Strategic HR Management; Industrial Relations; General Administration, Counsellor & Psychotherapist; Trainer & Coach; Hypnotist; Sound Therapist; Psychometric Test Professional; Poet and Author
Nandkkishore Sharrma...popularly called as NK by his collogues, is a Versatile, high-energy HR and IR practitioner with dynamic experience across corporate, manufacturing and project sites. He is an enterprising leader with extensive experience of 24 years in HR Strategy & Operations, Industrial Relations. He has held Senior HR level positions in organizations of repute such as Birla Corporation Ltd, Pride Group, POSCO, Hyundai Construction Equipment, Magna & Badve Engineering Ltd. He has been extremely successful in managing end-to-end HR & IR processes.
He has been instrumental in setting up several plants as well as JV’s including a MEGA Project. He was awarded the ‘BEST CHANGE AGENT’ across the processing centers of POSCO. He was honored with Best Employee for the Year. He was honored with Best QSS Agent Award in Thailand. He has concluded long term settlements with various trade unions. He has been credited with various HR drives resulting in savings of crores of rupees in recurring that too without firing a single person and without any IR issue.
Ravi: What’s your favourite short story?
Nandkkishore Sharrma: One of the stories I learned in my school days was a Hindi story by Munshi Premchand. The story was ‘Bade Ghar ki Beti’. It was such a simple but strongly build story on basic human values. I cannot forget it ever.
Ravi: The Best piece of writing advice?
Sharrma: Choose your topics carefully. You should have enough personal interest or knowledge about that topic. But off course, when its small articles, you may try your hands on any general subject also
Ravi: Where do you write?
Sharrma: I have a worship room, where I have also stocked my book collection. It’s a multipurpose room now – for performing regular pooja, study, writing and work from home. I have put up a small table and an office chair in the above room. It is big enough to sit down and write and small enough not to occupy much space of the room
Ravi: Where do you get your ideas?
Sharrma: I have a habit of thinking too much. I try to convert my experiences, feelings in to a written matter. As far as this book is concerned, due to my 24 years of experience in the industry I had a fair idea of the specific pain area of the wide effects of lack of leadership skills at the lower management level, so I wanted to do something on it. I just tried searching if anyone has written on this subject & I could not find any Indian author on it.
Ravi: Does writing energize or exhaust you?
Sharrma: I love writing, therefore there is no question of exhausting out of it. It only energizes me and I get motivated to write more and more. I intention is to write on various subjects and various formats. As now my target is to publish four books in the year 2020 and I have identified at least 3 more topics for writing a book
Ravi: How long on average does it take you to write a book?
Sharrma: On an average I take three months to write a roughly a 150~160 pages book. But I am planning to write a novel also, which I guess may take a longer time.
Ravi: If you had to do something differently as a child or teenager to become a better writer as an adult, what would you do?
Sharrma: I feel writing should start when we are teenagers. The experiences at that age, feelings in those days, the struggle etc if can be written down during those days only can be a big treasure. And why to wait to be an adult and then write? I believe one can write at any age. I would read more and should start righting things as early as my school days, thus creating a treasure for later on.
Ravi: What is your favourite childhood book?
Sharrma: My favourite childhood book has been ‘Godaan’ by Munshi Premchand
Ravi: What one thing would you give up to become a better writer?
Sharrma: Distractions are great these days. Cell phones are the biggest source of distraction. I have & I believe most of us have got into this habit of picking up the phone very often and checking messages etc. One thing which I would like to give up is engaging myself with the phone during writing. It’s a seriously NO-NO thing.
Ravi: What was your hardest scene to write?
Sharrma: I won’t use the term ‘hardest’ rather I will say the middle part of the book, where we discuss the Good and Bad behavioral aspects of a Team Leader was a bit challenging.
Ravi: Do you Google yourself?
Sharrma: Yes I do.
Ravi: Do you hide any secrets in your books that only a few people will find?
Sharrma: Not exactly. I do not create any such thing for a selective. I believe, book is a medium for the masses. It should be well understood equally by all and then only you can have the effect as well as following
Ravi: Do you read your book reviews? How do you deal with bad or good ones?
