Cuppa Tea

The title may sound British, but the tea is very much Indian.

Consumption of tea is the social glue that binds our society. The morning tea that energizes us to get through the day, the afternoon tea with colleagues sharing the office gossip, the evening tea + biscuits with family, watching your favourite sitcoms – the humble cup of tea is always in the thick of action.

Unlike the British, we Indians enjoy our tea with a lot of flavour and character. A well-prepared cup of tea carries the heart and soul of the maker. The addition of spices, the amount of milk, the accurate measure of sugar, the perfect boiling temperature – it all contributes towards making a perfect blend.

Tea is also a great conversation starter. All conversations with a guest often start with “Would you like some tea?”. Guests in India are not known to have ever declined that offer. A well-prepared cup of tea magically adds colour to the conversation.

With that context, let me dive into how the “story of tea” can be used to explain concepts of quality, communication, and value differentiation – terms that we use everyday at work.

You visit your friend. She inquires if you want some tea. Of course, you accept the offer. Let us create some scenarios from this point forward.

Your friend goes into the kitchen, you hear clanking of vessels, boiling of water, hissing of steam accompanied by the aroma of spices that fly into the living room – and, in about 10 minutes, your friend appears from the kitchen with two cups of hot steaming tea.

Everything seems normal – the amount of tea prepared, the amount of time taken, the tell-tale signs that you noticed – all indicating the adherence to a known process that is being executed to produce a known output.

Even before tasting the tea, you have a good impression about the final product. After all, it was produced through an expected process. You expect good quality because all the signs that emanated from the kitchen were right.

You taste the tea. You like it. You may ask for small adjustments – a little more sugar, a little too hot for your lips, a saucer to cool it quickly – all with the base consideration that the overall quality of the tea is good.

After you implement the minor adjustments, your cuppa tea is ready for consumption. You enjoy it immensely along with a lively conversation with your friend.

Let us say your friend’s kitchen has a solid door. She closes the door before proceeding to make tea for you. You are sitting on the sofa, wondering what is going on inside the kitchen. You don’t hear sounds; you don’t smell aromas – there are no signs of a process getting executed.

You get mildly nervous. You are wondering when the doors would open. You trust your friend and her abilities to make a solid cup of tea. However, your senses are not reading anything. You place blind trust on your friend to deliver a high-quality output.

10 minutes go by. The kitchen doors open. Your friend walks out with two steaming hot cups of tea. You are relieved.

The anxiety of the past 10 minutes makes you suspect the tea. You pick up the cup, watch the tea closely for consistency, colour, and aroma. You take a quick sip and let your tongue absorb the flavour. You take an extra second to evaluate and rate the quality of the product inside your head. ?

It is the same tea, made by the same person, following the same process – the only difference was the closed kitchen door. The closed-door blocked feedback about the process. You will not trust a process that your senses are unable to read.

It generates anxiety that brainwashes you to doubt the quality of the product. You have supreme confidence on your friend and her abilities. However, the closed door and the lack of signs made you suspect her skills.

At work, if you are executing a process – show signs of it to your client. Let them see the sights, smell the aromas, and gain confidence on the process. If they are comfortable with the process, they will like your output without many apprehensions.

Let’s say your friend went into the kitchen, left the door open and started making tea. You can hear the sounds and smell the aroma.

10 minutes go by.

20 minutes go by.

30 minutes go by.

The sounds and smells are coming through, but the tea isn’t.

40 minutes go by.

60 minutes go by.

Your friend eventually walks out of the kitchen with two steaming cups of tea. She walks into the living room as if everything is normal.

You are breaking your head wondering what kind of tea takes 60 minutes to prepare. Your expectations from the tea have multiplied within this duration. You are hoping for the best tea you ever had in your life.

However, your friend prepared the tea with the same skillset, following the same procedure. She just took a longer time. Maybe she was not organized, maybe she is a slow worker, maybe she forgot something and had to redo everything – your mind is racing to determine the reason behind the extra time.

The time taken to deliver same output makes you doubt the competency of the worker. Every task comes with a time-expectation. Normally, people tolerate 10% deviation to the expected time. However, they are not comfortable with 600% deviation in time.

You take a sip. You take a longer time to acknowledge the quality. Your mind is trying to find positive points about the tea, but it does not taste any different than a 10-minute tea.

