Don't think about the Pink Elephant

When you read the heading of this post, what was the first thing that came to your mind? A Pink Elephant?

Off late, this has been the question that I ask many of my teammates. And I ask this everytime someone comes up to me and says,
"I don't think we are in a bad position for this sprint."
"I don't think I have a problem with my manager." 
"I don't think we'll be able to complete this task within this time, given the experience we had last week."

Research has proven that the human brain has a big issue dealing with negatives.
In my experience it's more so when the sentence itself begins with negatives.

Someone came to me to get an email reviewed, which read like this, "We cannot support this feature by date X as the UI concept is not available."
I got it rephrased to, "We shall be able to support this feature by date X if we get the UI concept by date Y." 
This way we communicated a positive intent to support, and subtly put the onus on resolving dependencies to the other side as well.

There are a handful of people who are eternally optimistic. When one interacts with them, one feels everything looks so "Bade araam se". I'm lucky to have a few of them in my team as well.
Being like that comes naturally to them. 
But for normal people like me, it needs constant conditioning of the mind. 
A lot of our attitude shows up in the way we talk, our day to day outlook and the overall body language, without our knowledge. 
Almost every time that I have started something on a pessimistic note, I have failed. 
Almost every interview that I have attended in the past in which I have uttered the words, "I don't know" (or similar) when faced with a difficult question, the interview has ended shortly after that.

Many years back, a manager of mine wrote these exact words in his annual appraisal comments about me, "Santosh needs to work with a more Can Do Attitude".
Given that we didn't exactly share the best of professional relationships, I could have easily ticked it off as an attempt to vilify me, since it was documented and could be used against me in the appraisal discussion. 
Nevertheless, I sat down to understand if this was true and how to address it. And it turned out that I had a fair deal of change to be done in my attitude and communication. More on what I did, in some other post perhaps.
To keep it short, everyone likes people who believe "The Word is my World" rather than "The World is my Word".

Around this time, I also attended a training program where the trainer told us this story about a seasoned mountaineer who had climbed all the major peaks in the Himalayas. He spoke about the difference between the amateurs and the seasoned ones when they have to tackle a tough section of the mountain in front of them.
While the amateurs try to find all ways around it or maybe even bypass it, the veterans always find a way through it. 
His point was, "If I am here to conquer a mountain 6000 or more metres high, then I must not be deterred by this small section of mountain in front of me".
This was the most important learning point for me from that training program.

We must be like the seasoned professional in our outlook towards everything.
At work, everyday we are faced with all kinds of challenges and obstacles. Its up to us to decide if we want to procrastinate, circumvent, find an excuse or take these challenges head on. When I mean head on, I don't necessarily mean to be fast and furious in action.
Of course, doubts, apprehensions, will always be there.
Its important to take note of them and find ways to solve them, rather than not taking up the challenge itself. We also need to reassure ourselves that "Aal iz well".

While we may not be successful at all times, it will help us grow stronger and be better prepared the next time around.

A very profound quote from Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev.

Enchanting Europe

There were a few other topics that I wanted to write about, but since I returned from a short business trip, I thought I'll write about it first while its still fresh in memory.

I got an opportunity to travel to Germany for the workshop of a new project, and I had quite a few of my colleagues with me. Most of them stayed in the same hotel as mine, in a quiet countryside hotel in a place just outside of Stuttgart.

The view from my room was something like this.

We went to Stuttgart city twice during my stay. It vividly reminded me of the Need For Speed Porsche Unlimited game that I was addicted to during my engineering days. Many of the places, the U-Bahn lines in the middle of the roads, the old style Hauptbahnhof looked all so familiar from that game.

Over the weekend, we got a chance for two short day trips. One to Schwarzwald(Black Forest) and the other to Interlaken in Switzerland. 

Here's Triberg waterfalls in Schwarzwald, home to one of the oldest hydroelectric projects in the world.

Interlaken was just around three and a half hours' drive from the place where we stayed. It was a place full of vast lakes, giving a picturesque view of the Alps behind them.

 

This was also the place where Yash Chopra shot a lot of the scenes in DDLJ. In honour of that, the local authorities put up a statue of him, calling him the Ambassador of Interlaken.

This was my fourth trip outside of India in the one year after joining Mercedes Benz, two of them being to the US and two to Germany.

Somehow I liked Germany, and Europe a lot more than even the sunshine state of California, despite the weather. This is my kind of place, in a quaint setting with an old world charm about it.
This explains why I have a second post on Europe, the first one being more than a decade back.

