The work culture which actually works!

“Never stop learning. Never stop grinding. Never stop loving every single minute of your life.”

The day I dropped out of my college, this was something which I was prepared for!

I still remember how I got my first job as a photo editor at one of the photo studios in my home town(Valsad). It all started with a lie, I told the owner of the studio that I knew photoshop and I had learnt it from the internet.
Except the name of the software, I did not know about any tool in it.
Anyhow I convinced the owner and he asked me to join from the next day.
I struggled for the first week. I had no clue how to use the tools. But all thanks to the team there at the studio. They taught me the same thing again and again and also corrected me on every mistake I did. There was no shouting or blaming for mistakes. That is the kind of work culture I grew up with. The atmosphere was friendly, the people were extremely helpful and yeah all of them were treated equally. Soon, I figured it out that you can learn any new thing if you have the correct people around. I was doing great and I developed some skillls too. That brought in confidence and qualities like adaptability in me. Only with these two things, I moved ahead in my career.

I decided to quit my college and start learning new things from people I met at my workplace. Venture Studio was the best place for practising this learning approach. It had all: Designers, developers, business heads, mentors, researches, writers, etc. I worked here as a design and content intern.

I switched to different domain of work. The reason behind it was I approached every new job as a subject you have in college/school. In colleges you are taught different subjects so that you have an idea of varied things. So with every new job, I ensured myself that I will give my best and try to have some knowledge and expertise over every domain. And in 3 years I can say I have worked on content, design, communication, business development, marketing, product development and programming.
I have experience and some expertise on all these domains.

As you hate some subjects, even I was reductant on getting my hands on programming. But then life happened. I was asked to work in the programming domain. I had no choice. So I gave a shot to this also and it worked. I and my team built a platform which even an outsourcing company with 500 employees could not do. Again, it was all possible because of the people I was working with. They teach you , challenge you and let you struggle. All because they believe in you. This is why, now I am now open to programming opportunities also. All these things happened when I was in Gujarat. I was with the type of people whom I grew up with.

But now the game has changed. I shifted to Delhi for a new opportunity again. And trust me its not the same anymore. I mean yes, I still believe in my ideologies and I work in the same way. I talk to people over various things, learn from them and then try to execute my task. But the challenge here is different. I work on the execution and management side, more like a Project Manager. And management is something which I had not practised till date. So everything is a mess now. I am making mistakes almost on a daily basis. The challenge here is communication. Communication with the people I am working with. All the people around are great and they all have great expertise in their respective domain. The problem here is I am not able to communicate with them freely. Somewhere I fear that if I ask too many questions(some even stupid) they will loose their calm. Sometimes I do not get enough time to communicate with them. They just brief me with what I have to do and then leave the rest on me. I know this is the role description for which I am hired but then they also know I have not worked in this domain before. Its not that I cannot do work at this level. I know, it will take sometime, there would be failure but then it will be great. The only thing thing which I miss here is the work culture which I was brought up with. I believe if all companies have a work culture where in they help each other to learn and grow then there wont be a need to hire the best talent. You can build the best team by developing this work culture.

Why am I saying this? What credits do I hold? Why should you believe me?
I have no answers to these questions but I would like to say just one thing. If a person like me(one which had no skill) is able to place himself somewhere in the industry then I am sure that everyone can elso do it because I know everyone definately holds some or the other skill. :)