RamGanapathy.com

Author: Ram

  • Chasing faint memories from a distant past

    These days, im spending more time in the past. Not sure if that’s due to reduced anxiety levels I have about the future. As you might have noticed from my blogs, I’m a sucker for nostalgia. The further I travel to the left of the timeline however, the more intriguing and demanding it becomes, since it is a struggle to recall events from the baby years of my life.

    It strikes me that I don’t think much about my (paternal) grand father these days. Maybe since my grandma filled the space – she continued the journey with us for thirty three more years. I don’t even have his picture at my new home.

    I feel compelled to write about him. For the sake of my kid who will otherwise know much less about her ancestors. And for my own sake. I borrowed his name, after all.

    I will start with what I have. A few incidents and images of him are indeed registered in my head.

    I remember him walking me from the school. Wait. No, he is lifting me up on his hips as he collects me from the primary school, walking back home along the road. He does not talk much. I remember him being tall. When you are a kid, everyone else looks taller. Gee! I don’t recall much more of him.

    Then, I get flashed with another image: We are somewhere a temple in Ernakulam, standing on the elevated slab / base which has a big tree. I see my aunt (his daughter) teasing him to jump to the ground. My grandpa ignores the challenge stating he could have readily done that, if he was a bit younger.

    Now, that is amazing. I don’t think anyone narrated this incident to me. When you really scratch your head, the grey cells do play out a scene from the past. If you think I am hallucinating (I hope I am not), take a look at the recent breakthroughs in neuroscience, about the way we remember the past and recollect from our memory.

    But I cannot forget the day he passed away. I was just seven years old. In the morning, I was sent to school and don’t remember if I had said “bye” to him. Later, I watched my uncle walk in to the classroom requesting my teacher to let me go home early. I saw a crowd of relatives and neighbours in the very small living room. I see “him” lying on the floor. There were many other aspects of that day that clouds my memory, but I remember this weird feeling, as clear as sky: I tried to cry like everyone else, but couldn’t.

    He was not known for displaying his emotions. A shy and often silent person that he was, he had a tough life. I try to recall the narrations I have heard as a child from my father, about his dad’s life:

    My grandpa’s family owned a restaurant near the bus station in Erode. As an independent adult, he ran the kitchen in the weekly train between Erode and Ernakulam and must have impressed a certain gold merchant who decided to get his last daughter married to this tall and handsome man.

    Moving to the city of the bride, he sets up his own restaurant in the main streets of Ernakulam. Not much later, he faces revolt within the larger family which unfortunately leads to the sale of his only asset. With cooking as his only skill and, faced with limited opportunities in that small city, he takes up the job of the chief-cook in the same shop.

    I wonder how he felt that day he was downcast as an employee from being an employer . It must have crushed him. Not surprising then to learn that he packed his bags, took his wife and son (my dad) to a bigger city:Coimbatore. There he would work for many hotels and eateries – some of them still thriving even today. He has made dosas in Bombay Ananda Bhavan, spun jelabis during Diwali, delivered pooris to students by 6 am, served the canteen at the famous Central theatre, together with a coffee specialist who later became a famous restaurateur.

    I asked my father why grandpa had to change so many jobs. It seems he flinched and revolted often against people in the kitchen who were lazy and indifferent about quality and hygiene. He once threw an entire vessel of sambar down the drain when he spotted a floating insect. The next dish he cooked was weeks later, in a different hotel, several kilometres away which he had to cover by foot. Those long walks continued for some years.

    My grandma somehow managed to run the show during intermittent job “breaks”. The four children growing up and taking odd jobs even as they were finishing studies, also helped.

    The only regret we all have is, by the time the family clawed back to the middle class level, he had left us. He didn’t see the first black-and-white TV we bought. He wasn’t around when we watched our first movie at home at 10 pm (African Safari). He didn’t get a chance to push a button on a machine that would crush rice and deliver flour in an hour – relieving him from the physical pain of handling a manual stone mill grinder. And he didn’t answer the first phone call we would receive at home. He missed the convenient motor bike rides. He didn’t sit in my car.

