We got a new forum! What’s the big deal? We moved over from Groups. Sounds like something you’d do with a switch in the URL. I wish it was as simple as that – after more than a month of managing this switch, making sure everyone’s doing what they are supposed to do… making sure people are not doing what they are not supposed to do… running in to walls… looking into every little thing that needs to be done …. it was my first taste of managing something from scratch to launch.

Needless to say, yesterday I was like the schoolkid waiting for the exam paper – When I was in school and college, there used to be this inexplicable calm that would descend over me just 5-10 minutes before the exam. I’d close the books, just walk around and relax – that is, irrespective of my state of preparation. Yesterday was something like that – I had done my bit and made sure everyone had their AIs set – but, it was being pushed in PST. So, I’d know the result when I wake up!

And, yes, I woke up before 6am this morning – had a wash, read the Bible, and logged in around 6:30am – what a relief …and excitement too! To see all the work done open for the world to see

I guess this is a kinda rant – I might come back sometime later and edit this – but for now, am resting after those hectic weeks! It is a breather before phase 2 begins… As they say in my team, this one is Christelle’s baby… ya, been mine – we’ve hit the first milestone… soon, we’d be working towards our next steps!

Just for now, I’d look back – and smile… and tell myself, all that’s needed is Patience and Perseverence

Yes, here’s one more nostalgic post! The first milestone was 1 year in Hyd – yes, Jan 8, 2006 was the day I landed in Hyd wondering what I’ve gotten myself into, doubting my sanity, my ability to cope, and wishing I had stayed back in the great land of Chennai!

And then, days flew – as it can happen only when you work, work, and work – and then travel whenever you are free! It was the end of 2006 when I got to know quite an illustriuos friend… someone who made me walk around the biggest exhibition in Hyd before inviting me for his travel adventures. And there started our travelling spree – visiting just about every place around hyd!

Half way into the year, it was time to move to a new team, a new product – keeps you busy and learning for a while and, at the same time, makes you miss your buddies! It was a year of changes with friends across floors trying to stay in touch, catching up for lunch… and ended the year on a high note with my best friend’s desk quite close to mine! What a joy!

And then came Hampi-Jog Falls-Hogenakkal – after much preparation, the trip was one of the most memorable! The trek to reach the bottom of the falls, to be surrounded by walls of rock and stand there in the midst of the mist and the rain – is something to be experienced!

As if I had been too happy all along, there came the lull and swept me away! Fell in love and fell out of love too… Don’t wanna make the same mistake again! never ever….

Made new friends, got in touch with old friends and really, really old friends – thanks to social networking! I never thought I would get in touch with my classmates after 14 years of silence! Oh, the joy of getting in touch with old friends! … and the sadness of losing friends… and the mystery of people who are friends one day, not so friendly the next, friends again a few days later… Why do I even put up with them? I don’t know!!

Got a lot more online presence! A few blogs and, finally, a website! Though, not completely functional yet

All of this interspersed with visits to good ‘ole Chennai … the beach, Spencers, City Center, Coffee Day at Anna nagar… meeting friends, shopping till I dropped (quite literally!), fainting at a bus stop and getting hurt as if I fell from a bike!….

It’s been a year of brands, electronics, and going online big time – right from purchases to payments – all without a credit card … a year of delayed train arrivals, some crazy travelling, sleeping in a car, watching the sun rise over a dam… and some photography along the way!

Just as every other year, it was full of surprises that made me happy, and disappointments that drained me away! But then, the year ends on a happy note and let’s me look forward to the next year – I’ve travelled far and wanna travel more… I’ve taken risks and will take more… I’ve learnt and will learn more…Wonder what 2008 holds for me!

This is the state of my desk Ya, I know, it looks more like a whiteboard …my secret pastime… Normally, I don’t take pictures – I don’t think they are great enough to be pictures – ‘coz most of they are scribbles so bad, the house keeping guys don’t miss a chance to clean my desk So, took a pic of this one by chance – sent it to a friend, and he liked it! So, here it is for all to see? Any comments?

