A prank called career

I just finished discussion with my first ever customer...I was one month old in my business and this was the first instance of revenue .... I tried to be remain as composed as possible when he finally told me the figure which would have been almost my half year’s salary in my job......”You send me an invoice and I’ll send you a cheque”..... Once the initial euphoria settled down I was sheepishly standing in front of my father with a simple question.... how to raise an invoice (they don’t teach this in management school even today I guess).....

...I was presenting in a Gartner outsourcing event in Capetown, South Africa in front of about 70 odd CIOs / technology folks. I was presenting a new software delivery model........ something I was simply not qualified for (it is the mildest statement I can make about the situation!)..... my technology knowledge and awareness is butt of innumerable jokes amongst friends (few made up but mostly true!).....

Several times I have asked myself a question .... why am I so happy when I do things I am not meant to do ... I am not trained or qualified to do ... is it just a rebel in me? But no – I am not so much of an anti-establishment guy ..... rebel to me has always had a negative connotation ..... rebel is against something .... with an aim to defeat someone .... my feelings are far more positive .... more of indulging ..... so much focused on my own joy that there is hardly any space for anyone else! The more I think of it, there is only one word which comes closest to describe what I do..... a prank .... yes a prank!
Prank by its very nature is intended to have some fun in a short run without much of a thought for long term repercussions ( I dread this word) ... it requires an alacrity of mind .... a great sense of humour.... an ability to laugh at yourself if it goes wrong.

When I look back at my career I think the single most effective tool I have used to manage my career is ... yes ... a prank...

I have made up my mind regarding certain facts about career:
• Whatever looks exciting starts getting dull beyond a point
• If you take yourself too seriously there is only one title you are heading towards - a Moron!
• The world is changing so fast that it is meaningless to plot far ahead .... if you decide to plot every step you are either arrogant or plain stupid (in my dictionary these are synonyms)
• If you start getting praised for something ... it is best to drop it like hot potato ... if you continue with your ‘expertise’, you are as intelligent as a well-trained monkey in a circus...
• If you get bored, the most honest thing to do is to accept that you are bored rather than marinating your mind with thoughts of ‘maturity’ and ‘stability’ (these are two more words that I dread!!)
• Between career and family, it is always family that is more important ..... simple litmus test – you may change your career but may not like to change your family (here we are talking about normal people!)

The key to managing a career is so obvious that it is invariably missed out – the only way to manage a career is - "Have Fun":

Fun is situational so you are always responding to your surroundings with an alert mind (I have never heard anything like 3 year fun strategy!) .... it invariably beats the boredom ...... fun by its definition is short-lived so you never get ‘stuck’ with fun ..... you can continue having fun only if you find something new ..... it brings out the strengths unknown to you or others
My pranks of playing entrepreneur , salesman, software delivery head (this is the funniest) have kept me alive ......and I have not done too badly for myself (let me clarify – for me the only unit of success is how much fun I had!)
If you want to have a great career .... its a beautiful world out there ..... ready for your pranks ..... have fun!!

Letting Someone go... (Management Lessons from Vasudeo - Part 3)

Vasudeo is my father’s name. In a normal middle class Indian family of 70’s and 80’s me and my siblings grew up enjoying the freedom of calling him by first name within the four walls of our house. While we enjoy his friendship - his status for us is nothing less than that of a god…. This in fact is a first lesson… you need not follow any rituals to get your natural respect….. He being a man of few words, I learnt innumerable lessons through his simple actions…though the meaning of many I was to understand much later…..these are the few moments that have always stayed with me …..management lessons learnt from Vasudeo

Doorbell rang and when I opened the door, my father went up to the door to receive the guest. When they greeted each other I realized that I should not hang around…. The man looked distraught…. As I served him some water, my father quietly told me not to disturb them for next half an hour…..

As soon as the guest left, I asked my father about the man “He was from my bank and had come to see me as he needed some personal guidance” “Oh, but why did he come home then?”, little surprised knowing well that my father never mixed his workplace and home. “There was a problem with him and we had to let him go (even in a casual conversation at home he never used the word like sacked etc!!)” Suddenly I understood the reason behind the distraught expression on his face. “But if you sacked him, why did he come home?” I must admit I was little anxious as I asked (I guess this must be the hangover of Bollywood where the sacked man comes to boss’s house and shoots everyone!). “He needed some personal guidance”. “But you sacked him!” “We let him go because there was a problem with his work. That does not make him criminal! He knew that there was nothing personal about my action. He also has a family and he has to live his life!”…….. Hardly did I know that this small incident would serve as a guiding principle as I got in the situations where I had to take some decisions…..

Much later in life I got into a situation where I had to carry out an operation to let go quite a few people. It was a slow-down post dotcom bust and the phenomenon of workforce rationalization was quite common…. Media had a field day publishing stories about how lives were ruined, proposed marriages were called off due to people losing jobs. When I had to execute my job all this was weighing on my mind apart from the sheer burden of the task itself.

