| Sunday, 14 April 2024 |
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Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],
One of the beautiful things about the circle of life is rediscovering things you experienced (but have since forgotten) as a child, but only this time as a parent.
One of my most vivid recollections of this is from January 2015. Our son was about to turn five. I’d bought him a bicycle the year before hoping he’d learn how to ride it. No luck. After a few flailing attempts, he stubbornly refused to, and there was nothing I could say or do to convince him otherwise.
Then, on the last Saturday of the month, he came to me and said, “Papa, where is my bicycle?”
His six-year-old best friend had been cycling around the community, and I guess he had enough of it. “I want to cycle too!” he said.
I could only stand back and watch in amazement as he swerved, fell, and bumped over the rest of the day, each time stubbornly refusing my offers of help. The cycle got called various names and received various well-aimed kicks.
But, in a few hours, he had learnt how to cycle, I kid you not.
That was the day I rediscovered the incredible power of peer pressure, as a parent.
Over the years, I would note how many of the hobbies my wife and I proposed to him would be studiously ignored till the day he saw one of his friends engaging in them. And then, we would just marvel at his focused, self-directed learning.
Peers push us forward in ways that are hard to replicate, because they make us want to be better.
It’s true for adults too. One of the best things we can do for ourselves professionally is to be part of environments where our peers make us want to be better. We’ll get into that shortly, but here’s today’s edition:
1. Select your “ecosystem”
2. The Little Picture 📸
3. Survey: Careers are not what they used to be 🗒️
4. Drop more books to read more books 📚
5. An FP Quests Update 🏃
1. Select your “ecosystem”
You know I’m a huge fan of Systems Thinking (“Emergence”).
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Executive Chairperson, Biocon Limited
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