Category Archives: Thought Work

Engage in one-on-ones & motivate your team with this Trello board

After a lot of reading & thinking, I came up with the idea of a simple Trello board to help me conduct effective one-on-one meetings with my team, and to plan each team member’s growth. This is the boilerplate that I could quickly replicate for each team member using  Trello’s “Copy Board…” feature. My team has been using it since last October and they’ve found it really helpful to communicate their achievements, issues and most importantly, to plan their growth.

Thanks to them, its now mature enough to help other managers better engage with their teams.  The boilerplate board is now public so you can easily copy & build on top of it. Here is a sample board showing real-world use. Get started by copying the boilerplate, and let me know how it works or how we can improve it.

Boilerplate (Get started by copying) | Real-world example

Motivation/Idea

My one-on-one pattern has greatly evolved over the last 4 years that I’ve managed teams. Starting naively by tracking work,  it now leaves the daily stuff out and instead focuses on the individual itself. When my travel increased, I felt the need for something online to retain the connect. I believe in transparency and I hate secret dossiers; I wanted a platform where we both have the same view of the relationship, which becomes the single version of truth for all discussion. Also, since it was their plan, I wanted my team to have access even when they decide to move on.

I’ve got inspiration from a lot of sources: blogs, surveys & talks I’ve participated in, etc. Thanks to all!

Board Structure

There’s enough on the board for either of you to take interest. It helps drive strategy, but still track tactical stuff; stuff that’s important for the individual’s growth, and the manager’s. Continue reading Engage in one-on-ones & motivate your team with this Trello board

Recipe: Meethe aalo ka chaat

Nothing beats cooking in a steamer
Nothing beats cooking in a steamer

All my life, I’ve stayed away from sweet potatoes, which  the rest of the family savors as a fasting delicacy. Mitha Aloo Ki Chat is one appetizer that makes me pick the vegetarian selection on-board Singapore Airlines to Mumbai. Although I haven’t figured the exact recipe yet, this one works well in the interim, while my experiments continue. In the next iteration, I’m going to add some tamarind chutney. If someone has a recipe already, please do share it. Point to note is that  I’ve seen exceptional results when using the steamer (my wife got for preparing momos) as against boiling in a pressure cooker.

Ingredients:

The end-result - sweet & sour
The end-result – sweet & sour
  • 2 sweet potatoes
  • 1 chopped onion
  • 1 chopped tomato
  • 1 tsp cumin powder
  • 1 tsp chilli powder
  • 3 tsp chat masala
  • 1 tbsp lemon juice
  • Finely chopped Coriander
  • Rock salt, to taste

Procedure:

  • Steam the sweet potatoes, peel the cover & dice them
  • Mix all the other ingredients together

Recipe: Baked chicken sandwich

Continuing with recipes using shredded chicken as the key ingredient, here is another one that I was keen on trying.

Ingredients:

Baked Sandwiches
Baked Sandwiches
  • 8 slices of Multi-grain/Whole-wheat bread
  • 2 Tomatoes, sliced
  • 1 Onion, chopped
  • 1 Garlic clove
  • 1 Egg, whipped
  • 2 tbsp Milk
  • 4 Cheese slices
  • Olive Oil (or butter)
  • Shredded chicken
  • Barbecue sauce
  • Mustard sauce
  • Pepper
  • Chili flakes
  • Lemon juice
  • Thyme (optional)
  • Red wine (optional)

Procedure:

Setting up the layers
Setting up the layers
  • Add Barbecue sauce, Mustard sauce, Pepper, Chili flakes, Lemon juice, and if available Red wine & Thyme to the shredded chicken. Leave it to marinate for an hour
  • Heat some butter in a saucepan to saute the onions with garlic. Once cooked, add the chicken and mix well.
  • Grease the baking tray and lay bread slices.
  • Layer the chicken, tomato slices, cheese and sprinkle salt/pepper to taste. Cover the top with a slice.
  • Add some milk, and beat the egg. Pour this over the top slice.
  • Place the tray in an oven, and bake at 375′ for 30 mins.

Serve hot!

