Instant Inspiration, the weekly capsules of inspiration
I vision of a workplace where every employee has utmost
respect and a deep sense of gratitude for each other, where ego has no space,
where every member takes personal responsibility, where prevails a culture which gives maximum
freedom to make mistakes, to fail more often, there by breeding creativity and
innovation to the next level. Yes! I vision of an Organization where leadership
is deeply embedded in every single employee.
In my pursuit of making workplace a happier, more harmonious,
highly productive, supremely trust-worthy, giantly creative, extremely
motivated, more and more people-friendly, I write to a group of
employees on a weekly basis. This is in my constant endeavor and commitment to
share my learning from books I read, the many ted-talks I watch and umpteen
learning experiences at workplace I observe and journal.
In my current position, I could reach to a few hundred
employees. My mission is to reach to thousand and tens of thousands of people and
even beyond one day. Every Sunday hereafter, I will share one letter from my
nugget under a new label Instant
Inspiration, the weekly capsules of Inspiration and I hope that it will help
you to change the way you think, you behave and you work.
Today I share one of
my experiences I had at workplace, a few weeks ago. I wrote this letter on Tuesday, April 15, 2014. So those of you who have read it earlier, may skip :)
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small line - BIG LINE Theory
Greetings to Each one of you,
Last Weekend I was watching this TED talk on ‘Gratefulness’
by David Steindl-Rast who is a Benedictine Monk and an inter-faith scholar. He
says, ‘in daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us
grateful but gratefulness that makes us happy.’ Yes, it is Gratitude which
births happiness and not the other way around. Well, I do not want to miss this
opportunity of expressing my Gratitude to all those who liked my email on
‘Failing Forward’. Thanks a Million times to each one of you. You all inspire
me.
Today, I want to share an incident from my current project,
Vistex Upgrade which is approaching its completion (in technical terms,
Going Live in Production) this weekend. The lesson I learnt was so
profound, so transforming, in fact it made me to think about myself in an
altogether different light. Thought, it may help some, if not all of you.
Shyam Sundar, a Vistex Consultant is incredibly
knowledgeable, highly grounded, soft-spoken and an extremely, rather an ultra-
helpful person. And I can say, he is a ‘one in thousands’ person based
on my interaction with him in the past 4 to 5 month’s period ever since I came
here. About a couple of weeks ago, we were chatting on this Lync Instant
Messaging. I thanked him for a certain help of his. Well, if you know me or
have observed me closely, I have this habit of giving a genuine compliment to
anyone who has done well in some way or the other and is in my vicinity. I
thanked Shyam with my genuine words of compliments ‘You are the most helpful
person I have ever seen in six years of my IT life.’ I meant all my words.
He replied back with a question ‘Narendra, Do you know small line – BIG LINE
Theory?’ I said – No, What is it? He agreed to reveal this theory when we
meet in person.
A few days passed, out of busyness we could not meet. One
fine day, I got stuck with another Vistex related issue which required his
expertise. I went to his desk and after discussing the technical stuff, I put
forward the question which was lingering to my mind all these days. With
his calm composure and signature smile, Shyam took a piece of paper and drawn a
small line and asked me, without touching the ends of this small line, Can you
draw a bigger line? Somehow I managed to draw a parallel line bigger than the
former recalling the games we used to play in childhood days. And then he said,
‘I am the most helpful unless you see someone more helpful than me, there is
always someone better than the other somewhere in the world’. At that
particular moment, I was stunned, simply spell-bound by the simplicity and
the humility of this person who is so deeply knowledgeable, who is so
dependable, who is a GO-to person, on whom the Solution Owner has a deep trust.
This incidence taught me two important lessons and
here is something for you to grasp.
Firstly, there will always be someone better than you
somewhere. It is just a matter of time when you will meet that ‘someone’.
So if you have the habit of comparing yourself with others, my friend, you will
always be dis-heartened, you will always be dis-content. The only person you
should compete is yourself. See, how you
can make your today better than yesterday. What new things you can learn today,
what new habits you can build; what new resources you can access and so on that
challenges and outwits your yesterday. And the second lesson is the lesson
of humility, Simplicity and Goodness. No matter how talented, how valuable,
how demanding you are, stay grounded, and stay focused. Be so Good, that no one
can ignore you.
Well, I can write many more pages on these thoughts. I will
stop here hoping that the small line – BIG LINE theory has inspired some of you
to change the way you think and behave. Today, there are probably 100s of you
in my emailing list. If you think this and all my emails have helped you in
some way, I invite you to share these emails with your friends who you think
can also benefit. You can loop me if you wish to and I can add them to my emailing
list. My vision is to reach to thousands of you. Do share your thoughts - what are you doing to improve your today. I
will be the happiest person to help you in any possible way I can….
With TONS of Gratitude and Best Wishes,
Narendra Gupta
Before honor is humility.
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