Day 22-2012 : A Hectic Start...

What a hectic start to the new year!  It is all happening, leaving me with little time to organise my thoughts in the form of a blog post.  Anyways, I am here now, so, here we go.  

We are already in the last week of the first month of the year!  For me, the year started with the drive back from Ahmedabad to Mumbai on New Year Day.  I completed the 550 kilometres long drive in 8 hours, with two stops, one for breakfast and one for lunch.  The road infrastructure which has been built on this stretch is wonderful, to say the least.  Especially, once you get into Gujarat, it seems like you are in a completely different country!  Maharashtra still has a lot of catching up to do.  I thoroughly enjoyed the drive to Ahmedabad and back.

After the refreshing week long break in Ahmedabad, it was time to get back to work at full throttle.  It is the time of the year when reviews of all kinds happen and one gets sucked into the whirlwind.  At home, the in-laws visited us.  The school breaks were getting over as well, hence getting the kids fully kitted for another term became a priority. 

And then, of course, the unpredictable happened!  I got an opportunity to take part in the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon.  I had actually applied for taking part in the marathon, but did not get the opportunity.  But I really wanted to run.  I had in fact started training for it as well very seriously.  However, once I did not get through, I relaxed my routine.  But as they say, if you want something really bad, the whole world conspires to give it to you!  On January 13th, a day before the D-Day, the opportunity arrived, in the form of someone who was registered but could not go.  I was happy to do the honours!  And that is how I became part of the 6 km Dream Run on January 15th.

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of being part of the event.  It was certainly worth it, though after the 45 minute run, the soles and ankles of my feet were complaining.  The half marathon next year?  Maybe...!  I must confess that I am tempted, though it will require a lot of training.  One thing is for sure, I am determined to run again in the annual event.

The next week is going to be very busy with various engagements at work as well, following which I fly to London over the weekend.  I fully expect the week in London to be hectic.  So a lot of activity overall in the first month of the year. Add to it, the cricket nets, shopping trips, team-building events and friends and relatives visiting over the weekends; and the month has just whizzed past me.  If January is anything to go by, I think this year is going to be action-packed.

I say, bring it on! 

Take care!

Day 333 - The 'High Maintenance' Workplace

This week I was speaking to Navin Kumar, who now works in London.  During the conversation, one of the things that he mentioned, was the stark contrast in the way people work in teams in India compared to those in London.  Navin now is part of and leads a team of three people.  He was telling me how very professional the staff in his team were, which required the least amount of supervision.  Though we did not speak about this, but I am assuming that they have a clear distinction between their personal and professional lives, and hence the amount of distractions at work are less.

After this conversation, in my mind, I was trying to juxtapose the same to an Indian work environment, which is very different.  The workplace in India is, what I would like to call, a 'high maintenance' workplace.  There are far more people issues to resolve than real business issues.  As a manager, the people management component of your job seems to take up a considerable amount of time.  Loads of inter-personal issues to resolve; a complex and irrational web of cold wars to contend with.  Why is this the case? 

I think there are many reasons for it.  The first, but not a convincing, reason for this is the average age of the workforce in India.  With the demographic advantage of having such a large population of young working people, comes the disadvantage of majority of this population being immature.  Some are literally out of college / graduate school and the workplace to them, is probably just another place to hang out with friends.  One tends to think and behave in extremes at a younger age, which is never good for human relationships.  The maturity to understand relationships from a win-win perspective is largely absent. 

This bring us to the second reason, which is competition.  A large part of such immature behaviour is driven by competition.  The sheer amount of population that India has and the density of it in urban centres is driving people hard to compete; compete at any cost, like there is no tomorrow.  There are no age limits for competing, but it is very obvious that the younger age of the workforce makes it even more difficult as when one is young one tends to compete very hard, just to be able to make a mark as soon as possible.

The third and probably the weirdest reason is fear!  The fear of a perceived threat from peers and others around us.  We are finding it hard to trust each other.  However, if we dig deeper, we find that most of our fears are simply irrational. Finding a couple of spare minutes to be with yourself and reflecting on your own personal fears might show you just that – that they are grounded not in reality, but in some perceived threat that really doesn’t exist.

The fourth and the last one might be the strange belief in everyone that they are the centre of the universe, around which everything rotates!  The human ego!  Having an ego is well and good, but the problem is,that everyone believes the same and has an ego. 

So, what can be done to about this?  How can we direct such large amounts of raw energy in the right direction without any distractions?  One of the solutions could be to break the hierarchy of the organisation and make everyone an individual contributor!  Make them work alone.  However, this will not work as humans are social animals and prefer to argue and fight with people than bear the loneliness that comes along with living and working alone.  I believe what can help is talking to each other, including open conversations about issues.  This is the only way you can dissipate the emotional constipation that work relationships sometimes tend to create.  The ability and intent to empathise with others will also help.  It is very important to cultivate this quality in one and all.

Finally, it is important to accept the fact that any group of people working with each other will have it's own varieties of misunderstandings, misconceptions, perceptions and the resultant bickering and fights.  It is however necessary to ensure that they do not impact the common goal of the group and the personal doesn't get mixed up with the professional, more so for us Indians, because we are by nature very expressive about their emotions.

Take care.

Day 46 - All over the place

The response, both, online and offline, that I have got after my last post has been phenomenal.  Everyone has been very supportive and encouraging.  My heartfelt thanks to all of them, as this support will only increase my resolve.

I was in dull and depressing London again last week.  The hotel made it even worse.  Bad service can make the best of brands seem the worst.  

However, there were a lot of bright spots during the week.  I was in London to be part of some workshops which were very successful, including the team drinks on Thursday!  The session with Arshan, Mayank & Pratik on Wednesday was good as well.  Went to Browns at Shoreditch.  We got out of the place before Mayank's eyes could pop out of their sockets.  The best evening out was on Friday, when I caught up with Grant for a drink and then had dinner with Navin.  To top it all off, I was upgraded to First by BA on my way back!

Landed in Mumbai on Sunday early morning, where confusion reigned as usual at the airport.  This time the cause was confusion amongst immigration and airline officials on which version of the landing cards to fill!  So, after spending time filling out multiple versions of it, I finally made my way home.

Drove to Pune via the expressway in the afternoon on Sunday inspite of the jet lag.  Wonderful drive!  Was back at home after dropping in-laws at Pune in a grand total of 7 hours; door-door-door!

By the end of it all, couldn't wait to doze off.....take care.