(I was packing my stuffs, and I found few pieces of wisdom, inside a book. Its not like the general preachy types, so just wanted to share it..moreover, before I lose it I need to digitize it.)
Before you read it there are few characters you need to be familiar with, as this letter is few years old and intended for the employees , lots of people mentioned here have already moved on with their thrilling career in different organizations.
Chanda- Chanda Kochhar ( Present CEO ICICI Bank)
Kamath- K.V. Kamath ( Chairman ICICI bank)
Kalpana- Kalpana Morparia( Present CEO J.P. Morgan -India,)
Nachiket- Nachiket Mor ( President ICICI Foundations)
Author- Vaidhyanathan ( Present CEO of ICICI Prudential)
Dear Friends,
I had sent you a mail promising my best ever run, and in return seeking contributions. My sincere thanks to everyone of you for the thousands of wishes I received. Chanda : run more Vaidy..21 not good enuf...Nachiket , Lalita –Vaidy go for it. Kalpana –Take care we need your service more than ur run..Mr Kamath –I dont need to check on u...I know u will do it here ,take the contribution here and now..Bala Swaminathan – I m beting on u...
There were contributions from hundreds of employees and every rupee is sincerely appreciated .In total all of us pooled in over RS 5 lac and with the contribution from the bank it balooned to Rs 10 lac .Thanks I am happy to inform all of u that I did manage to complete the run in 5 hr 40 mins .I had a very difficult run . Many collegues and my family accompanied me/refreshed me along the way...it would have been impossible without them. Ramkumar ran the penultimate 5 km in the hot sun, and Prashant Shah helped me complete the last dash of 5 kms.
Since my mind was doodling for over five and half hrs, I tried to think of the similarities between our lives and the marathon. Some of these may be contrived analogies so bear with them. Do let me know ur views. Before ...I proceed, let me caveat this. If u see the performance of many of the peer runners who finished it effortlessly , my run is very ordinary job.I didn’t meet the marathon qualification standard of finishing within 5 hrs. And didn’t even meet my personal target of 5.30 mins . So I am not going to sermonize...the following is only a randon collection of thoughts which I am sharing with you friends.
Find a purpose. Purpose can be a sense of achievement or a cause .Without it you will flag off when it gets tougher. At ICICI we can change India’s economic destiny.It motivates me one helluva lot.
Commit.The Kalpana strategy. Want to know the secret of Kalpana’s success? She tells everyone her next goal. I did it this time by broadcasting to all of you. You will be surprised how much it puts pressure to deliver .Announce your business targets to your friends , your peers . Ambitious ones, not what you can reach. Watch the fun.
The other thing experts tell you while preparing cross training with swiming, strength trainign and so on. Our parallel at work , cross train by reading books, subscribing to libraries , networking ....
Efficiancy improves with partnership. With a partner, chances are you will pull along longer. I lost my training partner early on to the crowd,and paid very dearly for it. ( For those of you who are not married ..get married soon..you will last (live) longer.)
Music makes running easier. It gives you rythm and makes you forget the tiredness. So with work. Find the music of your life. Something that will kinda intoxicate you: and give you the zing at work. A high all the time. Could be a gr8 peer network.Could be continuous learning..think...ideas welcome.
I realised that if you take a break of 5 mins ..its very difficult to command the body to run again. You may keep your cool, but don’t let the body cool down.Restarting a cooled engine is very tough as a fatigue starts settling in.Thebody desperately hangs on to newfound comfort. Then it doesn’t stretch. Then atropies and exit the race .We saw this happening to many around us during the race. In a busy world where only the fittest and the fastest survive,ICICI just cannot affort to cool down. We have got to keep it warm ,running and buzzing all the time.
At times when the run is long and tiring, particularly at lonely stretches , ..your body says enough, I am out of fuel..lets call it off. Your ankle and knee , quite rationally says I am inflamed..lets try another day. The mind thinks otherwise. Depds on who rules whom.
People think of the marathon as an individual sport. Towards the fag end of the race , I noticed that if I stopped ,people around me tend to stop.If I ran past someone , they tended to start again.At work, keep running for the team’s sake.The ICICI team is running the marathon right now. If you slow down, you will get colleagues around you to slow. Keep your chin up and keep going .
( Attitudes are caught : not taught-Elwood Chapman)
( Attitudes are caught : not taught-Elwood Chapman)
Stretch. If you cant run, run 7.If you think you can run 7,run 21. If you think you can and are prepared for 21 run 42.And if u think u can run 42 in 6 hrs , run it in 4. Its no gr8 deal attepeting what you can do. Sounds familliar at ICICI anyway? I can hear hiccups at Mr Kamath’s office . “ Raising the bar “ has been patented there already....
A Quote that motivated me....
“ It’s the attitude that puts the cat in the kitten , and the stretch that puts the tiger in the cat”
