off the offsites

Another offsite. I am so tired of offsites. Tomorrow we are going to Lonavala. My company has grown and I have been a part of that growth story through sheer luck. So I think from a younger age itself, I have been going to offsites as a part of senior or middle management.

Offsites are the worst thing in the world and there is a reason I have never taken my team out for one. We sit in offsites and discuss the future of the company and other rubbish. I have never seen a productive offsite in my life, where we sit and actually ideate on a concrete idea that needs to be implemented and the stuff gets done. Never. Neither do we have offsites where we actually do serious team building games and activities.

My idea of an ideal offsite is a freaking picnic. I would love to take my team to picnic spots and play team building games all day long. Just keep playing tons of fun games. Those offsites I remember and they help in building real bonds and camaraderie. Not these, where we sit inside a five-star hotel banquet area for six or seven hours or even ten hours and don’t see anything around. Yes I have sat for ten hours in closed rooms, discussing god knows what. I really don’t understand why the company needs to take us 100 miles or more away to get us to sit inside a banquet room. It’s easier in office itself.

Thanks to offsites and conferences, I must have been to Goa, at least 20 plus times, without even once really enjoying the place. We could have been in any part of the world but of course I think bosses love thinking that we took the entire large team to GOA! There is a perverse joy in spending good money behind bad conversations.

Bleh. So now what. Nothing. I hitched a ride with my boss to take me there. And his boss is also coming in the same car. So that’s also good company for a great office and lovely start to the day! My boss is actually a nice guy but it fun to bitch about bosses, no matter how nice they are.

Typically, I get so bored in these meetings that I think the boredom is palpable on my face. In fact, I daresay, contempt is visible on my face. I use every opportunity to get out of the room and go somewhere else and do some work elsewhere. Any work. Earlier I used to be the young marketing guy in charge of the offsite, so it made sense for me to leave the room to look busy. I would go and sit outside and do nothing and come back.

Alas now that I am senior enough I can’t do that as well. What a bore. I will have to sit and get involved. Typically, I sit bored till I get all riled up or instigated or something and then  speak my mind which would likely to be controversial or conversation ending. Till some joker again refuses to listen and starts the fighting all over again. ARRGGG – I hate these discussions.

I can’t understand why you need more than three four people to decide strategy. A few decide then take buy in and then relentlessly execute. If I ever become CEO – I would ban all off sites. Total utter wastage. Waste of time, money and holidays. I will be so loved … but then not so… I really think a lot of my colleagues love these offsites. The fake bonhomie, the daaru, the dancing… the painstakingly made bad slides, horrible strategy… I think there are enough amongst us. Enough.

shit changes you

Over the weekend I went through two types of life changing events. Ok – too much drama. But they were experiences that would allow me to think through on issue sthat could potential change my thinking for a long time to come.

I took a few of my colleagues to design yatra. I am sure I would have blogged about this crazy amazing conference in the past. This is a place where I am a pretender in a place full of crazy designers and artists, I am a stand out stupid guy. I have no talents in this and I hope at best to at least appreciate the fact that there is beauty in what people do and value in art for art sake in whatever we do.

I am in the middle of being wooed by multiple people to join them. And I am thinking, should I leave, should I join something new, should I build on something I already have. Money is important but only so much. After a point its not about money but a chance to create something new and beautiful. Over the last few years I have come to the conclusion that marketing is a wasted field. What the world needs for now is product supremacy. It’s the product that needs to succeed. Product necessarily flow from great design. In our finance world where we don’t sell anything real or tangible (money is such an abstract concept). We need a serious reason for people to love our product. This is where design comes into place.

I have been thinking that wherever I go, as a next jump or wherever, whenever I am able to create my own little ecosystem, it will definitely be a place where I would want to build my team, have freedom to work, interact, get in amazing talent; fire idiots dragging the system and build a good place to work. If take up one more job at one more place, I would be building more of the same shit. New place, same shit, just a little more money. I want a lot more money but a chance to build something of real value.

Where I go they would want me to start asap, start showing results immideiately, and get cracking. Reality – it would take me a year to understand the product / problem and build a team that would then begin to start delivering. Then it would take me another year before we actually start to show results. Everyone wants an overnight sensation, not knowing how long it took to build it. Most overnight sensations are ten years in the making. Ten years.

So the design festival helped me realize and reinforce in my head my ideas of how great companies are actually built. By building great products that people want in the end. Today most of the big success stories that we see, and what most miss is that the products that were delivered were finger licking good. When they diverge from great design, shit creeps in and then all hell breaks loose. It’s funny that my company, group wide, has a marketing review, business reviews etc but no real product review. No really good well designed, lickable product customer interfaces and reviews. My super boss understands money but I am sure, he doesn’t understand what is meant by good looking and great interface products. The question for me is where do I build this expertise as decide my future course of action.

