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Author: Nirmal Thapa

Skills over Location

Posted on by Nirmal Thapa

A skilled professional should be respected, valued, and paid as much as someone that can be found in a particular region.

With remote work and freelancing work becoming more common than ever before, companies have a global talent pool to fill their vacancies. A skilled professional based in the US would generally get paid more than a skilled professional with similar qualifications in South Asia because the argument went that the cost of living in the US was higher so the professional needs to get paid more. Over the span of few decades, companies have been looking for talent in offshore regions for cost savings (primarily), time zones turnaround, work flexibility, proximity to customers etc.

The talent pool and the job/career marketplace is now global. Companies can have skilled professionals working on their products/services from anywhere in the world and the skilled professionals have a global job/career opportunity pool. Skilled professionals based in South Asia should get paid equally to a professional based in the US if the individual has similar qualifications, work ethic, quality of work produced and such. It’s a win-win for both companies and skilled professionals everywhere!

Caitlin Clark is worth the money.

Posted on by Nirmal Thapa

Pay Caitlin Clark what’s she worth. Nothing less.

The long drought in team engagement

Posted on by Nirmal Thapa

A company, WeAreGrowing Inc. decides to add several new team members to its company. They place ads, go through job sites, and recruiters to find and interview the best talent to join their growing company. Lots of time, human resources, and energy goes into finding the right candidate(s) for the roles and after several interview(s), the team members are selected and officially onboarded into the company.

For the new team members, the first few days and weeks are exciting at WeAreGrowing Inc. As the weeks and months go by, these new team members are not “new” anymore and become “regular employees.” As WeAreGrowing Inc. continues to grow, they add more new team members and so on. Sometime in the distant future, few team members decide to leave WeAreGrowing Inc. for various reasons – join another company, higher studies, start their own venture, etc. Then WeAreGrowing Inc. become highly alert on the recent layoffs and in a move to not lose the team members plans to meet them. HR and managers talk to the team members about how much the company values them and promises that the company will continue to grow. Yet the team members share that their plans to move on were made months ago and felt that their personal and professional growth was stagnant for sometime and were not growing at WeAreGrowing Inc.

There seems to be a long drought in team engagement between when new team members join a company and when they decide to leave. A company can convince itself that they did whatever they can at their disposal to keep the team member(s) engaged and growing. However, team members feel that the company did not engage them enough or challenge them enough or show tangible growth during the time they were with the company. Addressing the team engagement issues when the team members are almost out the door is too late!

If a company sincerely believes that the team is their biggest asset, then they should treat them as such – keep them engaged and challenged throughout the team members’ journey within the company. It’s more expensive for companies to find and hire new talent than keeping the current talent engaged and productive. Better for the company to approach their people that they can leave at any point and realize that the team members have many other career choices as well. You (HR, Managers, Founders or Leaders) just have to deliver the message and show that staying with the company is the best career choice for the team members!

Underrated : Thoughts on the documentary

Posted on by Nirmal Thapa

I finished watching the Stephen Curry : Underrated documentary on Apple TV.

The documentary tells of almost a fairy tale like story of how Stephen Curry who was overlooked throughout his basketball journey (high school, college, early NBA years) to ultimately becoming a 4 time NBA champion (so far). Stephen’s journey to the NBA was filled with challenges and underestimations. However, he kept going, working on his game, and continued to reach newer heights.

Stephen had a lot of people helping him on his basketball journey – family, coaches, team members, and the community. He emphasized how important his Davidson coach, Bob McKillop and his Davidson team members were critical to his confidence and growth on the basketball court especially in his early years at Davidson.

It’s an incredible sports documentary and highly recommend watching it for Stephen Curry fans as well as for any sports fan.

Skills Degree

Posted on by Nirmal Thapa

What if we could have a Skills degree similar to a College degree?

A Skills degree would show all the skills you have accumulated over the years. Writing skills, editing skills, sales skills, Excel skills, technical skills, marketing skills and more skills. In a knowledge economy, our skills are our biggest assets. Skills are learnable and we can get better overtime with practice and repetition.

What skills do you have or working to be better at?

A College Degree is great but not required. 

Posted on by Nirmal Thapa

I saw this on a job vacancy post.

A college degree is great but not required. What’s more important is having the skills to do the job.

Skills are the way to go. Whether its for an Account Executive, marketing, or technical role, skills are becoming important than ever. With the speed of technological developments everyday and shortage of skilled talent across various industries, skilled professionals will continue to be in higher demand across the globe.

What skills can you gain while in college and what skills can you gain outside of college?

Less Meetings, More Productivity

Posted on by Nirmal Thapa

Meetings fill up a work day. There’s a meeting here and a meeting there. Then the day is almost done and we still have a lot of important work to be done.

