The Mahabharata Connection of HashedIn

A Tribute to the Big 5

Today is my first working day in my new profession after a week of sick leave, and I thought I would start with tribute to the people who influenced me the most over the past decade. It has to begin with the Big 5 of HashedIn.

After working with the 5 big people, a few associations with my favorite epic, the Mahabharata, naturally came to mind. The entire story has nothing to do with a great epic like the Mahabharata. Our wars weren't as grand or flavourful, but we did have a few similar big heroes and we had our own Dharma.

The three leaders I worked with the most since I started were Himanshu, Anshu, and Sri. They, along with Rajeev, were technically my reporting managers throughout my 9 years, but the biggest lesson I learned was this:

There is no 'reporting' in a good system. Every one is equal and only the roles we play matter.

These were the roles they played:

Anshu as The Gyan Yogi: Krishna

Anshuman Singh played the role of Krishna—he evangelized learning at HashedIn. He was always curious, calm, and kind, listening to problems with patience and asking us questions that helped us figure out solutions and understand constraints. He was our theory guru, the Gyan Yogi. Anshu has had the biggest influence on the values we hold at HashedIn, which have, of course, evolved over time. Like the Radical Honesty value which has to go in hand with ‘Well Intentional’.?

The biggest lesson from Anshu was :

Get the right things done by asking the right questions, not by telling people what to do. Let the solution come from those doing the work. That's what motivates people to do things as humans.

One example is the last question he asked me when I showed him a book I wanted to write: 'What you're telling here is a very harsh truth, but do you think the audience wants to hear such a harsh truth?' - It made me think.

I started reading books only in the last 10 years. In the last 5 years, I've read so many growth books, all thanks to the Gyan Yogi’s evangelization of books and ideas like Antifragile, The Trusted Advisor,Drive,Hard things etc

Sri as the Karma Yogi:?Arjuna

Sripathi Krishnan mainly played the role of Arjuna. He was a fighter who stood on the frontline in all the big battles. Victory was almost certain when he led the charge. He was always excited to hunt and try out new Tech Astra’s in town and eager to fight new battles with them, always at the front. Sri was all about action—he was a Karma Yogi. Though he gave great gyan, it was his role as a fighter that made the bigger impact. The last book he told me to ask all the engineering managers to read was An Elegant Puzzle.

The biggest lesson from Sri was :

To win hard battles, learn to use new tools quickly, act fast, and fight from the front. And of course, be ready to let go of your old, beloved weapons and the software we built with them. Stay lean to move swiftly on the battlefield.

A recent example is how we created Gen AI capability, and before that, how we set up media capability by broadcasting live cricket matches from the office. Working with him has taught me to solve a lot of 'chicken-and-egg' problems, which is why I was often pulled into setting up new capabilities from scratch.

Himanshu in two half roles: Yudhishthira & Bhima - The People Yogi.?

Himanshu Varshney played the best parts of Yudhishthira and Bhima. If Himanshu were a Pandava and had to choose a role for hiding during exile, I am certain he would have chosen the role Yudhishthira choose (Kanka) in his incognito mode, helping the king in the game of dice. Like Yudhishthira, he loved games, and like Bhima, he valued people over processes. And of course, everyone respected and committed to his final decision, whether they agreed or not. And of course he did not do stupid things both Yudhishthira and Bhima did like betting with most precious things like HashedIn. He was the People’s Yogi.

The biggest lesson from Himanshu was:

The process is for the people, not the other way around. When designing a process, you can’t cover 100% of the population. At max 80%. The process is for the norm, not the exceptions. Treat exceptions with care and focus on managing them outside of the process, because exceptional things happen through those exceptions, both positive and negative.

An interesting example of 'What else would Himanshu do?' is our decision to send a note to parents when Hashers got promoted or were top impactors. I can remember so many "What else will Himanshu do " :D. There’s even a funny incident involving a Hasher related to this note to parents in the 'P.S.' section!?

