Memoirs in the Making
On a chilly January morning, I met Arunabha Ghose and Krishnendu Sengupta, in that order. They wanted me on board. It was an SOS. They wanted someone to perform what Hercules had done eons ago – clean up the Aegean Stable that goes by the name Documentation – Connectiva. Their choice – yours truly. Ex-Accenture, Ex-Ushacomm, Ex-Presidency, Ex-St. Josephs, Ex-et al. None of them were sure I could do much. But they took a shot in the dark. It was a move borne out of desperation. The time – 30 days. The mandate – put a derailed locomotive back on track.
I was unsure myself. I did not know what to expect. I have experience of situations where any change in the status quo is viewed with suspicion, and new leaders are received with hostility. I thought I will give it a shot, and blissfully sink back to my world of impersonal freelance.
I met the people – the team. I was surprised pleasantly to find a bunch of talented youngsters yearning to declare to the world they deserve a place under the Sun. They were tired of the brickbats, but were yet infused with the undaunted spirit of the youth which bounces back from impossible situations. They were a hurt lot, both from within the team and from without. They were bruised, battered, shorn of self-respect; but they were still-loving, still trusting, still youthful. Most importantly, they welcomed me with a disarming warmth that told me we were family. That’s when I decided I would be attempting something far more noble than what my corporate mandate was – I would be lifting people’s lives.
I was involved initially in my tenure as an outsider, with a consultant’s hat on, to streamline processes of management and planning, and to prepare vision documents. On the 22nd evening I was invested with a new responsibility – being the single point contact for deliverables aimed at 25th – 29th January. It was pretty simple arithmetic. The time = 4 working days; The deliverable = unknown number of documents (later turned out to be 32); My domain/product knowledge = zilch.
I took up the challenge because by that time the team members were my brothers and sisters, and I was their ubiquitous, ever-avuncular Jayanta da. I knew what they were capable of. I had faith on them as they had on me.
We are presently two days away from the deadline. We have frozen the requirement. We have cleaned the bottlenecks. We have a plan in place, shared transparently with all team members, and met it steadfastly at each step. We have a frail girl voluntarily coming to work from Barrackpore, an one hour train-ride away, on a national holiday. We have a girl with an ailing mother and an infant at home, zipping away till 9:30 pm each night smilingly. We have a resident guru silently canceling his long overdue honeymoon and spending his time, quoting him, “eating, drinking, living documentation”. We have a proverbial jumping jack and declared “black sheep” of the team not leaving his seat for hours on end – having heartburn because the late night car drop came 10 minutes too early for him to close his daily deliverable target. We have a shy girl with the self-imposed “outsider” tag chasing down contact points for Knowledge Transfer till they relent out of her sheer perseverance.
In a word, my friends, we have “ownership” in the team.
Everybody has noticed it. It is being discussed in hushed whispers in closed huddles across the organization that there is something about the droopy documentation team that has changed. Where there was rubber, there is now steel. Where there was meekness, there is now pluck. Where there was despondence, there is now hope.
What changed? What gives?
I can take an informed guess. It is the most socially acceptable four-letter word the world has ever known. It is, umm, shall I say that in the ruthless corporate, jargon-banter environment? Well, let’s face it – it is L-O-V-E.
Unfashionable, the cynics would say. Naïve, the management maestros point out. Quite unoriginal, the gasbags with verbal gimmickry who make wondrous presentations in hushed boardrooms on the other side of the globe, would contend. But honestly, if the world is still moving on its slightly tilted axis, it is only because love still gets you the most value for investment. But it has to be uncompromising, relentless, selfless, unflinching and unconditional. You can’t give up on love, as much as you can give up on your children. Try it at home, on the streets or at the workplace. You’ll know what I mean.
The team responded to love as an infant does. An infant always knows whom to trust unwaveringly. The team gathered around me and reciprocated the love I had for them, many times over. They were not essentially bad, as they were made out to be. They were radar-less and unloved. With love, with nurture, the buds bloomed in an untimely spring. Once the petals were out and the fragrance was air-borne, no hail could stop them. They lost their shackles – micro-management was out. But they were stuck to their workstations and churned out deliverables to glory, deep into the chilly nights. They had unearthed something deep inside themselves which is far more primeval and compelling than what any financial reward or job insecurity can achieve – pride in the self.
