What I learned from Mr Atanu Dasgupta at Power Grid – Part 8

Continuing on my experiences with Mr. Dasgupta, in today’s blog, I will cover a related topic about being a good leader. Let us take a look at the next lesson.

Bridge Distances with Technology – Make World a Small Place

Remember the dial-up modems? 56 kbps internet speeds? Can you relate to this image of a model with a telephone jack and the Rs232 connector?

It was not easy for us to get the internet connection at Office, but we were working on the “Next Generation” telecom infrastructure for power system automation projects. The projects were funded by the World Bank and we had the privilege of working with International consultants. I am talking about the period 1995-1998. In order to speed up the process, we needed to email documents to our consultants and also access the internet for seeking information on relevant standards and technical documents. Mr. Dasgupta emphasized that we needed a dedicated connection and we went through a rigorous approval process to get our own Internet connection. It was inherently liberating.

It was pre-HTTP era and we had to work with multiple protocols to get access to documents and information. I do not know if any of you have heard about gopher? “Gopher is an application-layer protocol that provides the ability to extract and view Web documents stored on remote Web servers. Gopher was conceived in 1991 as one of the Internet’s first data/file access protocols to run on top of a TCP/IP network. It was developed at University of Minnesota and is named after the school’s mascot.”  We used gopher, telnet and many other things. I was young and the internet was a very very handy tool. Even with 56kbps, it gave me wings and the wind to fly the world.

Leaders must realize that enabling the teams with suitable technology, greatly enables the teams and helps them bridge the gaps that divide them from the world. Video calls, conferences, messaging, team apps etc. are the new enablers. Make sure that you explore and get the teams the right collaboration tools, give them the technology that makes them reach across the world and see how they blossom.

Stay tuned for more next week.