It has been a while when I went to IIT-KGP for a summer project out of my interest in GIS and Remote sensing. Don’t ask me what made me interested in those subjects. For those who are not aware, I am a mining engineer by education and ended up working for the software industry. Well, that is the case with a majority of people in India these days. The software industry is bottomless. It can accommodate without an end (or it could accommodate until the recent crisis!).  I started my education around the same time the .COM bubble burst happened and hit the software industry badly. Not a good time to begin! So I had to come up with ‘Plan B’ in case I don’t end up getting placed. And my plan B was to go for an MS from a reputed university in the US.

I’ve given all the background to ensure that people don’t think of me as one of those ’studious’ kinds who was so serious about studies. It was a ‘forced’ decision. Anyways, when I visited the concerned professor, I came to know that he was an expert on ‘Mine Closure’ and had spent almost his entire career researching and teaching the topic. Wow! Can you imagine? I could never dream that ‘Mine Closure’ could be such an important aspect of mining. However, after spending a couple of days with him, I could understand its significance. The mine closure had to be planned even before the mining starts! And if you don’t submit satisfactory closure plans, the Government would not allow you to mine. He employed the latest technological advancements like GIS and Remote sensing to plan out and execute the ‘Mine Closure’.

So what makes me write about this today? It has been almost 6-7 years now. Someone has rightly said, ‘Whatever you learn in life, does not go waste’. After spending some time getting to know the software industry, I now realize the importance of ‘closure’.  It does not matter how many projects you ’start’ well. What matters is how many of them get ‘closed’ successfully and in time. It takes at least 5 times the focus and effort to ‘close’ a project successfully than to start it! It takes a lot of ambition and dedication to do this. ‘Closing’ out projects not only brings in credibility, but it also liberates you of the mental blockade which could hamper other ongoing projects (if you work across multiple projects). It would heavily aid efficient resource planning.

But is everything in our control? Well almost never completely. There are multiple stake holders and it could involve the client, their end clients and so on. Human nature is such that we would like to see new features and improvements until the last moment. And that often spells disaster. Another common practice is to start off new things exactly when something is about to end. Since newer things always inspire us more than what is ongoing, almost certainly they will take precedence over the ongoing activities.

I guess the argument is valid across industries. It would have taken a little for Ratan Tata to start his dream project ‘Nano’, but we all know what it took to successfully get Nano on the roads. In fact we don’t even know what happened behind the scenes to get this through. Hats off to Ratan Tata for pulling this off!

Better said than done. But remember, we won’t be known for how many things we started well, but we would only be known for what all was ‘closed’ well.

Alright, that’s enough of fundas, now let’s get back to work

While going through this post,  Sometimes losers win which crisply explains how (smart)losers  win sometimes by re-defining winning as being losers,  I got reminded of an age-old wisdom story which goes like this:

Akbar,  who was a successful and able King was known for his witty questions and Birbal, one of his favorite courtiers was known to counter and solve those with compelling reasoning. On one such occasion, to test Birbal’s wit, he drew a line and asked Birbal if he could shorten the line without touching it! Birbal quickly drew another line bigger than the one Akbar did and said, “See, I have shortened your line without even touching it!”

Now I’ll co-relate this story to another common trait in losers who try to win. To prove that you are the best among the lot (team) you are working with, there are two ways:

1. You really have the capability which gets demonstrated in your day to day work and over time, you are accepted as the best.
2. You somehow manage to prove that others in the lot (team) are dumb and idiots! The moment you achieve this you’ve pulled it off.

Does the idea behind point#2 resemble the essence of the story above? Well to clarify my standpoint, Birbal was never a loser. I just wanted to illustrate the concept.

This is how some people are able to rise in organizations in spite on their incompetence. I’ve seen this, esp. in big organizations where, usually, there is a disconnect between the leadership and the junior employees. Unfortunately there are numerous re-defined winners in the middle management (because it’s kind of tough to get beyond that by re-defining winning!) This eventually causes a lot of frustration among the people who actually get the work done as they do not get the credit and become victims of the blame-game.

I believe it is very important for any organization, to have a really good and genuine middle-management for two reasons:

1. It gives the leadership team, the bandwidth to focus on the business as opposed to look into people issues.
2. They are the only way for the junior people to be “Connected” with the leadership and the company as a whole.

I acknowledge that people who re-define winning to become winners are smart in their own way and can gain a lot personally by doing so in the short-term, there is no way this is going to take them to the top. I feel it is very important for the leadership to identify such re-defined winners either through 360 degree feedbacks for through a defined set of processes and filter them out to ensure a healthy and competitive work culture.

I agree with the following phrase which I have been hearing, ever since I joined the software industry:

“People do not leave companies, they leave their Project Managers.”

This may not be true always, but I believe it is true more than 80% of the time.

All this inspires me to put up another post. So coming up…….

“Everyone can be a Winner!”