Cut to Mumbai. I fly in from Goa early morning to attend an AGM for Matunga Gymkhana. It was public lynching at its best. We haven’t learnt from history that democracy can give rise to the worst of dictators. Hitler was a democratically elected despot.  In an AGM the person who can shout the loudest and incite crowds can sway the opinion. In a democracy there is the tyranny of the majority which can be used to suppress a saner but quieter opinion. That is exactly what happened. Logic and anything be damned. Louder voices ruled.

I was wondering what happened. I was quiet throughout, unlike my natural self. I only spoke once and I thought I made sense and I spoke for the greater good. People understood and the stupid conversation and fighting stopped on that one point. But then the asst. secretary opened his mouth, once again and then all hell broke loose. Every time he opened his mouth the meeting would extend by another 40 minutes.

But today after good introspection, I realized that even silence has a role. If I had opened my mouth and be drawn into these issues I wouldn’t have been able to see this game. I wouldn’t have been able to see how the few manipulate the large. It is a well thought of strategy relying on rhetoric and oratory. It is mind numbing how the majority are swayed by this. I too have been guilty of this in the past. I have been swayed without the understanding of consequences.

Real life is difficult, complicated and not without consequences. Most of which are unintended. The process of democracy is slow and painful and we must protect it at all costs.

I wanted to resign, I drafted the mail and sent it to my friend. I haven’t yet sent it to the gymkhana. But I think… should I or should I not be the lone voice of sanity and be there and grind it out or should I get out and focus on new things. The learnings are tremendous but I have to hold in my natural instincts and reign in initial response. I would need to be measured and studied. That is the right way to play the game. Let me think.

Who knew that a weekend in variety would prove to be enough food for thought, my friend.

Stay relevant . fight

Reinventing yourself is so bloody important. Reinventing relationships are important. Reinventing your passions and your reasons to be are important. Nothing is constant as you grow older. Everything changes, the relationships and their interplay change over a period of time.

We need to keep evolving on everything and this can sometimes, many times cause stress. When Indians go abroad many a time they can be accused of being in a time capsule. They notions of India and Indianess is define by the time they left shores. They have been unable to move from their last notion of India.

Similarly, every time I wake, I start from where I left off yesterday. Parenting Jispa for one. It’s a question of constantly reinventing oneself. By merely having by birth the right to be a father is the stupidest thing that one can want. You have to earn it every day. This Saturday I was teaching about margins to my kids in college. What is margin and what constitutes margin. It is not as easy subject to grasp. People will constantly make the mistake of missing one component for another. When you look at the supply chain you will realize that margin compensates the component of the supply chain in line with its role, risk and reward. I was thinking in my head that while a lot of kids got it wrong, I would assume that a lot of these concepts Jispa would intuitively get right. Jispa probably doesn’t know what kind of dad she has. She probably underestimates the breadth of experience and wisdom I bring to the table.

These days while studying etc, she doesn’t need/ take my help. So yesterday I was talking to her while we were watching the swim races in the stands. We were waiting for her races. It was too much fun. This is the interschool races for the international schools. It was a national event. This gave Jispa a chance to directly enter the all school nationals through a much easier route. International schools are few and far in between in the country and most of them have very small classroom strengths and total over all student strengths. You can’t expect too much competition with these numbers. So while we were watching the races, I was enjoying the rank amateurs swimming in the nationals.

In in one race you will see national level medalists swimming alongside swimmers who haven’t ever been in 50-meter pool in their life, let alone swan at a stretch for than 20 meters. You can make out by the way they stand at the stand and their body structures. Young fit six pack athletes in their advanced costumes standing next to podgy fatted kids wearing their summer swimming costumes. I was dissing them for 10 minutes, in a very stand up way and laughing with Jispa at these kids. Yes, I was being very mean and very unfatherly. But these kids had no reason to be in this national competition.

I was also explaining to Jispa that once upon a time, I too was like this as a kid. I went for a swimming competition and almost drowned in the process. I had no business going for a race. Sometimes, we just force these kids into participation for a certificate that we participated at a national level race. But hell.

