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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.

23 Jun 2018
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 ?”

9 Jun 2018
…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.

2 Jun 2018
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.”

27 May 2018
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”.

6 May 2018
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.”

20 Apr 2018
“Are you smart?”

I still remember the blue coloured poster on the wall of my ninth grade teacher’s office. The innocuous query, “Are you smart?” continues to taunt me. I had been a class topper most of my life and a lot of people saw me as a bright, diligent young boy. But smart ? Probably not.

It was during the final years of my engineering studies that it dawned on me – rote learning and great scores will only take me so far. Let me admit this: I was more immersed in the theoretical world and never indulged in anything practical. Never helped my dad to fit the fan upon the ceiling; didn’t play much sports – though I have spent many hours watching cricket and tennis. I didn’t have a hobby as such and kept myself to academics most of the time. I didn’t grow up to be an introvert but turned out to be socially awkward. I still had a bunch of mates but couldn’t confidently claim many of them as friends.

A classmate and I were chosen to make a trip to Bangalore to invite software companies to our college for recruitment. His uncle’s family was gracious to host me for a couple of days. I still remember cutting a sorry figure as I made a mess of their sofa by spilling coffee on it. We hired an auto rickshaw for the day and for the first time I saw the (fare) meter at work. One of the first duties of a passenger was to turn the flag (handle) upside down – the bell inside gives a ting, signalling the commencement of the ride.

My friend asked me if I would do the honours. I blinked. I still wanted to give it a try but was fumbling along – rotating it more than once. By then the driver turned around to give me a stern look. As he firmed up the fare handle in its place, my friend wondered out loud “Man, I can’t believe you don’t have any common sense”.

I survived the lab classes and practical tests – mainly on my reputation as a rank student. Almost. An internship stint at the R&D lab of a yarn company exposed me. The project chief was explaining the design of the yarn quality monitoring system to everyone. It involved writing software – which appealed to me more than the yarn sensors and motors connected. At one point, he signalled to me “can you please bring in that motor?” pointing me to the far end of the room. As I was turning around lifting the feather light equipment, I heard a huge roar of laughter from everyone. Except from the chief who was red by then – his hopes of ever finishing the project perhaps evaporated as he realized he is dealing with a useless guy who missed the real electric motor for a plastic replica. (I redeemed myself by writing a clever piece of C program that simulated results visually better than the actual yarn quality.)

I eventually got a job offer while still finishing the final year. Felt ecstatic, and also had a few sleepless nights. I now had to deal with the real world where my rank and marks would cease to buoy me up.

My real learning occurred in the first job. (It warrants a dedicated blog series). Meeting people, being in a corporate environment – and moving to a new city were fun. The actual work though was dreadful. I guess the HR guys went by merit, as I found myself assigned to the team working on a contemporary technology (it was 1999 and I’m talking about web technologies). But I struggled to cope up with the basics that everyone else seemed to absorb super quick. The training session on socket programming for instance was a real drag. Turns out they were not referring to the (physical) socket that I had in my mind. Later, when a fellow team member logged off from his yahoo email account and closed the Internet Explorer window to give me my turn in that shared PC, I yelled back at him, “Man, you didn’t have to close the internet. Now, I do I get inside the internet?”. He couldn’t mask the irritation in his voice as he tried to verify if I was indeed part of the team developing internet applications.

Feeling stupid, I resorted to the only thing I knew. Books. And, some websites too. Also, Google was coming along nicely at the time. Howstuffworks.com was a revelation. I no longer had to ask weird questions in front of others. Scores of self help books filled my shelves too, as I tried to become more social and confident.

I feel I have come a long way compared to those early years. It is ironical though, that my path towards attaining some level of practical knowledge of the world, is paved by a lot of reading. The book “Zen and the art of Motor cycle maintenance” is a case in point. A misleading title – this classic is an essence of modern day philosophy.

And philosophy doesn’t help fix even simple things at home – like changing batteries in the heating appliance or replacing the punctured tyre. But hey, youtube is a saviour.

