When I came to Mexico about two years back, I was a completly lost guy. I didnt knew what I have here for me. Neither was I sure what will I get there. But one thing I was sure.. I will get an adventure.. an experience that I wont get it again in my life!! Now standing at the cross roads after 2 yrs, I realize that the experience was infact more thrilling than I anticipated.. and its fun!!
The story goes like this.. a guy coming over to a new country (for the first time in his life travelling across so many continents and oceans) is lost... a new culture, a new language, a new way of living..The only thing he has is a knowhow and a desire to build his destiny in the way he wants to (without knowing what is available out there). I was expected to start a team of 3 people, where 2 of the folks who would be working were already selected. I didnt get a chance to talk to them before coming over, so obviously a fear factor, as to how those guys would be. I was informed that this is a place where communication in english is a rare phenomenon and the struggle would be imminent. But thats the fun right ? After all without the fun part, why work ?
We started the work... The desire to win and to strive ahead was so much that, I wanted these guys to work very hard.. and I did made them work hard.. result, it was awesome. We were able to drive a key project, which gave us additional positions and more people. Slowly I realized, my team had started to grow.
We grew from 3 to 10 within a matter of 10 months. I think it was a fairly good, because we didnt get the skillset readily available in the market and we were generating the skills by training freshmen.
But, while this was happening, there were other things that were also happening. On the professional front, I was moving from being a project leader to taking up key responsibilities like metrics reporting, resourcing and compliance. The initial days were tough, as the center lacked people who knew the process. That turned out to be good advantage, but yes.. it involved a lot of work.. sometimes there were crazy working hours of more than 18 hrs a day and they would continously be like that for about 1 or 2 weeks.. after that a small break just to begin with the same routine... Sustainment of that momentum was one of the toughest thing to do in my life!! I still remember those days and probably cannot forget them also.. that period continued for more than 6 months.. After all, if there is a lot of work that needs to be done, some body has to do it right ??? But as the time flew, I learnt the art of delegating and moving things around in a smoother way, to make my life a little more comfortable and to bring more people into responsible positions.. Built in my own teams and gave them knowledge, responsibility and power as appropriate to make the decisions.
Eventually, I did the same to my project team as well. Shifted the project leader responsibility to some local associate, whom I was confident of managing the team well. He is doing a great job and I am really proud of him.
What did this give me ? A new area where I didnt get a chance to explore much. It was on resourcing. I got a full fledged chance to explore areas where I get to recruit people on their skills and matching with the current requirements. It was fun .. definitely with the power that you have and besides looking at the way different people approach you for the job. Sometimes, they have been very funny to see, what people do to get a job. Those are some thoughts, some experiences which cannot be documented in a blog, but I am sure you folks would get my point. The only one thing which I was careful about that was not to slip away into delicacies of this position and power. Any small mistake, would ensure all the good work done till date is gone to dust. The ultimate exercise and precaution exercised during those days, have been pretty helpful.. in my overall learning curve. But the biggest thing which I learnt was people management - their aspirations, their skillsets and not to be deceived by what they say...something which I will cherish through out my life !!
As some one said, you cannot be promoted, if you cannot be replaced. After a stint in that role for about a year, I decided to find a replacement. Interestingly I did found and he has been pretty good in that role for now. So what does this give me .. more bandwidth, more availability and new areas to look for fun!!
0 comments :
Post a Comment