breathe easy kid

Yesterday Jispa wanted to talk to us regarding her education and the colleges she wanted to take admission in after finishing her 12^th here. As parents this has been a reasonably tough ordeal. Understanding which colleges are good and which ones are not so.  Which subjects she wants to take up and which subject she wants to graduate in.

This is obviously so new for us. The expenses are tremendous and could potentially destroy the family budget and a few years ago, I had no clue how I would ever be able to even afford something like this. We thought a lot about it, and I have had such swinging opinions on this. When the discussion first came up, I was clear. There would be an ROI attached to this. I would give / rather loan her the money and then she would have to return it back to her mom in some way over the years.

I was clear at the time. going abroad was no small thing. It was meant to be a big investment. I would only allow it if it was the big universities that I could name. I would only allow US. It would only be if she is take up a STEM stream or a medicine or something in which she would be able to rise and make a mark for herself and such. I wasn’t going to spend that money on small education.

Over these years we have grown much smarter about the process and the whole big decision. So when yesterday she asked us that she needs to speak to us, we were much prepared. Jasmine and I have had so many conversations on this. It helped us clear our minds and take a bit of a relaxed approach. Having a sensible conversation with her school counsellor helped as did taking to sensible people who have done the same before.

Yesterday while talking to her we laid out the rules. Number 1 – go study but study what you want to and what you feel most passionate about. If sports science is right now your passion, then sports science is what you should do. Go and study sports science. Don’t bother about your job, your pay, your prospects. Follow the love of your life. If today I had to live my life again, I would have studied History and Anthropology. I would have never done commerce and accounting. Whatst he worst that would happen? You will come back to India. You are better than 99.9% Indians and I cant vouch for that. You will do well for sure. Suppose you come here, you can work with lots of aspiring atheletes and work with them and take them to the next level. Sure the monies wont be that great and that you will have to live with your parents for a bit but who says that you would not be successful. Once Jasmine’s uncle gave me a piece of advice that I did not pay heed to but I now agree. Naukari – no kari. It means  - job – never do.

He said that he ate bananas for lunch but he refused to take up a job. He set up his own business. I think if I would have set up my own business, I surely would have been successful in whatever I would have done over a period of time. I could have been successful as a 22 year old starting off or a 30 year old or a 40 year old. I am betting that I will be a successful 50 year old man as well when I start. Right now, I have ideas buzzing but I am not pushing for them as I can’t afford it.

As a businessperson when I was young, I couldn’t fail and that meant I could not start. That’s why I started working on a job and a corporate career. For you, you don’t have that silly thing holding you back. You can start slow, do what you love. You don’t have to be independent. DO whatever you love and if you are smart you will be successful. It may take time, but you will get there soon enough. If its what you love you won’t bother.

What’s the worst that can happen. You come back to India and you do an MBA. You follow my footsteps and get a job in India. That’s also not so bad. You can start your life this way. Who cares. You just might have to stay in my house longer than you care for. That’s it. So when you are choosing your college – take the subject you want and see if they offer it. Go to the UK, Canada, US or Australia but please do what you want and try for the best school that will offer you that specialisation. After that – you hate your subject – change it. But please study what you want to and not what you have to. I don’t need your money. I need you to be happy.

That was quite a speech. Its amazing how my attitudes changed. I just want her to study well in the field that she chooses. I think that if you do that, you will enjoy the rest of your life. I was lucky I found marketing in my life later. I think I was good at this and I kind of love what I do. Its fun.

These days I am in charge of a sales team directly and I am trying to get them to run. Trying to understand the complexities and giving them the ammunition to attack. Its going to be fun.

This is when work doesn’t feel like work. It feels more fun. That keeps me going. I can take more shit around the work and the people that come with it. Because its fun and you can escape all that by working on more fun things to be done while working. That’s what I love.