    I feel guilty from not retaining him in my mind. But it is actually worse: I miss the chance of a meaningful conversation with him. That would have added some colour to the teenage years of me and my sister. Even for today, as I deal with tricky questions on career and life as such. A man who lived for 67 years, migrated to various cities, walked much distance, silently and on barefoot, fed hundreds of thousands of mouths, would definitely have something to offer. It feels like I am missing an important book from my library.

    I will need to explore, talk to uncles and aunts. A bit more about my grandpa’s lineage might be even more interesting. The ancestry might be traced to one of the agraharams (village) in Palakkad. I vaguely recall an incident narrated by my dad about someone (grandpa’s uncle?), a police constable who lost his hands while trying to arrest illicit-liquor vendors during a night raid. That explains why grandpa, his brothers and cousins chose to arm themselves with cutlery instead.

    TN Seshan, a famous son of the Palakkad soil, the man who revolutionised the way elections are conducted in India, says, “Palakkad is famous for producing cooks, crooks and civil servants”.

    My grandfather was a cook. My father retired as a civil servant. That leaves me in a strange predicament.

  • True (rep)lies and the art of answering

    When the angry professor questioned my friend, why he had not worn the mandatory dull grey shirt and the uglier trousers (called the “lab uniform”) for the Electronics Laboratory class that day, I sensed we were going to witness an embarrassing conversation. We had seen and heard many different excuses tried out by others, with limited success, only to be subjected to further probing and public demeaning.

    I vaguely remember my friend’s reply now, after so many years. The truthful, detailed account that stumped everyone – and certainly convinced the professor who had no further questions.

    What about situations where we are not under pressure ?

    For instance, it is easy for me to respond a simple question from my colleague, “How was your weekend?” with an answer “Great!” – which is good enough for a coffee-corner chat. But if I really care to give a proper response, a truthful reflection on that question might reveal some finer (and boring) details about my life – how I struggled to finish grocery shopping in time, having gotten up too late on that Saturday morning and the fact that I simply did “nothing” on Sunday – lazing around, watching a stupid movie. I might realise, I need to do something worthwhile during weekends in order to offer a better response. But the other day, when I narrated to my colleague exactly those trivial things I did on the weekend, he simply loved it – especially the “doing nothing” bit. A more meaningful chat ensued, about how our lives are never free of responsibilities and that it is not feasible to “do nothing” unless we manage to stop the passage of time.

    A true answer or an excuse sounds weird but it can work sometimes. That’s my interpretation of the famous Copy Machine Study, where a student is asked to jump the queue of people waiting to get their turn to use a copy machine. In the first experiment, he is asked to tell the first person, “Excuse me, may I use the machine?”. No reasons to be given. In the next experiment, he expands, “Excuse me, may I use the machine, because I’m in a rush?”. In the third experiment, he is asked to state, “Excuse me, may I use the machine, because I want to make copies?”. Guess which version had the most success rate (in terms of being allowed to skip the queue). While the second one was the most successful, the third version had almost an equal amount of success. Due to the magic word “because”, as Robert Cialdini explains, “…when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do.”

    I too was once looking for a strong reason; to apply leave and travel back home from the onsite location as my family, especially my daughter was missing me a lot during those four months. Phone calls every night usually ended with my daughter wondering, when I would be back. It was a tough call to make for me: on the one hand, my whole team was toiling away; as a project lead, I could not be seen retreating until we got the job done. On the other hand, well, my daughter was missing me. It became easier however, on a particular day when she went to bed early and conveyed through her mom that she is all ok and cheerful and she understood that dad would be away for a long time.

    I flew back home that very weekend, having provided a stronger reason for the two-weeks leave request which was approved promptly: my daughter was no longer missing me.

    The next time you are asked for a reason or when you are about to offer an excuse, try looking for the flash of truth.

    PS: This was my friend’s reply to the professor as far as I can remember. “I had given the clothes for ironing to the dhobi (washerman) last weekend and when I went to collect them yesterday, I found his shop closed and I learnt that he has gone on a pilgrimage only to return after three days.”

  • Can you please pass that insult ?

    Getting up at 5 am on a Saturday and in front of the laptop without even the customary cup of coffee? The wife was startled and wondered what’s gotten to me. That, I would learn for myself a few hours later, as I finished authoring a detailed analysis of the project situation along with some suggestions to mitigate risks. When I pressed the Send button, the email carried more than just the slide deck I had attached. It also took away the residual feeling of something I struggled to put into words the whole night: Why did these guys exclude me from recent discussions?

