Story #1 - Transforming Home garden

• A lot of theories regarding work-life balance have been discussed in the past. However, as we go through this pandemic, the lines between them have blurred completely and new methods of balancing the two are the need of the hour. I believe that this topic might not even be relevant anymore, owing to the flexibility displayed by the organizations and the adaptability of the global workforce in response to these challenging times. Through this article, I am putting forward my very different, though relevant learning's. The focus of this article is on the portability or adaptability of experiences and learning's between work & home, and about sometimes getting the best of both worlds.

Context:

My home garden has been the outcome of my wife's passion and it has evolved for over a decade since we moved to Bangalore. Used to the vast and spacious land areas of Vadodara, Bangalore was a hard adjustment, and the terrace garden was a nice weekend escape. However, as the garden grew in size it became harder to manage it. Some pics above to show the state of the garden in March this year.

After being confined in the safety of my house during the first few weeks of C-19, a way to unwind and de-stress was desperately needed. So, with a lot of mental deliberation, I decided to step into a territory that was totally a no man's land, since the home "managing director" would resist any changes to avoid any disturbance in her space. Many of you should be able to relate this quite well to our work and home life.

Challenges: No space for walks, Unorganized, In-consistent yield, water seepage risk due to excessive & unbalanced load, impossible to use the home garden as a family space due to lack of optimization of layout.

Solution:

After a few weeks of bargaining and with solid logical reasoning (let me transform the garden for you, the current load on terrace garden is not sustainable by civil structure, the yield can be better, better space utilization, etc) I was finally allowed entry into this work area. Hope this is also relatable to work, where sometimes you need solid reasoning and business case to put forward a project to stakeholders, knowing very well that your neck is on the line with odds stacked against you . 

Execution:  Then came the challenge of taking up the actual transformation during the lockdown with all the resourcing and supply chain issues. With my experience gained over the years at work, I started by making a plan factoring aspects of inventory & vendor management, waste & sustainability factors, aesthetics, managing my time (1hr every evening), space optimization & finally minimum disturbance to all stakeholders with everyone working from home.

All my lean manufacturing & transformation experience to Plan – Procure – Execute, keeping all the constraints in mind got tested to the limits due to all the external constraints in the times this project was taken up & even more critically performance management reflecting daily ending with statement from the Managing Director 'I told you nothing is going to be different" !! A lot of DIY was also required since external help was unavailable.

Just like at work, once a commitment is made, there is no looking back and our best effort needs to be put forward. Therein came the need to implement Lean practices and 6S principles in order to prepare a new garden layout, based on our needs & available resources.

• Sort:  Removed all unwanted plants, 5 tonnes of extra soil & broken pots. Pic here shows the magnitude of waste management
• Set in Order:  Segregated the layout based on functional needs like the natural conditions required for specific plants, sit-out, and walkway.
• Shine: Complete rejig of the garden, resulting in the cleaning of every part of the available real estate. It was also ensured that the new plan was in accordance with the civil load-bearing capacity of the terrace.
• Standardize:  The soil in all the pots was removed and recharged with the right composition. The layout was also made uniform. A special purpose plastic mat was placed below the pots to prevent the stagnation of water and seepage.
• Sustain:   The maintenance of the garden is now substantially easier. Soil quality is greatly improved.

Output:  

You know you have done your job well when your Managing Director says thank you. The best part of this journey was that all the hard work paid off and the transformation, though gradual became very vivid eventually. The process is validated only by the output and in this case, the yield of both flowering and vegetable plants increases dramatically.   We have now started spending late evenings on the terrace every day, tending to the various plants. Apart from helping us unwind, the garden also provides us with enough produce to feed us for 3-4 days in a week, thus reducing our exposure to C-19. The quality of the vegetables is way better than the options available in the market while being 100% organic. There's even enough left for the various birds and insects that are regular guests on our terrace.

Moral of the story:   

No learning ever goes to waste and we just need to keep exploring new ways to engage and contribute our skill sets. My objective of putting up this story is simple: we should never question whether something we learn is useful. It is all in understanding the use case - engaging with stakeholders - thinking of sustainable solutions - backing it up with solid plans and execution, to demonstrate evident results. If you enjoyed this story please respond with your C-19 experiences on converting challenges to opportunities. I guess there are many such stories. Let's keep learning!