A family friend of ours, who's settled in the US and comes to India once a year always says, "America is man made, Europe is God made".

There were some things that I liked about Germany in particular.

Public transport system
You can buy one ticket and use them in any of the buses or train lines, as long as you know how far that ticket can take you. There are no turnstiles in train stations, nor conductors in buses. They believe in the honour system, based on trust.

It is efficient and dependable, and available at late in the night as well. A much better experience when compared to what I had in UK.

Autobahns and driving
Germany is one of the few countries in the world with no speed limits on sections of the Autobahn. This is to show off what German automobiles are capable of.

There were stretches where Shyam was driving at 180 kmph, only to be overtaken by someone driving at upwards of 200kmph.

But there is not at all Fast and Furious. It's disciplined, patient and meticulous- something that I didn't notice much even in the US.

Even taxi drivers used to observe the speed limits, even in residential and village areas.

Generally safe

I generally felt secure, even in the most desolate stretches even late at night. Happened to see German police swinging into action within minutes of an altercation at a local restaurant.

There were somethings that I didn't like as well.

Expensive

In general, cost of living is pretty high owing to high per capita income. 

More than that many basic things for which you need to pay.

For instance, extra plates at a restaurant, or say, using the restroom in a public place.

Even in the smallest village, we had to pay for parking - can't imagine something like this in the near future anywhere in India.

If Germany is expensive, Switzerland is doubly so - ranks highest on the Big Mac Index.

No country for old men(and women)

I wouldn't want to delve more into it. But this is the price one pays for an independent way of living.

But the best part of the trip was the great company I had with me.

I don't know about them, atleast I had a great time in their company. Be it the joint breakfast, be it the dinner and after dinner talk, or be it the hot coffee after a long day at work ,or be it the short walk in the cold winter to the bus stop - I loved every moment of it.

After coming back, we had a team dinner in Bangalore city (and not Whitefield). After this, I made my team an offer they could not refuse - Ice creams at Lakeview on MG Road.

"If you want to go fast, go alone.

If you want to go far, take people along!" 

Generation of Degeneration

My last post was after a long time. I'm glad that a lot of people liked it, which gave me that much more incentive to write again on a more regular basis. Thanks to all for that.

Time was always a constraint, but more than that being able to sit in a quiet calm place and gather my thoughts into a meaningful post was not happening.

Most of my previous drafts ended up as '..half a page of scribbled lines'.

Anyway, coming to this post.

A few months back I was riding my two wheeler to make an appointment in Sadashivnagar. Just as I entered the by lane, I got flagged down by a traffic cop.
I had turned left on a green signal, had worn a helmet, and to my knowledge had broken no traffic rule.
I still got fined for a faulty registration plate. And mine was a new Vespa, which had not completed even a year. I was flummoxed.

The cop tried to fleece me by saying that the fine would run up to 400 rupees. When I insisted, he agreed to let me pay a fine of 100.

On my way back home, I had a lot running on in my mind on what had just happened. 

Just at that moment, a bunch of youngsters broke the traffic signal, vehemently even went on the wrong side of the road and just disappeared.
And all this, within a hundred metres of where I got fined. I was pretty pissed at the situation. 

Why can't the traffic policy focus on catching these kind of offenders, instead of enforcing some absurd rule, which no one would ever know of.

Having grown up all my life in Bangalore, I am beginning to hate the way things are turning out. I'm sure things are just as bad any place else in India, if not worse.

Traffic has always been bad for the past 10 years or so. But the brazen impunity with which people have started breaking the most basic traffic rules is what's irritating me.

Riding on the footpath, breaking the signals, driving on the wrong side of a wrong having medians are some of the things we see daily.

And its not just the seemingly uneducated auto-rickshaw or cab drivers who do this. Everyone else does it as well. And a good number of people are complicit, when we sit or sleep comfortably in our office cabs and let the driver flout the rules.

This brings me to a few questions.

 "What's the point of our education?" 

"What could be worse than this?"

"What example do we set for our future generations?"

"Do we want to get things done at cost, even it's not right?"

Surely this is not my idea of Acche Din.

We could extend this to almost every aspect of our daily lives.  

I was talking to my colleague Ajay on a related topic a few weeks back. We discussed on the possibilities - stricter enforcement of the law to create a strong deterrence, mandatory training. But most important of all we spoke about the need for a strong value system right from the young age, at the home and school level itself.