    We all face situations where we have been left out. What we do in those situations determine who we really are. It tampers with our ego, causes a bit of anger and we take offence. Whether we are part of a team that builds a space ship or if we are jockeys racing horses, or simply playing a game together, sometimes the ingredient that stimulates us to produce an inspiring result is not the respect, trust, or love from others. It just might be an ounce of insult passed on to our side of the table.

    Recently my (now “ex”) tennis doubles partner asked me to consider not turning up for the finals we were going to play in a level three tournament in a modest club in our small city. That way he can partner with a reserve player to increase the chance of winning. (The irony was lost on him that I beat him in a singles match just the previous night). I didn’t go and I still don’t know whether they won. But I knew that was the end of that strange “friendship”. Have I become more serious about tennis? Oh boy! I began playing more often and I even try that single-handed cross-court backhand shot once in a while, forgetting I’m still an amateur who is yet to learn how not to dance while hitting the ball.

    I am not a saint, though. And this has to come out of the system today: I did contribute to someone becoming an inspired table tennis player many years ago by means of my disrespectful behaviour.

    At the end of a relaxed day at work in the Hyderabad office, I was busy playing a game with another colleague. I didn’t pay attention to my friend as he appeared near the table. He was still learning to hold the racket and here I was already able to move the ping pong ball across the net. My colleague and I continued to play games without giving a chance to my friend who waited for an hour in vain. Six months later he surprised (shocked!) me by beating the blues out of me. And sixteen years later he is still a friend (I hope).

    Getting rejected is an awful feeling. Not being given a chance is criminal. Alas, nature does that all the time. It also teaches us how to thrive.

    As a year 10 student, with my eyes looking at an unknown future (I was caught looking outside the window regularly), I was intrigued by this question posed by our class teacher: what do we want to do next?. “I want to prepare for the IIT entrance exams” (the premier engineering institution in India). It was not the laughter from my class mates that put me down. The teacher’s discouraging words: “Son, I don’t think you can do it” pushed me down but only momentarily. Two years later, I eventually failed to get into IIT. But those two thousand hours I spent preparing for that exam, prepared me for the future. In the end, the good old man’s words only increased my appetite to aspire.

    In the climax of the film Seabiscuit (name of the horse), the jockey is on his most important race of his career. The horse and the jockey are injured. They needed more than mere motivation to win. Then he comes with this trick: he asks his friend who is another racer to help by bringing his horse close to Seabiscuit during the race; close enough to tease and “give a look” at Seabiscuit in his eye. Those few seconds were just enough for the trailing Seabiscuit to get spurred and race to victory.

    We all need a kick in the back once in a while. It is a cliché but it sounds nice in this context: when you fall you better try to fall forward. We don’t know why we react the way we do when we are pushed. We cannot describe much in words or convince our loved ones. We choose and avoid some of the battles. But the scars choose us and we remember. We then do the only thing that makes sense when slighted or insulted.

    We fight.

  • To carry an oil lamp to buy a trash bin

    The task was simple that evening, many years ago. We were four classmates beginning a new chapter in our lives: out of home, first job, new city, new apartment and the world to conquer. Two of us had to go get a trash bin for the house. The shop wasn’t far away and I wouldn’t complain anyway since this guy is quite a talker. He can explain the planets and cosmos while in the same breath turn philosophical or venture into the weird ways of the human mind. He once asked me, “think, what if you vanish one day and no one in this world remebered you”. We start walking the 300 metres to the bazaar. We see a small temple on the side of the road and he beings to wonder why religions exist in this world. I try to tell him we better hurry up before it rains.

    The small road leads to the bigger road at the intersection. We only had to cross the signal to get to the home furnishing shop. But then we see this new music shop crop up on our left and we walk right into it. This guy had introduced the western pop genre to me. And as someone used to listening mainly south Indian film music, the name savage garden sounded more like a filthy place full of violent beasts than a music album (until I fell in love with the animal song). With a couple of new music cassettes (it was 1999; CDs will come much later) as we started walking back home, we both realized our folly. We started telling each other how stupid it felt to be forgetful and wandering away from the simplest task of buying a waste bin . We discussed the root causes while at the same time began fearing the ridicule from the other two waiting for us.

