There is a cab-coordinator in Chengalpattu Infosys office (Chennai). After a hectic day at work you go to him and tell the place where you want to go. He would spontaneously say the cab number. You can ask me what is so special about this. Well, there are a lot of things to compute before he comes up with the cab number. First of all the cab routes are not regular and at any given day a cab is supposed to go to any place based on the requirement. Second there is no booking needed for this. So he doesn’t even have a clue of how many cab requests are going to come on that particular route. Third he has to keep track of the number of people he has sent for a cab in a separate thread so that he doesn’t overload any of them. Moreover he should be answering all the queries of the employees in different languages as India is a diversified nation and so as the software companies. All these things happen in no time and you see him on that spot, you would really appreciate that he is a genius.
What I am trying to emphasize here is the fact that your inspirations need not be always an Abdul Kalam or a Sachin Tendulkar. In my perspective, seldom would you get to be with such legends and still you try to live the dreams of them, which is quite not practical. The bottom line here is that in every-day life you see a lot of perfectionists and great people. It is just that the work that they do or the field that they are in doesn’t have the extra cut for them to come to limelight.
There is a small scale industry owner in my town. Two sisters were working in his industry and by their sincerity and commitment they impressed many, of course yielding lots of profit to their boss. Some other guy in the same business who saw that went to the girls’ father and provoked him to start his own firm in a small scale and offered him some loan and the orders too. Interested in this deal the father approached the former owner and told all these. Now his business mind started working and to the father’s pleasant surprise he also offered the same deal, in fact a better one this time. I was astonished to hear all these. We talk about acquisitions and collaborations and my dear friends that can happen in the remote villages too. We could well find the roots of management lessons there. (Nevertheless, the business is doing well and both of them are really happy)
How much concentration would have been needed for a driver who has never met with an accident? How much memory would be needed for a waiter in order not to mess up with the orders? How much patience would it take for a bartender to deal with his customers? What calculated effort would a pizza delivery boy take to deliver his orders in time? How accurate should a teacher be in evaluating the exam papers to satisfy all his students? How punctual should a railway gate keeper be? If you are a keen observer of your surroundings you would have by now recollected at least a few such examples. Personally, I feel taking a leaf out of each of such fellow men than the Federers and Fiedel castros would help a lot is sculpturing our personality.
Going a step ahead I learnt how responsible I should be when I organize an event, from my friend Yuvaraj, I learnt how a debate should be approached from my friend uday, I learnt the meaning of a good hospitality from my friend Dhiyaneswaran and how sportive should I be from my friend Rajkumar and this list continues. The stress here is even your friends could set examples for your life. (More often than not learning “how not to be” is also as important as how to be. Mastering “How not to be” is a tougher task than anything else though)
A final note here: My father has been doing his yarn business for almost twenty years now. But in the whole business he claims that he has never sold a single yarn bundle for loss. It is just mind-boggling and I just wonder how much risk estimation would it have taken. If I could match that in my profession and career I would be pretty much contained.
(You could fire back at me asking whether this is a philosophical or personal note. But somehow I am satisfied in expressing whatever I have felt. Bye for now)
