Putting first things first

It's been a long while that I've posted something. Lack of time, but more importantly there was a lack of coherent train of thoughts which would usually generate enough content for a blog post.

The last year and a half have been really busy. Traffic has come back to normal, which means that I am spending significant amount of time driving around, especially while driving back from office. I do take the ocassional Metro ride, but for the majority of the days, I make best of this time while driving to listen to audio versions of books on Audible. A few of the good books that I'd recommend. 

In my role at work, I need to spend significant time at work in talking to people. While some of it is with partners, much of it is with my team members with whom I need to have my influence for continued success of my teams, and mine as well. This also gives me the opportunity to have interesting conversations with colleagues who may not be reporting into me, but find it useful to have that talk with me. 

And this post is a byproduct of 2 such conversations in the past few weeks.

Managing Time, and Priorities!

While there are many things which may be in our circle of concern which we should learn to accept, we should always arrive to change what's in our circle of influence. Slowly but surely we also need to make this circle of influence bigger as well.

To manage time better, discipline and self control are essential. We could maximise productive time at work, one could work in silence by starting work early. 

To do this, one needs to wake up early, for which one also needs to get to bed early the previous night.

We need to take a hard look and decide if watching TV or being hooked on to the mobile late at nights is really required. One needs to decide on a time and consistently follow a routine every day.

I compulsarily drop my mobile in a tray in one corner of the room and then go to bed. Over the last 2 years, this has helped me sleep much better.

And when I saw that I was wasting too much time on Facebook, Instagram I decided to set a 5 minute App Timer for both these apps. This is designed in Android phones in such a way that one can still squeeze out 15 minutes each on a daily basis. This is still much better than 1+ hour that I was wasting earlier. 

We need to be conscious about where we employ our time. Everybody has the same 24 hours everyday. Believe me, 24 hours is a lot of time.

My father always used to say, "You can earn back lost money, but not lost time"

One needs to list out the things that one needs to accomplish on a particular day, prioritize them and plan a time - try as hard as possible to stick to this list of priorities for that day. 

At the end of the day, take 15 minutes to check on what was done well, and what was not. More importantly, what needs to be done better or differently the following day - and adapt quickly.

Long back I wrote this Post on Time.

The Feedback Loop

We may be participating in the retrospective meetings in our "Agile" projects. On similar lines, we should consider having a personal retrospective on a fairly regular basis. A high level of personal awareness, and an ability to be self-critical is essential for this to be effective. 

We get a lot of feedback, both implicitly and explicitly from the world around us. We need to filter out the noise, take what is important, and make those necessary changes in order to get better every day.

A Positive Mindset!

Much of this has to do with our personal upbringing, which hardwires our thoughts and beliefs right from our childhood days. In the past, I used to be a predominantly pessimistic person. With mental engineering, I have been able to have a more positive outlook, which has resulted in much positive outcomes overall, atleast in the last 10 years or so. On the topic of positive mindset, I wrote this Post some years back as well.

Consistency and Perseverence

The book "Good to Great" is about how good companies transform to become great. While much of the companies written about may not be relevant or even inexistent today, there are many things that one can pick up and incorporate into one's individual life as well.

One the of concepts that I really could relate to was "Crawl, Walk, Run!"

We need to be relentless in our pursuit of what we want to accomplish in our lives, which encompasses all aspects of our life - personal, professional and financial.

We can always start slow, become better at what we do and then eventually master it. At some point in time, there is enough momentum generated in the flywheel that helps in making extraordinary progress. This is only possible with unwavering focus, and a never give up attitude.

Personally, I have found good success with this approach in Cycling and Investing. Maybe a separate post on each of them if there is public demand.

Hopefully some day I can be really good at many other things too.

It's been a long post, I leave with a great dialogue from a movie that I saw not so recently.

The Second Wave!

 It's been a bit more than a year into the pandemic. World over, it has been tough times for everyone. 

There was so much happening, so much VUCA(typical management jargon: Volatility Uncertainty Complexity Ambiguity) that there was not enough clarity of thought to write something meaningful.

