I was at the Nasscom HR summit that took place in Chennai on July 23 and 24. On the first day, I was underwhelmed and thought maybe I should not have stayed back for this event. But I was so wrong !! Every seminar, event that Nasscom does, there is always something new to be learnt.
On the second day, the second session was innocuously written as an ice breaker, and young kids on the block. I thought it might be some sort of fun session till Mr. Swamy of RK Swamy BBDO Pvt Ltd called on stage the President and CEO of “godimensions.com”. They are brothers and the older brother Shravan Kumaran is the co-founder and President, aged 14… The younger brother is Sanjay Kumaran who is the co-founder and CEO, aged 11.
I wrote a few weeks back that the new challenge facing mankind is obsolescence – obsolescence the new challenge for mankind. The one type of obsolescence I never spoke of is job experience becoming obsolete. These two boys just took the hall full of experienced HR and other professionals by storm – they already have created successful apps for iOS, Android and the Google play store which have seen 60,000 downloads. Not just that, these kids have decided to give away 15% of their earnings for charity. Something that the many of us hesitate to do and needed the companies act 2013 to act :).
These two brothers represent the new world order and the sooner we adapt and understand this new workforce, we remain relevant or we face obsolescence. Age as a measure of maturity and enterprise is being tested… The leaders are getting younger and experience is becoming baggage. Resting on your laurels was anyway the wrong side of the body to rest 🙂 and now even more so.
The Gen Y is the most exciting generation to come into the workplace, because their work starts in their teens – are you adults ready for this change ? Will you change your archaic systems to let this generation show their magic ? Well, if you don’t, there won’t be ” your” kind of jobs anymore. These are smart, grounded kids, not a flash in the pan … Will you go to them and ask how to design your workplace ? Let’s better do that as they are anyway changing the game.
The other thing that we must take away is what the man who wrote the book “Fish” said on day one, “Work that is fun gets done” … Not creating a fun committee and keeping aside special days for having fun. Kids have fun and fun is good – so let go of that dour expression, your age and the Stone Age rules, let people have fun and see work getting done. :):):)