    Why do we forget things and miss out on simple tasks or goals? Are we not serious enough? I am not even talking about life changing goals. Simple tasks that doesn’t need much thinking or planning. The office receptionist was laughing at me the other day, while making alternative arrangements as I had lost my id card and car park access card on consecutive days. I still don’t know where I kept them but I do recollect the thought stream in which I was drowned in during those days.

    Life as a tourist:

    Nassim Taleb has popularised the french word flâneur which loosely means wandering, idling or being explorative. It describes a tourist (who does not have a fixed itinerary) as opposed to a tour guide (who has mapped out a plan). Taleb explains the need to have a variety of options in life, career etc., so that you can take decisions opportunistically at every step, revising schedules or changing destinations. In the words of Yogi Berra “if you don’t know where you are going, you will end up somewhere else.” What if “somewhere else” turns to be more interesting and lucky?

    I feel strange when people talk about a one-year goal, three-year vision, five-year target etc. I never thought I would be in an IT job even a year before joining my first job when I was only worried about getting good grades in the electronics degree. You have no clue where you going most of the time but you usually have some sense of direction. I used to be quite stressed out about not being able to control the outcomes and worry about slipping away from the “plan”. These days, I only keep a view on the high level goals and leave the steps to its own dynamics.

    It feels like freedom as I go unstructured and unplanned once in a while, loosing myself into the world of new information, people, random corridor conversations, unexpected outcomes etc. It is OK since it feels more human and real. There is a parable about a guru teaching his disciple about methods of focussing the mind. He hands him a lamp brimming with oil that could spill if shaken even a tiny bit, and instructs him to walk around the temple. When the student succeeds at the daunting task, the guru asks him if he had a chance to marvel at the scenery: chirping of the birds in the tree, the smell of fresh flowers in the pond or the aesthetics of the temple. The student blinks as the guru points out the ultimate skill: the need to experience the world around as we focus on the task at hand.

    But 19 years ago, as my friend and I were walking on a road to buy a trash bin, we didn’t have to carry an oil lamp. As we were talking, we soaked-in the sights, smells and the sounds and lost ourselves in them. The trash bin remained in the shop.

    The other two roomies couldn’t control their laughter as we narrated our yet another failure to “get things done”. We told them how much we had been cursing at ourselves for being so absent-minded. Until when one of them wondered out loud, “when you guys started self-pitying, why didn’t it occur to you to just turn around, cross the road and walk into that bin shop?”

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  • One Word Answer

    “What is the meaning of life, the universe and everything?”. “Forty Two”, replied the supercomputer Deep Thought, in the science fiction comedy, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I thought it was a joke when I watched this movie many years ago. A joke I wouldn’t understand.

    I am not known for keeping my responses crisp and short. You see, I already used two words to describe my predicament. It is my usual attempt to answer more than what the questioner might want to know. At work, I have been “advised” by my colleagues and managers to keep it simple. I am still trying.

    Some of us are able to pack a lot of content in the span of a few words. When we say less, it can also sound mysterious and can sometimes work in our favour.

    It isn’t funny however, when there is space for just one word while addressing matters of emergency. Fire fighters and police officers have a chance to shout a few words as they deal with life-and-death situations. Take for instance the recent death of a bungee jumper as she fell at the wrong time, when the instructor with poor English knowledge said “No jump” which she heard as “Now jump”. Or take the case of the Indian businessman charged with making a bomb threat in Mumbai (Bombay, previously) as he made a phone call to the airlines before his flight. Due to a bad line, he only managed to finish a part of his sentence “BOM-DEL flight”.

    A non-life-threatening word incident came to my mind as I went nostalgic about the first few days of my career that started in Hyderabad. After a session on the basics of Enterprise Resource Planning, the trainer wanted feedback from each of the 40 odd trainees. And we had to use a single, unique word to describe how it was conducted. I was fretting as I waited in the second row for my turn since the words “Interesting”, “Useful”, “Educational” etc were already taken by the lucky first benchers. I don’t even remember what I ended up saying but I recall the exuberance in the room when the last guy mentioned a word that had more than one meaning: “Impossible”.

