The Intangibles

In my office, we had a couple of young folks join the Onsite team. These guys were ‘Enthu-cutlets’, as we call them in Pune. Plus, they were joining the ‘Onsite’ team, and if you are at all acquainted with the Indian IT industry, you will know what a big thing that is! They came over with a will to achieve and transform the project between the 2 of them! They were intelligent, but inexperienced – and started working unsustainable schedules. Being an Operations team, we always have something that needs to be done yesterday – so that worked well for me to meet the Team’s SLAs! However, we could see the dangers that lurked – burnout.. apathy.. I would often have 1:1 sessions with each of them and make them aware of things like ‘work-life balance; but to no avail. They were all set to do or die!

So, the long hours and working weekends continued. I could see the strain showing, but when asked to slow down, my trusty steeds would obstinately refuse. Until – something changed. One of the guys arranged for his wife to fly over and join him here. She arrived and things were never the same again! He was still sincere, still hard-working, but now, he realized the importance of ‘time-boxing’ his work. He knew he had someone waiting for him at home, and he needed to finish on time. He started organizing his meetings and his tasks much better. He ensured he was out of office by 5 latest. He started prioritizing which meetings were necessary and which questions could be answered on email. To my mind – he became a much more valuable and mature team member. To my mind – this was an actual ‘Productivity Boost’. But this was not something I achieved as a manager. This was something that was enabled by a completely intangible human factor – technically outside of my team. For this person - it was his family, as it is for most. I know of companies which leverage outside-hometown postings to drive longer work hours for employees. If you don’t have a family waiting at home, you would definitely continue to work.. at office or at home. After all, how many movies can you watch? Or Netflix? When you think of it, it is simple – but rather Machiavellian, I fear!

And then it made me wonder – what are the other intangibles that affect how a team / individual team members work? Tell me what comes to your mind!

Nothing to lose

A long while ago I wrote on chain reactions – wondering about how in the most busy times, we are usually at our best creativity. Please note I use the word ‘creativity’ and not ‘productivity’. :-) in a similar observation of the contrariness of how we function, I put to you – that we invest our best efforts at the initiation and end of every engagement. This thought does not spring from the logical assumption that we would naturally put our best foot forward at the initiation of a new project / relationship; neither does it stem from the guess that we end things well to leave a better aftertaste. More than anything, I feel at the initiation and culmination of things – we have nothing to lose!

Imagine this scenario – you have joined a brand new group for a social project. You arrive with no preset notions, because you are meeting a host of new people! In addition, you are uninhibited because there is no past performance you will be pitted against – this is a blank slate! Anyone who has had to bear the brunt of their own past success, will know this is not an easy weight to carry! It is almost easier to carry off failure – because again, nothing to lose! Sallying forth without an opinion on your part or your companions’, you are already prepared to give of your best. Think of all the picnics you had with friends of friends, the teams you joined as the only outsider… wasn’t it always more fun? Weren’t you almost always a completely different and more driven individual? If you’ve already accepted you can’t dance, you rule the floor just by moving the way your body likes! No performance pressure.

Similarly, when I move towards the end of any engagement, I find myself more eager to converse, more enthusiastic to share. And I feel certain, this is at least in part due to the fact that I lose the fear of messing up and living with it. All of a sudden I know – even if things don’t quite work out, we’re already moving towards the end. This is a completely upside-down way of thinking, but more often than not we function this way! I’ve lost count of how many friendships I’ve formed in the last few days of a course, project, vacay…

The fear of living up to an image is a great burden. We put it upon ourselves. If we could carry on with the same uninhibited way even after building a reputation for ourselves, perhaps we would be able to invest with the same frenzy throughout. If we could care more about who we are, than what we portray – we could fly free. If we could truly understand the transience of what we do, what it says about us, and how it fades – we could focus on the actual doing. Then again – easier said than done.

Restless Routine

The Loss of Naivette

A few days back I found myself sifting some thoughts… and on an impulse put them on paper. I expect this is a part 1 and will go through much improvisation… but felt like sharing it for whatever it is worth in its first cut…

The Loss of Naivette

Life robs you of innocence. The shining faces and glowing hearts with which we set forth into this world soon become tarnished by the harsh, acidic realities of life. We give these realities the name of ‘Experience’; and what we lose in the soft warmth of innocence we gain in the hard, cold armor of self-preservation. This is the obvious; the not-so-obvious is the cyclical nature of this ‘evolution’ …a constant revolution if you may. It almost seems like we let loose a chain reaction every time we open ourselves to a new experience! In corollary, is it in order to reclaim our naïveté that we crave the novel?

The taking up of a new hobby to overcome heartbreak, the buying of an object to get over an intangible loss …a fresh start is almost always an attempt to feel once again the purity of hope, the squeaky cleanness of a fresh slate. A fresh page comes with no guarantees… but in opening it, in opening the doors for new people, we try to find the trust we lost in our old relationships. In finding a new place, we search for proof that our beliefs will be rewarded by a change of circumstances.