Author: neil

# To which communities do you belong?

• • Work

    I’ve created multiple communities – for public speaking, for sharing knowledge, the internal TED talks, for musicians, for bookworms, for sharing dad jokes. I’m dragged into formal communities that I show up because it’s demanded of me. I’ve set up an informal graduate mentoring group that I absolutely enjoy nurturing.

  • Social

    I volunteered at the local radio station for a couple of years & just stepped out of. I help out at the community garden when I can. I’m in several WhatsApp groups that I’m a non-active participant. There’s a tiny social circle that I engage with when I can.

  • Professional

    I’ve got professional accounting qualifications & I continue to renew my memberships in two countries. It’s ironic that neither of them is useful but it provides a social status that apparently is important to cultivate!

  • Personal

    I’ve a personal Board of Directors made up of colleagues. I’ve an informal/intangible BoD that is my collection of books, blog subscriptions. Of late, I’ve begun reaching out to the authors directly, & conversing with them over the Internet. This intimate group of confidantes is the one I most engage with deliberately.

## How has multi-culturalism influenced your life & career?

Growing up in the rural south of the subcontinent, and moving around with my parents’ employment meant I was exposed to various cultures within the region. The subcontinent does not have a monolithic culture by any stretch of the imagination, a fact that became apparent only after I first moved overseas. In fact, the number of cultures and subcultures – as defined by region, religion, food, dress, festivals, language etc changes every couple of hundred kms in any direction of travel. I didn’t think too much of it of course at the time. It seemed natural to me that I picked up whatever language was dominant in the area. Religions didn’t mean anything. Food was a delicacy, and never could get enough of it. That other people lived differently to my own catholic background and everything it entailed was of little import. I remember there being a strong sense of community everywhere we moved.

Moving overseas, I was surprised by the extreme change in living conditions, first of all. The Middle East is a harsh environment, both figuratively and literally. I discovered how living conditions for most people from the subcontinent, or Asia in general, was worse off than it was back home. A friend put me up at his place he shared with his brother & his family. Having 5 people living in a 1BR apartment for the first month of my life there was a fascinating learning experience. I met several people I had seen as a child, who’s wives showed of their wealth in that little village, and whose living conditions were far worse than the one I had left behind. There’s plenty written about the squalor of the Middle East, a part of the world that most tourists do not ever get to see.

I also surprised the white men who employed me – they apparently did not expect my English to be as it was. I could give back as well as I got, a lifetime of wit & humor picked up from Readers’ Digest in my arsenal. The overt & covert racism I dealt with, and the abuse I saw inflicted on those who weren’t as fortunate as I was, scarred both my view of the “civilised white” I so often read about, and the way I still think about the Middle East. There were multiple incidents & experiences there that showed both the best and worst of humanity.

The best of humanity there persuaded me to move to Australia. It was not an easy move, not was it easy to find work. But as the book says, where you go, there you are. I adapted as I’ve done throughout my life to new environments, making acquaintances through the community, and then through work. Many of those acquaintances are no longer so, the commonality of our early struggles forgotten, & little else to share. The choice of living away from vicinities of common cultures, the not knowing anyone in our new chosen neighbourhood, and having to commute 2.5 hours a day meant I made many more new acquaintances. Several of those acquaintances are, now a decade later, still good friends.

My work life has changed dramatically too. My academic credentials and social standing meant little when I found my current tribe. That I not just could, but did significantly fill a huge gap in the team’s capabilities has given me far greater credibility. My acknowledgement, sometimes hilariously, that I did not understand the local culture or slang, and genuine curiosity to learn more has made me more friends through work than ever before in my career.

# Is there a common denominator in the career choices you have made during your life?

Only in hindsight.

When I’ve changed roles across companies or continents, it has been a matter of luck. When I’ve changed roles within an organisation, it has always been to work for people I wanted to learn from, perhaps even admired from afar.

My work experiences – I won’t call it a career – have been whatever has caught my attention or fancy. Working in finance seemed to have created certain impressions of my skills. I’ve always blown those presumptions away, doing things that couldn’t have been further removed from the job I was hired to do, and doing them well.

