Ten Thoughts from my Visit to India

I had the honor and pleasure of visiting Hyderabad in the south of India. Appfire has maintained an office here for years because we knew lots of talented engineers from previous roles and wanted to tap into the rich knowledge base of smart people. I’m here tagging along to a meeting of our top engineers from across the global organization, but I’m not at all part of the meeting - just a friendly observer. (It’s one of those things a Chief of Staff does.)

What follows is a mix of what I wrote in my personal journal, plus a list of ideas I grabbed from my daily practice if writing down a “10 ideas” list every day.

A Visitor Could Quite Easily Miss the “Real” India

In my journal, I wrote an honest thought that might feel offensive, but that I mean with great respect. “If you come from the west, your eye might ‘catch’ on the piles of trash that sometimes litter the side of the road, or the roaming dogs, or some of the other ‘messy’ things. Or maybe worse, you’d be fooled by the ‘forced opulence’ of the glittering towers built by Amazon and Microsoft and Honeywell. But those perspectives would be missing the true magic.

”India finds a way.” That’s the key element. India rises to every challenge, and people can grow beyond their starting points. This is a guy from the US making this observation. Am I wrong?

The people are the magic. They aspire, they rise, or the ones who want to succeed rise. So many people display a great pride in their roles, and I’m quite excited every time I see their efforts in action.

I met Chef Chetan at the Trident Hotel in HITEC City. He ran a staff of 90 and delivered such quality food every morning (I only ate breakfast with his people). He’d been there for six years, and his excellence was obvious every step of the way. He stands out as one kind of symbol of excellence.

But in the same way, I met with some of the region leaders of the Brahma Kumaris organization, and was impressed by their worldwide efforts, which showed through in very tiny details at the old age home and primary school for young children that we visited. I saw the same potential and expressed excellence as what I saw in Chef Chetan.

Ten More Ideas

Not all of these are about India, but enough are.

1. Uniform perfection isn’t necessary. We only need what we need. Everything else is ultimately a “nice to have.” - The experience of Hyderabad is that you see things that look “messy” or “imperfect,” but those things don’t relate to your experience. Your experience is almost always perfection.

2. Most people want to pursue mastery, except those who don’t.?I think people who can sense the potential for opportunity give great effort towards achievement. Those who don’t try are often victims of not believing they have options.

3. We learned from the internet that no connectivity equals a “brick” (Polish statement). I think no “live” data is a different kind of brick. Ugh. This is hard to unpack in this post. Let me write you another standalone post about this concept.

4. Treating your guests like gods is a great way to instill an amazing guest experience.?- My colleague Bipasha explained to me "Athiti Devo Bhava" - that’s almost literally “we treat our guests like gods.” I wonder if more people could learn this idea from Indian culture that we’d have better guest/customer experience in so many other ways.

5. Shared chaos can actually work as a system. Or collaborative chaos. Whatever. You should see the traffic system here. Until you’re in the middle of the chaos of Indian traffic, you can’t understand this premise. My point is that “order” isn’t always the best way to solve something. As long as everyone understands the lack of solid rules, the end result is successful. In fact, the worst traffic snarls came from what westerners would consider “normal” traffic.

6. When people know opportunity is available, they have a reason to strive. Not everyone does, but more will, simply knowing the opportunity is there. The chance to grow.?Rereading this now, it’s more or less what I said in #2. (So the list is 9. Whoops.)

7. If you ever think vegetarian food is boring, it just means you haven’t tried real Indian food.?It’s almost cliche to rave about the food or warn about the spice. Understand this: there are depths of culinary excellence that we can’t appreciate until you eat immersively in this space.

8. There’s always more to learn. I had never heard of Telugu as being a LARGE language in northern India. I thought Hindi and English.?(This is me reminding myself that I’m dumb.)

9. Live in-person team events will never die and never should. There’s nothing like dancing with a bunch of drunk coworkers.?I’m writing this from a powerful offsite meeting. The level of sharing is amazing. But last night, we also drummed together (the entertainment was a man who taught about 100 of us to drum in a circle), and we danced. OMG, you should see a bunch of well-watered Indians dance.

10. I must always wash away my assumptions. Oddly, this isn’t about India. It’s about our engineering team. I know these people are smart. I know they care. I really felt a depth of nuance and a deep desire to innovate. It was quite lovely to witness. Maybe this point is about remembering just how much collective knowledge and wisdom matters.

This list is just a messy note to you from India, because I wanted to capture the sentiment and feelings I experienced here, and not just the visuals and facts. If you’ve been to India (or live here), you probably feel a bit of “yeah, no kidding, Chris” at everything I expressed. But I think that all great truths are better absorbed through repetition, and so I offer this to the body of work of people praising India for having a very special perspective on how to deliver excellence that doesn’t always align at first glance with how we see things (how I see things - I’ll speak only for myself) as a westerner.

Have you experienced any of this? Any areas where I’m wrong? What would you add?

Chris…