This is not the point of this story. What is the point of this blog? It is something totally different. Jispa and I were talking and we spoke about how till 7^th grade I was still largely involved in teaching her stuff. She said that now dad, you can’t even help me with anything on studies nah. I am way too advanced for you. AH… nopes kid. I am still a smart guy. I can help you with some of your studies. English and psychology for sure. and the mental aspect of sports science. Anything you do in the technical side, I am not that good. Bio, math etc – you are way ahead but in English and other similar stuff, I am still relevant and awesome. She was like – no you don’t know things like juxtaposition and stuff. We do analysis of vogue covers and stuff and you are not good for that. I had to tell her, not forcefully of course that I can still help you, but its your call.

Sunday evening at home she comes to me and shows me the explanation of the Vogue covers. She has to analyze them. She and her friend wrote a very superficial analysis of the covers. I explained to them that this was bad shit. I helped her understand core values of Vogue. Then who are on the cover – what is the intended effect of the celebs. What are the personality traits that the celebs lend onto the cover and the articles / themes of the cover? I explained how the Venn diagram of the vogue and the celeb intersection is what the cover is about. I basically took her analysis to a whole new level altogether.

At the end of this – I then told her – I am still relevant in your life kid. I am still relevant.

I have to fight every day. Struggle for being relevant in people’s lives. If you take your role for granted, then you are doomed. Fight every day and stay relevant. Else get consigned to the sides. Same for office, spouse, father, friendship, mentor – whatever shit you do. Stay relevant and keep changing.

please peace, inner piss

Yesterday I had a nice conversation with a friend. It wasn’t exactly pleasant but it was very interesting or me. I have the gift of talking and spouting gyan. Earlier I used to think that I was reasonably intelligent and I would likely have the solution to all of mankind’s woes. As I grew older and alas, wiser, I realized that no such shit exists. No one has answer to anyone’s woes.

I have written about this – there a beautiful book that I read “if you meet the Buddha on the road, shoot him”. Fundamentally answers lie within you. Inside of you. And mostly it futile trying to tell answers to anyone. through the book I learnt one clear thing – people come to you to talk / for advise / for love / for understanding. You can’t give any, if you really care about the person. You can only tell about your stories in life and about the issues you faced and the principals you learnt in your life and the questions you asked of the world and of yourself.

Yesterday was a n hour long conversation. It was the most beautiful conversation in that sense. I realized that I had grown up and alas (yes, I know its repeated) wiser. The whole conversation, I simply explained various situations in which I dealt with shit and how I dealt with situations and the experiences I got while growing up. The choices I made and the nebulous nature of life that I understood. Not once did I give an answer or a direction.

My friend was able to decipher for herself the meaning of what she was asking for me. I may give an answer, and maybe by sheer power of nature, it might be the best / right answer; but the real answer is always the one in which you arrive at yourself. You can ask for multiple suggestions, advice and experience but it will not count till you arrive at it through your thinking process. There is always a time for an answer to get inside your brain. I always tell Jispa – of course listen to me but more importantly – don’t listen to me. Learn on your own. Listen to me only to replay what I said later on in your life when you might realize its truth. For now, just store in your head. Appreciate the experience that I bring but then quickly discard it for your action. Then replay and hold the consequences against what I said – and decide what was right.

At the end of the conversation – I told – I sound like a guru nah? Not because I am right but because 60% of what I say, it is likely that you will forget. You will remember 40% of which half will turn out right. That is a total of 20%. Now that id worse than tossing coin for advice. The remaining 20% will never be fructified as you will likely be dead in the hope of seeing it come true. You will say – that this is true but I have just not experienced it yet. This is the true math of a guru. Say enough obscure far reaching sounding,  profound clouded, shitshat. 20% true, 20% waiting to be true and 60% forgotten. Say to a larger base and everyone will find their 20% and soon amongst the audience as a collective all 100% will be true – just broken up in each guy for their own 20%. Did you get the math?

But not the gurus are bad. You got your 20% right? And you felt you got your 100% also. So what gives… give the guru some dakshina, love him to death, put him on a pedestal and voila – you have found inner peace through randomization.

Inner peace is not that difficult to achieve. I also wonder what the purpose of life is. I guess there is no purpose really. So play board games and enjoy. Which I why I have been buying board games and playing them. I want more GAMES MORE GAMES. I have bought quite a few and I have a huge wish list on Amazon – I keep adding. I get some crazy joy in board games. Sit one whole day and play games after games, till the end and sleep. We were born on this planet to play games.

Life became far more bearable and the Machiavellism of the players became such a joy to watch, as long as you think of it as a game. Everyone has their reasons. They don’t align to yours. They never will. Align yours to yourself in harmony with the world and dingalangaling – inner peace!

Such an elusive concept. Also called in good ol’ colloquial hindi – bhaad mein jaaye. Or ‘go to to hell’. Simple.