12 years, 10 Bosses and tons of friends & learnings

 As I finish an amazing journey of 12 years, by the grace of the almighty, I am reminded of my 10+2 school days. A journey so very similar, started as an individual contributor, when I accepted the offer then with double mind. Father who worked in a single  company named Automobile Products of India (API) for over 30 years, did not like me moving job often, and I had promised him, I would be here for at least 10 years. Could keep that promise, but so much of water has flown under the bridge since then, father and grandmother are no more, so much of learning, had ten bosses so many new friends made. Humble gratitude to each one who have made this journey worth treading with immense learnings. 

To begin with the first COO I met, Srivats Sir - who said, the key to work here is 'Put your heads down, ears open, and give your best', and that has come in very handy. I still remember it after so many years. 10 year experience was first documented here https://arunoday.blogspot.com/2019/07/10-years-journey-of-decade.html

Flying with projects like Hummingbird, Flamingo and Eagle with work moving onshore, offshore, nearshore , with varied teams across almost all geographies, processes and ERPs there was lot that has happened in due course. Acquisition, merger, demerger, hive off. There were so many 'Hoto's' – hand over take over document, SOP's being prepared. Simplifying activities, implementing Continuous process involvement. Every phase was a process of learning, unlearning and relearning. The key was looking at each activity with these three questions in mind, which was reiterated by Vishal for 2022:

• Is there a need to do it
• Is there a duplication of task/activity
• Challenge the status quo

Thanks to Sharyn Coleman, had my vision board, in front of me always which kept reminding me to:

• Dream Big
• Get tings done
• Have fun 

With work, changes and even otherwise, got to visit quite a lot of places as well, during this period, keeping in mind the three wishes given by Thobias:

• Don't let things slip - Thrive to improve our service/business partnering
• Keep the reputation we could establish as a function and build on it
• Make your own career development a personal priority, no one else will do it for you. 

Prioritisation, pareto principles and Philosophy did help; one of the favourite was the Fish philosophy by John Christensen which emphasises on:

1. Choosing Ones attitude: How do we want to be when we do our work
2. Playing at work: How could we have more fun and create more energy
3. Making someone's day: How can we engage our customers in a way that will make their day. How can we make each others day.
4. Being Present: How can we be there for each other and for our customers. 

All these would not have been possible alone, though started alone. There were other departments and many people in there who helped with people even in there changing:

• Operations who helped business grow
• HR the most important, starting me let it, moulding me often, as I value feedbacks a lot 
• Admin for making the life easy
• IT , without technology, life would not be possible. The highlight was the Love story on IT issues for Valentines day, which say - wherever we go, one thing that will follow us alway, is the Tech issues. - From Nirmal. 

And above all, the energetic, talented, visionary, flexible team, together in office for 10 years, and then one day suddenly Corona Chucked us out, with sudden losses too, teaching us:

• Dreams can wait, drive doesn't disappear, diseases can come unwelcome, anytime, don't get depressed. Take Care of your health, it is the first of life. 
• You need not go to office daily, or work 14 hours every day, for great things to happen, it can happen even otherwise
• There is more beauty when Hustle and bustle is avoided, and we can do without it.

For team building, the support was the Secret of Teams by Mark Miller:

A team can’t really be a team if its members don’t know what they’re doing. You team will never perform at the highest possible level if the members of the team don’t exhibit genuine care and concern for one another. Practice is how we build skills, speed and consistency. One can’t be an effective leader without measurement. Measurement tells us where we need to improve, it lets us know if our improvement efforts are working or not; it helps us stay focused; it brings out the best in us as a team; it presents a tangible challenge. This fuels continues improvement. It’s a great tool that helps us refine our skills. If our success is contingent on our physical presence, we will become a prisoner of our business.

High-Performance teams focus on talent, skills and community.

• Talent – We need good fit people who want to be on a winning team as opposed to being individual contributors
• Skills – It is the deployment of both individual and team skills that enables sustainable progress and improvement.
• Community – Turbocharges their performance.

High-performance teams is a strategy – a means to an end. It is not the goal. Results are the real objective. The ultimate goal is a movement - Respect & Results without the need of our physical presence always, but with strong processes and measurement and performance analysis and yardsticks in place. 

My team varied, was my strength, who made my journey memorable, many of the team members becoming friends for life, being around personally and professionally. Can't Thank each one of them enough, whatever I am today is because of you all.