    And to the bewildering answer of 42 to the big question about life and its meaning –  there are many theories. The author himself admitted it was a random number, trying to lay to rest many of the stories. I liked this one, however: Turns out, the ASCII code for the wildcard character “*” is 42. Wildcards in computer programming are used to represent one or more things. That is, “whatever you want it to be”. Sounds like a good short reply to the biggest question of it all.

    But, I was shy and confused during the first few days. I wanted to talk to a lot of people, learn many things, all at once. The MD of the Hyderabad delivery unit was an awesome communicator  and a nice guy. Little did I expect him to recognise me a few days later, when he greeted me calling my name as we entered the men’s room. The awkward silence that occurred when we were taking a leak at our respective commodes was broken by his enquiry, “So…Ram, how’s it going?”.  The one word answer that I uttered in the context of training sessions lead to a few seconds of silence before we both laughed. “Smooth”, I had said.

  • The (in)decision to help

    I had always been fascinated by people who are able to throw themselves into rescuing someone in trouble, without indulging in a lot of thinking or analysing. Contrast that with people who either panic or act weird when faced with an ask to lend a helping hand. And some, in the attempt to help out end up complicating things. You wonder which category do I fall under.

    Last month, the story of a “real life ‘Spider-Man’ saving a baby dangling from a balcony”broke the internet. An immigrant from Mali living in Paris did not blink once before “climbing up four storeys” to save the child. He is seen as a national hero in France and the President has offered him citizenship. Great news, but for some reason I felt something strange.

    I knew why. Many years ago, I blinked when I could have helped a truck driver stuck in his seat after hitting a wall. It was not life-threatening and there was a already a crowd looking after him. It occurred at a village road I pass through in my motor bike ride to the Bangalore office. I was in a rush but surely, the heavens wouldn’t have fallen if I had stopped. Looking back now, I feel I could have at least offered to call someone or do something – I had a mobile phone at a time when it was still a luxury to own one.

    Figured out later, not everyone at the office behaves that way. At least not my colleague, who demonstrated calmness (and sheer guts) under stress that helped save a life. The office bus that he was travelling in, hit a cyclist who was badly hurt. The driver ran away. The bus stood in the middle of the road causing a traffic jam, while the poor soul laid gravely close to the tyres. Our man didn’t think much before lifting the cyclist into the bus and taking the wheels himself to drive to the hospital.

    This sense of guilt has never left me. I do help others but that’s not the point. Its about how I respond under pressure. Its about needing to possess both the instinct and intelligence to make a difference to a worsening situation. Though I did not encounter life-or-death incidents, even odd requests from strangers has left me stumped.

    While waiting at the café outside the Brisbane Airport on my way back from an official trip, I had a young man approach me with a request to watch his bag while he makes a quick trip to the gents room. I declined bluntly even as I noticed the couple in the next table happily oblige. Later, my colleague assured me I made the right call, especially being outside an airport: Imagine an Indian caught with a ‘bag’ by the Australian aviation security personnel.

    I did have a chance to redeem myself later that year. This too occurred in an airport and it involves my mobile phone which I failed to utilise many years ago. Waiting in the lounge (this time, inside the Canberra airport, having missed my flight) and being the only one present, I watched a lady and her kids approach me as they struggled with their heavy hand luggage. I was relieved when I figured I wasn’t asked to carry anything for them. She said her battery ran out and enquired if I would kindly offer my phone so that she could contact her husband waiting outside. I did not blink, think or analyse before graciously handing out my iPhone. She made a loud conversation in what I assumed was an African language and returned the phone expressing her gratitude.

    As I was finishing that eventful day in Melbourne, I got a call from a number I didn’t recognise. I would discover soon later that my phone had knowledge of that number, when a male voice with think accent asked me, “Man, my wife called me in the morning from this number. And I waited in the airport for long but she hasn’t turned up yet. Where is she ?”

  • …and some dharma

    This is the part II of the blog that I started writing last week.

