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!
Showing posts with label strengths. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strengths. Show all posts
Friday, February 17, 2012
Thursday, August 05, 2010
life... choice... sigh
Some body asked me today about the choices we make. The ones that we make in haste and hope things turn out well or should we actually take time to think through all the choices we have. Should life be process driven.
It’s funny when someone asks me thus. I am reminded of the book I have ‘if you meet Buddha on the road kill him’. That book was once recommended to me by a blog reader, on one of the comments he left. It was an interesting enough title. I began reading it and never did finish it. The reason I couldn’t finish it was that it was very good and I always thought I should be a better frame of mind while reading it. Basically it talks about not looking outside but inward. The Buddha is in all of us. Also the book talks about how you can never give advice but you must relate your experiences in similar circumstances and let the pilgrim get his own answers.
This has been a driving force in my life in many ways. Possibly that is the reason that I don’t really like listening to too many advice givers, they don’t know me. At best they can relate their experiences and their thoughts. Then it is up to me to act and me to carry the cross of my own actions or like Napoleon, crown yourself.
Many years ago when I was engaged to Jasmine, her uncle in America had asked if I wanted to go there and make my life. He would support me to the end. I almost jumped at the chance. My mom was not too enthused. I think the reasons would be more like you can’t take the favours of your in-laws. It’s against society norms and people won’t respect you. I did not bother about that logic. My dad told me one thing that struck me hard. He said, in your life you have taken all your decisions. All that you are today are thanks to you and your abilities. You decided your specialisation stream, your own college, your MBA, your job, your summer assignment your wife everything. He said that he had no hand in any decisions that I took. In many ways I was on my way to be my own self made man. At this juncture why would I want to then take on anyone’s obligation? Things might not be as rosy there and the opportunity might not be that exciting. I think he was warning me of the perils of running just on someone’s word leaving what I had in front of me – my self.
Somewhere the penny dropped. I realised that and I kept it that. Another piece of advice my brother’s friend once gave me ‘its better to do it and know for yourself than not to and regret not trying, many years later’. That too has stuck with me for long. This was said roughly 17 years ago.
The common thread I take from here is that you are the master of your own destiny and in the end if you manage that then you have no one to blame but yourself and narcissistically, no one to thank but yourself. Right now too I just went through a rough phase mentally as thanks to some circumstances I was forced to rethink what kind of behaviour and attitude I must have. I have more than enough share of senior resources telling me what I need to do. In order to combat my normal self arrogance that I know best , I have conditioned my self to think at the first instance that what someone is saying is right and keep that as an hypothesis before proving it wrong or right (in degrees). But finally, the decision is mine and mine alone.
I have many stupid decisions in my life and some really bloody smart ones. But all that is hindsight and subjective. The bad ones might have saved me and the good ones might have been the ones that have stopped me from achieving more. The point being you never know. All I know that my supposed intelligence keeps improving all the time. And the calls I take keep getting better at the logic behind them – mind you I said that the logic behind the call improves; there is no evidence of the call actually improving. Who knows what the best solution is? Sometimes you see the mistake and you say yes – you improve, sometimes you don’t see it. the dangerous ones are the ones you get right and the logic fits correctly. You give yourself a pat on the back and congratulate your logic. Then you use it again, and again and again… your greatest strength becomes your weakness. You use it once too often and the world comes crashing on you. You have been exposed as a one trick pony.
There … now should you change or should you not. That is the question that I am facing. How much should I change? Things that I got right have got me here and the one instance it was used against me. This is getting a little complicated.
Virender Shewag was out in the last test playing the cut shot. One journalist asked him if that was his weakness. That he got out a few times playing it. To which the brilliant uncluttered mind of the batsman answered that the journalist also failed to see the number of runs that he has scored from there. He said that that had been his most productive shot from his arsenal. Should he cut it out?
Hahah. This is so not easy to answer. I guess the answer lies in learning from experiences. You keep at it, trying to think through the choices you made and analyse them. Slowly you might get better at them… not at making choice but making the logic behind the choices.
So can I attempt to sum total the entire post in one line – hmmm…. Let me think…..I think I got it…
life is a box of chocolates. You never know what you gonna get….
