Review: Management And Life Lessons From Ground Zero By Harrish M Bhatia There is no dearth of books on professional and personal growth, success, leadership, but few perhaps go into the details of what it takes to achieve them with such simplicity as Harrish M Bhatia does in his new book, Management and Life Lessons from Ground Zero.
Published by SIA Books, this is Bhatia’s second book. Professionals today are caught in a race to get ahead, but few are able to navigate the twists and turns it takes to get to their goals. In the pages of Management and Life Lessons from Ground Zero, every reader will find something of relevance to further their growth, regardless of the stage of their professional career they are in.
The author, Harrish M Bhatia, boasts of an illustrious career, starting from frontline sales in Aristocrat to now heading the Media/Entertainment and Consumer Durables segment as President at the DBCorp Group – that brings out the third largest circulated newspaper in the world. He has drawn upon the learnings from his career spanning 38 years in his new book to offer lessons for individuals pursuing their own course to grow.
The book makes for an easy read, skipping the jargon, and offering some hard-hitting and relevant lessons for professionals from all walks of life. The book is divided into four sections, offering guidance for professionals in initial, mid-level, and leadership positions respectively, followed by a section on life lessons that cut across segments. The book is not overly drawn out, not sermonizing in its tone – it reads like a conversation between the author and the reader. In each of the chapters, the author directly addresses the reader, taking them through the quintessential lessons of what it takes to be a true blue professional as they climb the rungs to the next level of their career.
The chapters are short, the language simple, the lessons worthy of emulation. Each chapter begins with a quote, the author’s own, which serves as a precursor to the content of the chapter that the reader is about to delve into. The first three sections of the book focus on professional growth lessons which are drawn from the author’s own experiences. From talking of values and ethics to providing a map for leaders on how to be authentic, the book goes beyond the conventional to offer advice that holds nothing back, encouraging the reader to give their best in whatever they take on or are held responsible for. The last section, Personal Growth, with its ten chapters, makes for an apt conclusion to the book, covering topics as far-ranging as the importance of reading, the role of family and friends, and Bhatia signs off with the chapter “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”, urging readers to continue to thirst for and pursue knowledge for growth. And that perhaps is the biggest lesson that every reader can take from this book. Available in Kindle edition as well.