Coming to which I came across a term called email apnea. It seems that people stop breathing or have shallow breaths when answering emails or texts. That’s right. This is a scientific thing. “Salzberg talked about email apnea (or screen apnea), a finding by Linda Stone, a writer, researcher, and former executive at Apple and Microsoft . Stone noticed that a majority of people (possibly eighty percent) unconsciously hold their breath, or breathe shallowly, when responding to email or texting.”

“…that holding one’s breath contributes to stress-related diseases and disturbs the body’s balance of oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitric oxide, which help keep the immune system strong, fight infection, and mediate inflammation. It can affect our well-being and our ability to work effectively. Shallow breathing can also trigger a sympathetic nervous system “fight or flight” response. If we stay in this state of emergency breathing and hyperarousal for extended periods of time, it can not only impact sleep, memory, and learning, but also exacerbate anxiety and depression.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-art-now/201411/email-apnea

This is serious. I see this in myself. I have to try and control this. This also happens while TEXTING. I think we need to breathe a lot more while working. I need to breathe while thinking, talking and working in general. Luckily I have this condition that any stress reflects in my lower back and it starts acting up. I have learnt to immediately start breathing and it goes away. Remember to breathe.

After the chat with Jispa, I was so happy and proud of what Jasmine and I had become as parents. We could finally allow Jispa’s wings to pop out unfettered. It was just beautiful. I could say what I could because we have had so many conversations on this. Quite bedside conversations on what on earth would we do? How we would go about this?

Only by having innumerable conversations, our heads turned from the transnational nature of what we were thinking to the more core learning nature of her education. Study for study sake. Because  you love the subject you should study more of it. That simple. The joy of learning.

This has helped us breathe more. And will help us breathe in easy in the future.

kneed some more love

Jispa had an assignment in English on Elon Musk and his 120 hour work week. Ya. It’s a bit of a tough thing to keep a 120 hour work week going. I work five days a week and I think I can manage 60 hours. I come to work by around 815 after dropping Jispa and then I get back home after 9. I think I am overdoing this but, right now there is a magnitude of issues hitting and it would take at least 2 – 3 years to sort some of the issues.

2 – 3 years. Yes. One of the things that I have learnt over a period of time is that work in large organizations take time. I have seen this company since 18 years. The calls taken 18 years ago come to haunt us afterwards. It takes that long to unravel the mess caused. With large heads sitting everywhere, it’s a time consuming effort to unravel the whole thing. You also need to hire right, put the wheels in motion and then you start seeing the efforts. Patience.

But thing is about work life balance. Work life balance. I don’t know about it. When I go home I try not to work. On weekends, I try and largely succeed to stay off my laptop and work. I figure that I spend so much time in office that I don’t need more time to give it. I was speaking to Jasmine and I was explaining the sexy work that I was doing in office and how I was pushing a young kid to do it. Even on weekends. My belief that at 43, I wish I had a chance to push myself at 23. Life would have been different. Hence that’s why I have figured that it best to push the kids at work. I now have little or no regret to see them working on weekends or late at night.

Someone asked me if I was a workaholic. I don’t know. The definition is “a person who compulsively works excessively hard and long hours.”  I think the key word is compulsively. I work hard and long hours but I don’t do it compulsively. I am happy to not work. Right now we have to achieve much and do much and that’s why I work as hard as I do. It definitely not for the simple joy of working that I do it. I would much rather not work so hard. I would rather go home, watch a movie, run around, swim, and play badminton… whatever.

Coming to which. At the start of the month I had the good fortune of going to Israel on a work trip. It’s a lovely country and the people have shown what a resolute bunch of people with no shared national identity but a shared religion and a sense of a shared history of persecution can do. Jews around the world have come and set up their land and lived together creating a thriving country from nothing more than a desert. As every Israeli will tell you, they sleep with their one eye open. They are hated by their neighbors who would like to finish them off in an instance. It’s a global melting pot. Especially thanks to Jerusalem, which is the holy place for Jews, Christians and Muslims, all together in one crazy tight part of the city.

