Life's Valuable Lessons

As I look back at the 6 decades of my life I thought it was pertinent to recall the learning’s I have had that have made the me the person I am and allowed me to lead the fulfilling life I have had.

At a seminar I attended conducted by the Harvard Business School a very interesting piece of research conducted over 20 years was shared. The research tracked the career trajectory of graduates from prestigious Ivy League business schools trying to understand what factors distinguished the really successful ones who made it to the CEO slot vis a vis the also rans .

The personality of the participants was essentially viewed through the lenses of Logos, Pathos & Ethos. While Logos relates to a persons ability to use his knowledge and logical thinking ability, Pathos is about ones interpersonal abilities and Ethos related to principles and value systems.

It was found that the ones who made the cut had distinctively higher proportions of Pathos & Ethos as compared to those who fell by the wayside. The reason for the same being that as one handles more and more complex tasks merely getting compliance oriented behaviour from subordinates and colleagues was not enough to deliver outstanding performance , what was required was a spirit of cooperation which was a function of the pathos and ethos factors displayed by?the leader .

With this construct in the background I set to look at my life in terms of the lessons learnt & the wonderful people who were instrumental in enabling me to imbibe the same and to whom I am & will continue to?remain eternally?grateful.

Very early childhood memories pertain to being utterly pampered by a gentleman and his family who were our neighbours in Calcutta .It has continued until today by the subsequent generations.

The manner in which they have indulged me is not only difficult to comprehend especially considering that there was no blood relationship involved. I have however not come across anyone else in my life who I know well who has received the kind of affection I did perhaps even from their own parents or grandparents leave alone from strangers.

The invaluable lesson I have learnt from this experience is how to love unconditionally. Am trying hard on this front but do not remotely measure up to the standards experienced. The practical idea behind this thought is to be unconditionally committed to the growth & well being of everyone that one is privileged to share a relationship with .

The second valuable lesson comes from my father who was a austere man of few words. It concerns a professional colleague of his who he treated with the reverence he probably had only for his own father owing to the manner in which he helped my father settle down both in the professional & personal fronts at a crucial juncture of his life and it was impossible to tell that relationship we shared between our families had started with them being professional colleagues.

The gentleman once wanted my father to do him a favour by clearing some expenses which were improper and would violate the code conduct of one of the country,s most prestigious institutions namely our Central Bank . Contrary to his wildest dreams my father declined leading to a rift that never healed in their lifetime .The lesson I have taken away is that ethics and principles are non negotiable no matter what the consequences Am happy to add that the most memorable?moments of my career have involved taking stands against tremendous odds which could have completely disrupted my career .

Another real life lesson I was privileged to learn courtesy my father was by having to move and live from a very young age in very contrasting cities and cultures. One had no choice but to quickly adapt to paradigm shifts in context and?make oneself at home in very alien situations . This is primarily responsible for me being able to adapt to the dozen odd relocations in my career which threw up many opportunities which might not have come my way if I had been reluctant to move. It has also developed in me a innate ability to make friends quickly and build enduring relationships based on mutual trust & respect. I have always followed the adage that people are innocent until proven guilty and not the other way around which is the default norm in most professional relationships.

On my 18th birthday i was privileged to interact with the CEO of a leading pharmaceutical multinational who happened to be my neighbors boss. The wonderful gentleman not only shared some pearls of wisdom and but also took me along as a special guest to their professional get together at a very fancy restaurant. What he said was Young man be sincere and you will never be a loser. While taking this approach might not land you the top job , you will however?never regret the fact that you were sincere despite everybody else not being?so . This has stayed with me every single day of my professional journey and I when I look back at a life that has exceeded every expectation I would ever have dreamt of I cannot but bow to the memory of this wonderful man.

I also heard him discuss with the adults in the room that it was his management philosophy to proactively reach out to his juniors and engage?with them instead of expecting them to take the initiative to do so as most people are reluctant to approach an authority figure . This not only demonstrated that you cared for them but also made them feel important which was a prerequisite to winning their trust and cooperation . Following this approach stood me in good stead with the very diverse people I had to lead across multiple cultures ,geographies and varying levels of seniority?right though my career.

