New Year musings

The New Year is an appropriate time to look for new inspiration, and I would like to share an experience that I hope will inspire you too.

At a recent event to mark International Project Management Day, the guest speaker was Deeip Sengar , a Kargil veteran, who is now Senior Vice President of Softsensor.ai, an industry leader in Data & AI.

Deeip’s life story is one of conquering the odds. At thirty, doctors told him he would never walk again, after a bullet smashed his hip bone in the Kargil war. He quit the army as he could not reconcile himself to being in uniform but confined to a desk. Despite needing crutches to walk, he wrote the CAT, completed his MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, joined Microsoft and rapidly rose to the top of the IT world. In about 10 years, he had discarded the crutches and trained himself to walk and run again!

While this is inspiring in itself, it was Deeip’s address on the occasion that captured my imagination and gave me several points to ponder.

Daring to dream and turning problems into solutions – When he joined the IT sector, Deeip believed he would literally automate the world from day one. Despite several challenges in selling the ideas that he envisioned would change the world, Deeip never lost sight of his original dream. Instead of losing heart, he took it upon himself to train the non-technical members of his team to code and created a whole bunch of apps that ultimately became successful enterprise level products in their own right. And all because he had the confidence to think out of the box, walk the talk, show a clear bias for action and the resilience to follow his dream.

Watermelon metrics and the mirage of success – Deeip explained the dangers of what he termed as ‘watermelon metrics’, by relating an anecdote about a large, prestigious project he was involved in. With a top-notch team of experts, adequate budgets and unstinted support from all quarters, the project could not fail. All the metrics showed green. However, there was a catch. The volume of documentation and data inputted was so large, any kind of analysis or review of them was simply impossible. So, while the metrics were green from the outside, they were red inside, just like a watermelon. The consequent financial and reputation risks loomed large.

The lesson to be learnt here is something that I always stress to my own team - keep things simple. Unnecessary complexity will always be counterproductive and require new people who come in to first undo what has been done and then simplify the process.

Learning for continuous improvement – Deeip called it being an ‘eternal student’. He said the boss at the client’s end of the project was one such. After Deeip’s presentation, he went back, did his research, understood the potential and accepted the technological recommendations completely. There is no age bar for learning. I, myself, am learning something new every day. If each of us becomes an eternal student, we will stay ahead of the curve, pioneer best practices and take our systems and processes to the next level of ‘getting it right first time’.

Call the fire brigade – Simply put, it means that when you cannot manage things by yourself, don’t hesitate to ask for help. Many do not speak up until it is too late, making it much more difficult to manage and retrieve the situation. Collaboration is the name of the game. Think and work as one team, not a collection of disparate individuals, roles and functions.

Practise high integrity – Deeip concluded by making this last and most important point - do whatever you do with an uncompromising ethicality It takes years to build a reputation and just a moment to crash it, which places a greater responsibility on our shoulders.

As I said, Deeip’s speech really got me thinking about how success is so often a matter of self-belief, hard work, determination and frugal innovation, against the most challenging odds. Qualities that will do us well in our personal and professional lives.

Good wishes and all the very best for the year ahead!

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