Lessons in management & life ..... thru father-son letters

　

Dear Baba,

What you have told me has eased the burden of failures which I carry with me. I still remember after a week of reading this "learning to accept failures with an even kill as much as learning to deal with successes." It has completely stuck in my brain.

With a determination of getting strong GPA's next year, I am studying with Dadan and on my own. With Dadan I am leaping in and out of chapters with no specific order in Algebra. Today, Dadan has started me on the bengali alphabet with "অ আ ই" On my own I am cracking down on the World Geography.

Next years subjects are Apex LA, Algebra 1, Inventions and Innovations, Social Studies, Science. I could take care of science but I decided to concentrate most on the math- it takes a chunk out of the time I have. As you are wondering what is Inventions and Innovations and where is writing, I will explain it to you. Inventions and Innovations is a engineering class that is given to Apex Students in the place of writing. I am very happy about this but Ma is not liking the fact that there is no writing. She thinks that I am a "chotta" (cheater!!) and purposely not taking writing!

Dadan - digs for gold, forgets to flush, and receives a scolding from Nan everyday. He tells me stories, plays with me, teaches me determined to spend as much time with me as possible. During lunch time, Dadan cracks jokes about Nan and asks puzzles. This question completely stumped me - there is a lily in the middle of a pond, every day it grows twice the amount it grew yesterday. It took 21 days to fill up the pond, what day did it cover half of the pond? The answer cannot be in decimal form, no hours, no minutes, nothing except day. When Dadan told me it, I fell on the couch with my hand on my forehead.

Nan - endless things to tell. She wakes up 4 in the morning and does pranayam, has biscuit and tea when ma wakes up, tries to stuff ma with food during breakfast and lunch, and then she cannot be seen after 2. Nan wears a lot of oil and that makes the bathtub completely dirt which I have to clean it everyday. Whenever I fall on ma - Nan gets this "oof" look on her face. We watched Vooter Voobhishat, Kahaani, and Error 404! She pretty much dozed through the entire movie and then wakes up at the end and asks what happened. When I explain it to her, she dozes in the middle of me explaining it.

Now I swim for 2 hours per day. Scott kills us and then expect us to be back in good shape. He said none of us are physically or mentally prepared for these practices. To make us more physically prepared, he said don't do anything that runs a risk of getting hurt. He won't accept any physical injuries as excuses to miss practice. On some day our swim club is planning a lock-in night at the pool. As we were getting ready, we joked around about if Scott got his own way he would make us practice the entire night. If he didn't he would make "pop practices" over the night.

I am waiting for you to come home. I read the letters that D and N sent you congratulating you on the improvement over there. I want to know a bit more on the day to day basis on how you run the plant.

With love,

P..

Dear P....

For a few days and weeks now I have been planning to pen down this letter to tell you a few things that has been written in my head a thousand times! Sorry for the delay in replying to you - but nevertheless I wanted to write you another letter from India.

My stint in India has virtually come to an end - I will still do a few follow-ups remotely, but for the most part the things that I had come to settle have been managed. It was overall a wonderful experience, and even though I missed you and mom a lot - I think this stint has taught me a few things about myself and my job that I may not have accomplished elsewhere, especially in US. Given a choice now, I don't think I would have wanted to exchange this work for another. So, it's not surprising that I bid good bye to P-town with a mixed feeling - is it?? At one end, I was happy to finally get back to "my world" - on the other, I was leaving behind a world that had become very much a part of my world in the last 3 to 4 months. The strings of attachment had grown more deep rooted than I ever thought they would!

Very unlike myself!! I leave behind quite a few things that I am quite proud of. Professionally there's probably no part of the plant that I have not touched, and with a vast majority of them I ended up changing them for better -- those things will continue to change, for better or may be for worse! I won't bore you with the improved metrics on our key measures, many of which improved 2 or 3 times. But I think the two things that I have been able to instill personally in the culture that makes me most proud of are -- decisiveness and desire to change in people! To me you always have to change; you can move forward, backward or sideways -- but the fact of the matter is you have to move -- standing still at a place is like being dead! So, I kept telling folks who cared to listen or not - that you have to take decisions to move -- indecisiveness leads to a standstill and stagnancy leads to lifelessness!

Until the last few days, I frankly did not realize how deeply I have touched a few people that I worked with. I do not always get moved by farewells - because those are the places where people say good and kind words for you, even if they do not like you! Somehow though when I saw the surprise cake with "we'll miss u" inscribed on it (can you believe one sweet girl travelled 7 hrs just for getting the cake from the city!) -- unknowingly it choked me a bit, and very unlike of me I was at a loss of words. I told them it is easy to run a well oiled big machine, and I was proud that I run such a big machine -- but here in having to deal with a small machine that has parts falling apart all over the place was very different, it humbled me to the nth degree and I commend them for having the patience, flexibility and skill set to deal with it! As you and ma can imagine, I have been at times very harsh and sarcastic with quite a few to make them improve and move -- I apologized for that. And, I am more in peace with the fact that they appreciate my honesty and directness rather than sugar-coating things and not giving them a true picture, and helping them see things that keep breaking their processes, and working side-by-side at a very granular level to get those resolved.