This character of making the most from less and the cut throat competition coming in from immigrants all over the world, make Israel a culture you can only learn from. They always want to make the most from the least. Their products are top class thanks to their legendary investments in technology and the fact that they don’t have enough people or resources forces them to design products that are simple to implement and self-serving. It’s difficult to explain in terms of tech but the simplest example of this is in irrigation. They are country who invented drip irrigation. A perfect example of irrigation technique that uses less water and people for the maximum impact.

I went running there, every morning. I travel very badly when I am without family. I sleep late, I laze in bed and just generally I am a grumpy guy. So I decided that with my new found passion for running, I should pack my running shoes and kit and go running there every day. We were staying next to the beach promenade and that would definitely be an added reason to go running every day. So I did go running religiously. It was great run. Beach side, water points along the way. Lots of open gyms. Everyone running there. It was awesome. I saw a lot of locals playing beach volleyball on the nets laid out for the people. It was the perfect recipe for disaster.

In the evening after a lovely swim in the Mediterranean Sea (bucket list tick) while passing the beach, I couldn’t help but notice some locals goofing around. We started playing with them. They were playing volleyball but like football volley ball.  The kid came out in me and the bucket list number 2 kicked in. We joined in and a few stunts later, I fell in pain. I have been taking care of my right knee for so many years. It keeps getting dislocated and I keep putting it back. This time around, while attempting, god know what, my right knee gave in. Oh freak. It didn’t dislocate but it did twist enough to give me problems. It went for the rest of the trip.

When I was back in office, I was gently trying to kick some kid in office when my knee buckled in again and I feel to the floor. It was time to go to the orthopedic surgeon. An x-ray and an MRI later, the verdict is out. I have severe ACL tear. In both knees. Which means surgery, one by one in both knees. Okay. That is fun. It also means being out of action for almost a year from most sports. Oh shit. In way I was / am really disappointed. I was doing great. I had restarted running and I was doing 6 to 8 kms at one stretch without too much effort. I could have gone on and on for long. But as Jispa was counselling me “don’t regret it. You did go out in style.” Ya. I sure did. Now what. Well surgery will follow. They supposedly take my tendon and stretch it to become a ligament or something. It’s a minimal invasive surgery. Also there is the matter of a meniscus tear in the right knee that requires shaving off. Sigh.

I have always looked at the bright side of things and while at it, I thing this knee thing was a blessing in disguise. I had so far refused to see the orthopedic. It turn out that if I don’t get this fixed now, I might have needed knee replacement at 55. That would have been pretty painful I guess. At 55!

On another note. We have been enjoying our new home quite well. We seem to be lazing around at home most holidays. Stepping out for a quick meal nearby and watching Netflix. It’s a neat big house that I might have dreamed off, all my life. Neat and tight. The big TV in the hall also seems perfect, as we lounge around and watch Netflix and Amazon Prime. And the best part – we have kabaddi season starting soon.

Kabaddi is the thing that we family bond over. Especially when we understand the sport from close quarters and get some inside dope. Fitness has come to kabaddi and we now are seeing the benefits of this in the players as they get better. It has been a lucky break for me in my life. Things that come to you just because you are open to new experiences and learnings.

how's work doing?

There was a saying I read once. I think it was attributed to a US president, which basically said – a chance to work hard at work worth doing. I have loved this form the moment I read it. It’s perfect and in many ways it sums up my life approach to work. Give me meaningful work and then get out of the way. In fact – don’t give me any work. Allow me to work, I will find meaning, reach your objectives and yes – stay out of the way. That’s what I love doing. That drives me to work harder and harder and put long hours. Meaningful work and chance to make a difference to the company and the people around me.

It’s very difficult to define meaningful work. Different people would have different meaning to take from it. I also don’t know what really meaningful work is. The bare minimum is that I would need to find meaning is that I get to learn something interesting from it. Something new every day! That’s the fun bit. What’s the point of doing something same every day. I can’t handle that. When I am teaching I am sure I am doing a great job and helping the kids learn, but that’s not enough. What I really want is to teach new things what I have learnt or seen. New stuff. So teaching is as much about me as it is about the kids. Possibly it’s more about me than anything else.