Sharrma: I do. Reviews help you improve and find out the blind spot of your book, which you could not see. So a review, whether good or not good has to be taken as an complement and learning has to be drawn from them
Ravi: Have you read anything that made you think differently about fiction?
Sharrma: I have not thought of fiction as yet. Most of my first writings are focused on how do I put forth my industrial experience and help the industry
Ravi: What did you edit out of this book?
Sharrma: Initially I wrote lots of things about leadership, but then I realized that there is a sea of things meant for leaders, but would it be really practical for someone to have, develop all those qualities or competencies? The answer was – off course not. I then started limiting the write up and focused on what can be practically done , learned and adopted.
Ravi: How many hours a day do you write?
Sharrma: As far as this first book is concerned, I was writing for about two hours daily during the three months, but for last few days, I had spent about whole day writing
Ravi: How long were you a part-time writer before you became a full-time one?
Sharrma: I used to write poems, though they have not been published yet. I was never a regular writer. I have written some articles related to Human Resources, but those were about two to three page articles, so I was not writing it daily
Ravi: What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book?
Sharrma: I do research before beginning the book. This gives us some fair idea as to what exactly is available in the market. How would the subject be taken and what are the probabilities of people trying to read this topic. I generally Google search and try to find out the various books and authors on the same subject.
Ravi: What’s the best way to market your books?
Sharrma: As now, I know only two sources – first is my publisher – Gurucool Publishing House and the other is the one conducting this interview – Ravi Reads. Off course, our personal connects etc. are a source to circulate the writing
Ravi: How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?
Sharrma: I have one fully written book of Hindi poems. It is in the process of getting published. Third book is more on case studies of Industrial Relations – more useful for the people who work in various industries as well as for the students who are getting in to the industry. This book is half written as now. I am working on it and it may also be ready for getting published, probably in November 2020. Parallel to this, I am already working on one another book which is again related to Industrial Relations in the industry.
Ravi: How did publishing your first book change your process of writing?
Sharrma: Publishing my first book gave me confidence and more insight on writing. It has made things little easy for me. I did struggle penning my first book, but now it has become a bit easy.
Ravi: If you could tell your younger writing self-anything, what would it be?
Sharrma: Go ahead and keep on writing small stuffs. Don’t wait to write a book. Habit of focusing and writing small articles will help you in developing content for bigger things.
Ravi: What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer?
Sharrma: Truly speaking I don’t have writer friends. As I have been working I the manufacturing industry till now, most of my friends are from HR fraternity only. But off course knowledge sharing is something we keep on doing and this helps me I concreting my thoughts.
Ravi: Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want?
Sharrma: I try to be more original. Otherwise what would be the use of my experience? I can put down my thoughts, my opinion and my feelings on the paper and that is how only I can write a book
Ravi: What advice do you have for writers?
Sharrma: Be original, be free and once you start writing, don’t quit
Ravi: What are the most important magazines for writers to subscribe to?
Sharrma: I don’t have anything to recommend here
Ravi: Tell me about your recent book to our Ravi Reads Blog Readers?
Sharrma: The current book is on some practical things which a team leader should do to be a successful Team Leader. Many a times, it may take years to understand what practical things are to be put in place for having a motivated and highly performing team. There are these leadership aspects – what should be avoided at any cost and what should be done. This book is a self-help book for the people at lower managerial levels like Team Leaders, Supervisors and even for the people who would be growing to those positions. I have tried to be very simple in putting forth my own learnings. As there was no one who taught me this and I have to learn the importance of these things in years of my employment, I thought of putting it down for the other people who want to grow and climb the ladder of success, whether be it a manufacturing set up or an ITES or IT company.
To Know more about Sharrma 's 6 Step Formula to Fast-track Your Growth check out this link
Thanks to Nandkkishore Sharrma for agreeing to this interview! If you know of an author who’d like to be featured in an interview (or you are an author who would like to be featured), feel free to email me at the address on my contact page.
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