You decide. The next time you visit her house – ‘you are not asking for tea’!

Timing is critical. Every project must be delivered on time. However, there is no justification for laziness. You, being a slow worker, will not help even if you produce a quality output.

Work on your skill and improve your timing.

Let’s say your friend went into the kitchen, left the door open and started making tea. You can hear the sounds and smell the aroma.

However, this time, she asks you to pull a chair and sit closer to the kitchen. Your conversation has started even before the tea-making starts. She walks you through her “special” process of making tea.

She boasts about her famous, home-made tea-masala, that she uses only for special guests. You start feeling privileged. She invites you to smell the aroma of the masala after it is added into the boiling water.

You are mesmerised. You are eager to taste the output. She tells about her trade-secret – how she pre-boils the milk before adding it to the water. You are impressed with her talent.

10 minutes fly by. You did not even notice. You were seeing the tea take shape right before your eyes. Everything about it was right. The process, the smell, the masala, the trade-secret – it all seemed to fall in place.

You are in absolute awe of your friend’s skill to make tea. It is the same tea, made by the same process, by the same person – but somehow, this tea seems fascinating.

You take a sip. Your mind tells you not to compare the tea with your past knowledge from a million cups of tea you had in your life. Your mind says – “this tea is special”. It was made specially for you, with masalas that are not used for others, with a process that is so unique – you now have a new baseline of how tea should taste.

Constant communication with your client is critical to the success of your project. Tell them about your work, how you bring forth your special skills to deliver the best output, how you have magic tools & tricks to enhance the product, how you are giving your best shot to creating an absolute marvel.

Your clients will love you for it. They will baseline your work and use it for comparison with the rest of the world. You are a super-hero.

Let’s say your friend went into the kitchen, left the door open and started making tea. You can hear the sounds and smell the aroma. However, there are some strange, non-tea-making sounds and smells coming from the kitchen. You are not able to place your guess.

60 minutes go by. You get anxious. “Why is a cup of tea taking so long”?

Your friend walks out of the kitchen. She is carrying a large serving tray. It has two cups of steaming hot tea along with onion pakoras (fritters). She remembered that you enjoy onion pakoras with your afternoon tea. Her gesture makes you happy.

However, you don’t appreciate the wait. While you enjoy the pakoras, it did not come with advance notice. It did not give you time to prepare and receive this accompaniment properly. Maybe you had a late lunch, maybe you stopped eating deep fried items – a little warning would have helped.

You take a sip of the tea and a bite of the pakora. Both the items are now competing for your attention. You want to rate the tea, but the pakora is clouding your judgement. A well-intentioned value-addition is ending up devaluing the primary product.

It was the same tea, made by the same person, following the same process – however, an un-announced value-add interfered with the perceived quality of the tea.

Value-adds in business are a good idea. However, it may be wise to ascertain if your client sees it as a value-add. A quick confirmation – “Hey, I was thinking of making onion pakoras with tea, is it ok with you. Hope you have time; it may take an hour?” – would go a long way in making your value-add worthwhile.

As you may have realized by now, tea-making and office-working are two sides of the same coin. The approach we bring into executing one project, influences how we perform in other projects.

We are the same person at home and at work. The skills you learn at home will help you perform better at work, and vice versa. Many of us lead two lives. We transform into a different person when we go to work and return to our original selves at home.

Habits like - communication, quality adherence, process adherence, time compliance, organization & planning skills, value-addition, financial management – can be learned and perfected at home and exhibited at work.

Current day organizations place a lot of importance on learning. There are many layers to learning. If a new learning is not positively influencing your core-personality & character – you would’ve wasted an opportunity.

Real knowledge is when you are trained to quickly and efficiently absorb new information. Information may change over time, but knowledge persists. You may learn a new coding-language, but, if it is not teaching you logical reasoning skills – you would’ve wasted an opportunity.

Kill the alternate personality right now. Be ONE awesome individual. Learn from the world around you and use the knowledge in other places.

To quote a famous Tamil philosopher – “What you know is equivalent to the water held in one’s palm. What you are yet to learn is equivalent to the water in the ocean”.

There is much to learn. There is much to live.

Enjoy your cuppa tea!

?

?

?

?

?

?

?

?

?

?

?

?

?