Work is also I guess therefore more about me. I don’t care so much about the firm and the people in that sense. I know that with my standards of work are high enough for the firm to hugely benefit from it. But that is not the point of it. How can I wake up every day and say, today I will make my promoter happy or richer. He is already a billionaire many times over. That’s not the job is to build what I love and what I am proud of. An amazing practice and an amazing team to run that.

Which comes to the team. I can drive mu kids up the wall on doing good work. I refuse to be satisfied with their work or mine. I quietly admit to them (at times) that their work is awesome but more than anything, I want to always push the work to new boundaries and that they expand themselves in the bargain. Such expansion is not cheap. It will suck their lives, their self-worth, their egos, their commitment and their selves. But it will build a stronger them. A them, that is far more resilient and powerful and smart.

Right now also I am driving my kids’ nuts at work. The sharp ones are getting that the learning curve is immense and that they have to stay on top of it. They are working like crazy. They will reap the benefits of this for years to come. Some just don’t get it. They are not destined to learn more. They are destined to remain where they are and they will rot in there chubby holes. Learn more, work more. Bring boundless energy to work in the morning knowing that you are making a difference to yourselves and to your company and that you are building for the future. This learning is something that your family won’t understand or even remotely appreciate.

I remember that as a young kid, my wife and mother too wanted me to come home early. Later on, I remember talking to Jasmine and explaining to her that if I have to learn and do more, I have to work hard when I have the chance to. It’s not for anybody else or anything special, but it’s for me and my future. If I don’t push myself I don’t learn and if I don’t learn I don’t have a future. Plus, forget all the future, so many times, I don’t need a future… it’s just the present that matter in so many cases. A real chance to work hard. Who is going to argue with that? It adds meaning to my life.

So no I am not a workaholic. I won’t work for a career so much or for work itself. But I am a meanginoholic. I work for meaning and as long as I get meaning I will work. I teach because it had meaning. I play badminton because I find meaning in it. So also for running or swimming. Find meaning and go after it.

Jasmine now understands. She know that work is why we are where we are. The payoffs are great and awesome. Of course she wants more of me at home (I hope). But she realizes that work place is a treadmill on which you run.  I don’t go home tired and worried. Now I am past that. I go back happy that I have worked hard and learnt a lot and taught a lot. That’s important.

Is that worth dying for? I don’t know but absence of meaning is not worth living for. I am trying to find my fitness and I am trying to work towards my goals. I want to lose a few kilos, get leaner, run more and see what else I can do. I want to sleep well and manage that as well. I want to eat well. I am trying to find balance in all this. It’s a good thing. I am loving it.

In the middle of all this, I have not found the time to blog. That is something I have to do as well. Let’s see how I manage this as well. This blog has meaning for me even if Jispa never ever reads it. It has deep meaning for me.

happiness is ...

A good friend of mine messaged me to ask me if I was fine. If I was happy. I didn’t seem happy enough. Was something wrong?

These are difficult questions to answer. Are you happy? The frank answer is I don’t know. Instinctively – yes I am happy. My home is just set up. Yesterday I sat till late on my desk and I was reading on the laptop about Amazon and its growth. I was reading random things. I paid some bills as well and I ordered stuff on Amazon. I felt happy and content that I was there doing my bit.

But work takes up a large part of my awake hours. I realize that work is a bit of a bummer. The team is just not ready and is completely wasted. I would have to work with them to push them, improve them and make them come up to mark on a whole host of things. I have to coordinate and play games with so many people to get things going. There are people in the firm who are stuck in a time warp. They refuse to learn and refuse to improve. They are just there, stuck. They don’t even want others to improve. I don’t understand how ego can come in the way of making more money for the firm as a whole. They block everything and every move.

Now that I think over it I see this organization evolve over the last 18 years. Weakness exhibited by the management 18 years ago has snowballed into a large issue and now these monsters have been dragons of epic proportions. Slowly they become even more difficult to dislodge and take the whole business down with them. Weak managers who want to control only their immediate balance sheet try not to upset the apple cart too much. These who manage one year at a time, hiding the problem get rewarded and move to the top. These are managers who do no wrong. They also do no right.

