So Busy Yet So Relaxed

Reflections from the recent week long vacation:

I was extremely busy traveling back and forth and doing specifically nothing but adding on to my spiritual quotient.I liked the time I got to spend with my family - I cannot think of the last scene when the whole family sat down together for such a long time in the last 4 years.Thanks to the road trip - all of us were boxed together for almost 16 hours and that gave a good platform to talk/discuss/brainstorm.I keenly heard my dad talk and derived some parallels that are very well applicable to us ( at least to me). Read on:

Being Busy

I don't believe any of us can afford to be less busy than we are today, most of us are trying to get 30 hours worth out of the 24 hours a day.I am not a proponent of doing less - I believe it no more. I do support slowing down once a while but what if the nature of job,routine is so hectic that you will be busy most of the day and not very relaxed- then slowing down needs to happen atleast once a day :), the nature of work,job I am in is so extremely taxing and very stressful. The more you bite, the more +1 you have to chew and it is a vicious cycle. I have made some rules that I follow 99 % of the times. I define a slowing down time every day where I work on reducing the stress and recharging the body and mind- I call it the "The burn out zone" -I hit the floor- not the dance but the gym. Next 70 minutes I sweat crazy and it is such a feel good factor- you have to experience it. I have just finished 39 months of gym regime( nope I don't work on building muscles- not yet :) ). This phase truly burns my stress and probably some fat and helps me bounce back recharged. I observed the freshness and increased alertness of the brain and spike in "being in the moment", it helps me stay focused. Now once a while the world goes crazy and it has no dependency on my burn out zone, if required I just head back to my office in a war footing mode. If folks need me they know how to reach me- similarly if someone needs you badly they will reach out- just make sure you set the expectation right and let the concerned folks know your whereabouts. It helps.

I realized (may be you subconsciously did too, just did not acknowledge explicitly ) that you have be ready to handle any thing that comes your way - our mantra in transformations,client engagement and operations. It has a universal appeal just because you don't have a choice. When situation throws an unfolding scene at you either you have dealt with it or a similar one in the past if not this would the first one, as long as you are breathing (actively!) you will have so many firsts- I can guarantee you that. Just make sure you are following your lessons from the last first if applicable or make a note of the learning and pass them on. Doing a part of this will achieve an equilibrium of "Busy-Yet-Relaxed" so your brain can really think rather than just act. Strategy has a way of winning over tact !

There is something wrong if we are all getting along

After a long day of work and lot of nah saying/naggy calls - I realized (very well) that if we ( you and your teams) are getting along very well- then there are some serious checks you need to do. You might think what the heck? Read on..

Dissent is not necessarily a very comfortable factor to ride with. However if things are going forward with too much of consensus and not enough dissent then probably we are not pushing the tower from both sides well ( there by a leaning tower in progress). When the tough questions are not asked, some pots are not stirred- are we really trying to think through?- now don't get me wrong I am not saying you should fight with your direct team and extended team,agree to disagree and be extremely objective on what needs to be achieved. Do you as a leader foster a culture of dissent? You want enough people who can push back for the right reasons and question every little thing with out making assumptions, it does not hurt to ask a question- I ask way too many stupid questions and I don't fear asking them in any forum. If things get agreed right away - it tells me one thing very clearly - we as a team are failing to plan and thus planning to fail in near future. Now there will be those one offs that will fly by the first time around, they are exceptions rather than the norm. In a world of growing complexity, rational argument is more important than mere ranks and titles. Encouraging a culture of dissent where people are thoroughly encouraged to voice their opinion is a great thing. As my teams and I go through the maze, we get a sense of something missing or being wrong if we are getting along and making the same choices, it either tells me we are not spreading our spectrum of thought and there by covering all aspects or we are unlearning the culture of dissent.

Did you start fostering a culture of dissent yet?

All about fundamentals

During the recent 4-day trip, I had a great time to introspect on some thought provoking fundamentals.

We ( 3 of us- 2 fellow colleagues and I) made a reservation ahead of time expecting the floating crowd that would be at Arunachalam for the full moon day, due to the connectivity reasons obviously we got delayed and the lodge guy gave away the room conveniently ( Mind you, there is nothing wrong on what he did, he was trying to minimize his losses, if you will). So we had a good 5 minute "ethics" talk on how can you do this b.s and knowing their absolute organizational and management skills, I realized it was a criminal waste of time, every minute we are spending talking here, we are loosing another possible available room in some other hotel/lodge. Being a first timer there we had all good reasons to panic, we did not, we just walked around the corner and all lodges had a "no-vacancy" board (read it as no room available). We went to one lodge that was all booked. Spoke to him for few minutes and boom he opened a door for us and showed the next door marriage hall available and handed us over to another person, who walked us to a non-a/c room and it was pretty good. I asked him if they had an a/c room and he took us through and while we were taking a look at it, there was another party that wanted to take the a/c room, so we just grabbed the offer and went in. It was the only choice we had! After a week, as I recall the journey and enjoyed every moment in the divine company, it reminded me of some simple fundamentals that helped us during the whole trip. Here they are:

1. Patience is a virtue - holding on to our horses really helped, we could have very well yelled at the guy who did not honour our reservation, that did seem as an easy option, but we did not opt it rather took his help in getting pointed to the next available hop and that worked wonders.