At the start of the 1980,s I found myself graduating from college and stepping into the wide world to earn a living . It was a very different socialist india with very few job opportunities and a period of great anxiety for job seekers with just a graduate degree . On a train journey to Delhi on the iconic Rajdhani Express I was fortunate to run into a remarkable person who was a few years older than me but had impeccable educational qualifications from both India’s premier engineering and management institutions who was working with a blue chip technology multinational . We struck up a conversation that changed me life . He took me under his wing and groomed me like an elder brother and set me up for success in my first job interview .

He continued to be a mentor for many many more decades and held my hand early in my career and gave me the much needed confidence to face the totally unknown challenges of corporate life . He will live in my memory forever having played such a crucial role in enabling me to get up and running in corporate life when I was a complete novice .

Cut to the 30th year where I found myself in Delhi having taken charge of an expanded role where I became a managers manager for the first to time . It also involved the 1st relocation in my professional life (10 more followed ) along with a very young family . The first decision involved selecting a house which the company give me a carte blanche in the selection process my allowing to freely travel to the city I would be moving to . Having made the move with my family we to our utter horror discovered that the house had innumerable problems and my wife gave me an ultimatum that I either find a new house or she would move back . The situation was further compounded by the fact that the company had paid advance rent and brokerage too.

A gentleman who was the supreme boss of my division came visiting immediately thereafter and I shared my plight with him .He asked me the simple question as to whose decision was it to take the house and I replied it was mine . This was followed by another question that logically speaking who should bear the consequences and I had to admit that it would have to be me . He then said that it does not mean he that he couldn’t help me and asked him to put across a memo on the same . Sure enough in the next few days a clearance was given to write off all the expenses and go ahead with a new house . This was a master class in decision making using both logos to make me realise my folly and pathos for my condition something I have subsequently tried to emulate with very limited degree of success as we are inclined to mostly use logic or become sentimental and decide purely from a pathos perspective .

Another pearl of wisdom which I was fortunate to pickup from my associationship with this extraordinarily?brilliant and humane person who bore the greatest of pain and tragedy in his not so long life was when I asked him what his philosophy was towards leading a fulfilling life despite all its challenges was . True to style he simply summed up as Live as if you will die tomorrow but plan to live forever . Carpe diem as the popular mantra goes ie Seize the moment and make?every minute count whether it be at work or play but don’t indulge in excesses in a manner that you might have to regret it tomorrow . One more very valuable lesson I learnt from the associationship with this gentleman when I had just?moved into?a senior leadership role was that there are two ways to look at your job as a leader . One is to view it as a set responsibilities and obligations towards your team and the organisation and the other is to view is to make the most of the set of privileges that come with the role .Your credibility as a leader with largely hinge on the choice you make.

The start of the fourth decade of my life strangely found me getting back into formal academics something I disdained in my teens and early twenties I chose to invest a fair portion of my limited savings to signup for a course on marketing at a top notch US business school which completely changed my entire perspective on the subject and which continues to?pay dividends to this day . What I basically learnt was that to be a real marketeer one needs to fundamentally look at the business from and outside in perspective ie is wear the consumer hat first before donning the company hat while?the default mode of operating for the vast majority of marketing professionals is to attempt force fitting the company perspective on to the customers as?the company is the one?paying for their livelihood.

This was followed by another stint at another cutting edge institution where I learnt the science of pricing which most people believe is a nothing but a cost plus affair which is a big fallacy since costs are always driven by volumes and volumes are determined by the price offered. In other words call it value based pricing which is based on a very deep understanding of the consumption contexts and availability of alternative options given the challenges posed by time , place and information asymmetry factors .

By age 50 I had been there done it and thought that I had mastered what was needed to be a effective business leader .I could not have been more mistaken.To start with the first major lesson i picked up was the knowledge is finite and ignorance is infinite and hence considering yourself as an expert is the biggest mistake you can make since your hunger to work on expanding your horizons diminishes?and you quickly get outdated.

The other paradigm changing revelation was that contrary to popular notion, thinking you can manage the environment is a myth and the only thing you have some control over is your own physical mental?and emotional self which are all interrelated?. Hence knowledge of the inner self is far more important than knowledge of the external world if one wishes to lead a truly fulfilling life .This is a journey without end and I do not have enough words to thank the 2 gentleman namely Dr Debasis Chatterjee & Dr Shrikumar Rao for setting me on this path . I must also acknowledge the role played by my young life coach Dr Atul Pednekar and the stalwart executive coach Dr Marshall Goldsmith who have aided me on this journey of finding my way from merely living in my head to begining to also live in my heart a journey that is only 18inches in distance but which even a lifetime is not enough to cover.