But these are ones who have built this massive organization. Possibly it was an era where you did not need to compete like crazy. You needed just to not do too much hara-kiri and stay alive. Today when you see, the old organizations in the industry are built on edifices of rust and so weak at the roots. One needs to change things and shake them up a bit for them to move and compete in this bold new world.

In all this stress, I am also trying not to take too much stress. I want to sleep at night, not get my blood to boil or increase or decrease my pressure. I want to simply live and manage. Like the same wise friend of mine explained to me 6 months ago when I said I want a boring job “no jaimit, you won’t work in a boring job. You will take a boring job and then you will attack it and make it work and change things there as well. No jaimit, people like you don’t rest”. This was told to me not only by this friend by a few more friends.

Its right I guess. We have the best of intentions but our friends know us more than anything else. This is the thing about friends. So yes – my friend did guess it right. I am the happiest. Possibly I am a grumpy old troll these days. And some other good friends who care have been telling me about it. I guess I have been on the edge. I need to just chill and relax. Make things happy around me. Make myself happy. Manage my happiness quotient.

Of course I have to push for change. Hard push, but never at the cost of screwing my own happiness. That’s a really tough thing to do. Push for change as hard as you can and then enjoy the process and the failures that it will inevitably bring you. Hah! Chalo… it’s a learning of a different order. Be happy be pushy and be content.

These are too many opposites reconciling.

Let’s talk some happy things – I have grown an ugly thick bushy burly moustache. My wife hates it. And I am enjoying it no end.  I always wanted a thick moustache with a short crop hairdo. Now that I don’t have too much hair itself, the contrast is amazing. I think I am loving my old man, grey look. Here you decide.

colossal waste of everything

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon introduced a number of interesting policies at Amazon. One of the things he said was the two pizza team rule. This is so dam interesting. He said teams must not be greater than what two pizzas cannot feed. So, in many ways the team size is restricted to 5 -7 heads. This is right.

We went to an offsite over the week end. One of the things that I will do when I ever become the head of a business, is that I will ban off sites. First things first, why should we need to go off location to discuss and have ‘strategic’ discussions. In an off site you take half the company along with you. You seat them in a conference room and then sit to discuss some company strategic goals. Half the jokers in the conference room are bored, half don’t understand anything, half don’t want to give opinion, half don’t care, half don’t get it, half only want to give their opinion, half think the world is wrong. In case you are wondering, these are not mutually exclusive and hence you can have so many halves. In the end, no one really does anything big and no real decisions are taken and almost every delivery is forgotten.

My preference for all these decisions are simple. They should be taken in a small room with a small number of people who actually matter and who are smart enough to add value. I just can’t handle an extra bunch of crowd in a room.

I HATE OFF SITES.

The only official off site that I think ever helped was once where we went on a training program which had all of us playing games all day. We went to a simplistic place with basic facilities where they made us play all sorts of games out doors. These were interesting games, obstacle courses and physical and mental games. We were there for two days and thanks to the plethora of games, the teams kept rotating and you got to interact with people from all the departments. That is one off site format that I agree with. What’s the point of being off site, if all you are going to do is be indoors? Strategy can be done within the four walls of the office. Bonding can be better effected outside the confines of office and by doing all sorts of fun games. That’s the fun thing to do. Still there is no guarantee of team play or anything, but at least the team feels nice for a few days afterwards and that is something to build on.

Over the years, I have learnt that my instincts are better than anything else. Too many people do too many things and of all things they are guilty of, is trying too much. Work and office is simple. The principals are simple, you learn from your experience and you try and stop making mistakes that you were subjected to by your bosses.

I remember the first off site I ever went for. This was at Sariska wild life sanctuary. Here my big memory was the sales head, taking the case of the Area Sales Manager while he was making a presentation to everyone. It was designed and pre-decided to publicly humiliate him. The best part of all this is that the ASM was so used to this being a sales system forever, that it did not even hurt him. He was just standing there. Today was his day, next year it would be somebody else’s turn. What a joke.