I’ve gravitated towards meaningful roles, and when they weren’t so, found augmenting tasks in those roles that gave me a sense of meaning.

I’ve found ways to create and nurture communities with common interests.

I’ve avoided promotions deliberately when I believed that I’d be trading my time and strengths and/or meaning away for marginal dollar benefit. Weirdly, I’ve also beaten myself up when I avoided promotions.

I’ve found vicarious pleasure from seeing the folks I’ve had the privilege of mentoring soar in their careers.

# Do you have a clear image of what you want to do and achieve in your life today?

No is the simple (maybe flippant?) answer.

A concept I’ve probably implicitly understood but never examined is the idea of achievement. What is it anyway?

One definition of achievement is “a result gained by effort”. Everything requires effort. There’s an expectation also that all effort has results. Some are tangible (seen, felt, experienced, acknowledged), some are not. Some will happen immediately upon the expending of the effort, some won’t be seen for long after, maybe even for decades. Brushing & flossing require effort (got kids?). So does exercise. And so does the job that pays us to fund our lifestyles. Some want the symbols of achievement (an MBA, a BMW) while others want explicit recognition from someone else.

I prefer the term success over achievement,  and my idea of success is stolen from inspired by legendary basketball coach John Wooden:

“Success is peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to the best of which you are capable.”

What I want to do today (or in the near term) is more clear. I want to be around & work with people who are doing their best, and are willing to share their knowledge. I want to learn from them. I want to help them in ways I can sense they want. I want to express and sharpen my own, often vague, ideas in a variety of mediums – words, pictures, music. I want to connect people with other people I know to see what magic they can come up with. I want to play to my strengths, and work with people whose strengths complement my weaknesses.

So the answer is not No, but Yes.

I want to be doing as many of the things that I want to do, with the people I want to do them with, being the person I am and can become, helping people along the way, and to be doing this every day that I wake up.

## What did you want to be when you grew up?

My parents worked at a bank, the same bank. In fact, that’s how they met, and got married. The bank’s policies around couples meant they could never work in the same branch. Dad took on the role that meant he’d be transferred every so often, and mum would find a branch nearby. In those days, the optimal location didn’t exist: either the parents commuted, or the kids did, or in some cases, both did.

The concept of after-school care didn’t exist in those days either. Kids ended up either at home by themselves, or at a friendly neighbour’s. In some cases, the parents’ place of employment allowed the kids to turn up there after school until the parents wrapped up their day’s work.

I ended up at one or the other parent’s branch after school every single day, six days a week. I’d get introduced to people who came into the bank. There were all sorts of people from all backgrounds and all classes of society. In every little village or town that my parents moved to, people were friendly. Most answered my questions when I cared enough to ask them. I knew nearly everyone of the bank’s customers by name, and often their profession – or at least their spouse’s profession or location of employment.

Bank branches were also located in the busiest part of town. Trade, commerce & industry in full force. Art exhibitions. Handicraft emporiums. Author book signing events. The occasional attempt at robbery. Food and drink for sale. Butchers. Bakeries. Fruit vendors. Bus drivers and conductors. Milk cooperatives. Wine stores. Tailors. Cloth merchants. Other banks’ branches. Hairdressers. Restaurants. Several other shops that looked like offices. These people all would rock up at the bank, of course.

And then there were the wives of “foreign-workers”. The Middle East was a huge employer of people from the south of India. Anyone with basic literacy skills found employment in offices in the oil-rich sheikhdoms. The currency arbitrage attracted several menfolk, even if they didn’t have literacy skills, to try their luck. The womenfolk, single women raising their kids with ‘gulf-sent’ money would be dressed in gold & livery when the traipsed into the bank. When the menfolk returned once every 2 years or so, and weren’t drunk, they too rocked up to the bank to organise their financial affairs.

That was the background in which I spent the first decade and a half of my life. Printed money in strong rooms (cash safes) smelt wonder. Coin- and note-counting machines were fascinating. The sounds of both metal and paper currency being counted and tallied. The frustration of the bank staff when paper records and paper currencies didn’t tally. The elation when they did.

