This goes back to mid seventies. There was this young guy majoring in music in college. Rick Roberts happened to be his name and French pipe happened to be the instrument. The young guy was smart and talented enough to rise to be a band director. His dreams came crashing quickly when he talked to somebody in his line with a lot more experience who dissuaded him from this line given the lack of career opportunities.

Not knowing any better, he followed his brother’s advice. Talked SMU into letting him in to a one-year MBA program. (this is late seventies; there were no pre-reqs for college admissions). Post that, he scored a job in the marketing department of one of the biggest employers in the Dallas area. His job was to go thru the foot-high reams of computer output to analyze data.

Remember, these were the days of long computer sheets and two layers of carbon paper for copy. Invariably he came home with arms filled with carbon paper ink. He decided that was not what he wanted to do. But, he also reasoned, since those were the printouts from a computer, obviosuly the data was sitting in a computer somewhere. All he needed was access to that computer and figure out how to get the computer to do his work for him.

Except that it was against the policy in this company for marketing folks to get access to the computers. Eventually, he convinced somebody in the data center to give him his user id and password (now you know why I am not mentioning the company’s name 🙂 ). With some effort and time, he learnt the programming language and how to get the computer to compile the analysis for him instead of doing it manually. With one caveat. He had to do it on the sly. Which meant, he would do it during night. He would go to office during the day, twiddle his thumbs for some time and then walk up to the boss and show the results. His boss (who had no idea of this) would never believe his output and then used to be astounded by its accuracy!!

Many years later, access to computer was relaxed and that he is when he got into serious programming. He was adept enough in programming that the top computer science recruiter of Dallas area then – Texas Instruments hired him. There was a super programmer called Lamott Oren in TI. Rick’s job was to understand and learn the code that Lamott wrote. As Rick put it – Lamott would come one afternoon, spit out a bunch of Lisp code and then Rick would take the whole week to understand it!! In a complete twist of fate, many years later, that LaMott, Rick and myself worked together in the same team in a different company!!!

It was in that company – i2 that I got the honor of working side by side with Rick. The product he oversaw – Factory Planner – is without any doubt, the most successful supply chain product that I have ever seen. It became the flagship product for i2. His push for simplicity and eye for what makes a product succeed was beyond any comparison.

Fast forward a little later. I had long left i2. Rick’s position was eventually eliminated in those days of mass outsourcing and he was let gone. Disappointed that his role was eliminated, that day, when he came home, he went for a walk on the Main Street. There happened to be a guy playing an Irish flute. He stood there and listened to him. On a whim, he bought a flute from him for $3.

Then he practised like heck at home. An elderly gentleman suddenly practicing Irish flute in the kitchen for hours together can be intense for any family!! It was intesne enough that his twenty year old daughter decided to move out from home 🙂 Luckily, his wife, as he put it, decided to weather it all. Now, he is so good at it that he is often an invited and featured artist at events around the metroplex.

After many many years, Rick Roberts and I met up at an Irish bar over some beer, fish and chips. It was absolutely unbelievable getting in touch with somebody who I learnt so much from in my early stages of professional life.

It was really good to be with a really good guy again!!!

Last time I called up Angie to wish her a happy birthday, she mentioned that I was prominent in her list of people she wanted to meet from her past. I had figured that next time I was in Dallas, I had to find some time to catch up with her.

That day came yesterday. Among other things, she led our recruitment – especially executive recruitment. She was one of the rare recruiters who truly impressed me – and taught me how to look for the core elements of what makes a great professional or executive (and not the stuff that is written on the resumes).

I was aware she had gone thru some tough times in her personal life and also that she had beaten back all of them and thru the process had reinvented herself. It was inspiring and educational last night to hear the full story of how she took a tough challenge in life and emerged a better person.

As always, we also caught up about our old friends from i2. Looked like she had more updates than I did – and I do not face that too often 🙂

I had another reason I wanted to see her. Remember that lady – Thomasine – at the DCA airport? After hearing her story three of my friends – Jenny, Raghu and Angie had stepped forward to help her. In fact, Angie had already set up calls with her and spread the word around to 600 folks in her network.