Recently, I had the challenge of having to fit curtains for the windows of our new home. The quote from the blinds designer was exorbitant and I ended up doing it myself – measuring, buying tools, hanging the rods in the correct angles etc. While the do-it-yourself kits of Ikea did help, the real motivation was my wife teasing me, “You studied engineering, right ?”

2 Apr 2018
“What makes you an expert, Sir ?”

My only trip to the United States occurred in the year 2014, as I was visiting my colleagues in Philadelphia for a very short business trip. I have heard fascinating stories about the behaviour and the line of questioning faced by first time visitors – even the well travelled ones – from the immigration officials.

My encounter was brief. I was asked to explain the purpose of my visit, which I did. I was then asked to explain my role which read Project Expert. With a face that did not hide the smirk and a voice blatantly sarcastic, the official asked me,

“What makes you an expert, Sir?”

On the way to the hotel, I could not stop thinking hard about this question. I had carried out multiple roles – engineer, tester, manager etc., and acquired fancy titles and glorious designations along the way. I started my career as an Associate Software Engineer – and when I eventually climbed the first step in the corporate ladder to become a Software Engineer, it already felt like having shed some burden away. At a later point in my career, I was called a Development Specialist before becoming a Project Expert.

Associate, Specialist, Generalist, Expert, Analyst, Professional. These titles can be quite misleading. For instance, while the title Area Product Owner referred to someone who managed many Product Owners, a lot of people misunderstood the APO as an associate under a PO.

Mostly, the actual role performed by someone bears little resemblance to the designation. Once when we included the senior vice-president of our line of business in a conversation with a customer, he – being demonstrative of his proud roots – introduced himself, “I am a developer!”. Though he meant he was still an engineer at heart, I could already see the frown in the face of this business leader at the customer end – who seemed terribly disappointed at being introduced to a mere mortal.

I stopped taking these labels seriously after a while. Whenever I got a new title, I went along happily – accepting a step change to my career which also came with additional responsibilities (and pay hikes).

But did I become an expert ?

What makes someone an expert after all ? Me thinks, it is by learning – doing – learning – doing – this goes on and on. Putting in thousands of hours of work, honing our skills, working under the guidance of mentors, being trivialized and challenged by peers and subordinates, failing multiple times, reflecting on those debacles and being able to feel confident about the stuff we do. That’s a not a crisp definition but hey, I’m not an expert to talk about that.

Recently, I found myself struggling to convince my daughter to stop relying on google for her school assignments. I tried to explain that the content from a published book – written by an expert, could be trusted more than a fuzzy search engine. She pushed back: how come you trust this author but not the person who contributed to the web content. I went on to say a lot of things about the difference between an amateur and a professional, body of knowledge etc, but she was unimpressed. Eventually, I got her to listen when I asked her if she was going to take the risk of false information.

I have to admit however, I have been doing a lot of my own learning from google, especially during my professional life. But then the actual doing part validates every bit of learning. Also, I have been lucky to have carried out varied tasks and responsibilities and have a general sense of being an IT engineer. The breadth of knowledge is equally important to the depth of skills and expertise in a particular area.

My answer to the immigration official evoked a genuine smile from him: “When you spend fifteen years doing something, it is inevitable that you become some sort of an expert, don’t you?”

You just have to be mindful of not getting into a rabbit hole, however. Apparently Gandhi has said, “The expert knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing”.

24 Mar 2018
Gifting a surprise

The kid is growing up. She just completed another year circling the sun and it was pertinent that a gift is chosen. The wife had plans drawn for months now, just that I didn’t know. In parallel, the kid wrote a wish list on the fridge – I never noticed it.

Here I was – one week before the birthday without any ideas for the gift. I quickly turned towards the wife for some soothing words that did not include “I have been telling you…”. It was a quick and easy call that was made: we promptly purchased the ear rings that she had been planning to gift our kid. That was done. What about the wish list on the fridge?

Shopping for a birthday gift – one that is not going to be a surprise anymore – wasn’t going to be that interesting. The only mystery that we managed to add was to dramatize the whole thing: we made fun of her asking for such childish things even at this age, which made her resign to the fact that she won’t receive them.