2. It is better to be the solution than the problem/landscape. - When we were given a room that had 2- beds and a small walk way, we asked the guy for an additional bed sheet and pillow to define our solution. Nature/System has a way of helping people who are part of the solution not the problem.

3.Give a little respect
Respecting others no matter how big you are by money/muscle/status should be a given,
because you are famous or more successful than someone else, it doesn’t give you the right to treat them like shit. To give you an example: when you need to address the security/watch man/attendant - rather than addressing them with an excuse me or hello to address these mortals, checking their name and addressing them by their name always helps.

4. Emotions Affect Decisions During the recent trip we felt terrible to show up at the reservation counter and to learn "No-Room" deal, especially after 18 hours of journey by train and 2 buses. We hid our emotions and asked out the guy to help us and he was Ok to help and that got us a room. Emotions affect your decisions and they can burn the bridges very effectively. So don't make decisions wearing the emotional cap.

Honestly, You don't need much to be happy in life. the more you want or desire the more the rabbit hole takes you deep. Play it hard but remember there will be variables that are beyond your control. Give your best shot and never forget the fundamentals.

Sloppy Products
I was trying to make a booking for an event that I am planning to attend in bangalore. I filled in my details at Ayojak.com and entered the details and hit the submit on the payment gateway, it came back with "Server too busy- response" - I did not expect that from a payment gateway- (atleast please don't say that you are busy to take a revenue!) god damn design is completely flawed, now think of it this way - you are a sales guy and some one is willing to make the payment and you say "Dude- I am busy to take the money - hang on for a while" how would the customer feel? Ofcourse if it is a product like the apple's you don't mind waiting ( not to mention that you don't have an option BUT for waiting for the I-Products- we will discuss that in a different post of Apple's demand curve ever greening). I was not very pleased to see the screen. I filled in the details the second time and hit the submit- same again ( I did not expect the server too free up some computing power for my transaction, but hey in the current virtualization and on demand world, I don't remember seeing in a while, atleast on the commercial sites, [I do frequently see that in some torrent sites and other forums that run at the mercy of user donations and we know how miserly the individual gets when it comes to giving back to forums and sites that help us in sourcing digital content and provides a platform to get our questions answered]. The fourth time around I wanted to try my debit card option and went ahead, something definitely worked-the payment gateway charged my debit card, but again the handshake between the website and my bank's payment gateway did decide not to make a hand shake( for what ever reasons best known to them), I had no option but to call the Ayojak.com's website technical support. I was frustrated but did contain it and spoke very composed to the support guy on the other end, a pleasant voice said they will revert back to me in 30 minutes and now I am foot tapping to hear back from the Ayojak.com guys about my ticket confirmation- I am sure it would be positive. The whole experience of taking the ticketing,payment platforms online is to take away the waiting and to ease the customer with asynchronous transactions - if crappy products are forming parts of your solution ecosystem, then the whole experience is lame and customers will not necessarily have the patience to try it on and on, I wish the guys are tracking the translation rate from payment gateway failure to payment realization ( I guess it would be about 70% given the fact the folks want to attend the event rather than worry about the payment gateway - but If I am taking time to write this post and folks are taking time again and again to pump in their plastic details to buy the ticket, then I remember the payment gateway and website for the wrong reasons and that is already a lot of damage done.

Customer Delight

The online experience definitely is making one go away from the touch and feel experience we have experienced from the various commerce. One business that cannot completely have a revamp is the hotel/cuisine business. You can order the food and eat home but hey most of the time you don't want to miss the experience and the ambiance/whole ecosystem experience that you get while you are at the restaurant. This weekend I was at Mainland China Hyderabad. I was truly amazed with their customer pleasing skills. My folks were not sure of the order ( I was sure of my cocktail), to add to their complexity my preferred Veg style threw them another challenge of not very well known order. The steward came to their rescue( I outsourced the menu handling skills to the rest of folks while I continued to be lost sipping my Tom Collins). As I worked through my TC, my first round of ammunition showed up, it was spicy for my 3 year old and observing our state, the steward got us a bowl of butter fried noodles and my son loved it. Now, our whole experience could have been down the drain if my son was to starve. The 80 was my Son and his bon apetite - so the rest of the 20 - who ate more than 80% of the ordered food could have had a great experience. As our hunger kept us going, we landed in main course and to my delight - there was some great smelling veggy food. I just mentioned the guys about my brother's b'day and there was a small make-shift music band with a small cake- singing happy bday and presenting a small toy of main land china ( to the b'day boy). My son was happy to see the toy and boom there appeared another toy on the table. Now is this a big deal - well if you ask me - Oh Yeah- it is a big deal - the Main Land China guys delighted every one in the family now that cannot be coincidence- they very well know the art of enchantment. Good show boys and oh yeah, brother- happy birth day.