They worked out of love and they worked out of pride. Few armies in the world can be beaten, if they are infused with these two adrenaline rushers. The Azad Hind Fauz lost the battle, but they were never beaten. Saurav’s Team India lost the world cup final, but their spirit remains unchallenged in the arena of sports. This team might falter, but now they have developed a self propulsion that will make them rise from the ashes.
Which management school teaches these concepts? Well, I call it my Mother’s School of Management. As a seven year old in my second grade, I had only red in my report cards. I was born with bad eyes, genetic myopia they call it, and could not see the board unless I stood next to it. I was tall for my class, so I was relegated to the back benches. You could say I was batting blind. My dad was a super achiever in all senses of the term, and saw his son as a projection of his success story. He verbally castrated me, disowning me. He was in HR, what was then called Personnel Management in the Industrial sector. where he was a Director – Personnel. “Your Daddy is a Big Man” – people told poor tiny near-blind me. I was dismissed from his presence. I see that incident as the youngest sacking based on performance. I was retrenched from my father’s esteem. Well, I was not without a “job” for too long. I got hired real soon! My mom took me in – unconditionally. She said those magic words in that magic October eve, two days before my 8th birthday – “Son, I’ll love you irrespective of what you do or don’t do. But don’t give up before you’ve given it your best shot.”
I was too young then, to know the meaning of pride or shame or confidence. But I responded to raw love – love of a mother for her son. I put everything into it, cajoling my teacher to allow me a front row seat – not because I wanted my studies to catapult me to be a BIG MAN like my Baba was. Far from that. I just wanted my Ma to be happy. I was desperate to reciprocate the love she gave me. The only currency I had for payback was my report card. I came first in the final term, and was promoted. My father was the first to be at the parent teacher meet, and he preened at me. Oh, I made him so proud, he said, just being the Leo he was. My mother had those placid, lustrous Virgo eyes and she looked at me from a distance, far from the accolades she always despised. She had neither pride nor disdain in her eyes – she had love. She could not bring herself to either understand the teacher’s praise or engage in a conversation – for she did not have much English. She needn’t bother, for she was unconcerned at my achievement – she was happy that I tried. Till this day, and she is 75 now, she does not claim any credit for her son’s turnaround. She just loves me unconditionally in whatever I do or don’t do. She just wants me to maximize my potential, that I always give a cent percent. I almost never disappoint her. Not reciprocating her faith in me is too big a price to pay.
A celebrated “mother” for whom I worked as a part-time-volunteer for 3 years, an European nun by the name of Mother Teresa, once said at a prayer meeting I attended at Mother House, AJC Bose Road – “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” How can I forget the twisted arms of Bapi the Leper at Prem Dan (Park Circus) reaching out eagerly to touch me, his “brother”? How can I forget the 6 year old Mira the Orphan at Sishu Bhavan (AJC Bose Road) bawling as I wept when she was being adopted by a childless European couple – for all the family she ever knew was me, her “uncle”. The school for children of prostitutes at St. Georges (Bowbazar) compound floor where I taught from my class 9th to my 3rd year in college, the platform children at Sealdah station studying at Sister Cyril’s platform school – all of them filled me up with love – the unconditional love of a child for the parent, of a mother for the off spring.
What will a corporate hot spot achieve for me? It is zilch when I can turn back 20 years from now and know that I loved and was loved – without reservations. Let us not hanker for appraisals and appreciation in quantifiable entities. Let us not keep ourselves finite to the possibilities of turning out good documents or earning a fat pay check. Let us spread our wings and soar, a la Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, as we are involved in an Endeavour of far greater import than the cumulative rewards the world’s riches can bestow upon us – we are fostering human relationships. We are reaching out and touching lives. We shall never say the bottle is half empty. For us, the bottle is always half filled. We will never say you can’t. we will say, you can if you try hard enough. We will trust and not back-bite. We will perform and not play politics. We will stand up for each other and be counted.
I will soon move on as my life meanders through an erratic path, according to a Divine Strategem. But I leave behind a bunch of spirited young souls, now motivated and strong, maddened by love, who will state at each of their life’s bottlenecks, “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
Never forget. All things good and lasting are taught by our mothers. I call it Mother’s School of Management. You don’t have an admission test to enroll.
With love,
Jayanta Ray
1.15 am, 28th Jan, 2010.
