Loud Thinking

Archive for December, 2013

Perseverance is persistence to continue, despite difficult obstacles.

“A winner is just a loser who tried one more time.”

George M. Moore, Jr.

Understand Meeting Dynamics

As much as we’d like them to be, meetings aren’t purely logical business mechanisms; like any human interaction, they’re embedded with non-rational dynamics. Consider underlying motivations and personal agendas: For some people, being part of a meeting is a status symbol, so they may continue to attend even when they have little to contribute. Others view meetings as social gatherings, or opportunities to score political points. No matter how clear the agenda, everyone will arrive with a different perspective. Some attendees will consider it high priority, while others will show up late. Some participants are comfortable letting someone else take the lead, while others will sabotage the leader or become passive aggressive. These unconscious aspects can undermine effectiveness, but understanding them improves your chance of actually accomplishing something.

Adapted by HBR from “The Hidden Side of Meetings,” by Ron Ashkenas.

Lahore canal road and its arteries are witnessing the worst traffic jam in the history of the city.

“For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.”

— Lily Tomli

In 1992, while I was posted in the US, I learnt that my father, living a retired life with my eldest brother, had suffered a third degree burn injury and was admitted in the Safderjung Hospital in Delhi.

I flew back to attend to him – he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged from neck to toe. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroach infested, dirty, inhuman place. The overworked, under-resourced sisters in the burn ward are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst.

One morning, while attending to my Father, I realized that the blood bottle was empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked the tending nurse to change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger. Finally when she relented and came, my Father opened his eyes and murmured to her, “Why have you not gone home yet?”

Here was a man on his deathbed but more concerned about the overworked nurse than his own state. I was stunned at his stoic self.

There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be for another human being and what the limit of inclusion is you can create.

My father died the next day.
He was a man whose success was defined by his principles, his frugality, his universalism and his sense of inclusion. Above all, he taught me that success is your ability to rise above your discomfort, whatever may be your current state.

You can, if you want, raise your consciousness above your immediate surroundings.

Success is not about building material comforts – the transistor that he never could buy or the house that he never owned.

His success was about the legacy he left, the mimetic continuity of his ideals that grew beyond the smallness of an ill- paid, unrecognized government servant’s world.

Subroto Bagchi

At that time, my father’s transfer order came. A few neighbors told my mother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she would not see the flowers in full bloom.

She said, “I have to create a bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place, I must leave it more beautiful than what I had inherited”.

That was my first lesson in success. It is not about what you create for yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.

Subroto Bagchi

Father taught us a simple lesson. He used to say, “You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it”.

That lesson was about showing consideration to others. Business begins and ends with that simple precept.

Subroto Bagchi

To me, the lesson was significant – you treat small people with more respect than you would treat big people.

It is more important to respect your subordinates than your superiors.

Subroto Bagchi

My father was a fervent believer in the British Raj.
He sincerely doubted the capability of the post- independence Indian political parties to govern the country.
To him, the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event.
My Mother was the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National Congress and came to Dacca, my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him. She learnt to spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained her in using daggers and swords.
Consequently, our household saw diversity in the political outlook of the two.
On major issues concerning the world, the Old Man and the Old Lady had differing opinions.
In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence of living with diversity in thinking.
Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end state; it is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.

Subroto Bagchi