Thank you Forest.
But tell me one thing – aren’t the chocolates now coming in colour coded wrappers?
It’s funny when someone asks me thus. I am reminded of the book I have ‘if you meet Buddha on the road kill him’. That book was once recommended to me by a blog reader, on one of the comments he left. It was an interesting enough title. I began reading it and never did finish it. The reason I couldn’t finish it was that it was very good and I always thought I should be a better frame of mind while reading it. Basically it talks about not looking outside but inward. The Buddha is in all of us. Also the book talks about how you can never give advice but you must relate your experiences in similar circumstances and let the pilgrim get his own answers.
This has been a driving force in my life in many ways. Possibly that is the reason that I don’t really like listening to too many advice givers, they don’t know me. At best they can relate their experiences and their thoughts. Then it is up to me to act and me to carry the cross of my own actions or like Napoleon, crown yourself.
Many years ago when I was engaged to Jasmine, her uncle in America had asked if I wanted to go there and make my life. He would support me to the end. I almost jumped at the chance. My mom was not too enthused. I think the reasons would be more like you can’t take the favours of your in-laws. It’s against society norms and people won’t respect you. I did not bother about that logic. My dad told me one thing that struck me hard. He said, in your life you have taken all your decisions. All that you are today are thanks to you and your abilities. You decided your specialisation stream, your own college, your MBA, your job, your summer assignment your wife everything. He said that he had no hand in any decisions that I took. In many ways I was on my way to be my own self made man. At this juncture why would I want to then take on anyone’s obligation? Things might not be as rosy there and the opportunity might not be that exciting. I think he was warning me of the perils of running just on someone’s word leaving what I had in front of me – my self.
Somewhere the penny dropped. I realised that and I kept it that. Another piece of advice my brother’s friend once gave me ‘its better to do it and know for yourself than not to and regret not trying, many years later’. That too has stuck with me for long. This was said roughly 17 years ago.
The common thread I take from here is that you are the master of your own destiny and in the end if you manage that then you have no one to blame but yourself and narcissistically, no one to thank but yourself. Right now too I just went through a rough phase mentally as thanks to some circumstances I was forced to rethink what kind of behaviour and attitude I must have. I have more than enough share of senior resources telling me what I need to do. In order to combat my normal self arrogance that I know best , I have conditioned my self to think at the first instance that what someone is saying is right and keep that as an hypothesis before proving it wrong or right (in degrees). But finally, the decision is mine and mine alone.
I have many stupid decisions in my life and some really bloody smart ones. But all that is hindsight and subjective. The bad ones might have saved me and the good ones might have been the ones that have stopped me from achieving more. The point being you never know. All I know that my supposed intelligence keeps improving all the time. And the calls I take keep getting better at the logic behind them – mind you I said that the logic behind the call improves; there is no evidence of the call actually improving. Who knows what the best solution is? Sometimes you see the mistake and you say yes – you improve, sometimes you don’t see it. the dangerous ones are the ones you get right and the logic fits correctly. You give yourself a pat on the back and congratulate your logic. Then you use it again, and again and again… your greatest strength becomes your weakness. You use it once too often and the world comes crashing on you. You have been exposed as a one trick pony.
There … now should you change or should you not. That is the question that I am facing. How much should I change? Things that I got right have got me here and the one instance it was used against me. This is getting a little complicated.
Virender Shewag was out in the last test playing the cut shot. One journalist asked him if that was his weakness. That he got out a few times playing it. To which the brilliant uncluttered mind of the batsman answered that the journalist also failed to see the number of runs that he has scored from there. He said that that had been his most productive shot from his arsenal. Should he cut it out?
Hahah. This is so not easy to answer. I guess the answer lies in learning from experiences. You keep at it, trying to think through the choices you made and analyse them. Slowly you might get better at them… not at making choice but making the logic behind the choices.
So can I attempt to sum total the entire post in one line – hmmm…. Let me think…..I think I got it…
life is a box of chocolates. You never know what you gonna get….
Thank you Forest.
But tell me one thing – aren’t the chocolates now coming in colour coded wrappers?
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