If you’ve worked for a while where I do, you’d be used to desk moves. You move within the team, you move to another team-same product, you can even move to a new team-new product. And when you move, your desk moves with you – computer, telephone, all your stuff ranging from teddies to post-its.
I had moved within the team a couple of times – and, of course, one of the first things you do is to look up your neighbours. In one such move, my desk was right in front of my manager. I moved wondering why. Before I could find the answer, I had to move again. This time, it was next to this bubbly, chirpy character in our team — in short, kinda my opposite. You can hear her in office – you just can’t hear me when am working! Add to this, I put on my headset without fail – so, even if I am not listening to anything, people around assume I am listening to something, and don’t disturb. And ya, I really needed a quiet environ to work.
And then, I moved! I was hoping I’d be able to work without complaining – and guess what? I was totally wrong about a few things. Yes, she remained loud and I remain quiet. But then, there are times when you bond with someone and you just can’t figure out why or how it happened… this was something like that. Soon, we were ganging up together – our fave pastime was Abhijeet Bashing… If you aren’t in Rock, you just don’t know what this means
We’d discuss about every little thing we could think of – and, I realized that I could work even with a boisterous cubie.
Soon, it was time to move again – this time, I moved out of the team. And before that, we enjoyed a great offsite – my last Rock offsite, a very memorable one.
And now, she’s moved too – a different workplace. I can’t walk by and leave notes anymore – well, now I do in Facebook, but then, I guess, my space has become a lot quieter…
That’s for you Indirap!

We are always hunting for that elusive success formula, aren’t we? I came across this article, in the McKinsey Quarterly, on how executives search for that success formula for a runaway success.I’ve included a few thoughts here (You can find the full article here – registration required). When I read the article, some of the points made were quite obvious.

For example, success and failure depend not only on a company’s actions but also on those of its rivals. Where did we lose that insight we gain right from kindergarten – your rank doesn’t depend only on the marks you score. I guess, in our quest to find that easy answer to the puzzle, we often fail to realize that there can be a few puzzles that have a different answer each time. Instead we expect the puzzle to end at the same point – which is not the case in a competitive environment.

There were other thoughts that were business-centric – but if you take a closer look, you’d realize they are true in other spheres of life as well. Consider this one: “Suggesting that companies can follow a blueprint and achieve lasting success may be appealing, but is not supported by the evidence.” Like the books that deal with the success formula for business executives, there are umpteen books out there that talk about how to deal with your own life – how to win, how to be successful, how to be a good listener and so on. At the end of the day, these books tend to reduce life into a set of formulas you live by. But, life isn’t about following someone else’s path; life isn’t about living within the safety zone. Life is all about stretching your boundaries, accomplishing what you considered impossible, and, most importantly, living your life your way.

In the business world, success is a result of decisions made under conditions of uncertainty and shaped in part by factors outside our control. In your life, what you do and who you are depend on your decisions in your day-to-day life. You cannot simulate your life and your choices to reflect someone else’s. There is no perfect choice, there is no dead-end – you can always start again and your best attempts may not be good enough. That is life – but then, for all the uncertainty, I won’t want life to be any other way.

Here are some of the very interesting and valid points:

A reliable path to high performance – does not exist.

In the business world, success is a result of decisions made under conditions of uncertainty and shaped in part by factors outside our control.

The task of strategic leadership is not to follow a blueprint but to gather and evaluate relevant information, and make choices that provide the best chance for the company to succeed, all the while recognizing the business uncertainty.

The delusion of absolute performance

Success and failure depend not only on a company’s actions but also on those of its rivals.

High performance com6es from doing things better than rivals can, which means the managers have to take risks.

The delusion of lasting success

Lasting success is largely a delusion, a statistical anomaly. There is a strong tendency for extreme performance to be followed by less extreme performance in the next.