There are 4 other qualities which I covet and cherish namely generosity , humility?resilience and willingness to forgive which I consciously attempt to?practise and will always remain as work in progress factors in my life. On the aspect of generosity I am inspired by a gentleman with literally no formal education whose neighbour I was privileged to be for more than a decade. Being a typical business man who had extensive dealings in the alternate economy his?life got turned upside down the day demonetisation was announced owing to the huge amount of cash in his possession . This however did not prevent him from giving me a master class in generosity on the same day when he said that he had some lower denomination notes that still remained legitimate currency?which he wanted to share with me to save me the inconvenience of standing in the bank queue when I was on my way . This apart?from the everyday spontaneous gestures both big and small of sharing and caring he demonstrated regularly on all facets of life not just to me but to every other friend of his continues to be a daily source inspiration .

Resilience in the ability to?bounce back from seemingly impossible to recover setbacks In life when everything seems lost .

My two dear friends who are cancer survivors epitomise this quality. Not only have they recovered from late?stage cancer at critical junctures of their lives but continue to be ever cheerful and optimistic despite experiencing such a grave situation . One of them who is perhaps the most cheerful & enthusiastic person I have known also has a child with severe mental & physical deficiencies to boot .No wonder I refer to him as the King of Kings .

Three gentlemen who are very close friends today happen to be individuals whose jobs I had to terminate when we worked together as colleagues some years ago . It astounds me that they show not the smallest sign of rancour about the difficulties they faced on account of my harsh decision and are today amongst my biggest well wishers . Their ability to forgive has made me realise?how much ground I have to cover on this front and I continue to be in awe of them because of the manner they have forgiven me by treating bygones and bygones and not allowing the past to interfere with the present,?a quality which I am continuously striving to cultivate.

The above phenomenon interestingly contrasts with my experience with 3 other people . These were individuals who were also junior colleagues but whom I treated as I would treat my own younger brother . I went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that they always got the best breaks and at times was even accused of nepotism by other colleagues . The irony of this situation is that these people not just subsequently bad mouthed me but have refused to maintain any contact with me . The lesson I have inferred is that while life never shortchanges you the payback for your good deeds don’t often come in the shape & form you expect it to .

Last but not least the aspect of humility was brought home to by none other that our country’s Bharat Ratna the peerless Lata Mangeshkar. At a once in a lifetime opportunity I had to engage in a long one on one conversation with her , never for a second did I feel that I was in the presence of a legend owing to her?extraordinary ability to make a ordinary mortal feel like me an equal . The icing on the cake was when I suggested a Dr who I thought could be of use to treat her persistent respiratory problem she mentioned she was suffering from and suggested I could ask the Dr to visit her at home . Her immediate response was to ask for the Dr contact number and mentioned that she would go over herself .What better example can one come across .

It was at this time when I was heading a high profile company that I decided to start the practice of polishing my own shoes a Sunday ritual that lasted an hour just to keep myself grounded & humble?and not get carried away by the new development in my life

This quality is also brought home on a frequent basis by my current boss who has created a very well recognised company from scratch at a very young age and is a now in his?early thirties. His insistence on having no markers attached to his position when he is in office and in the process make himself just like everybody else is a quality rarely witnessed in young people or for that?people of any age who have accomplished as much as he has and even amongst people with far lesser attainments .It is remarkable to see him carry out the practice of cleaning his own dishes after having lunch and at times even volunteering to do the same for whosever he?is hosting .Must say I am truly humbled by my associationship with him and consider myself privileged to learn from this person who is half my age .

Last but not least I have my wife to thank for continuously bringing me down to earth and keeping me grounded right through the twenty odd years where my corporate career was progressing at a very brisk pace bringing more and more prosperity into my life .

I sincerely hope to keep striving to emulate all these wonderful?persons for the rest of my life and to remain as a piece of work in progress forever . Kindly wish me luck .

Hoping I have given you meaningful food for thought to take stock on where you are in your journey of life when measured by these parameters .

May these better angels of our nature always shine radiantly in you.

All the best