or 2-hour curling with your e-reader recharges and lets you come out roaring.

Is Success Even the Right Metric?

June 19, 2015 / / 0 Comments

“How can I be as successful as ….?” This is a question, that not just my daughters ask, but many of the young people I meet. Of course, this gives rise to the question “What is success?” No two people define success the same way.

While I’ve read and heard a variety of definitions, I feel, VR Ferose, the former Managing Director of SAP India said it best. Success is personal and often about yourself. To the young man who is the first in his family to have attended or graduated from college, that is a success. To the security guard at his company who’s the first, from his village, to have landed a city job that’s success. To the young woman who became the CEO of a tech firm, success is attaining that post.

So doctors, engineers, lawyers, politicians all believe various things that they have achieved or seek to achieve as their success. But is success even the right metric for our lives?

I’d argue, as Feroze did that day, that impact, what impact are we having or will have on others lives is a far better metric. Unlike success, where the focus is on you and your accomplishments, impact is about other people. “She’s created over 200 jobs, as an entrepreneur” or “He’s helped 30 kids graduate from college.”

Does this mean we should quit our jobs or not pursue “selfish” goals such as running a startup? No, absolutely not. But we should revisit how we measure what we do, what we believe as success in ourselves and others. Entrepreneurs are among the greatest contributors to society, whether simply as inspiration to others or in creating real impact on the ground it terms of wealth or job creation,

Does a Babajob, create new economic opportunities for those in the disorganized service sectors? Hell yeah! Does Vaatsalya enhance the quality of health care and life for folks in Tier 2 & 3 towns? Certainly. I’m sure you can think of many more. Of course, their being financially viable as a business is important to deliver the impact that they do. However, measuring or celebrating entrepreneurs and their companies as a success merely because they raised a round or their founders are cool is both limiting and unimaginative.

So what is the impact you and your organization are going to have today?

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