    A couple of weeks ago, I participated in a review session involving internal auditors who checked the sales contract document authored by my colleague – a sales lead who I collaborate with by providing a significant portion of the content. What started as an innocuous discussion, turned quickly to an intense scrutiny of many sections of the document, that gave rise to multiple follow up actions and meetings for the week. It also lead to the sticky question: who is responsible for the inadequate quality of content. Made me step back and ask a few hard questions to myself.

    The glorified title I have – Engagement Manager – hides a lot of trivial activities to be carried out. For instance, it takes a hell a lot of talking, emailing, negotiating,  waiting, worrying and sometimes escalating – to get people from various teams and geographies at short notice to agree on a business proposal. My mom once asked, “You seem to be talking all day, non stop. What do you actually do?”

    My role is not trivial however. Ever since I moved into this new job function, i have been super excited by the many facets that come part of it: beyond just being an expert of my line of business, I need to bridge the world of sales and delivery. I act like a diplomat sometimes, representing the huge remote delivery organisation that I was once part of, exhibiting adequate amounts of caution and risk management during the sales process. At the same time, I keep reminding myself that I’m part of the sales set up which requires me to be a catalyst and a collaborator. I feel like a amphibian.

    While the fun derived from working with great minds across the organisation (and our demanding customers) keeps me afloat, one is constantly challenged to come up with new ideas and business models that test the limits of our current processes and, the answer relies on innovation and speed.

    Alas, speed and accuracy are not the closest of cousins. I guess I got a bit carried away with the peripherals of my job and need to focus on the core part of it. The issue at hand was not just how to fix the quality issues being reported in the document, but also why I did not check the content in prior. Though it is not always feasible to compartmentalise responsibilities between us, my initial reaction was to shift the blame. Deep down however, the lurking sense of guilt hurt me badly.

    The mind looked for an easy and lazy way out of this problem. Maybe I’m over worked and burdened with the data deluge. Who am I kidding. I’m paid to pay attention. Isn’t that the most important aspect among others? I remember reading about the sense of duty illustrated by the thousands of inspection workers of Indian Railways. Every day they walk along the vast stretch of rail tracks looking for faults, hammering away any loose bolts. They are paid a pittance for the value they create.

    The lesson learnt is to keep focussing on the signal among the noise. Easier said than done. As I scrambled to figure out how to avoid such mishaps in future, my colleague went ahead and fixed the document.

    Later that week, a useful one-on-one conversation with my manager helped conclude this episode. I briefed him on the incident and asked how I could split responsibilities with my colleague. I explained the brain fade that occurred to me, and wondered out loud if the workload and the multi-dimensional aspect of my role were key contributors. He heard me out completely and shared some suggestions. He concluded the call saying, “But your role can be described much simpler than what you think: a gate-keeper.” I also felt the words he didn’t utter. Keep the good shit in and the bad shit out.

  • A bit of karma…

    After a nice lunch at our cousins’ place in Sydney, the mind wavered back to the events of the recent, intense weeks. Two episodes came to the surface that led me philosophising. One, involving a series of incidents at work that might refine the way I look at my role and, the other, a learning experience watching my daughter go through a bout of high school assignments and assessments.

    First, about the school assignment in this blog. (I will need more than a nice lunch to pen down the office stuff, which I will do in my next blog).

    Two weekends ago, it was quite easy for me to comfort my daughter grappling with her English assignment: to write a creative essay about a character from the book they were reading at class. Peer pressure and high levels of expectations set on her was telling, as she asked me for some advice. I gave her tips and tricks but encouraged to write it in her own style.

    She drafted it quickly and read it back to us. It sounded well as I heard her narrate, while munching on snacks, congratulating myself on how I let her do it by herself. A few days later she came home with a strange look on her face. While the teacher’s comments were positive on many aspects of the essay, he was critical on grammar and punctuation. He had gone on to state that a bit of proof reading at home could have made the result better.

    I felt guilty. I chided myself for just being observant and not getting involved in her homework. Instead of lecturing her while sitting on a couch, I should have sat down with her to work on sentences and structure. My wife politely reminded me of how I take blogging more seriously than helping with homework and wondered out loud, how one could be so casual about it.

    I then had a chance to redeem myself during the subsequent assignment about writing further on the character. This time, I spent a good couple of hours with my daughter (the wife looking over my shoulders). We researched about gothic style of fiction writing. It felt good about learning something new. After she finished her draft, I verified it, suggested corrections and ideas.