That’s why the simple wisdom of Jeff Bezos trumps everything else. Small teams solving real problems and taking the firm forward, one problem at a time. Most of the time, we simply get people in an offsite, just so that people don’t feel bad.

At my earlier firm, when the money was good and flowing, I have been to off sites to Turkey, HongKong, Singapore and Srilanka in addition to countless Indian destinations. My best story on this is that I actually flew to London in business class to attend a 2 hour useless meeting on strategy. Like really! I wasn’t complaining. I felt like I had arrived in life. I loved the business clas travel and I loved hanging around in London for a couple of days as if it’s a regular cool thing, I wore my woolen suits and I showered at the Business class lounge at Heathrow on arrival before going for my meeting. Why should I complain?

The best is that all of this came to a sudden halt post 2009 when the financial crisis hit the world and money dried up. Off sites dried up and all useless spend was frowned upon. Forget hotels, now we were staying in guest houses, if we did have to travel. Business class became restricted to only the upper echelons of power and for the rest travel became only on an “if and must” basis.

Now these excesses are going to crop up again. I will try and resist but it’s going to be impossible. One of the reasons it had climbed dizzying heights in my previous company was the simple factor of having a company-wide newsletter. Every group company / division was tasked once a quarter to report some interesting achievements of the business and the only thing that everyone reported was the amazing offsite they had. Everyone would read this and go to their boss and ask for an offsite themselves and since they were doing better than that division, they deserved a better location. Slowly slowly, these locations started going to 5 stars, exotic places and then, they started to reach abroad. Once that happens, all hell breaks loose. The boss is depicted as a loser for not being able to swing something exotic enough and he was forced to get something interesting so as to retain / stamp his authority on the team. What crap. Institutions are full of people; people are full of ego. A multitude of ego combing together create a mad house where anything is possible. I am so done with these jokers. But I also know that my rant is the version of the stove calling the kettle black.

So yes, off sites are still the worst thing in the world and I hate them to the core. They are a waste of money, time and bandwidth. BAN THEM.

belong

Its been three days at the new office for me now. The first day was very tough. I spent the day battling a sense of depression. It come from various sources – a stong missing of my old team and the new office which somehow doent know how to welcome a new person. I remember the last time I was at a new place. It was 11 years ago. My first interaction with my new team was an offsite. Here I remember feeling like shit and alone and not knowing whats going to happen. I did not know if I could belong here.

This place was also a nightmare on the first day. When my old team celebrated a birthday at office and sent me the photo, I was completely upset. Smashing a cake on everyone at a birthday was my thing. By the time I left it was a ritual for everyone to smash a cake on everyone and then take a selfie with all the constituents. This time I was not in photo and instead there was my replacement. That was not fair.

I returned home in a bad mood and was not sure what I wanted from life. It carried on till the next day morning and then I did not have time to sulk as I had one meeting afetr another. Suddenly after the second meeting – shit changed. Something happened and I got my groove back. I got out of the meeting and started taking charge of the numbers. I got the relevant people in the teama nd started barking orders left right and centre, I started teaching how the numbers must reflect, started attacking the existing way of doing things, called the team one by one and started talking to them. I spoke to each one of them and asked them what they were doing what they wanted to do in life. I started talking to some of founders and asked them what they wanted to do in their streams of business. Then I started cracking the whip on everything I could see.

Now I am in control, now I am back and suddenly nothing is new to me.

Yesterday I was telling Jasmine, All it needed was me to believe in myself and my abilities. The first day was just an abberation. Once I believed in myself and knew that I belong here, everything else just fit into place. I asked the right questions and got the right direction. I pushed for what I wanted and the people all fell in line.

Of course right now, the guys must be wondering what kind of a mad man they have as a boss. This guys comes in at 8 am and then leave a little earlier than 8 pm. Constantly pushing, showing agression and urging them on while laughing, cracking jokes and suddely calling a spade a spade.

