Back from Hiatus

Hello friends, it’s been more than a year since I wrote something. There have been lot of changes in my life over last 15 months. We have a new addition to our family, a baby girl! Additionally, I’ve changed my job and I now work for GoodRx.

Past few months have been crazy, in a good way! I’ve learnt a lot of new things, developed a new perspective on things in life, priorities have changed drastically and most importantly I’ve learnt a lot about leadership basics from my baby girl!

I’m going to share a few of those learnings, observations with you all today and how it helps me in professional life.

Nature provides for self-sufficiency

When my daughter was born, at the hospital, I got to experience the wonder of the nature. A small life inside a mother’s body sees the world for the first time. The way body transforms to adapt to those situations and how baby slowly gets used to the external world which they have never seen before is fascinating. It gave me a new perspective, what if, when we build our systems at work, we use similar principles. When we release a new system to production, we need to watch it very carefully to nurture it, to stabilize it as well as to grow it into a mature system. This is where growth mindset helps to constantly adapt to the ever changing needs and situations.

Growth is the only constant

As stated earlier, if you carefully observe growth of a baby, every 2-3 weeks they evolve and change habits. As a parent, you feel settled in a groove and everything changes. They start rolling over, crawling, walking, talking, etc. All these changes make you respond in a variety of ways, new toys, new clothes, baby proofing the house, etc. Similarly, when you see our systems and processes at work, they need to evolve as the demand for services/products change. Clients always are asking for more and better ways to solve their problems. We as leaders need to adapt quickly else the products/services will be rendered ineffective in a matter of time. It’s our duty to create psychological safety for our teams to allow them to experiment. The way to do this successfully is by being curious about the needs & changing environments of your employees, clients and society in general.

Never stop being curious

The curiosity of a baby makes you realize that how much more is there to learn. Right from the time they open their eyes in this world, they are developing all of their senses – touch, smell, sight etc. That’s a beautiful picture to see their curiosity. As leaders, if we develop this kind of observation skills, develop curiosity and use that data to make decisions, it’s definitely going to pay rich dividends in securing long term growth of products/services that are being delivered and making the world a better place!

Be Patient – Things need to take it’s due course

During all of this your best friend is your patience. As leaders many a times not everything goes as per plan or not everything is under your control. The best lever you can pull is build capabilities within your team to be able to respond to any situation thrown at you. This was something very evident when I saw my daughter growing up. Right from holding her neck, rolling over to crawling to walking to talking everything happened but at it’s own time. I couldn’t speed it up but what I could do was build capabilities in her that allowed her to be ready for these changes. Simple examples include, baby proofing your house when they start crawling/walking so that they have a safe environment. It’s similar to the psychological safety of the teams!

Real pleasure is in small things

While doing this don’t forget to enjoy the process. Don’t stress about it. The process will determine the success. The only thing in your control is effort and sticking to basics. Results follow automatically. If the basics are solid, most of the times results will be in your favor.

I would love to learn from you all, your experiences of how our kids are teaching us to be better leaders.