When it was decided whom to let go we also decided how would we do it. We just followed simple guiding principles:
• The people we were letting go were our colleagues and not some hardened criminals
• Losing jobs itself was enough burden to handle and we need not burden them with extra load of clearing our conscience.
• Our objective was separation from jobs that they were doing and we were not in the judgement seat to decide their lives!

As we set out to do the unpleasant task, we actually structured Do’s and Don’t of the communication. Another important decision that we took was - we will not do any mass communication but we’ll spend time with each individual losing job even if it means our speed was slow! (Its good to do away with process efficiency parameters sometimes….sensitivity could be more valuable than efficiency!)

When we started talking to people we communicated few points clearly:
• This is the decision which has been taken (If you are breaking a bad news it is good to sometimes to come straight to the point rather than beating around the bush)
• This is a decision for separation from the current assignment and we are not passing any judgement on them. As this is a human decision we acknowledge the fact that there is a chance that we could be wrong (yes… we actually used to say that)
• We spent significant time on discussing the life after….. we allowed them to resign than a termination…… Though they had to disengage immediately we let them be on the payroll for a month so that the chances of finding other jobs are better (In any case we owed them one month salary)… In many cases we extended this period as leave without pay till they got alternate assignments….. We offered drafting resumes

Make no mistake…. In spite of all this life was hell! It was sheer trauma! We just held our nerves and their hands….. In the end almost everyone got a job ….. most of them called back to thank for the support during that difficult phase.

If nothing else the experience made me wiser. More often than not it is our anxiety to clear our conscience that makes us lose our sensitivity. If you are letting someone go, why should you heap further insults by justifying your decision. Most important of all, can you look at the person you are letting go as a flesh and blood human being like yourself than a piece of trash being thrown in a dustbin!!

Faces Beyond Facebook

My mother called me excitedly, “Why don’t we all gather this Saturday? Vinaya (my elder sister) has come back from Mauritius and says the photographs are amazing – Lets see the photographs together – will be fun” “Yes, but we have already seen the pictures”, I almost regretted my response as soon as I uttered those words. I could almost sense her disappointment on the other side of the phone. “Siddharth (my nephew) had uploaded them on Facebook but yes watching it together will be lot of fun”, while I desperately tried to salvage the situation, I knew that I had already spoiled her party!

This small incident set me thinking.... Personally I am a great fan of facebook... I have been able to reconnect with so many people whom I thought I have lost forever. In the era when you spend most of your waking hours at office it almost saves you from getting alienated from the rest of the world..... Its just kind of nice to stay connected with your friends and know what they are upto... whenever you see anything interesting, funny you share it instantly with the world for it to appreciate......

I must admit – I am relatively new to all social media........ I am a sort of fellow who always craves for feedback, reinforcements so whenever I upload anything on facebook, I am almost eager to know the comments on it.... it always amused me how your basic nature does not change even in the virtual world!

There is a tremendous information that explodes right in your face electronically....be it your mails – official and personal, your orkut, facebook, linked-in, Twitter and what not.... it is not very uncommon to have multiple windows open on anyone’s desktop. There is an interesting study published by Stanford University (I hope I remember it right) on multitasking – it says that the information explosion today also causes lot of distraction. Multitasking is not the best way to respond as your brain almost works in a fragmented manner. It also remains that way even if you are not multitasking – basically it narrows down your span of concentration. Your mail and your electronic communication is a stimulus which is always easy to react and you are almost looking forward to your next one to guide your life.

I think the process has not really started with Social media or internet.... Television channel surfing is the predecessor for most of us when it comes to surfing....

The beauty of it all is that though options are plenty, that most precious resource – time has remained constant...... it means the timeshare occupied by the new options will take toll on something else and couple of incidents come readily to my mind....

I was talking to one of the Ph.D. guides of Mumbai University who has been a Guide for years and quite contemporary in her outlook. I asked her how has the field of research changed due to availability of information at fingertips. “Its good that you don’t have to lose precious hours and days searching for the information. But somehow the cut-paste regime is really going out of hand.... rather than spending some quality time on thinking followed by looking for relevant references, today they almost feel handicapped without google. Reading habits and span of concentration definitely has taken a heavy toll”.....

I believe that best conversations always happen when you finish your meals and just continue on the table chatting. Once, all of us were sitting around the dining table on a Sunday post lunch.... we heard an alarm on my sister-in-law’s phone....she just got up saying “Its harvest time on my Farmville”.... I had a tough time explaining the elders on table that she is ok...this is normal....... only to have them worrying about my sanity at the end of 15 minutes!!............

All the social media is great .. in fact I dare say that this is even a necessity of today’s life.....provided................
you still catch up with old friends for a no-agenda talk.....
you still appreciate fresh air and farms in real life........
you still get lost in a book over a steaming cup of coffee......
you still lose the track of time playing with your toddler........
you still sneak out those 15 minutes to gossip with your mother.....
..... and..... never forget that there are faces beyond facebook for whom you mean the world!