A walk to my Birthplace - Day 10 (47 Km covered so far)

Today I was on campus of one of the reputed institutes. It’s a big campus and as soon as I finished my work, I wandered around the campus like a nomad. Of course I had my tracking APP on my mobile and walked 7 Km today! As I walked along lovely, shaded walking trails around the campus, randomly remembered some crazy things in the past.

For a short time I worked with a boutique HR consulting firm where I discovered my selling skills. I used to be pretty aggressive and generally a pain in the !@# for my boss who was a thorough gentleman.

We were on one sales call, discussing Organization Structure and senior hiring for a proposed DotCom. The venture had backing of one of the well-known aggressive entrepreneurs who acted as senior partner. He regularly participated in the meetings. I had a strong belief that you terminate a sales call if at least one of the three criteria was not met. Three criteria for me were very simple – the prospect has to either have a brand that helped us, or had money where our brand of work helped him or sometimes you get to interact with some professionals from whom you would learn something. I used to be very selective about the third criteria and this particular case definitely was not the third category!

By the second meeting, I was pretty bored and though I liked their concept I did not know where this was heading! I was sitting silent when the senior partner asked me – “How do you view our challenges?” I was bored and blank! I blurted out “Your challenges are similar to Shivaji – the great maratha warrior who built his empire”. I could see my boss wanting to strangle me to silence but the senior partner looked curious. So I continued my explanation about establishing an enterprise from scratch, choosing the strategy against traditional competition and some basic structure and profiles that would fuel the strategy. It was an inspired piece and honestly I myself don’t remember the exact content!

The senior partner now was smiling and my boss started breathing easy. The senior partner said magnanimously, “Young man (I was about 30 then), your thought process is great. Let’s meet for some more brainstorming.” I was just put off and again blurted out, “Thank you sir, but brainstorming is using consultant’s time for free!” My boss froze again – later he told me that he thought we would be kicked out. But the senior partner said quietly, “I don’t want to hear this excuse, bill your brainstorming!” Who the hell knew how to bill brainstorming. I gathered myself in a moment and said, “I will attend 5 meetings of brainstorming. Today the second is over. If at the end of it I am not convinced about your idea, I will not take up the assignment and we will charge you Rs 5 Lac (Approximately USD 2500 per hour at the prevailing rate) for these five meetings.” “OK, send me the invoice and fix the third one!”

When we came down, my boss kept laughing for 15 minutes till he went red in his face muttering “You are mad!” For me, I had learnt the best lesson of life - Instinct is your best bet when you have to think on the feet. You just have to back yourself!