Of course I have matured in the 11 years. With more than 17 years of work experience, I know how to push the bar on work to be done. The first day as I said was an aberration, it was an important transition day. The second day was even more important – now I know that I can and that’s easy. Just trust your instincts. Like the first day for a  new batsman on forign soil for the first time in a test match. You prod, you poke, you sulk, you move around. You get a few overs in, you possiblyget out and you don’t know what hit you.

When you come back for the second innings or the next day, you have had time to reflect and to look back at yourself. Then you tell yourself to just chuck it and trust yourself, and enjoy your time. The first ball hits the bat and then things fall in place. When I played cricket I have opened many times. I always liked to go to the non striker first. It allows you to get a feel of the match. I also always liked to listen toteh sound of the first time the ball hits the bat. I hate to get out without even touching the ball with the bat. Once I feel that, I know I can bat and then I know I belong and then its on form there.

I started here by the numbers and the way we looked at them. I got my team to start working on them. To start analysing them in a way that made sense to everyone who needed to analyse them. Things started falling in place from then on. Analysis is something that I have always been good at. Getting numbers in a format that aided decisions is extremely important but a few get it right. I cant understand why it would be so difficult, but now I have had years of training on it.

So yes, the first ball was outside the off stumo which I left. The next ball was on the stump which I defended firmly and the ball raced away between covers to the boundary line. I belong.

long good bye

On the 31st of last month, I closed a huge innings of my life. I resigned finally from the Kotak Group and searched for my passions elsewhere. This was a really difficult decision to make. I knew I had to do what I had to do. The digital industry was booming and I couldn’t stay out of this for a long time. I had to experience and understand digital in its entirety and had to take the plunge.

The difficult thing was the team and the fact that I had to leave a team, which I had so painstakingly built. Everyone barring two, were people that I had hired and trained. The two were from before but I had trained and groomed them as well. It was an emotional thing more than anything else.

There was a three-month notice which I had to serve. This was a really weird period with me not knowing what was really expected of me. It was a tough phase emotionally and mentally. At the end of which my team got really emotional. Towards the end – I was dreading the last day. I think others were as well. Everyone knew it was going to become tough and emotional and people would cry. No one really wanted to cry openly and neither did I want to nor did I want anyone else to. Normally when people leave, we do a speech session where each one gives a short talk on the person leaving and the person leaving gives one talk on every individual. That is the surest way to kill you emotionally. So tactically I think everyone agreed that this was something we were not going to do. So we assembled and had some coffee and then I gave a speech to all. I gave my last words of advice and a brief about what I thought I faced at the firm and the obstacles and the high points. I gave advice that I thought was relevant for them. And I left it at that. And then I let it go. Some were teary eyed and some went to the loo and cried and some just hugged.

Also I tried to write something that they would read at rest and get a sense of what I thought and what my philosophy was. It was my feeble attempt at a legacy!

Here it is

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Hi Guys

I have spent the last 5 years trying to build the marketing function in the middle of the digital landscape. The truth as I saw it was very apparent. Mass media as we understood it as marketers is dying. The new digital landscape is allowing for a large range of options that we were not available for the marketer. The times have changed. While it is easy to deride the old ad ring in the new, not everything we learnt in the past is to thrown out. The fundamental principals of marketing remain steadfast.

Understanding customers, gaining insight and solving unfulfilled needs uniquely is still very much in fashion and I think it will remain in fashion for a long time to come. Yes Kotler and all the gurus will be even more relevant. The digital landscape allows the marketer to micro target and follow a customer through many of his life stages and the brand can stay relevant and push for an appropriate call to action at each of the stages. Brands with deep understanding and intellect will be able to build even stronger bridges with their customers. Digital allows for this – it encourages it. the success you see around you is from those companies who have managed to keep this connect very sharp and alive across the life cycle.

More math and more tech will surely come in. Does that mean that creative will die?  On the contrary creative will see a reinissance like never before. With a spectrum of moods and million ways to reach, what will break the clutter? Mere relevance is not going to be enough. Creative will come in. And the best part – creative will get instant validation of whether it works or not.