Recipe: Shredded Chicken

Getting ready
Getting ready

In an earlier recipe, I mentioned my plans to write a cookbook, exclusive to recipes using shredded chicken as the key ingredient. This post is chapter 1: “Preparing your key ingredient“. As simple as it sounds, boiling chicken is an art. The trick is to cook the chicken without leaving it too dry. And here is how:

Procedure:

  • Take enough water in a large vessel to fit the chicken pieces and bring it to boil – WITHOUT the chicken
  • Cut the chicken breasts (or other pieces) into sizable chunks
  • Once the water is boiling, reduce the flame & drop the chicken pieces into the vessel
  • While the chicken boils, keep skimming the foamy protein that floats on the top (as shown below)

Continue reading Recipe: Shredded Chicken

Recipe: Oven-toasted Chicken Bruschettas

At some point in time, I am going to write a book about cooking: “A Husband’s guide to quick recipes – a.k.a. all you need is shredded chicken”. The possibilities of what you can do with shredded chicken are limitless. I’ve used it with enchiladas, salads, nachos, pizzas and what not. Here is another easy one.

Ingredients:

Oven-baked bruschetta
Oven-baked bruschetta

Continue reading Recipe: Oven-toasted Chicken Bruschettas

A 1-page resume design that speaks to your hiring manager 🏆

The last time I redesigned (not updated) my resume was 2009. Since then, my understanding of ease-of-use, information architecture & win-loss has grown several fold. Late last year I realized that my resume looks archaic and needs a revamp.

The need was to create something that was:

  • information rich yet not cluttered
  • comprehensible yet not funky
  • likely to get past through the recruiter’s clutter.

Several opinions & tweaks later, I finally published a release candidate that I wanted to share. Yes, sharing definitely looses the competitive advantage at a PM opening, but what use is creativity that’s kept to yourself. I hope this bit on the design rationale helps all.

📰 The importance of Page 1

Single-page resume that says it all!
Single-page resume that says it all!

It’s a no-brainer how crucial the first page is to recruiters, considering their daily swim in the resume swarm. The key was to summarize everything that mattered to them on Page 1, while deferring details to following pages. More importantly, it also acts as a printable summary to save some paper.

Continue reading A 1-page resume design that speaks to your hiring manager 🏆

5 benefits of indulging yourself in pet projects

You have every right to question my proposal – haven’t projects at work already tamed our lives for the worst? Well, yes definitely. But I’m not talking about work-related projects, or even the side projects that your cool workplace encourages. I’m talking about every other little project that needn’t advance your career or make you money (at least to begin with). The reason I’m distinguishing this from hobbies is because a hobby can keep you amused for an entire life-time – like numismatics for me. Projects on the other hand will usually have an end-result.

Courtesy: drrajivdesaimd.com
Staying the grey zone

The result is what is crucial to creating a sense of achievement & satisfaction. It is only one of the benefits you would you see while engaging yourself in a pet project. Here are some more:

1. Sense passion and purpose

The monotony or stress at work takes a hit on passion. A project with the right amount of challenge can bring you back in the grey zone and you will experience passion. Additionally,
Continue reading 5 benefits of indulging yourself in pet projects

Crackerjack Popcorn Fail

A year I tried this recipe for Homemade Cracker Jack and it turned out great! Crunchy peanuts glued to caramel pop-corn making for a nice sweet-and-salty snack. Just a few days back, I bumped into a question on Quora that asked ‘When do you realise that you are good at something?‘ to which I said: When repeating ‘it’ no longer worries you. Or when You dont need revision or preparation, and when others seek your opinion or value you experience.

In an attempt to get good at Crackerjack (and to satisfy my craving on a slow Sunday evening) I went ahead and tried it again. Only to realize that I still need to improve. The peanuts just didn’t glue with the pop-corn because my caramel sauce should’ve had more butter & water. But I’m glad that I attempted to perfect it, traced the cause of my failure and that I’m still eager to perfect it.

The caramel topping

Putting it together

Recipe: Cheese Nachos with Baked Beans

Ingredients:

Basic ingredients
Basic ingredients

  • Cornito (or other) Corn chips
  • Canned Baked Beans (Sil @ Big Bazaar)
  • Mozzarella Cheese
  • Finely chopped vegetables: tomato, onions, capsicum, olives, jalapenos
  • Salt, pepper, oregano to taste

Procedure:

Preparing to bake

  • Arrange the nachos at the bottom of the baking dish
  • Spread vegetables and then baked beans over the nachos
  • Then shred the mozzarella cheese as per your dietary requirement 🙂
  • Add additional layers if you’d like to bulk-produce
  • Bake in the over at 180c for 5 mins before serving

Continue reading Recipe: Cheese Nachos with Baked Beans