haw many have you missed?

Finally I seem to be getting a grip over things. I guess this job change has been very good from a learning perspective. I joined here in November 2010. It’s been a year plus on the seat. With the benefit of hindsight I can say, I came in with a bit of arrogance. I thought I could radically change the way things are done around here. Give new direction to the way marketing must function, show the fellas a trick or two, ‘oh what a great boy am I’. Quickly I ended on the wrong side of things. No one likes to be shown that they are wrong. I realized that I wasn’t exactly entirely welcome here. People are resistant to change. Things change far more slowly in a large organization. Egos are volatile things. Everything can move must it requires a gargantuan force to move it. I am reminded of a phrase ‘when immovable object meets unstoppable force. Yes. It’s been tough. Very tough one year.
Also managing 15 heads is another challenge. I have to understand their jobs, their restrictions, their own strengths and their own weakness. Yesterday I arranged for a talk with the IT guys with my team. I thought it was pretty informative. Any one is worth listening to as long as he is saying something from his experience. The head of the department said something which I hope to never forget. He was talking about his a-ha moment when he changed some fundamental things about the structure of the trading engine. I asked him about the risks associated with the change. He said “we realized one thing. Whenever you do something it is very important to understand the limitations of what you can do. As long as you can understand that , you are not likely to go wrong”. Yup. It takes time to understand that. I think those words are golden. I too came in knowing my strengths, knowing that my strengths are my weakness, but I really did not know my limitations enough. I did not know the limitations of my team, I did not know the limitations of the infrastructure they are dealing with. Its easy for a guy who is new to the system to come in and say that the way things are run here …. It doesn’t make sense. But I learnt – and it’s taken me a year to learn, that things are difficult. Have patience, understand people, understand their limitations, and understand the limitations of the system. The fine line is to understand this yet push through change. Yet keep that fire. Of course I have to change the system, but by staying inside of it, not by being outside of it.
Wasn’t that the reason I left consulting and joined the business? The chance of doing real work and making a real impact by staying inside of it. That was my objective. No matter how smart you get, life always gets the better of you. That is the best part of it. It never ever fails to teach you a trick or two. You have to be willing to put your nose to the grind, bend and have patience.
Speaking of life, parenting also teaches you something every day. Every time when Jispa sleeps we know she will rotate quite a bit. She twists herself in unimaginable postures. She flips around and changes her pose in ways you think are impossible. So every time she sleeps, I put a bunch of pillows on the floor. She might fall anytime and at least the pillow will help. Sometimes, she likes to sleep in our room. We put the mattress and make her bed on the ground. Then as a precaution I put a pillow near the leg of the bed, just in case she hits it, then near an edge near the wall, just in case she hits it, then near the cupboard, just in case she hits it. The day before, she wanted to sleep inside. We let her. I helped her make the bed. And I missed putting the pillows. Also she’s grown up now. At four am, I hear a thud followed by her saying ‘ouch’. I get up to see her sitting up and rubbing her head while she saying something. I ask her what happened. “ I hit the bed”. “oops, don’t worry, go back to sleep, its ok, I will put a pillow there”. Now she is old enough not to cry on getting hit. She went back to sleep. In the morning I asked her how was her head. She looks at me for a second and remarks “oh, I thought it was a dream”.

That’s the thing with parenting – you don’t know how many you have saved, but you surely know how many you miss. I won’t know how times my prudence will have saved her, but I will definitely know when I missed doing something and it resulted in something bad happening.Hah!