Do not anticipate but participate. This is how I had to pacify myself during every moment of the stay at “Isola Di Cocco” – meaning “
Towards the end of each year there is a sense of satisfaction of having performed well but at the same time there is a sense of a greater challenge that still lurks in the vicinity. The thought of another year coming by with greater expectations and opportunities, makes it impossible to obviate the need to recapitulate the valuable practical lessons learnt in the previous year and not to strategize for the coming year.
Many a times one might be tempted to take some time off and relax. But to catch up and to stay on track my mind used to constantly ponder over one of the most important activities of the job – to review and to set new goals. Thus, the thought of the Annual Conference for the year 2006 kept coming back to me, as I knew while at this conference apart from reviewing the performance of each region, I would also learn from my colleagues in other regions and be given an opportunity to share my experiences and the lessons learnt from them.
There used to be deadline set for preparing case studies to be presented during the conference. But this time it was different; it was unique to the extent that apart from there being no need to prepare any cases, all of us, even the Regional Managers were asked not carry the Laptops! I screamed inside, “What are we going to do for 4 whole days!!” Thanks to “Art of Living,” which I took up during the beginning of my stint at Atlas Copco, I had learnt how to accept each moment as “awe” and to remain calm.
Got off the air craft and was taken to a true land of awe. Though I belong to the “God’s own country,” each time I am there, it brings back to me a new experience of refreshing and soothing my spirits. Staying there one can truly find harmony with the nature around him. This was true to the extent that our lavatories had only partial ceiling!
We stayed relaxed and just as the wide and never ending horizon over the blue waters and the calm back waters, our minds were free of any clutter and ready for a “Paradigm Shift.” If we will think for a while, we will find that all our senses are meant for receiving impressions from outside us and of things around us. Therefore it is obvious that we hardly get to look deep in to our own selves and to understand the individuals that we are.
“Greed,” “Fear of losing,” etc., are the basic instincts in each individual and these are major impediments for one disabling us to work in teams and also makes it difficult to work among different teams. It might seem easy to tell at a person’s face that he is greedy and needs to change that. Would he accept that message? Probably in a manner in which a message written on the shores of an ocean, with constant waves, is eventually washed off. Adopt this direct method and at the end of it you will get a person whose ego is hurt and with low morale.
Were those child games? They did seem so in the beginning. But as the moral of each activity hit hard on us, the lessons, on us, were as marks of a continuous stream on a rock. There is always space for some water to find its place even between those smallest of gaps between the sand that managed to find its place between the gravel, which in turn fits between the large stones. Thus, how to find “Fun” while we are bogged down by seemingly more important tasks in our lives was shown through these refreshing and enriching games.
The message could not have been conveyed in a better way, as it was seen that after an initial lesson taught, for every activity that followed, the teams decided to come together and find solutions as a larger team. “1 + 1 = 11” and “AC + CP = 100 %” were couple of innovative team statements that came out of the activities held. Do the organizers need any other clue than this to know that the purpose has been achieved?
Wishing us all the best, in implement all our learning from these unique 4 days in “God’s own country,” of working in synergy with the larger picture in mind, I remain.