The advice he gave me during our last meeting, while discussing my new path, was this: 'Listen more and pay extra attention to the person sitting across from you.' I felt that I really needed that advice."

Harshit as The Growth Yogi: Drupada

Harshit Singhal played the role of Drupada. He joined later and focused on business, growth, and alliances. He helped balance the 'Good Money' vs. 'Bad Money' lines we had at HashedIn. He taught all of us on the importance of executive presence and we stopped wearing flip flops in office to calm down his anger:)

The biggest lesson from Harshit was:

There is always a weak link or 'Herbie' that slows you down when you want to grow. Put all your focus on that Herbie at the right time.

An example was: 'Okay, hiring is the problem, so recruitment is your Herbie. Let's hire a few good recruiters first.'"

Sandeep as the Firefighter: Abhimanyu

Sandeep Kumar Singh was pulled into a lot of firefighting and was often deployed to break through many Chakravyuhas. I laughed the most with Sandeep at HashedIn. We would sit and laugh about various topics for hours. He felt more like a pal, like other Senapathi's with whom I fought many battles together. He was very kind and helped me a lot in the start. We were responsible for the entire HashedIn Delivery for a long time and that helped me grew.

Our Dharma

Over time, I felt that our Dharma evolved into this:

'Deliver delight to the client and take good care of people.'

Both co-exist, meaning that if you take care of your people, they will deliver great service to clients.

Good Dharma appears obvious and simple, like in this picture (again, from Jaya). It’s about standing for extreme empathy for the Client and Hashers. The other extreme is Exploitation, which is adharma, as shown in this image:

A Model of Problem Solving

After working at HashedIn with these amazing folks for so long, the following problem-solving model naturally came to mind:

• What would Anshu say?
• What would Sri do?
• What else would Himanshu do?
• What would Harshit suggest to make money or scale it?

If I can model the answers to these questions and act on them, I'm confident a decent solution will emerge.

The 'problem at hand' was always the Kauravas—our enemy. Sometimes it was a client's problem, sometimes a growth challenge, and other times it was a people or capability issue. Now, when I need to approach someone with a story or script, I try to model these answers

The Seeds of Maha-Hashedin

It's amazing to see how Hashers have grown with HashedIn, and the seeds from Maha-Hashedin are budding and flourishing, becoming rich forests in many places.

A great credit goes to Rajeev Vasudeva and the Deloitte US leadership for finding, guarding, growing and even adopting the good things from HashedIn within the vast Deloitte ecosystem, driving it grow 4x in just 3 years.

Post Scripts

P.S.1: Here is an interesting incident regarding Himanshu’s “What else would Himanshu do?” series. We used to send a celebration note to parents at their home address whenever someone got promoted or became a Top Impactor at HashedIn. Our admin team put lot of hard work and parents used to love it. One of the colleagues’ parents expressed sadness to son when they didn’t receive a note from Himanshu after the 1st time. Promotions and Top Impactor statuses don’t happen every six months, so they thought their child hadn’t had a good year, putting on a sympathetic face and was asking, “Are you doing okay?” To solve this issue after a couple of cycles, the son himself used Printo’s service to print and send goodies to parents every six months.

His parents lived with pride happily ever after as the award kept on coming!. Heard the 'Son' will also be taken to hell temporarily for few seconds for this malpractice like it was done to Yudhishthira before taking him to heaven forever for keeping his parents happy forever.

P.S.2: ?I took both images from Jaya: An Illustrated Retelling of Mahabharata. It’s one of the best versions of the Mahabharata I read. I love the narration, the side notes, and the illustrations. The other two versions I enjoyed reading are Randamoozham by MT Vasudevan Nair and the most read one by C. Rachagopalachari.

What have you encountered because of Himanshu’s creative “What else do we need to do?” solutions? We could shoot an episode on this and call it “Aam Aadmi - The Mango Man.” We could also include his famous mango story! :) He is a sport and he wont care ;)

Feel free to share your favorite version of the Mahabharata as well.

And the epic saga continues to thrive, breed, and grow.

Thank you, Big 5!