A mid June afternoon, my always energetic DM said that we are opening shop in chennai. and I was excited. was it a new Beginning for me? i hoped so....
On the morning of 16th august 2005, 40 confused souls landed in a partially constructed building, in Mcity and started off work. 38 of them unhappy of working in such a lousy place. Little did anyone of them realize on that day that those would turn out to be the best days of their life. Powered by VNP , driven by Nitin the floor turned out to be a heaven for everyone. What ever be the amount of work or whatever be the pressure.. Come hell what .. all of us were in office with a smiling face ready to roar for the day. We worked hard, Enjoyed every bit of it, got to know each other and became a family. We set examples that great things could be done by little known people and posed as a serious competitor to Bangalore. Eyes were raised but we were appreciated. we came in good light. the icing in the cake came when the delivery head walked into the floor and was stunned by the attitude of the team. he said ' U guys have some thing magical in you' and the whole DC looked upto us for inspiration. We were proud champions confident of turning around things , be it whatever it takes. It was a really a fairy tale start.
That was the day we hit the pinnacle of success as a team. We thought we were here to stay and conquer. And i was the most happiest man around to carry the brand where ever i went. But destiny had some other story written for us.
Getting recongnized is easy but maintaining it is what is tough. Soon to this happy family came intruders , from every nook and corner. From within the organization to aliens( I prefer to call so). Probably this was when it all started. Every one came with just one motive 'Make hay when the sun shines' . The intention was good .. fine accepted. But how was it implemented? The modus operandi was an utter disaster.
We as a team in the early days, set the tone for what would be wonderful growth. every one wanted to take advantage of the situation. they ignored the fact that they were taking too much more than what they can digest. the greed to grow made people forget the core values. The essence of values was lost. every one forgot what had to do. but they were focussed on one thing - the goal. even if it takes to break the law and not do their duties. And these rule breakages were cleverly overshadowed by some fake successes and results.
What we wanted as an organization was not a Shah Rukh khan or a vijay who would show too much out on screen presence, but a Raghuvaran or a paresh rawal who could guide us and pilot our way through.
Powered by greed, driven by unethical methods , these intruders slowly began to spoil the name that we had set. I was too agonizing a time when you are surrounded by 25 people determined to bring you down and you had to fight a lone battle. The whole of London and edinburgh were against us, with me and suresh doing the saving act every time. Fueled to this was a brave act by some of my colleagues who went to the extent of campaigning against us. this was primarily driven by their need to be in power. ufffff.. i hate this greed for power..
Seeing and hearing all this i thought I am not in the heat of things. I thought me with a couple of other folks could turn around things when i go back. But destiny again played its card by sending our godfather Prasad to US. Delt with a blow, but determined to make an impact i landed in chennai. I thought I could turn around things. But probably i was a bit too optimistic. Little did I know that things had gone terribly out of control and to bring it back to normal is not a one man job. It should be a collective vision driven from the top. But the question is where is the top.
in the 5 months after prasad's absence , there were small power centers created, each wanting to control the place. in this fight for power they had missed out the essence of project management. Essence of man management. All they concentrated was on limelight. How do i Stay in lime light and what should i do to achieve this. In this greed, without their knowledge they broke the basement of the floor. The team that we had initially built started to break apart and that was it.. there were minor ego issues that began to crop up among these kids. what will these poor kids do , after all they were just 1.5 yrs old. And in all these confusions who took the biggest hit - the work and delivery. Quality was down . Codes were not running. you name it it had it. but to teh outside world these DAMAGERS , kept on showing that they were doing good and infy kept rewarding them. But at the ground level things were worse. to add to this was these people were also rewarded by the company for their SO Called gracious act.
The information spread like wild fire and it had become a talk of the town that whatever happens in M city was just bullshit. We had been turned into items of mockery.
having seen all this , I thought I could do some thing. But Even I am human too. The Selfish part of me took over and I started looking more at my career and life. I confined myself to just my work and let others do their work. Yes I was partly successful. I got my MBA admit but at the end of the day I had let my home ground down. Now when I am outside chennai , People ask me - what guru , Your people are like this .. so bad and they start off. It hurts!!! Mind you it seriously hurts... and I go about defending them. how long will I do that?
When i Look back, the people in Mcity are really good. I have been with them all along and i understand what they want. They are hard working, committed. If they stand one to one with their counterparts from other places, they are definitely better, but when they need to fire as a team , they fail and that too miserably. Its all mayhem
When i sit back and think about it where they failed. It just points me to one thing. GUIDANCE. these people were/are not guided well. given some help they are bound be achieve , but no one in this greedy place has the time to groom them and make them better people. Every senior is just bothered about how to save his $%$, leaving these little ones to suffer and letting the reputation of the place we built to drains. The downfall of this place has been so much that what ever rescue act one does , the chances are remote to come back to normal. Leave alone coming back to those best days when were were challengers. We were like soldiers fighting in a battle field without a General.
but Will they ever make that attempt is the question. My heart sincerely prays that they do it but reality is not always whatever you want. Having seen them for the past 2 years , i have lost my slightest hope in me that we can recover. with these people around i just pray that i doesn't go worse than this.
But now its time for me to leave. I leave this battle field with a heavy heart and a deep scar on my heart that I could not do anything to improve the place that has given me so much today. It would always stay as one of the troughs of my life that I could not do anything to help out my people.
I am Sorry RBS_MCT .. I have Let you down !