Personally and professionally, things were tough for most part of 2020. But thankfully, perseverence, tact and courage during these tough times meant that it concluded as THE best year for me in terms of outcomes at work.

All the 3 programs under my responsibility had desired success. This was largely possible due to the support of the teams working on it, who were relentless in their quest for success. This was also true for our entire department, where collectively we delivered crucial deliverables inspite of the pandemic.

This meant that the ones who worked really hard, were very well rewarded. 

Lesson learnt: During the toughest times, put in the best efforts. It pays bigtime!

The stock markets, which tanked initially recovered sharply. An election year in the US  meant easy access to funds which moved our markets irrationally. I must admit, I may have missed a major part of this rally. But more importantly, many new first time retail investors entered into this market. 

Whether or not they make money in the long term needs to be seen, but it certainly gave me a sustainable and viable path for an alternate career. Whether or not I shall really take it or not, only time will tell.

This meant that I spent a lot of time learning through material available on the internet, and also learning through books.

Lesson learnt:  Knowledge is Power!

I must admit, I may be following 10% or lesser from what I read from these books. 

But I'll get there!

From a fitness perspective, social distancing norms meant that I wasnt keen on continuing with badminton till I felt confident about the situation. I switched to cycling, mostly 20-30 kms rides on a mountain bike over the weekends on the slopy city roads.

This has helped my stamina, focus, and more importantly, will power. 

Next step is to graduate to longer rides on a road bike, but when that will happen only time will tell!

But there's a more important reason why I chose to write this post today. 

While the pandemic's supposed third wave is impacting most parts of the world, the second wave as they call it, has hit India really hard! 

This time the numbers have been much larger, and going up in an exponential manner. This has been compounded by reported 'double' or 'triple' mutations. This is leading to many false negatives in RT-PCR tests, and also casting a doubt on the efficiency of certain vaccines available today.

We could say increased economic activity, elections in 5 states, Kumbh Mela, IPL or whatever. But the root cause is us! We let our guard down, and it is having serious implications on everyone. This may have also many impacted people who did nothing much wrong, and simply stayed home.

And the government is only as good as the people who vote for it(or dont vote at all), similar to "Yatha Raja thatha Praja" in the olden times.

In the first and second waves, even the most developed and wealthiest nations had serious pressure on their well developed healthcare systems. As a developing nation, the pressure on our systems is going to be manifold. 

Despite all this, we still managed to help many countries, even developed nations in meeting their medical demands, even if its in a small way(HCQ tablets, vaccines, etc). Irrespective of which government is in power,  as Indians we would have anyway done it. 

But the same developed nations are now being "practical" in our times of need.

There has been a deliberate attempt to block access to raw materials which could scale up our vaccine manufacturing capacity. Being the pharma capital of the world, we have enough capacity to manufacture for our need, and for the everyone else's as well. The political rhetoric from even the European countries has been disconcerting.

Negative global press coverage apart, as a precaution many countries have stopped flights to India. As they tackle their own problems, should something go wrong to the Indians who have gone to these "developed countries" for education, in search of greener pastures, or for work, we need to be fully aware that they would only naturally give preference to their citizens.

The situation today is grim, it can only get worse before it can better. The next 2-3 months are going to be critical for that.

It will surely get better, and we need to do our bit for that.

Stay positive, but stay extremely cautious. Staying away from news channels is a good first step to stay clear of depressing thoughts.

Restrict social interactions, especially in groups to a minimum.

Everything else can wait. Be close to your near and dear ones. You never know who needs your help when, and vice versa.

Exercise restraint on social media, especially on posts related to political propaganda. They serve no good to anyone, but simply build acrimony amongst the people. We need to be standing united as a nation now. No time for politics!

Show compassion, help the needy wherever you can.

Most importantly, at the first given opportunity, get vaccinated. 

We have setup one of the largest vaccination programmes in the world. As on date we have been able to completely vaccinate only 1.5% of our population, despite giving close to average 25 lakh doses on a daily basis. 

The developed nations have hoarded a large chunk of the global vaccine supply, thanks to their superior buying power. Now that the government has opened vaccination for all above 18 years of age, please register and get vaccinated. We may need to match dollar for dollar to secure this supply for ourselves. Even after both doses, we need to be patient for a few weeks, if not months till the antibodies build up and immunity is achieved.