On a chilly January morning, I met Arunabha Ghose and Krishnendu Sengupta, in that order. They wanted me on board. It was an SOS. They wanted someone to perform what Hercules had done eons ago – clean up the Aegean Stable that goes by the name Documentation – Connectiva. Their choice – yours truly. Ex-Accenture, Ex-Ushacomm, Ex-Presidency, Ex-St. Josephs, Ex-et al. None of them were sure I could do much. But they took a shot in the dark. It was a move borne out of desperation. The time – 30 days. The mandate – put a derailed locomotive back on track.
I was unsure myself. I did not know what to expect. I have experience of situations where any change in the status quo is viewed with suspicion, and new leaders are received with hostility. I thought I will give it a shot, and blissfully sink back to my world of impersonal freelance.
I met the people – the team. I was surprised pleasantly to find a bunch of talented youngsters yearning to declare to the world they deserve a place under the Sun. They were tired of the brickbats, but were yet infused with the undaunted spirit of the youth which bounces back from impossible situations. They were a hurt lot, both from within the team and from without. They were bruised, battered, shorn of self-respect; but they were still-loving, still trusting, still youthful. Most importantly, they welcomed me with a disarming warmth that told me we were family. That’s when I decided I would be attempting something far more noble than what my corporate mandate was – I would be lifting people’s lives.
I was involved initially in my tenure as an outsider, with a consultant’s hat on, to streamline processes of management and planning, and to prepare vision documents. On the 22nd evening I was invested with a new responsibility – being the single point contact for deliverables aimed at 25th – 29th January. It was pretty simple arithmetic. The time = 4 working days; The deliverable = unknown number of documents (later turned out to be 32); My domain/product knowledge = zilch.
I took up the challenge because by that time the team members were my brothers and sisters, and I was their ubiquitous, ever-avuncular Jayanta da. I knew what they were capable of. I had faith on them as they had on me.
We are presently two days away from the deadline. We have frozen the requirement. We have cleaned the bottlenecks. We have a plan in place, shared transparently with all team members, and met it steadfastly at each step. We have a frail girl voluntarily coming to work from Barrackpore, an one hour train-ride away, on a national holiday. We have a girl with an ailing mother and an infant at home, zipping away till 9:30 pm each night smilingly. We have a resident guru silently canceling his long overdue honeymoon and spending his time, quoting him, “eating, drinking, living documentation”. We have a proverbial jumping jack and declared “black sheep” of the team not leaving his seat for hours on end – having heartburn because the late night car drop came 10 minutes too early for him to close his daily deliverable target. We have a shy girl with the self-imposed “outsider” tag chasing down contact points for Knowledge Transfer till they relent out of her sheer perseverance.
In a word, my friends, we have “ownership” in the team.
Everybody has noticed it. It is being discussed in hushed whispers in closed huddles across the organization that there is something about the droopy documentation team that has changed. Where there was rubber, there is now steel. Where there was meekness, there is now pluck. Where there was despondence, there is now hope.
What changed? What gives?
I can take an informed guess. It is the most socially acceptable four-letter word the world has ever known. It is, umm, shall I say that in the ruthless corporate, jargon-banter environment? Well, let’s face it – it is L-O-V-E.
Unfashionable, the cynics would say. Naïve, the management maestros point out. Quite unoriginal, the gasbags with verbal gimmickry who make wondrous presentations in hushed boardrooms on the other side of the globe, would contend. But honestly, if the world is still moving on its slightly tilted axis, it is only because love still gets you the most value for investment. But it has to be uncompromising, relentless, selfless, unflinching and unconditional. You can’t give up on love, as much as you can give up on your children. Try it at home, on the streets or at the workplace. You’ll know what I mean.
The team responded to love as an infant does. An infant always knows whom to trust unwaveringly. The team gathered around me and reciprocated the love I had for them, many times over. They were not essentially bad, as they were made out to be. They were radar-less and unloved. With love, with nurture, the buds bloomed in an untimely spring. Once the petals were out and the fragrance was air-borne, no hail could stop them. They lost their shackles – micro-management was out. But they were stuck to their workstations and churned out deliverables to glory, deep into the chilly nights. They had unearthed something deep inside themselves which is far more primeval and compelling than what any financial reward or job insecurity can achieve – pride in the self.
