Part 2 - Reflections on my 3 years at Rackspace

This is part 2 of my 3 year journey at Rackspace. I have been blessed to have thought leaders as friends and mentors in my journey. This concluding part articulates the things I learnt from them and applied into this job.

The 5 Es (Envision, Enrol, Energise, Enable, Execute) to create a strong circular organisation:?An individual can make an immediate impact. However, for an organisation to truly remain high performing, teams must come together and deliver sustained results.?

How we get the team to jell together into a winning unit is the hardest part and needs sustained nourishing. A few lessons that I've stumbled upon with the help of my amazing team are:

• Business is mostly about bookings, revenue, and profit, with all other things thrown in as side dishes. However, this is very cut and dry and does not motivate the wider company. Creating a vision of what we are trying to achieve that talks to everybody is very important. If we keep our employees happy, they will keep our customers happy, who will, in turn, keep our “financial books happy”.
• Each individual brings something unique to the table. How do we bring out these diverse perspectives? How do we value them? And how we weave all of them into a common vision is an art!
• The more that the team thinks it is their idea, that idea will gain traction and deliver results.
• Keep finding ways to energise organisations toward key initiatives.?
• Enable each member of the team to deliver their portions of the KPIs. In addition, create an ecosystem where each member understands each other's KPIs and their value towards the wider. mission. This will make Execution so much easier and self-fulfilling
• As individuals, we all could do with a push. That “push” comes in many forms – a positive psychological boost with an appreciation of the work, a continued inspection of expectations, and an active intervention to resolve issues.

Personal Development: I am blessed to work in an industry that was pandemic-proof and kept growing leaps and bounds. This industry pushes us to continually learn new things, new ideas, and new features to stay relevant. As I talk to people across industries and countries, the upcoming recession is at the top of everybody’s minds. The only thing we can do is to keep investing in ourselves, get certified, put up our hand to solving customers’ or companies’ challenges, and keep our networks strong. These are the only things that will keep us employable.

Diversity: In a global organisation like ours, it is a given that we will work with people from different parts of the world. Sometimes, these parts that seem the same country can also have nuances. As I have interacted with people from Mexico, Texas, California, Midwest, UK, various parts of India, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Japan, Vietnam etc., a few things I have learnt:

• People hunger for relationships. Find ways to find commonalities even when there might be no obvious ones. I have learnt food is a universal language. Every country, province, and city is proud of its food culture. There are so many common things about the food of various parts of the world! A discussion about food almost always gets a conversation going and breaks down barriers.
• The words you use (and how you use them) have different connotations for different cultures. Do not jump to conclusions.?
• Have a genuine interest in meeting people and knowing about them. People can detect a fake attempt pretty easily. If meeting new people does not come naturally to you, find other ways of connecting.