I had to see such a gracious person and learn from her.

If you thought Stacy crying because I embarrassed her was a funny episode, (see previous blog), you should try this. This one is circa 1996 again. I had become a manager for the first time in my life. There was this young lady – Tammi Gagne Perry – who had just joined the group that I had become the manager of. Two months into her joining the group, my manager – Dan Stenger – undoubtedly one of the best managers ever in my life – one day called me to his office and discussed which teammates deserved how much bonus for the year. To be honest, I was so new as a manager, I pretty much went along with whatever he said. Plus I trusted his calls.

One of the suggestions he had was to give Tammi a $1000 bonus (which would have been out of cycle for her) for the results she had produced within a very short period of time. Again, I went along with it. Except that since I was the direct manager, I had to give her the message. It was not a particularly difficult message, anyways. So, I was up for it.

I followed all the management protocol. Remember, I was new to this. I called her to a conference room, closed the door, explained to her, her achievements in a very short time and that the company had decided to reward her efforts and results with a $1000 bonus. I was expecting a gracious nod. A token “Thank You” would have been nice too.

Instead, she just started crying. I mean crying fluently and copiously. Evidently, she was so overcome by the gesture from the company (actually Dan’s, not even mine) and she was so not used to being told “Thank You” that she completely lost control of herself.

Did I mention this was in a conference room? With glass panes as a wall?

Can you imagine the scenario? There was this young lady sobbing and crying uncontrollably. Facing him was this the-then-young Indian guy with a sheepish grin but totally clueless about what to do next. And then there were these passers-by on the corridor watching us and wondering whether they should step in and ask her if she needed help!!!

It certainly sounded funny today as I met Tammi almost twenty years after that incident and discussed it. (Again, it was far less funny for me on that day). It is with great relief today that I can report that she takes to compliments far less violently 🙂

Seriously though, it was just magical to get in touch with a human being that I had grown so close to over the years (even her mom who we lost to cancer, her husband and daughters as well as her sisters).

Great evening with Leanne and Robin over a glass of wine. We worked together long time back in i2 technologies. It was lovely catching up with both of them and remembering some of the stories from the late nineties and later. I am sure they do not want me to write the details of some of them here 🙂

Picture this – circa 1996 – a newly minted manager (in fact, first time manager) – yours truly – gets a chance to present his team’s activities to the CEO. I invited my entire UI team to attend the presentation. The presentation went swimmingly well, except for one minor hitch.

And that hitch turned out to be my understanding of the English phrase “dropping the ball”. I was eloquently presenting all our achievements and successes. Somewhere, there, I had to explain that we had to deprioritize a sub project called “UI Editor” in favor of something else. In fact, the developer working on it – Stacy Roderman – had to be pulled from that and put on high priority project. However, I spoke about it as “We dropped the ball on the UI Editor”. The slide clearly showed Stacy’s name against the sub-project UI Editor.

I have no idea why, till that day, I thought “dropping the ball” meant you “set it aside”. Of course, in reality “dropping the ball” meant… errrr. “dropping the ball” 🙂 Funny part is that the CEO did not even flinch, nor have any questions. But I could see that Stacy – sitting in the room – was visibly upset.

At the end of the presentation – which, as I said, went extremely well – I was feeling really good, when another team mate – Tom Moellering, came by and said “You might want to talk to Stacy”. Eventually, I went to Stacy’s room and I could see that she was upset. Not knowing what is going on and wanting to give some privacy. I asked her if she wanted to go to Starbucks for a coffee. She readily agreed.

We did not talk much as we walked to the car. I had barely started the car and started pulling out of the parking lot when she started laying it down to me. She was bawling and taking me to the cleaners, demanding to know why would I berate her in public – that too in front of the CEO. As you can imagine, I had not the faintest idea what just hit me.