In India there's this "babu" culture where managers tend to just "tell" people to do things rather than doing it themselves. I hope to some extent I have been able to break this barrier of "telling" vs "doing". My point is if I can tell somebody, I can as well do it myself. I understand this goes against delegation -- but delegation through telling is not true delegation -- delegation in my perfect world should be such that a place can run on its own even when I am not there -- folks are independent of me in terms of decisions. You won't believe things that I got involved with -- stating from brokering a deal to get someone a room to getting someone a job, solution designing for an improved operations flow to solution designing the food processing at 3rd shift. Believe it or not, one of the things that I get credited for is bigger chicken pieces at lunch -- not kidding!

In life as in work you can deal with any situation in two ways - you might keep looking for and building the perfect solution, or you can make do with what you have and then try to better it as you work. I've always preferred the later, and again here it proved to be the case. As I said, performing an open heart surgery on a patient that is walking is far more interesting than trying to build a perfect heart! If I try to make the analogy a bit simpler for you - let me tell you of a house -- you can spend millions to build the perfect house, and delay your stay in it -- but until you stay in it it does not become a home - right? So why not build the house that is affordable and bare minimum, you can always keep remodelling it to your need and beautify it as you stay in it -- one, the solutions are much more suited to your needs (because you understand your needs much better as you stay in it) and two, the house becomes a home and serves it purpose much earlier! Hence, I do not blame folks who got this place started at the first place; yes they could definitely have done a better job - but they probably did as much as they were capable of, and it was fun to fix a few things to make it work the way we would want it to!

You wanted to know day to day running of a plant -- my philosophy again centers around empowering people and enabling them to take decisions -- right or wrong, I always teach managers to back the decisions of their employees. That's what I did here in India - trying to teach them how to get things done (quick decisions based on available info), and how to get things done without breaking processes (slow and steady wins the race - go for processes, and the numbers will follow -- almost like telling you instead of preparing for an exam, study the chapter to learn it and the exam prep will take care of itself -- do not focus on results but focus on the path that leads to results). Also, the other thing to note is when you do not perform, the external pressures keep mounting demanding a thousand different things, But one cannot do thousand different things at a time - right? So I helped them pick the few critical ones that when done will help to clear a bunch of other noises, and then I taught them how to push back on the others -- "offense is the best defense" in my world - otherwise if you keep defending, at some point of time it is bound to give in!

Also, in India there's a finer balance of escalating to higher management vs, building personal relationships at the lower level to get things done. It's very difficult to understand it unless you are very attuned to the culture, and for folks who haven't worked here, it is very difficult to understand it and strike the balance. For the people who came to help here from US and Europe, that was what I helped them with. Not that I did not make life uncomfortable for a few with my escalations, but at the same time I think I was able to connect with most at a very personal level, that made getting things done easier. I do not think it is political savvyness or diplomacy -- I just think it is more of empathy and understanding, I should say, I feel proud that I see that empathy in you!

Looks like you are having a lots of fun with nan and dadan - grandparents are a joy! They are friends with more wisdom and they are parents with more freedom -- and you are very fortunate to have time to spend with your grandparents. Here back home, thammi and dadabhai misses you a lot -- I hope we can travel here in next July. Beyond that, be it voluntary work in prep for your medicals or otherwise, I would love for you to come and spend time in India -- exploring and understanding the beauties and nuances of real India on your own. Let me tell you a secret -- unlike in US where you are dazzled with clarity and marvel of modern world, India still manages to surprise me and capture my imagination in a very different way -- the sheer lack of structure, infrastructure and money makes this place in my opinion far more interesting than US can ever be!

Ok - I won't bash and complain about the country that we have made home for the last 10 years. The country that has taught my son to fix his own bed, make his own breakfast, and hopefully in keeping his room and bathroom clean (inspite of the oil! -- external pressures are no excuses - right?). The country where he is biking to school and swimming to glory! The country where he is mowing the lawn and saving money to buy stamps and a iPad someday!! Keep smiling and keep fighting -- they say "practice makes a man perfect" - so next time I see your swimming coach Scott, I'll give him a hug -- an antidote for that other girl's (forgot her name, the one someone in your team is trying to be special friends with!!!) dad scolding him......:)

Bye

Baba