    I also expanded on how to not worry about what the teacher might think of her essay and only focus on her own effort and preparation. This was not me preaching her about do-your-karma-without-expectations (Bhagavad Gita) but more of trying to be a helpful dad, offering a logical explanation: we can only control what we do (effort) and can never be sure about the result.

    I got a pat on the back from wife once she read the final draft. It was our best effort.

    The teacher’s feedback arrived few days later. He praised her for the creative elements in the narrative. I noticed a comment in the end. “The essay would have turned out better if you had done a bit of proof reading.”

  • How to survive a meeting

    When I started working (I mean, working as opposed to the many months of training sessions) in my first job, I noticed people in the team spending a lot of time inside meeting rooms than at their desks. The work assigned to me involved coding a piece of software – at least that’s what I thought; soon it became clear to me that without talking to the seniors and colleagues i cannot get anything done. Not that it was unexpected but it astounded me that i spent more time writing emails and talking than coding. Worse was when i struggled to obtain availability of meeting rooms and subject matter experts. Thus it was evident that communication skills were as relevant as computer skills, especially when one tries to share ideas and seek improvements to make a collective decision.

    I should have seen that coming. It was during the final years of college as we were preparing for job interviews that I encountered this construct called Group Discussion.

    We had to debate on a topic and you are judged on how well you make your point. We were given the controversial one: to agree on the most effective form of government (in the subcontinent): democracy or dictatorship. I was still struggling to put my views across, mainly in English and was intimidated by the bunch of guys who waxed eloquence on the principles of democracy, while being struck by the plain and simple logic evoked by the other group who championed dictatorship. I was still waiting for my friend to open his mouth yet – I knew him as a sharp and fierce communicator – when I was prodded to speak. I kept fumbling along and made a mess of the only speaking opportunity. I was in a 50-50 mode mentally, but could not express that at all.

    Formally, a meeting is defined as a situation when two or more people meet, by chance or arrangement. Effective interactions and collaboration among workers are the building blocks of successful organisations. The power of collective human consciousness is unparalleled. It is quite important to structure such gatherings since otherwise, they quickly degenerate into a platform for egoistical arguments and cacophony.

    There are many simple rules for running meetings which I think are not so simple. There are companies that take it very seriously. Last week, i read about Jeff Bezos’ rules of running any meeting at Amazon, which included no power point presentations apart from insisting everyone to silently read memos for the first half of the meeting. That reminded me of a suggestion I made to my team many years ago. I was still a rookie but I had the gumption to strongly recommend that the entire team be forbidden from talking to each other for the first three ‘silent’ hours in the morning. I was not the most popular person in the team.

    While I m not criticising the very purpose of social interactions in a corporate environment as such, I want to draw your attention to the fact that a typical knowledge worker in this age has less time for him/herself. More than 70% of my work time gets spent on meetings. They come in various terms and forms: discussion, idea generation, design thinking, status update, issue tracking, planning, synch up, stand up, get together, morning prayers, kitchen cabinets and what not. I read this somewhere: “a meeting is a chance for people to share their own confusion with a broader audience, contributing to the collective chaos.”

    How to survive such meetings? How to conduct one? Enumeration can come to the rescue. When you make a simple list of items to be addressed and stick to that, you can at least complete the meeting if not solve world hunger. The real challenge is to come up with such a list.

     I remember a particular issue-tracking meeting that occurred during a critical phase of the project. My manager asked the team about the progress of resolving defects which were pending for weeks. “We have made very good progress in the last two weeks; many of the issues are resolved; some of the remaining ones are being corrected; most of the corrected issues will be tested by tomorrow”. It took a whole thirty minutes for the boss to determine the list of issues in the first place.

     Can we try to be more objective and mainly focus on data, facts and actions, while ignoring the emotions involved? At your peril. You see, meetings are also occasions where people vent out their frustrations, and real human connect occurs only when you let others express themselves. My own inadequacies in the listening front is well documented in my previous blogs. Having said that, I believe it is cruel to let someone go on in their line of argument when everyone realises it is a rabbit hole, especially with the time constraints we live with.