The good old days of planning your year with one big campaign will go. If tech development can get Agile, marketing will as well. Marketing will release in versions. There will be wave of marketing campaigns. These will run parallel and sequential to each other.  There will be chaos – organized and unorganized. The marketing manager will have to live with ambiguity. In fact the fuzziness of campaigns will have to be built in and accounted for.

It’s not that wastage will stop. Waste will always be there but this will be in the form of exhaust that can be analysed. This will lead to further efficiencies to be built in. Campaigns will be designed for testing and collection of feedback and data will decide which one will run its course.

These are what I see playing out in marketing. These are forces that I have learnt will shape marketing for time to come. But the greatest mystery I have tried my best to solve is the mystery of motivation of man! This has taken me most of my adult years and I don’t think have come too close to cracking it. Many different incidents and experiences have shaped my thinking. When I first started my work life my limited interaction with leading people was the stuff I did in college – I was the secretary of a few societies. But clearly I wasn’t that good at it. Later on when I started work, I was a disaster as I took a lot of time to understand that people have various different motivations and many different things that make them tick or not… Understanding this has taken up most of my time.

The challenge here is also not the people per se. The challenge I felt at start was simple – where does the person end and where does the firm start. Who is more important? The firm or the person. What if they are at cross purposes to each other? Whom should I develop first? Whose interest is paramount in daily interactions or even at a strategic view point?

It then dawned upon me that the answer was simple – it’s the people. I got upon this in a simple way – people were in front of me all the time. The firm was still two steps away. Firms are more complex and very weird. They designed for profit maximization. People aren’t generally built that way. They respond to stimuli and they tend to reciprocate. You get feedback over a period of time.

People are what make an organization and people are what take it forward. People are capable of going beyond what you thought was possible. People are ones executing things for you. And people need to be trained or pushed at best. They need to go beyond what they think is possible by them. All they need is someone to trust them and believe in them. Surely some funny characters come along. These don’t believe you or are skeptical of everything they see or hear that doesn’t fit their world view. My aim was to simply take people who were positive, wanted to do good and helped them do good. And people grow, invariably they grow by doing good things for the firm and then the organization grows along. The organisation growth is the byproduct of people pushing the paradigms of growth and not the other way around.

Hence this philosophy shaped my work life. Bet on people, train people, push people. This is reality as I see it. Push them hard. Those who don’t want to be pushed will move aside. Those want to be pushed will do good things for themselves and others. They take the team forward as well because at the end… everyone wants to do well.

This has been deeply enriching and rewarding for me – and of course deeply frustrating as well. But in the end as you stack up all the pros and cons – I realized this is the way I like to lead my life. By putting faith in people. Always having time for them and always being there to guide them. It works weirdly within the organization as the rest find the camaraderie developed uneasy. They throw stones, call names and express disbelief. They laugh at the times it fails – which invariably it will in isolated instances. But on the whole, it creates something that many aspire to but few actually do.

These are my big take aways or leave behinds.

Things around you will change – at a pace slower than what you predict but will come and hit you faster than you realize it. So keep learning all the time.

You are nothing without people around you. Keep them as your priority all the time. Push them forward, propel them but don’t hang on to them. So keep teaching all the time.

This is my distillation of my life. All of you have contributed in many ways to this. Some by your mistakes and some by your advice and some by your behavior or attitude. But the one I treasure the most is what you taught me by your love. You show it different ways and I treasure it so much. this is what I carry on as confidence when I move on. That  - I may piss off people, some may hate me, but some – some I think genuinely love me.

All I hope is not that we keep in touch. Life is fast and busy and many forces push us away. If we are in touch then great and if not then great. But if you catch me at a mall, or at a movie or anywhere just loitering about – I hope you will shout out to me or at the very least look at your friend or kid or anyone with you and point out to me and say – you know that guy – he is Jaimit – I worked with him and I learnt a lot.

Because honestly with all of you – I learnt a lot!