Of relationships between friends

These are thoughts put together when I was around 20 years of age (just found an old paper which had these on and have just typed it out!)

Relationship between people is a complicated and intricate puzzle. It is a mixture of emotions, sensitivities and misunderstandings. It is a rather complex phenomenon when one takes into account the fact that behaviour of persons change with time, surroundings and mood. A person might react very favourably to a particular thing at one instant of time and the next instant he might develop an aversion towards it. In a good mood a person might say ‘Yes’ for a thing which he otherwise would have said ‘No’.

A relationship between two persons is highly unpredictable because each person has his own moods and idiosyncrasies which are independent of the others’ mood. The point to note here is that the moods are independent. One, being in a jolly, devil-may-care mood might yak of something which the other will take to heart being in a bad mood. This might result in the breaking up of a good relationship. It is only when two people are very good friends that they resonate; one understands how the other is feeling and acts accordingly. Such a state is very difficult to achieve. One individual, being a completely different entity from the other, can never understand the other person completely. And also there is nothing like understanding a person completely, a because a person is not like a book, where you can say, after reading upto the last page, that you  have completed that book. On the other hand, a person is like a diary which is being updated every second. Each and every second, a host of impressions are incident upon the person and the person reacts to these incidents and there is a change in him.

Another person, different from him, can never claim that he knows him thoroughly since that ‘him’ is not the same ‘him’ as he was a year ago, a day ago or even a second ago. Everybody is changing and at best one can know another person to the extent of knowing his broad ideas, his likes and dislikes in the broadest sense possible. What I want to drive home is that one cannot predict the future behaviour of a person, on the basis of knowing him upto some point of time.

One more thing which makes human relationships interesting is the fact that one always acts on the basis of what one thinks the other is thinking of him. This also makes things rather funny and tragic at times. Most of the time man deduces a lot of things from the others’ actions, speech etc. These deductions arise from the fact that he would have exhibited similar actions, speech etc. when he wanted to convey that meaning. But, at times, it happens that the other person was not trying to convey what this person has deduced and this results in a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. There won’t be any conflicting ideas as such, but some missed signals, some minor actions which are no way related to the others persons’ response completely distort the meaning wanting to be conveyed and mess up the relationship. And it is a minority who are very frank in their speech. Most of the people do not word out their intention and this leads to further problems. Just wording out the intention doesn’t help in solving things, one has to make sure that the same misunderstanding is not repeated again and this can take place when there is perfect understanding between the two.

Relationship between two persons when they are alone and when they are in a group again differs. When they are in a group, they cannot be frank and they might act in a different way than they would have otherwise.

Innovation

Got in the mood to write again. Some time in the future, I am going to look back at the frequency and content of my blogs and this will probably give me some deep insight into myself :-)

To get back to more mundane things - I have finally gotten around to giving the PMP exam and I am a certified PMP now. That's one thing off the list.

I have gotten back into the site management role and I am the project manager in two areas now... so I am keeping myself busy at work. Working on product development is a lot more fun and satisfying than working on more lifecycle projects.

I had been to the PANIIT meet in Madhavpur last friday and the talk by Professor Ananth - Director, IITM was very good. He talked about how IITM is trying to build up an University Park for driving innovation.

I keep wondering about how we can do more from NCR, Hyderabad. We just don't seem to have the right kind of discussions going on between people to start thinking in terms of creating new products or improving existing products. The center has been around for more than 4 years now and we should ideally start thinking of contributing higher up in the value chain. There are very few people around who seem to be willing to think about more than what is required for getting along on a day to day basis.

Another thing that is bothering me is that I am getting away from technology myself. While I am fairly comfortable with my skills in General Management and Project Management, I just seem to have gotten off track with my programming skills... and with my skills to think in terms of technical details. The question before me is to whether to even try to acquire the skills back or to whether hone my management skills. The downside with not having technical expertise is that you are always dependent on someone else to make a beginning. It is very difficult to start off with an idea and explore it unless you can start grasping the details.

the last few months

I am back in the mood to write again.