    Ideally, a meeting is just a means to an end. An end outcome that moves the team forward. Actions are assigned and a direction emerges. In reality though, meetings need not always be so serious and I will run out of space writing about many funny episodes. For instance, I have seen people rushing to point at others as action owners, often at those who were absent.

    But many a meeting occurs in a hostile/political environment where unwritten rules manifest and items not in the agenda dominate the proceedings. In such situations, a significant amount of time is spent post-meeting to minute the discussions and document actions which gives an opportunity for the host to shape the outcome of the meeting even as he was unable to influence it while it occurred.

     Though one should not treat a meeting like a war zone, it is fascinating to see people trying to have the last word. But usually the ones who are able to listen to differing view points, forge relationships and offer creative alternatives emerge as real change makers. They make everyone think and realise it was worthwhile spending time away from their desks.

     My college friend demonstrated that many years ago, when finally his turn arrived during the group discussion. As the crowd was already dissected into democracy advocates and dictatorship worshippers, our man got this to say. “I think we should try democratically electing a dictator”.

  • How to spot your friendly neighbourhood Mentor

    “Who is a Mentor?”, asked the trainer from The Smith Family – a charity organization that helps children from struggling background – as part of a corporate program I recently signed up to. I realised I had been too self-centred and decided it was high time I did something more than work, at work. If selected, I would be a mentor for a couple of school terms, spending an hour a week doing Q&A with students.

    Indian culture has had a word for this: Guru, which is loosely translated to the term Teacher. But a mentor is not just a teacher; a role model, a guide who helps us navigate this complex world. Co-traveller sounds more apt to me, since no one knows everything for sure. We just need to help each other out with what we learn along the way.

    I ended up answering her, “A mentor is someone who acts as a good reference point for others to emulate and learn”.

    I came away feeling nostalgic, reflecting on my own reference points during the growing up years. Would start with my parents who lived their ideals, working hard and keeping it simple. While I remember my mom helping me and my sister with homework during the primary school years, my father was instrumental in me venturing beyond regular academic stuff. He enrolled me for karate and Hindi lessons and later when I finished high school, he put me onto a personality development workshop conducted by an inter-religious organisation. Those were unheard of in the 1990s in a city like Coimbatore.

    I also remember being tutored by members of our large extended family when I was much younger. The many uncles and aunts who lived close by, the cousins who were in high school already were more helpful than my teachers at school, as I struggled with the spelling of King Dhritarashtra, perplexed with English grammar, confused by negative numbers, mugging up the definition of the species spirogyra. One of the summer vacation trips turned out to be an academic tour, with my cousin tasked with helping me pass an upcoming Hindi exam. And later when I was appearing complacent in my first job, my cousin brother alerted me about the Java wave that swept the IT world. I still remember trying to copy his elegant way of presenting himself for work, especially those blue stripped formal shirts.

    Neighbours turned out to be excellent teachers. Not the ones next to our house who were the quarrelling type. Im talking about the passionate Maths Vaathiyaar, who also taught Chemistry as a private tutor when he was not working for the government. He was more a family friend than a teacher; he was the one who instilled pride and confidence in my work. He also helped me score a 100 in Math and Chemistry. In fact my aspiration to get into a premier engineering institute was fuelled and fostered by such neighbours – and dad’s colleague’s son who was already studying there.

    Friends and colleagues teach a lot by not teaching. I owe my English speaking skills to a bunch of mates – one of them a neighbour too, whose terrace was our joint. Another friend’s friend even offered his house for more preparations as we pruned our linguistic skills for the job interview. Later, I got inspired to take reading as a serious hobby from my room mate who famously brought more bags of books than clothes to live in a new city as we started our careers together.

    We spend a third of our life time at work and thus it is important to recognise the formal and unconscious learning and positive influences we receive from colleagues, subordinates and bosses. I have learnt as much from people who I managed as from the many seniors I worked for.

    It is a tough mental exercise to list all my mentors in one go. I feel I have missed mentioning many more reference points. Our journey is shaped by the many masters we may never fully acknowledge. The true way to repay (Guru Dakshana) though, is for us to walk the path along these points, live a good life.

    Reminds me of a quote attributed to Dalai Lama: The Buddha says, “I am a finger pointing to the moon. Don’t look at me; look at the moon.”