With remote work being a part of our professional lives, video conferencing tools so easy to use (Zoom, Meet, Teams), and devices at our hands, we could be taking meetings from anywhere. An organized meeting with an agenda, meaningful audience engagement, and clear next steps is well worth it. However, many meetings fall off the mark and we end up just looking busy and not getting much work done. There’s a huge opportunity cost to meaningless and unproductive meetings when the team could be working on more productive and important tasks. A CBS News article stated that “Based on how much time workers said they spend in nonessential meetings as well as their salaries, the survey estimated that organizations employing 5,000 people waste around $100 million annually on unnecessary gatherings.”

What are the solution(s) then?

Meeting Purpose: Before setting up a meeting, asking ourselves is this meeting necessary, what’s the agenda, who is absolutely needed for this meeting, what can be the end result of this meeting etc. Being absolutely clear on these few questions can make a huge difference on how the meeting goes.

Meeting Audit: Once meetings have been on the calendar, conducting a meeting audit from time to time is important. A meeting audit will consist of reviewing whether this recurring meeting is still necessary, what can be changed, and if possible can the meeting be removed from the calendar completely.

Meeting Scalability: Often times, there could be meetings conflict where the same key individual(s) are needed in multiple meetings. Considering if the next individual in charge can attend the meeting instead, can the meeting be recorded, or can the video conferencing platform create an AI Summary of the meeting are some options to make better use of our time at work.

Silicon Peaks

Posted on by Nirmal Thapa

Pukar C. Hamal, Founder and CEO of SecurityPal, recently coined the term Silicon Peaks to capture the growing startup ecosystem of Nepal.

On his LinkedIn page, Pukar wrote that “The Himalayas have always been a source of inspiration for me. And given that 8 out of the worlds 14 highest mountains are located here including the highest (Mt. Everest) and the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th(!) highest, it only felt natural to pay homage to the incredible Peaks we have here! And thus 🏔️*Silicon Peaks* 🏔️ was born!”

Silicon Peaks is here and will continue to grow! #SiliconPeaks

The color of the grass

Posted on by Nirmal Thapa

A tourist from New York City, US visits Pokhara, Nepal for the first time.

The beautiful views of Phewa Lake and mountains from Pokhara’s Lakeside makes the tourist relaxed and joyful after a long time. The tourist lives a hectic lifestyle back home with job, daily commute, bills, and all the “luxuries” that come with city life. So the Pokhara scenery, atmosphere, and the local people make the tourist comfortable and appreciate everything that is around. The local Pokhara tour guide shows the tourist the best spots in the area and makes the tour enjoyable and memorable. The tour guide lives a relaxed lifestyle with seasonal tours when the tourist season is at peak and takes other temporary gigs in the off tourist season time.

The American tourist sees the tour guide and admires the simple life of the tour guide who is bestowed a place full of natural beauty, hospitable people, and delicious food. The tour guide sees the American tourist and admires the relaxed life of the tourist who is bestowed financial freedom, choices to splurge their money on, and travel flexibility.

What’s your Trillion Dollar Venn Diagram Of Success?

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Dharmesh Shah, co-founder and CTO of HubSpot shares his thoughts on rare skills and the Trillion Dollar Venn Diagram Of Success (phrase credit to him).

Dharmesh shares that “You probably have a few valuable skills right now. The question is, how do you turn those skills into a successful career or company? By combining skills together. But combining any set of skills won’t necessarily get you where you want to go. You need to be strategic about which skills to acquire. Here’s my framework for combining skills to maximize your potential.”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=WghyEbmPWgk%3Fsi%3D08-AmPfcl47pxRhZ

Enjoying Vacation Time

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Planning activities and leaving room for spontaneous moments is one of the best ways to enjoy vacation time.

I used to have an itinerary for my trips and go from one activity to another activity. With that type of schedule, I felt accomplished and proud. There was no much time for “unplanned” activities or moments to just relax or take a break. I was always on the go. If an activity or event started late or went over the scheduled time, we would have to rush and “new/other exciting activities” would have to be rescheduled until next time.

Now I find more joy in planning activities for my trips and leaving ample room to take a break, rest or do an activity that could come during my trip. It’s a better way for me to have an enjoyable vacation experience.

Engaging Company Culture

Posted on by Nirmal Thapa

Engaging company cultures have empowered, creative, and growth oriented team members leading company culture events. Through empowerment, employees are given the decision making authority and independence to decide what activities bring out the best in the team. Through creativity, employees can be resourceful and come up with activities that are out of the box and meaningful for the team. Through a focus on growth-oriented activities, employees can initiate programs that integrate both learning and fun.

What’s your company culture like?

More Art than Science

Posted on by Nirmal Thapa

With AI, Large Language Models (LLMs) and ChatGPT, the possibilities seem endless. In fact, it has made it very easy for us in various professions to go to ChatGPT, write a prompt, and get a good output in a span of seconds. With ChatGPT, we can have a solid starting point for an email to a client, a college essay, speech or anything that ChatGPT can help you with.