In my last trip to Germany, one of my German colleagues told that in school they are taught about Hitler and his regime. This is to remind them that such mistakes should never be repeated ever.

Ajay returned to India after living more than ten years in Germany, where he had done his higher education and had worked for a long time as well. He then went on to make a statement, for which I was taken aback. 

"Santosh, I think there should be a big war sometime soon and the whole country gets destroyed. Then we should rebuild it all over again."

At first, it sounded a good option to me. My team mates also seemed to concur, while we were discussing this amongst a few other random things during our road trip to Interlaken.

But in reality,

"Are we ready to pay the price? 

Can we afford it?

Do we really something like this to set us right?
Is there a better way to deal with it?"

Stand up and Take charge

Last evening, while at the badminton club I had this discussion with a close friend of mine. He was my colleague at my second job. He had joined as a fresher some 11 years ago, and still continues to work there.
The statement that I made to him was, "People working there have a good job with great pay packages, but rarely anyone made a good career."
What he is doing now, is more or less the same as what he was doing when he was having 2 years of experience. And this made him feel less confident about himself. 

I must admit that I learnt almost all my technical skills, confidence about coding and perseverance while working here. This was largely due to the tough working conditions and the highly competitive nature of people working around me.

But how to build one's career, and how to grow, these I learnt in my brief stint at IBM. 

Right on the first day of my joining, at the pre-induction speech, an industry leader made this statement to all of us, 

"You are responsible for your career. You have to stand up and take charge"

This was something that I had never thought of, in the 11 years before that.
Reminded me of these lines from Pink Floyd's song Time, 

"... and then one day you find that ten years have got behind you,
No one told you when to run,
You missed the starting gun..." 

Based on my experience there, I could find at least three ways to help build a good career.

Career conversation with your manager.
As a professional it's my responsibility to setup a regular meeting with my manager and find out how I am doing and also let know of my needs and aspirations.
I'm lucky that some of my managers have been really good at this, even in my present organization.

Find a mentor.
It's extremely important that you find someone who's been there, done that. Someone whom you would look up to.

Approach someone you can trust and confide in. He/she may even say no, but may help you in finding a mentor. The mentoring may not be even a formal one. 

Find something that suits both, and works for you.

At best, someone with slightly higher experience than you can be a good buddy - a best friend at work, but never a mentor.

My own manager told me that one should avoid having their own manager as mentor. That's a potential conflict of priorities.

Learn from people around you.
As a budding architect, I was really lucky to work with some of the best architects across 2 business groups. I could gain a lot from their experience. Driving meetings, conference calls and negotiating with tough clients being the most notable of them.
I still get to learn a lot from my peer managers, and my immediate next level managers every day, in every way possible. 

At IBM, I was also training batches of graduate hires and inducting the good ones into projects in my group. But after a year into the projects, only a small handful of these actually did well. The rest simply fell into a bottomless well called mediocrity. They simply found their way into the crowd.

And this is true in many organizations and at all levels today, more so in the Indian context.

Insufficient technical competence may be a reason in some cases, but skills can always be learnt. Attitude, is not so easy.

To be honest, many don't know what their priorities at work should be. 

Some spend way too much time chilling out, just because the system allows them to do so.
In all the foreign cultures that I've worked in, be it east or west, people who spend a lot of time on personal calls at work are generally looked down upon. 

In the Indian context, we may not look down upon our colleagues, but certainly wont miss opportunities in making snide and loose comments on their backs.

Some people take their jobs as a mundane 9 to 6 job. By that, I don't necessarily mean that one must stay late in office, to give that visibility to their bosses.

What I meant to says is, if at any time, work is becoming routine and predictable, one must take it as an early warning and start to look for new challenges at work. 

A famous man once said, "We Indians get easily discouraged by setbacks." And he is absolutely right.

When faced with setbacks, some people tend to lose their enthusiasm, energy and passion.  Then it becomes a mundane 9 to 6 job, and people tend to go through the motions, meekly accepting what's thrown at them. 

It's important to get back up and take charge again.

For one to build a good career, undoubtedly the foundation also needs to be strong. 

Reasonably good technical skills, consistency, sincerity, hard work and unwavering focus are utmost essential. Of course, you need to be prepared to put in whatever effort it takes to be at the place where you want to go.

There are some who take the option of bullshitting their way up. Just remember, "you only know who's swimming naked when the tide goes out". Sooner or later, their luck will run out.

Whichever approach you choose, you must always keep checking if you are headed in the right direction.

Ultimately its your career. You must stand up and take charge of it.