Working from 'The Center for Agile Thinking' HQ!

The new year started with a big bang at both the Last-Bench! office in Mumbai and The Center for Agile Thinking office in US. The boys in Mumbai have been on a roll and continuously producing learning content. I'd like to share my experience working out of The Center for Agile Thinking HQ in Princeton, New Jersey.

Work as usual started from the 1st day of January. That I'd like to call #LifeOfAnEntrepreneur. Prof. Anne, Charlie and I started work with getting an agenda down first of what we wanted to accomplish over the next 4 days. We came up with a list of 9 items and we achieved 8 out of them, which was very exciting!

The day started out with coffee, went into discussions, ideations and brainstorming. We also got down to some real work which included content and technology. I got to meet a very interesting management consultant while I was there with whom we validated our product, idea and value proposition.

Charlie and I got our hands wet with some server issues, discussed wireframes, design and user-interface. Prof. Anne and I reviewed content for some of our offerings. We had our first virtual team meeting with Sajid and Venkat in India and I was here in the US. It felt a bit different but the feeling was good.

Our days started at around 8am and went on until 8-10pm but it never felt tiring or stressful. Intermittently, our conversations ranged from culture to experiences, which maintained the balance and equilibrium in our minds!:-) I learned Charlie is an awesome musician who also learnt from Pt. Ravi Shankar back during his college days. He played the Piano on one of the evenings as we all were relaxing and it was perfect! The music was relaxing and it got us energized. He played Jazz to Classic Rock. I didn't know a whole lot of Jazz but he played Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Billy Joel. What an experience to see him play the Piano!

Even on the last day, usually one would feel relaxed but we were on a roll and got a lot of work done on the final day too. With al the work, I was balancing calls and work back in India and tried in whatever little way I could to support the team in every possible manner which included communicating all our discussions here with Sajid and Venkat too.

Prof. Anne and Charlie were great hosts. For me, it felt like home and working from the office was the best start to the New Year!

Here are some pics:

Corporate Training Video (demo): 'Giving Effective Feedback'

Check out our brand new corporate training video - 'Giving Effective Feedback'. 

(This video is a demo and we appreciate your feedback and comments. Look out for more such videos. Soon!)

THOUGHTLESS NO MORE!

     

'The current business environment is extraordinarily challenging, competitive and dynamic. You must be over qualified, have multiple degrees, have years of experience and seize opportunities!'

At Last-Bench! we like to call this the 'Parrot line'. Why? Because everyone picks it up from someone else, will talk about it at length but won't do anything about it. In fact people don't know what the solution to the problem is and constantly worry about how success can become a guarantee? The solution is getting lucky at the right time and till then churn on, persist and hope for that special break. Right?  Wrong! Here at Last-Bench! we like to say- 'Today's world is highly competitive, YOU must carve a niche for yourself!' See how we played around with words? See how the emphasis is suddenly on YOU to make that next big leap? Whether at home, at college or at your workplace, people will constantly give you advice (c'mon we've all given and received it!) but in reality advice is just food for thought and action is what makes the difference! 

Office Space

Initially during our pre-setup discussions which were taking place in a borrowed conference room at a friend's western suburban office, we would splash out ideas as to what would be an ideal location for our startup. For the matter of fact we also thought if it would be ideal to simply follow a work-from-home model. But then, call it a blessing in disguise we found out that our alma mater Sardar Patel Institute of Engineering had started an Incubation Centre. This helped us lay our first stone in the foundation of our company.

We wanted the office to be a one stop shop which incudes office space for the staff as well as a learning lounge for the cohorts. Right from the word 'Go' we started scouting for the furniture, keeping in mind comfort, aesthetics, experience and ofcourse costs (remember the 'Lean and Mean Start-up Strategy').

Parallel to these activities we also had to finalise the gadgets for the lounge such as a high quality projector which could display images and videos flawlessly. The partition for the office alongwith the electrical works was completed within a week, with the furniture delivered in the following week.