I did keep my calm and tried to get out of her what seemed to be the problem. When I finally realized what the problem was, I was really amused by the comical scale of the misunderstanding caused by my lack of knowledge of an English phrase. She did not find it that funny at all. (Fortunately, she found it as funny as I when we talked about it this evening – which is why I am even daring to write it 🙂 )

While that was not the only time I got into trouble for not being knowledgeable of the language called English, it was certainly when it was healed very quickly.

We had a great laugh as we talked about it. We, being, of course, Stacy, her husband Brian and myself. Both Stacy and I worked in the same team and over time I got close to her and her husband. That was over ten years back. We had two kids each roughly around the same time and we continued to work in the same company roughly till around the same date.

Another funny story. Coming from India about a quarter century back, I was not terribly used to the concept of divorce and re-marriage. I mean, I knew what it meant – but I had no friends who had parents or siblings who were divorced. Or remarried. Against that backdrop, I am sure you will be sympathetic to my condition when one day, while describing something that I cannot remember, Stacy talked about “My stepfather’s ex …..”. She continued with her sentence but I was stuck at that phrase. By the time she had finished her story, I was still staring at her blankly while my overworked brain was desperately trying to compute who the heck is your “stepdad’s ex” 🙂

It was fascinating catching up with Stacy and Brian today. Once again, I reminded myself how blessed my journey has been by the presence of some really great fellow travelers on this journey we choose to call “life”.

I will let Bipasha explain…. 🙂

Got a chance to meet up with two of my oldest friends from Dallas area over dinner last night. It is always great to spend some time with Aniruddha and Indrani. Last evening was no different.

I remember – way back in 1995, I would play tennis with Aniruddha. Every single weekday. At 5 pm sharp. In his apartment complex – that was often referred to as CP-6!!! Not that our tennis skills was something we wrote home about; nevertheless, we would show up at 5 pm without fail. After a good game or two, we would sit around the staircase of the apartment building chatting ourselves to glory 🙂

Later, Indrani and Sharmila went to school together and we made some great common friends. This was when we were young couples without kids. A great weekend day meant we got up late, called each other up and showed up at an Indian restaurant a few minutes before they closed the buffet down and ate enough to justify a whole month’s worth of tennis games. 🙂

Unbelievably enough, I was a teetotaler then!! Speaking of which, we missed Sharmila last evening so much that we did the next best thing… the three of us had her favorite Pinot Noir 🙂 I am sure that is exactly what she would have us do 🙂

One of the best things about business meetings in Dallas is that I get to create intersection points with so many people that had crossed my path in the long past. The first one started with a guy I met on June 3rd, 1991 in the training room of COSL in SEEPZ in Mumbai – about two and a half decades back.

It was magical to get back in touch with a guy I had not met in many many years and is certainly the most creative person I have ever had a chance to know.

Aditya Garg!!!

Not sure where to start….

Maybe the fact how he was so meticulous and organized in everything he did? When, in those days, we cared very little about how crumpled our office clothes were, Aditya would invariably be found ironing in shirt before we left our flat to catch the office bus.

Or maybe that his flair for creativity rubbed off on me for a long time? If you have ever invited me to your house for dinner or lunch after 2005, you probably also remember the meticulously written Thank You letter written in a fountain pen with calligraphic nib on a monogrammed paper that you received in your snail mail. Well, Aditya was the guy who taught me calligraphy. He is the guy who taught me how to make calligraphic nibs.

You see, unlike in US, we could not simply walk up to a store in India and get the six pack Sheaffer calligraphic nib set. He taught me how to buy normal nibs and then patiently rub on a sandpaper and then rub even more smoothly on concrete to smooth out a hopefully-now-flat nib. He taught me how to make the two types of calligraphic nibs – flat and 45 degrees.

He was also the engineer par excellence. He had devised this lamp shade that was balanced by hooks in four corners of the room with four varying weights. Here is the marvel – you could place the lamp anywhere in the three dimensional space of the room and it would balance itself there for as long as you wanted!

Even to this day, he has not lost his zest for independence in thinking and deciding what is best for him – regardless of what the world thought. That, I mused this evening, looking at him, has to be the ultimate recipe for success in this world.

I gotta to meet him and learn from him more….