The Inside Story of ... "Open Secrets@Work"

Everyone has a background. I had no idea I would be ending up writing a book. It just started with a dream and ended with complete reality. It is possible. I just remembered the phrase "Dare to Dream"!

And it doesn't end in there. I am overwhelmed by the love and response of readers across segments. Most importantly the benefits and takeaways which they are sharing it back!

Since many of the readers reached out on how it all happened, I have put across the humble beginnings and the little motivation which pumped me. It also forms a major part of the book. 

How this book evolved?

We come across different situations and scenarios as our career curve progresses. These situations may be challenging but it helps us to learn and mature. This, in turn, helps us in sailing and steering our journey as we leap from one milestone to another. I got an opportunity to work in some of the best cutting edge organizations including the fortune ones. Being an HR professional and a strategic partner, I would say I got plucked in some of the amazing teams who were glued to some of the most challenging problems in this era. From building and changing the way people shopped to making airplanes smarter. The problem statements were solved through different schools of thought and by a unique set of visionaries. One interesting correlation that I could derive is the day to day situations and challenges, the individuals in these smart organizations encounter in their professional journey. The idea of writing this book evolved out of mere reflection on a certain day. The COVID-19 situation and lockdown scenario has a lot to contribute. The entire industry adopted a new era of working; flocking remotely. People are now working from home for months or longer, which was unusual to be seen in our careers. When I took a pause and looked back, I saw an opportunity to reflect. I saw huge value in these last years gained from the communities and the people that I have worked with. Thanks to all the problem statements that I was able to solve, being part of the exploratory groups. While I got to solve this uniquely in each of the organizations, I could connect a lot of experiences in parallel. It’s a journey of meaningful experiences when I connect all the dots. Apart from my profession, the influence of my other personal interests in my life has been paramount along these years- Intense traveling, playing musical instruments, reading, writing, and photography. Thankfully, I have been able to pursue all of these in some way or the other; a lot of it with conscious efforts. From having a musical band five years back to travel vlogging with my wife(Angita, who also is a passionate traveler) still continues relentlessly. These passions require a lot of hours, but I enjoy it. All these purely out of passion and love and not with any intention of pursuing a full-fledged career though. I thought to take advantage of all my time in the lockdown situation. With no travel and vlogging, I could sense I can invest my time in bringing in some of the learning and experiences to life through pages. I realized a lot of time being saved, which otherwise I would have lost in my daily logistics. I started jotting out those learning, those triangulations of all those experiences throughout these years. I could devote some daily hours to outline my thoughts and bring in to a unidirectional objective. This book is all about those reflections. And nevertheless to mention, my sincere regards to my dear wife and my well-wishers who have encouraged and supported me relentlessly for bringing this up.

What are these reflections all about?

It’s all about those little but powerful challenges which shape up one’s journey. Today, when I pursue my different journeys, I could easily relate the respective challenges in these journeys with each other. The philosophies are the same. And you would be able to relate to it as well. You may have different journeys in parallel. It can be anyone for that matter. Someone who is just fresh out of college and joined the first job, or maybe someone who has just been promoted as a people manager or taken up an enhanced role. Whatsoever, every one of us will come across some common challenges and situations. This book is all about listing those challenges under the carpet. There can be many. But the topics addressed here in this book are inevitable. Everyone faces it at some point in their lives. In my reflection study, I could find a lot of similarities in the nature of the problems. In fact, many times, the solutions and approaches discovered are also the same. Well, again this book is not drilling down atomically to change something exponentially. But an attempt to bring some practical approaches on how to handle these interesting and evitable challenges on a daily basis at work through tiny steps. This is not a rule book, but a helping guide. Use this to shape your thoughts, approaches, and decisions at your profession and in general. While I was writing this I have tried to stick to all the fundamentals and basics and nothing idealistic. Idealistic thoughts are great but may not be really helpful to solve day to day challenging chronicles. However, fundamentals and basics can. They may be simple but they are very powerful. It is all about those daily routines and practices that you can bring into your schedules. What you need to do is to focus on basics and leave the result to the end part of the game. Right now, you would be in a certain phase in your life. As you read through the book, try to relate to the situation you are in. While I have quoted certain phases like the first job or a promotion phase, it is easily relatable to each one of us regardless of any stage. For e.g. aspects like networking or agility are key abilities or skills at any level in a job. Bring in the relevance, pick up the fundamentals, try and use it. You may like to put these fundamentals into practice as per your relevance. I would rather say one or few at a time based on your appetite. As you see values streaming in at your work, and you see the initial practices are in auto mode, try to rope in the rest of the fundamentals. Juggle in, adopt, and adapt. The essence of this book is to bring all of us into a certain state of acceptance on these challenges. And some of the situations at the workplace are bound to happen and all for a cause, maybe relevant or not. At the end of the day, our survival and success don’t matter on the intensity of challenges. Our survival and success would be determined by our ability to ride through it purposefully. And this would only happen if we understand what these changes are, which are inevitable in nature. 

I have put all together all these practical approaches in these 10 chapters in the form of a playbook!

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I will wait to hear from you :)

With love - Sam