What have I done over the last few months? Other than work, I have spent time with the Vijay Foundation Trust and have been trying to put together a project which will help the Aarti home residents and other students from the Government colleges in Kadapa get their first job. It has been interesting work... but I really should get more people involved who will help me with keeping the motivation levels up.

Other than that, I have been helping out with the Altura set up. Things seem to be going ok on that front.

I have completed the GMITE program. Postponed taking the PMP exam yet again - have rescheduled it for the fourth time now. The current date is 7th April - hopefully I will get this done with on this date.

I am now fully into the Project Management role... but it doesn't really seem the answer for anything.

If I look at the portfolio of things that I am supposed to be handling now - I have site management and project management at work, have GMITE program which is going to get completed in December, have to take the PMP exam (the date, which I have postponed three times now). However, I am really not doing good on any of these fronts and I am not feeling good about it.

I am just not motivated enough. I get these bursts of energy where I do things really efficiently and then there are real slow periods where I just cannot get myself to do anything much. Over the last one week or so, I am going through a slow period.

I have a nagging feeling at the back of my head making me wonder if I am going through cycles of depression - not a 'I can't even get out my bed' kind of depression, but of the milder kind which does not allow me to really do anything useful with myself. If I am going through a depression, what do I do to get out of this?

I still do want to become really good at one particular thing. It is really bothering me like hell that I still haven't figured out what that is... and time is running out!

Work satisfaction

It has been a while since I have felt satisfied with the work I have been doing. When I got into my new role end of 2005, things were quite challenging. I had to learn a lot of things without too much guidance. I had a lot of support, mind you, but not enough guidance.

Now that I am moving out of this role, I am in a mood to reminisce. I have done a few things well and I have also made some blunders. However, one thing which has been consistent all through was that the role was very loosely defined. There was never a defined set of expectation from me, nor was any work that I did critically evaluated. I got praise where I felt I have not really stretched myself and I got none when I really went out of my way to learn something and implement.

I have had to tell myself a number of times that this is a senior role and that one never gets complete 'feedback' about one's performance in such roles and that one can assess oneself by the change in the scope and nature of work assigned. If I evaluate myself on these parameters, I have to arrive at the conclusion that I have been a failure in this role. While it hurts to feel like a failure, what is really sad is that I am still not being told what I could and should have done differently.

I have tried to think myself on what I should have done differently. I can think of quite a few instances when I could have provided more leadership by being forceful about certain issues. I could have done more to be in the limelight by strategically escalating issues and by travelling more and by a host of other things. I have not done all this and I have tried to resolve most of the issues by consensus and tried to delegate responsibility and authority to the right level. I have not travelled much and have maintained a low profile in dealing with senior management.

I guess the issue was that I have always considered myself to be in a learning mode. To be quite frank and upfront about it, I do not feel that I came equipped with sufficient knowledge or experience to handle a general management role which this job demanded. Once I got the role, I have been putting in effort to educate myself in various aspects of finance, law, HR etc to be able to do a better job. However, in retrospect, I find that my pace has been too slow.

Some of the things I should have done to handle this better is to push for getting a traditional project management role for myself long time ago. Also, I should have pushed for having a better structure in Hyderabad which will help me manage things locally. I have not done this and I more or less left it to the GDMs to handle these issues. This was a blunder.

At this point of time, when I have been asked to move into a traditional project management role, I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. While I feel like a failure and also 'cheated' on one hand, on the other, I am relieved to not have to handle the operational issues which the role demands. I am also happy that this is a good decision for the center. If we find the right person, I am sure that it will help in taking the center to the next level.

I need to get my feelings sorted out and move on. This change was discussed more than two months ago and I am still not gotten over it.

My first entry

I have put off creation of a blog for a long long time. The main reason I did not create a blog is that I have never felt that there is a lot I want to communicate.

This is quite funny, atleast for me, because I do want to write. I do feel a lot like writing my thoughts down, analysing and dissecting them. However, 'why should I write when I am not looking to communicate things to anyone?', has always been something that has bothered me.

I have now reached a point where I want to stop analyzing myself to death and just do what I like - write. I have also figured out who the potential audience of this blog is going to me - it is going to be myself!