Made me think about the concept behind gifts in general – the sense of expectation that surrounds us as we unwrap them – and the whole idea that we get something for free. (The word free derives from the Sanskrit word priya – which means “dear” or “love”. Yes, when we give out something to others without an ensuing transaction, it ought to be with some love.)

Choosing vs being surprised:

It seems obvious that most people love a pleasant surprise as opposed to fully knowing what they are going to receive. Not necessarily.

My previous company had an annual ritual: useful things like water heaters and glass bowls were nicely packed, gift-wrapped and presented to each of the 400 odd employees every year around the festive season. But during one of the monthly forums with the MD, a section of the crowd pushed for a change of approach. Most of us were still single and had little excitement to receive a kitchen utensil at this phase of our lives. The suggestion was to either being able to order a gift (from a catalogue) or collect equivalent cash.

The MD was struggling for words to describe the conflict between the original intent and how it ended up being perceived. But he was bang-on as he finished, “A gift is given and not chosen”.

Eventually, we managed to buy the items in the list without her knowledge and she had an unknown gift box in front of her on the day. Surprise.

Or was it ? Well, in her own words, the kid felt doubly happy about collecting the items in her wish list – especially after not expecting them.

PS: Turns out, the wife had advised the kid to make the wish list all along. I learnt about it after writing this piece. Now, that was a surprise.

12 Mar 2018
Take your seat

Prior to relocating as an employee of our Canberra office, I had made a few short business trips to meet the team and the customers here. I had a fair idea of what to expect in the new place. That was three years ago. The role was going to be different but I was mentally well prepared for everything. Almost.

Ours is a small office and at any point of time there would be a max of 50 people around. Others would be either working from home or with customers, I would think. The office space is organized into named desks (name printed on a steel name plate atop the mounted desk screen), hot desks (anyone – usually travellers – can occupy, temporarily) and meeting rooms.

I used to randomly take a hot desk when I was a visitor. Now, moving in as an employee of this office, it felt strange when I learnt there wouldn’t be a permanent desk for me. Should that affect me ? After all, I had spent many years in this company working in different offices, travelling to various places, working from airport lounges, customer offices and from home too. And what is my work anyway: read mails, take calls, meet people and occasionally get to do some inspiring stuff. Should a permanent desk matter ?

I found a spot. It was in a corner, facing the window with a nice view of the traffic-less street surrounded by other buildings and a bunch of eucalyptus and maple trees. The next day too, I managed to position myself there. The third day though, I was late. When I found another guy settled down nicely in my (?) desk, I felt like a child whose candy was snatched away.

Berating myself for being silly, I quietly occupied the next available hot desk. It was a dull place far way from the window. No scenic view to provide any inspiration – unless you count the potted indoor plants. The desk was messy too. You are expected to clean the desk when you go, especially if it is not yours. Then it became clear to me. That was some clever guy who knew how to mark his territory. Fair enough. I moved away.

In the meantime, work kept me engaged. I made quite a few acquaintances, new connections in the office and outside. The new role turned out to be fascinating. The family too, settled in nicely in a new country.

While I worked on many business cases and helped secure deals, I also managed to secure a permanent desk, eventually. It did not matter that the steel name plates ran out of stock. I settled for a simple print out of my name on a piece of paper (bold font, though), perched on the mounted partition of the desk. My desk. Or my portion of that long desk that houses three others as well.

I decided to sprawl the desk with things. I got my daughter to make a couple of crafts for display, and the usual stuff: coffee mug to keep pencils I never use, print outs that should have been fed to the shredder long ago and the many wires and chargers.

Recently, I reflected on this behaviour and did some googling too. There are two opposing schools of thought regarding this question: Should employees have their own private space or be part of an open environment that encourages dynamism and collaboration. I think however, our primal instinct to secure a physical territory far outweighs the need to be socially connected.

It is funny and silly. Only until you find your desk taken away by some stranger, leaving you to look for a spot near the window with a view.

18 Jan 2018