This means that the ART part is becoming more important and will continue to do so in the future. If every sales person or customer success manager in the company goes to ChatGPT to help them write emails, almost all will start to sound alike (if there’s no personalization done). If every student in the classroom goes to ChatGPT to help them write an essay, almost all will start to sound alike (if there’s no personalization done). And the list goes on.

Our creativity, personality, uniqueness, authentic experiences, and human emotions are where we create meaningful connections with others in the world we live in today. Bring your authentic self to the work that you do and have that human connection. Let AI take care of the rest!

Starting your venture

Posted on by Nirmal Thapa

Bill Gross said in a TEDTalk that timing was the single most important attribute to startup success.

There’s no science to when’s a good time to start a venture. However, waiting for the idea to be perfect, or wanting to have all the “necessary” data points in the world to make the launch decision or just plain waiting probably won’t do much good to your “exclusive” idea.

Ship your idea. Gather feedback from prospects/customers. Iterate based on learnings. Keep going!

Am I hunting Antelope or Field Mice?

Posted on by Nirmal Thapa

A lion is fully capable of capturing, killing, and eating a field mouse. But it turns out that the energy required to do so exceeds the caloric content of the mouse itself. So a lion that spent its day hunting and eating field mice would slowly starve to death. A lion can’t live on field mice. A lion needs antelope. Antelope are big animals. They take more speed and strength to capture and kill, and once killed, they provide a feast for the lion and her pride. A lion can live a long and happy life on a diet of antelope. The distinction is important. Are you spending all your time and exhausting all your energy catching field mice? In the short term it might give you a nice, rewarding feeling. But in the long run you’re going to die. So ask yourself at the end of the day, “Did I spend today chasing mice or hunting antelope?”

The above excerpt is taken from Tim Ferriss‘ 17 Questions That Changed My Life who had quoted Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives using the above analogy.

Sun. Light. Power.

Posted on by Nirmal Thapa

Sunlight is very important for us and provides many benefits.

The benefits of sunlight are:

Sleep at night. Early morning sunlight in particular seems to help people get to sleep at night. 

Weight loss. Morning light also seems to help people keep the fat off.

Boosting serotonin. Sunlight helps boost a chemical in our brain called serotonin which can give us more energy, be positive, and focused. Higher levels of serotonin correlate with better mood and feelings of satisfaction and calmness, and lower levels link to depression and anxiety.

Eye health. Moderate amounts of sun over one’s lifetime helps to maintain good eye health.

Here’s two good resources on sunlight and health : more benefits of sunlight and health. Why Sunlight Is So Good For You

Scale or Small – which one?

Posted on by Nirmal Thapa

Which one is better for your enterprise? Going for Scale or Staying small?

If you run the best coffeeshop in town, do you focus on opening 100 more around the country or making the flagship coffeeshop the only one available and best in the world? If the decision to open 100 franchises of your coffeeshop, came with ownership dilution, longer working hours, more work travel to setup franchises, more stress, less personalized experiences for your customers, would you still want to do it because the financial upside is huge? If the reasons you started the coffee venture in the first place – delighting customers daily, creative and financial freedom, doing something that you are passionate about are available to you with one coffeeshop, would having MORE coffeeshops make you happier or less?

It would certainly help to revisit why you started your entrepreneurial journey in the first place!

when you’re ready for fishing

Posted on by Nirmal Thapa

“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Heard it many times. Seems like a valid point of view right?

That is if the man is ready to fish or wants to learn how to fish, then it becomes an empowering journey. Without the awareness that fishing is important or is an important lifelong skill to learn, it won’t take people closer to their goals and vision. You won’t go too far with a person who just wants a fish on a plate or happy to have something easy served up all the time!

How about “Give a man a fish, and you feed his appetite now; teach a man who is hungry enough to learn how to fish and you feed his motivation and empower him for a lifetime.”

Want to become better at…?

Posted on by Nirmal Thapa

Want to be a better writer? keep writing.

Want to be a better storyteller? keep telling stories.

Want to be a better leader? keep leading.

Want to be a better creative? keep getting creative.

Want to be better negotiator? keep negotiating.

Want to be a better coach? keep coaching.

Want to be a better teacher? keep teaching.

Want to be a better manager? keep managing.

Want to be a better mentor? keep mentoring.

Want to be better skilled at any craft? Keep at it.

Prioritize and work on the craft that you want to become the best in the world at.

You made it

Posted on by Nirmal Thapa

What’s your success criteria?

What makes you feel like you’ve made it? Personally? Professionally? Overall?

Is it financial success, family success, social contribution, personal well being, or making the world a better place?

Is it enough to make it there or should you be thriving in where you want to be?

Have you made it to where ever you wanted to be and proud of it?

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