Dont relax yet!

Apparently herd immunity is achieved reliably when more than at least 60% of the population is vaccinated, or exposed to the virus. Remember, kids below 18 years of age are still not covered yet. 

To be safe, we need to ensure that the vaccination rate crosses a significant part of our population. Given our population, all this could take 3-6 months at a minimum. 

Patience. Jaan hain tho jahaan hain!

A new learning

Its been a while since my last post. Between then and now, a lot of things have happened. On the good part, I went to Europe in warm weather- though it was only Germany. All my previous trips till then were in gloomy winter.

And since I could spend a weekend, I got a chance to visit the Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart - for which I got a free entrance, by virtue of my company ID card.
This was a chance to connect with history, to know about a passion for engineering excellence. This happens to be right across the Porsche Museum. Two of the many names that have brought immense fame to the city of Stuttgart.

This beauty was a restoration, once owned by the Maharaja of Kashmir

But all this was in the middle of really tough days in a particular project.
Most of this time was spent in having to prepare presentations on what went wrong, how to fix it and by when.
Just as I was about to post this, I read this tweet that someone shared.
"If its written in Python, then its probably machine learning. If it's written in Power Point, then its probably AI."

This, and the next part of the post were lessons in project management for me, and a brutal reality check.

Just as the project storm had weathered, our family took up a long pending project at home - Kitchen renovation. This was the second part of a longer program of home repairs - which started sometime in the beginning of the year.
And when I said kitchen renovation, everything up to the last tile in the 20 year old kitchen was ripped apart and replaced with something more contemporary. It was much similar to the project at work, where majority of the code was rewritten from scratch, rather than part by part refactoring.

During this period, I had to work with a lot of people - carpenters, masons, tiling specialist, painters, electrician, plumber, granite experts and so on. And this experience prompted me to write this post - the right people are essential for any project to succeed.

I was wary of the budget. But since I knew good material and good workmanship comes at a premium, I was prepared for any kind of budget over run.
But I was not prepared for the kind of schedule over run - what should have been 6 days of work, took 3 full weeks. And during this time, the family had to endure a lot of trouble without a functional kitchen at home.

The underlying problem was people, and my inability to deal with them.

Each of the people involved were good in their own area work. But the uncertainty associated with them was responsible for all the delays. So many days were lost when no work actually took place, where one person or group was waiting for the other to complete their bit.

For example, a good plumber whom I know just took off to his hometown whilst keeping his mobile phone back in the city. It was only after 4 days of waiting that I had to get a substitute fielder to do part of his job.
But then, the same good old plumber became available at the next time that I needed him - the threat of losing a bigger business did the trick.

The biggest challenge was dealing with the granite experts, who contributed to most of the delay. And since I had to pay a sizable money as advance, I could not have moved this work to someone else after that. Escalations to the owner of the company didn't help much - but threatening his 20 year reputation did.
On a positive note, I was really impressed by the quality of their work and the overall finish that their work brought to the kitchen.

An ever reliable electrician and painters did an awesome job, without having to look over their shoulder.
The tiling expert and mason also did a good job. But while one didn't know how to use the materials to the best effect, the other had to come back to fix some bugs that he had created.

But the best of the lot were the carpenters. A real professional unit, with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. While the elder brother did all the marketing, design and managing finances. The younger ones did all the heavy work- creating the furniture, transportation and installation. While the quality of their work was really good, it was their cheerful outlook towards work that impressed me the most.

Their primary skill was carpentry, but when the situation demanded, they pitched in to do electrical work, tiling, masonry and everything else in order to get things done.

You may call it T-shaped skills in an agile team.

I could draw a lot of parallels with how things went on at the project at office. And in general what's common with the corporate India, and the unorganized sector is our lackadaisical Chalta Hai attitude towards work.
Between the carrot and the stick, its almost always that only the stick works.