Suggesting that companies can follow a blueprint and achieve lasting success may be appealing, but is not supported by the evidence.

No formula can guarantee a company’s success, at least not in a competitive business environment.

You can view the Business World Survey here.

The Insights:

Insight 1: High employee engagement levels
Insight 2: Larger responsibilities with more flexibility
Insight 3: Love for fun
Insight 4: Effectiveness of profit sharing process
Insight 5: Loyalty does not translate to life long commitment
Insight 6: More credible actions from leaders expected

You thank me
I thank you
Let’s thank each other
And be happy forever

Forever??

13.3.
It was there in my goody bag – spiral bound, logo at the bottom of every page – looking real neat. Ya, that’s the notebook am talking about. I got it the day I joined Google and it has been with me ever since…. I’ve written, scribbled, and loaded it with a bunch of papers – brochures, prints, write ups… in fact, there are so many papers, the notebook is double its size…it’s been with me to umpteen meetings, training sessions… it’s been with me each time I visited Chennai…each time I traveled some place…
Whenever I researched something online or heard about something I wanted to research….well, you know where you’d find them…

…and I lost it this morning…

I walked in with the notebook in hand because I didn’t want to forget what I wanted to do, walked into the café on my way up, and left my notebook there. It was about 2 hours before I realized what I’ve done, and I’ve been searching since then. Haven’t found it yet… been asking the security guards all day…no luck so far….

Will I ever see it again?

14.3

Yaayyyyyy…. I found it…

God only knows how much I’ve missed it!

By nature, I wasn’t a talkative person. As a child I had neighbors tell me that I should talk more if I wanted to survive…am sure I would be giving them a shock if they see me talking now…the reason, I am talking more than ever before. One main reason is that in my workplace, there is a great emphasis on communication. Add to that the fact that some people confuse plain talk and communication, we are encouraged to talk, in the name of “communication”. In fact, my first performance review here, had one remark in this aspect. It was that I should be more vocal in the team, and more vocal I am.

In spite of this, there are times when I can’t get myself talk to certain people. I don’t know what stops me. I am not able to find a reason. I am really clueless. But there are people with whom I find it highly impossible to hold a decent conversation.

There was this person here in one of our teams, and the job flow was such that I would have to interact with him (he was one among ~40 people in the teams I was working with). Since the day I joined, I wasn’t able to say a word to this person. Not even wish for courtesy sake…if we were working on a document, all that I would say would be perfect official talk regarding the document…as days went by, I got to realize that he wasn’t a good character, both on the job and out of it….he would talk crap and his work would not be of good quality. In spite of the kind of work he was doing, he would talk as if he was the best in town.

Almost a year later, I found another friend who said she had a similar feeling toward him. I was surprised. Till then, I had thought that it was some sort of a premonition that I had…something that forewarned me about his nature….but to find this in another person? We could only assure each other that we were not alone in this issue. Finally, he was laid off due to misconduct.

This is not the only incident. It is one among the many. There are a number of times, when I talk to someone and feel that person is not honest with me…in fact, nowadays if I feel the same way as I felt when I saw this fellow for the first time, I take it as a warning sign.

All the same, I have to admit that this doesn’t work all the time….

There are others who become my friends, these are people with whom I would feel comfortable…. There are some among this group of friends, a select few with whom I could talk about anything and everything. There is a friend who stands out in this respect. He mailed me once, I ignored the mail. Then he mailed again and I replied. Think we chatted just once and then we were talking on the phone and we were sharing so much of our lives uncensored… There is this particular day that would remain in my memory… That night we started talking and we stopped only when he fell asleep early in the morning…that was the amount we spoke and all along we were talking about everything we could think of…a wide range of topics…

Again, I have no idea why we spoke so much. We were strangers to each other just a few moments ago…and then here we are chatting away as if we had known each other for a lifetime…and in recent times there is this friend to whom I send a Long mail everyday and I receive an equally long one…

What makes me be so open with him? Well, what makes me talk? I have no idea