I learnt error-spotting on ledger folios, and short-cuts in arithmetic because mum & dad both brought home them home at month-end time to complete the double-entry system of manual book-keeping. I could identify many sorts of errors: transposition, addition, sequential recording. I knew how to identify numbers from bad handwriting (long before I had ever heard of the EMNIST dataset. I learnt skills because I was exposed to the work that my parents did.

I also learnt that asking questions was endlessly fun. Regardless of their backgrounds, people were eager to talk about themselves. Humor went a long way. I had picked up a ton of dirty jokes from these people. Not everyone was offended (and I made sure my parents weren’t around when I told them 🤪). I learnt the fine art of learning by follow up questions.

I met a caricaturist, Prakash Shetty, when he had his exhibition on the floor above my dad’s bank. I was about 10 years old. Watching him draw, and then listening to him explain how he did his craft was fascinating. I started sketching because of him. I don’t think I’ve thought of him in a long time. I also loved his handwritten font, and began copying it nearly every day. It spawned my initial interest in calligraphy.

I’ve met people from so many different professions and I don’t think I remembered any of those professions vividly enough for long enough. I wanted instead to learn something from everyone I met. Crossword solvers. Wordsmiths. Yoga paduvans. Electricians. Plumbers. Mechanics. Bank managers. Auditors. Milkmen. Bus drivers. Nuns. Priests. Old-age home workers. Doctors. Nurses. Grocery storekeepers. I typed those professions out with specific people in my mind, after all those years!

The one professional I vividly remember not having met during those times was a pilot, or anyone who worked with/ on aircraft. Unsurprisingly, that’s what I wanted to do. I never did.

The local used bookstore is becoming a regular haunt for me. There are two particular aisles that are a magnet. Every time I’ve been in there, I’ve found an interesting book or few. My personal library is growing at an alarming pace, and I love it. The book I found today was titled “Thought Leadership” co-authored by Matt Church, Scott Stein & Michael Henderson.

Upfront: I’m not a fan of the phrase “thought leader”, let alone the capitalised version. I’ve seen far too many self-promoting, vacuous and incompetent assholes calling themselves thought leaders.

I swallowed my usual visceral response to the phrase, & began thumbing through the book subtitled “How to capture, package and deliver your ideas for greater commercial success”.  A few chapters in, and I’m glad I didn’t follow my instinctive response to ignore the book.

It strikes me that I do all three things – capture, package, and deliver – with ideas. Except: They’re about wildly diffuse ideas, from different domains. I’m interested in and read on a wide range of topics. I remember what my close cohort of friends and acquaintances are interested in, and I share stuff that interests them. Is there a better way to package what I capture and deliver it in other ways? How can I bring my writing, design, & public speaking skills to bear on this?

Reading The Neo-Generalist, followed by this book, is making me ask questions (ha! A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger is the book that preceded these two) of myself. Am I being effective at what I really want to do? Where am I spending my time of late, given my daily challenges? How can I invest my time more appropriately?

Ill-health pushed me to take a couple of sick days off. Promises to the kids helped me get out of the house, from behind the screens, and invest time with them. Letting my mind wander away from frustrations I’ve been bottling up has been cathartic.

With 86 days left in 2022, I have some things to put into practice to package. Documenting this journey will be valuable in of itself.

 

 

A hurriedly posted part 1 here

The second conversation with a colleague who is a ‘encouraged reluctant participant’ in a particular program. It is intended for folks with STEM capabilities from a culturally different background to step into leadership roles.  While they acknowledged the effort that’s gone into getting the program off the ground, their previous lived experience with both the creators and some of the participants has raised questions about the  intention of the program. “Inauthentic”, “gaining visibility is the ticket to success” , “The program seems to encourage that behaving in a certain way is all that’s necessary to be a leader” were a few of the descriptions used.

All that to say, if I was to create a program for this cohort, what might that look like? Coincidentally, an author I connected with online wrote to me today to say he’s considering beginning a podcast with a global network, to focus on the local leadership skills for the GenZ & Milennials cohort. It’s a timely reminder that I’m not alone in thinking about these local challenges, and that collaboration is essential.

Most of my recent satisfying endeavours have involved helping a few grads learn how to learn in an organisational context. I have a couple of ideas that I wanted to kick off this week that didn’t happen for health reasons. There’s much possibility here that I want to explore.

