What I learned from Mr. Ajay Chitkara at Airtel – Part 2

Continuing from last week, today I will share another lesson that I learned from Mr. Ajay Chitkara.

Don’t pick up a Project, you do not intent to successfully complete.

As mentioned in the as a leader of the technology team, I was intent on building stronger ties into the business verticals and that gave me a few opportunities to connect with Ajay. I was always looking for newer opportunities to start new initiatives that can bring the two teams together. One such initiative we planned was to establish single point of contacts within my team for various network verticals, with a key responsibility to share the network roadmap with the B2B sales teams.

I went to Ajay with the proposition, he was happy that we have stepped forward but also cautioned me. He told me a story of three back-benchers.

He said once there were three friends, who intended to enjoy their school life and focused very less of studies. They would mostly spend time enjoying themselves and having a good time. They used to fail most courses but were not bothered by it, they wanted to have more fun and have more time at school while they could.

One year one of the three friends took an exception. He said he is going to focus on studies. He missed many activities with his friends and put in some effort. While he tried, he did not really put in the required effort and still failed, by a very slim margin. When they met after the year, the other friends said, that if he was going to fail anyways, he should have at least enjoyed the the time like they did. He had missed the fun and still not succeeded.

Ajay then said to me that if I really want to run with the initiative, I must make sure that my team works to ensure that the initiative is a success. We had multiple interactions for knowledge sharing that year and received kudos from his team, I guess we succeeded.

I wish all of the leaders do make sure that once they pick an initiative they intent to make it a success. Leaders should not start things they are not convinced upon. Initiative that we start without our heart in them are bound to fail and end up wasting time, resources and efforts in addition to giving us a bad reputation.

Stay tuned for more next week.