Life in shades of grey

When the end justifies the means, rot seems to set in. The Indian word "dharma" is out of the window. As they say, all is fair in love and war. And life seems to fall in between black and white...in millions of shades of grey.  Laura Schlessinger said, "When you are the victim of behaviour, its black and white; when you are the perpetrator, there are a million shades of grey." Even law, which is supposed to be black and white recognizes grey and has what is called the "golden rule of interpretation".

As for me, life is colourful. It has black, white, millions of grey and all the colours that you can think of. But, if I stick to grey for the moment, many of us struggle to live in grey and prefer black or white. I was thinking of the many things that have happened to me that are only in the shades of grey. Guess what, I seem to have enjoyed these moments. The more we think we are in total control, the more we realize that we actually do not have any control at all. The world around us is a bit of an "organized" chaos.

I had a situation where a colleague of mine who worked for me was going through a very difficult pregnancy. The doctor had asked her not to commute. Our back office operations needed her presence to ensure it goes on smoothly as there was just too much going on. I discussed the situation with my Manager who said that he wanted her in the Office or she needed to leave. I thought through and decided that I will let her work from home and then cover up for her at office by putting in extra effort. Due to tremendous work pressure, I let that fall through the cracks and ended up in a situation where the Operations got adversely impacted. I still remember the tough times that I had to go through as a result of this one decision. The decision was should I go with the organization that I work for or with the human being that worked for me or try and find a balance. I chose to find a balance with the primary focus being on the human being who worked for me. It went wrong, though for different reasons. But, if you ask me now as to what I would do, my answer will be the same. I will give her the leeway to work from home but will also have someone sitting at office, help her fill the gaps.  Like this, we take so many decisions daily that are not black or white but in various shades of grey.

Another story I can remember is a hurricane hit US and one part of the country got battered. Most parts of various cities in that State were in water and there was no power for almost a week. I had a staff member working there and it took us few days to get in touch with her as all telephone networks were also down. Finally she came on line and said that she had to shift to a hotel and was lucky that she could get a room. She had logged in and contacted us after getting in to the hotel. The policy of our company was that we will help in all ways possible but we would not be able to take the cost. In this case, I decided to go pick up the tab and told her to work from the hotel which she did and we managed to get some important ground covered for us at Office while she got the bills paid for. Yes, the policy did not allow it but that is why organizations have leaders/managers. We are there to interpret these for the good of the organization and the individual concerned and ensure that we do what is best under the circumstances. Here is where common sense and life experiences matter.

I remember another story at the Bank that I worked with. We had issued a credit card to a customer (this was way back in the 1990s before mobiles came in). As the customer was checking out of a 5 Star hotel (in which he was staying for the first time), they swiped the card and for some reason it kept coming back with an error message. The customer called our branch and it was well in to the evening and I happened to be at the branch. I picked the phone and heard him out. I then spoke to the Hotel Front Desk Manager and tried to convince him that we will honour the payment. It did not work. I had to then help the customer by taking out money. I could not draw that much amount through the ATM those days. So, I drew out whatever amount I could, took the permission of the Branch Manager and actually took money from the Bank's Account and went to the hotel to pay off their bills. Even after 20+ years, this customer calls me to check out how things are going with me. He says that he cannot forget that day and he is still the customer of the Bank. I should actually thank the Branch Manager for taking a pragmatic decision in favour of the customer and doing that after getting a good understanding of the risks involved. 

When you go out of the way, grey zones start applying. They put you at risk of losing a job or a relationship or some such thing. They also work like a charm and create ever lasting relationships both personally and at work. Again here, it has a lot to do with applying common sense.

It is living in these grey zones that make our lives interesting. Else, our lives can be replaced by robots because they would do a better job in ensuring adherence to policies or set processes/procedures. As I said earlier, it is because of situations that need use of discretion, common sense and interpretation of policy that organizations have managers/leaders. And, as Leaders/Managers, if we don't use that discretion or common sense or both, we end up losing our value both to the organization and the employee.

Life comes in beautiful colours. We somehow don't seem to notice these colours and would like to live in black or white. More often than not, we need to live in the grey zones for most part of our lives. If we do not recognize grey, we will find it difficult to live. As I always say, the more the straight lines and boxes we have in the way we live our lives, the more the curve balls that life will throw at us.