 

I had two conversations today with colleagues on the subject of learning & training. They came from two different parts of the org.  The context in both cases got me thinking about well-intentioned learning or training programs that are abysmal failures, viewed from the perspective of those that these programs are designed for!

One conversation was from a designer of learning programs. They were in “discovery stage”. I did not get a sense that after months of discovery, they were any wiser about the needs of the individuals they were designing the capability building programs for. They did repeat what managers had said about their current and future skills necessary. They talked about the state-of-the-art training technology available, and how it could be co-created with the business units.  Someone was mapping the skills-capability matrix, which they weren’t across the detail of. They were conscious of the increasing rate of attrition, & were under instruction from their leadership team on fixing the problem through building skills of the future.

TBC

 

Many times over the last few decades, I’ve been witness to how people who trust each other, whether in a work setting or otherwise, band together to deliver a promise in the face of enormous challenges. Today was another such day at work. Despite the ridiculous deadlines inflicted on a small team, and insane personal challenges to contend with, they were able to ship an invaluable tool to their eager customers.

I also see distinctly how poor leadership management behaviours are causing these ridiculous work hours. Doing it once may be heroic, but demanding that they be done as a matter of routine is madness.

I’ve been listening to a podcast from two amazing data scientists, both of who found themselves unemployed. A quote (I paraphrase) about “going from doing work I find meaningful one morning, to no longer wanted to be doing it later that morning” when finding herself laid off resonates strongly.  It’s also a reminder that the stated “focus on people” means little when those people don’t see that translated into support in real life – whether being paid appropriately, or paperwork being done at even half the pace of the demand of them. Disappointing.

 

Where do insights come from? That’s the subject of Gary Klein’s book “Seeing what others don’t”. It’s also the question I’ve been pondering on.

One of the jobs I held was titled “Insights Analyst” – a role I felt unsuited for at the time. I had about zero experience in the telecommunications industry in this country. I had little understanding about the business climate in the country as a new migrant. I also had no idea about what was expected of this role – and it appears, neither did the good folks in HR who crafted that job description!

And yet, I have remained in this industry for 13 years. The Occam’s razor explanation is that I’m so poorly skilled that no other industry or company will hire me. The story I tell myself is because I enjoy it. It’s got the right blend of challenges, opportunities, people, technology, and personal purpose that works for me.

Challenges & opportunities: Do a field visit with an expert or field technician from the industry, ask questions, and listen. The pits and pipes and equipment in the ground or hanging from the poles take on a magical appearance when I do. I’ve learnt the history of telecommunications, looked at the equipment from the very early days of the industry, understood the scale of the physical challenges, empathised with the scale of the emotional challenges of poorly paid yet invaluable technicians, listened to their ideas for improvement, and where I could, translated them so that the ‘leaders’ recognise the opportunities to save money.  The relationships I’ve built through these continue to this day. When I don’t understand something, or want to learn more, I have a network (pun intended) to ask questions and learn from.

Technology: My weakest area as a non-engineer.  I don’t know the maths, or the physics, or the chemistry involved in how the network operates. Yes, there is chemistry involved: cables rot too. Technology spans a wide range of things: the hardware that does magical things with data, the fibre that hauls this data at speeds of light, and the software can enables all sorts of weird and wonderful things to be done with it. This is even before what users do with the technology. In industry parlance, Layer 2 of the OSI model, is as fascinating to me as the software that enables everything at and above that Layer.

People: are the driving force for me. I’ve met so many experts in this field that work alongside me. I’ve learnt far more about the industry, the technology, the challenges and the opportunities than I ever could have done from either a university course or an apprenticeship. I’ve been introduced to people in ancillary fields that I’d have never met otherwise through these people. Many of these folks have become dear friends, folks who’s opinions I ask and value on subjects other than the industry or the work.

So insights. Where do they come from? Gary Klein suggests it’s from keeping an open, curious mind. It’s from being able to be shocked out of our assumptions. It is in building new connections between things not usually connected. It’s in observing and identifying anomalies that don’t fit our belief systems. Insights are disruptive. They don’t allow you to see the world the same as you did before.