They worked out of love and they worked out of pride. Few armies in the world can be beaten, if they are infused with these two adrenaline rushers. The Azad Hind Fauz lost the battle, but they were never beaten. Saurav’s Team India lost the world cup final, but their spirit remains unchallenged in the arena of sports. This team might falter, but now they have developed a self propulsion that will make them rise from the ashes.
Which management school teaches these concepts? Well, I call it my Mother’s School of Management. As a seven year old in my second grade, I had only red in my report cards. I was born with bad eyes, genetic myopia they call it, and could not see the board unless I stood next to it. I was tall for my class, so I was relegated to the back benches. You could say I was batting blind. My dad was a super achiever in all senses of the term, and saw his son as a projection of his success story. He verbally castrated me, disowning me. He was in HR, what was then called Personnel Management in the Industrial sector. where he was a Director – Personnel. “Your Daddy is a Big Man” – people told poor tiny near-blind me. I was dismissed from his presence. I see that incident as the youngest sacking based on performance. I was retrenched from my father’s esteem. Well, I was not without a “job” for too long. I got hired real soon! My mom took me in – unconditionally. She said those magic words in that magic October eve, two days before my 8th birthday – “Son, I’ll love you irrespective of what you do or don’t do. But don’t give up before you’ve given it your best shot.”
I was too young then, to know the meaning of pride or shame or confidence. But I responded to raw love – love of a mother for her son. I put everything into it, cajoling my teacher to allow me a front row seat – not because I wanted my studies to catapult me to be a BIG MAN like my Baba was. Far from that. I just wanted my Ma to be happy. I was desperate to reciprocate the love she gave me. The only currency I had for payback was my report card. I came first in the final term, and was promoted. My father was the first to be at the parent teacher meet, and he preened at me. Oh, I made him so proud, he said, just being the Leo he was. My mother had those placid, lustrous Virgo eyes and she looked at me from a distance, far from the accolades she always despised. She had neither pride nor disdain in her eyes – she had love. She could not bring herself to either understand the teacher’s praise or engage in a conversation – for she did not have much English. She needn’t bother, for she was unconcerned at my achievement – she was happy that I tried. Till this day, and she is 75 now, she does not claim any credit for her son’s turnaround. She just loves me unconditionally in whatever I do or don’t do. She just wants me to maximize my potential, that I always give a cent percent. I almost never disappoint her. Not reciprocating her faith in me is too big a price to pay.
A celebrated “mother” for whom I worked as a part-time-volunteer for 3 years, an European nun by the name of Mother Teresa, once said at a prayer meeting I attended at Mother House, AJC Bose Road – “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” How can I forget the twisted arms of Bapi the Leper at Prem Dan (Park Circus) reaching out eagerly to touch me, his “brother”? How can I forget the 6 year old Mira the Orphan at Sishu Bhavan (AJC Bose Road) bawling as I wept when she was being adopted by a childless European couple – for all the family she ever knew was me, her “uncle”. The school for children of prostitutes at St. Georges (Bowbazar) compound floor where I taught from my class 9th to my 3rd year in college, the platform children at Sealdah station studying at Sister Cyril’s platform school – all of them filled me up with love – the unconditional love of a child for the parent, of a mother for the off spring.
What will a corporate hot spot achieve for me? It is zilch when I can turn back 20 years from now and know that I loved and was loved – without reservations. Let us not hanker for appraisals and appreciation in quantifiable entities. Let us not keep ourselves finite to the possibilities of turning out good documents or earning a fat pay check. Let us spread our wings and soar, a la Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, as we are involved in an Endeavour of far greater import than the cumulative rewards the world’s riches can bestow upon us – we are fostering human relationships. We are reaching out and touching lives. We shall never say the bottle is half empty. For us, the bottle is always half filled. We will never say you can’t. we will say, you can if you try hard enough. We will trust and not back-bite. We will perform and not play politics. We will stand up for each other and be counted.
I will soon move on as my life meanders through an erratic path, according to a Divine Strategem. But I leave behind a bunch of spirited young souls, now motivated and strong, maddened by love, who will state at each of their life’s bottlenecks, “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
Never forget. All things good and lasting are taught by our mothers. I call it Mother’s School of Management. You don’t have an admission test to enroll.
With love,
Jayanta Ray
1.15 am, 28th Jan, 2010.
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