Four Corners

It is Friday the 13th August and I am trying my hand at blogging for the first time. Why is my blog called Four Corners?  I live with my wife, 2 daughters and my mom...they are the four pillars of my world and, of course, the 4 corners along which I get kicked around!!!  The fun is I grew up in a family that did not have daughters..only brothers and guess what - 4 of us!!!  Since most of my life is going around these 4 pillars, I decided to call this blog Four Corners.

I am in one of my best phases in life...changing jobs and am on long leave (2 months) before I move to my next role. Since I have the whole day to me, thought I will start blogging.  I head up a back office in Bangalore, India and manage a team of 4800. My new job will get me to manage a larger team.  What I like best about this job is that I have the opportunity to meet so many people daily.  I learn from each interraction and hope that I have had a positive impact on every person I meet. I hope to write on many such interractions and what I have learnt from these.

I wrote an article on Sweating the Small Stuff few weeks back on my organization's intranet...read it and if you think it makes sense, why dont you write out to me?

Sweating the small stuff

The other day, I overheard my wife telling our daughter to tidy up her room. In true adolescent spirit, my daughter responded: “Don’t sweat the small stuff, Ma!”

For a minute I smiled at the retort. But on second thoughts, I disagreed. It’s the little things that truly matter. I believe that one needs to focus and invest on the small things as well, because that’s what contributes to and sometimes makes a critical difference to the ‘bigger picture’.

I recently ordered a birthday cake for a friend and the baker messed up the name on the cake. All because he had not paid attention to my request! Small thing he would say, but it made the difference between being able to present it to my friend on a happy note or feeling bad that the moment was lost all because of a ‘small thing’.

What makes successful organisations? One of the main factors of success is attention to detail. Successful businesses consistently do all the boring, fundamental, necessary and unexciting little things over and over again. Most of us, including me, spend an enormous amount of time and effort worrying about trivial instances in our daily lives. So my daughter’s words really hit home and I mused over how she would also learn the lesson someday. Spend time on the small stuff, at the same time don’t lose focus on the bigger picture.

In large organizations, we need to sweat over all types of issues – ranging from small to large. When it comes to handling people issues, we must sweat the small stuff. As a leader, I have always found that a high-touch approach is absolutely necessary to find out what’s on people’s as well as our minds. This is why I push so hard on skip level meetings with teams and communication channels for our people. Issues may seem small at times, but it may just be that one thorn in the bush! So you must strive to get it out of the way before it causes a major mishap…That's sweating the small stuff!