Leadership

I've been contemplating to write on this topic for a while now.
While I was interviewing for my present job, one of the interviewers asked me, "What's leadership according to you?"
I had prepared quite well for the assessment, but somehow missed preparing for this question specifically.
Being an avid cricket follower, I replied that for me Clive Lloyd is a great example of Leadership for the way in which he turned around West Indian cricket.
In one of their tours to Australia, the West Indian lost badly, mostly due to the intimidating bowling of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thompson.
But by the next tour a few years later, he had created a formidable bowling attack, which decimated the Australian batting lineup with the same intimidating bowling, leaving a few batsmen maimed as well.

To follow it up, their batsmen played aggressively enough to reverse intimidate the Aussie fast bowlers.

When the then English captain Tony Greg made a careless and purportedly racist comment like, "I intend to make them grovel", Clive Lloyd made the entire English team suffer brutally, with the same hostile bowling. This series was so intriguing that a movie called "Fire in Babylon" was made around it.
This picture of Brian Close says it all.

What he did, changed West Indian cricket, which meant that they dominated the world cricket scene for the next 20 years or so. 

I'm sure there have been great captains after that - Kapil Dev, Imran Khan, Steve Waugh, just to name a few.

But the one person that I wanted to talk about is Saurav Ganguly. Of course, he was "God of the Off Side". He transformed the Indian team in a way that no one else did. Undoubtedly, he had "The God of Cricket", "The Wall" and "Very Very Special" in his team, but they could not be great captains themselves.

He led them from the front and backed his team to the hilt. 

Introduced great talent like Yuvraj Singh, Mohammed Kaif, Zaheer Khan and so on.

When Harbhajan Singh was close to getting dropped, but Dada put his foot down and got the selection committee to have him in the team for the Australian "Final Frontier" tour to India. It was Harbhajan's 27 wickets in the 3 tests which was largely responsible to end the 16 test unbeaten run of the 'invincible' Aussie team.

I'm sure a lot of my batch mates will still remember risking their semester exams by watching VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid play the dream partnership at Eden Gardens, which change the whole complexion of the series.

Its legendary, the way in which Dada frustrated Steve Waugh by making him wait for the toss. 

Even more legendary is this picture from the Lord's balcony.

Back in our professional lives, everyone has some or other person they look up to as leaders. For me, a true leader is the one who backs the team, guides them when the challenges seem insurmountable. And eventually delivers in style. Yearning to be a leader is easy, but being one is not. Its easy to talk strategy from 60000 feet. But actually walking the talk, is not.

And remember, "Anyone can steer the ship when the sea is calm".

Why so Serious?

Recently I was scanning around my Alexa playlist for music by Ennio Morricone, the same person who created the music for "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly".  I chanced upon this magnificent track from an Italian movie "Malena", featuring an equally beautiful Monica Bellucci.

It's about the childhood crush of a young boy on a much older lady. And like most crushes, this one is about the kid's short term tribulations associated with it.

I''m sure every one of us had similar crushes in our school days, and maybe a bit later too. At that point in time, it would be the most serious thing that happened to us, but within days or weeks, all that is forgotten and life's back to normal. Much of what happened in those years was like that.

But is that the case when we grow up?

I was going back to my own posts from more than ten years back. Back then it used to be travelogues, movie reviews, photography, long drives and so on.
But my last few posts have been on not so fun topics, which makes me ask this question,
"Why so serious?"

I guess everyone goes through phases of life when different things take priority. I just wonder, how things will turn out ten years from here on.

To be honest, I didn't have anything of purpose to post lately. But then, I remembered a story that goes somewhat like this.

By Hindu mythology, it is believed that the rains are caused by Lord Shiva's beating of his special drums. And for some reason, He got angry with the people on the earth that He decided that there would be no rains for a long time.
The people, who came to know went to Goddess Parvati asking for help, who understood that something had to be done so that the people don't suffer. She told a nice story to convince the Lord that one needed to constantly practice what they do, in order that they don't forget doing it altogether.
And just to be in practice, the Lord plays his drums and in the process brings rains.

I didn't have anything much to write, which makes this a pointless post actually.
But did it just to keep in touch and not forget writing altogether. And now that you've reached this far, take some time away to "Return To Innocence"