As someone at the helm of an organization that is growing rapidly (we grew nearly 100% both in terms of revenue and staff numbers and incubated businesses, IP and service offerings last year), I know that now is the time to catch the wind and forge ahead. However, I find myself questioning the old established standards and definitions of success and introspecting about what I want Centelon to stand for.
It sometimes takes a mammoth-sized jolt to slow down from the daily grind of operations and look beyond the immediate and 2021 gave me several such jolts on a personal front. The first and most heart breaking of these was the loss of my father towards the end of 2020 and learning how to navigate the world without the presence of this man who had always been a comforting, encouraging constant in my life. What added to this trauma was the uncertainty that followed because of the unanticipated four month enforced stay in India and the separation from my family in Australia due to the lockdown. It took an exhausting seven-day journey with stopovers in four countries before I could reach Australia. In the classic case of ‘so close yet so far,’ I had to still undergo 14 days of hard quarantine in Sydney. By the time I crossed the familiar threshold of my home, I was a mentally and physically broken man. Despite the quantum of work that required my attention at Centelon, I took some time off to recover and regroup. It was one of the best decisions of my life.
My experience was in no way unique and I was aware that I was fortunate in so many ways to have the resources and freedom to do what I needed to do to get back to a state of feeling like myself once again. This time prompted a hard rethink on some of my long held beliefs on how businesses must be run and what I wanted for Centelon and its employees. These are a few of my musings on the subject:
- Importance of having passions beyond work and family - All my working life, I have focused exclusively on work and family, believing that I was far too busy to take on anything more. A decade in Australia, with its ‘ give it a go’ and ‘do-it-yourself’ attitude, had already primed me for this change, but over the last two years, I have started to enjoy spending time and energy in doing odd jobs around the house. I started with small jobs before moving onto bigger jobs like painting my entire house and dabbling in gardening, landscaping and such. The physical labour has been immensely therapeutic. I am determined to find new avenues to explore this year. I also got myself a pet dog, who played a big role in helping me maintain my sanity during the bleak, frequent lockdowns in Melbourne.
- Importance of mental wellbeing - I had always appreciated physical wellbeing, but post Covid, I realised mental wellbeing is just as important and the impact to it should never be underestimated or under appreciated. Your mind is just as important (if not more) than your body and needs attention, nurturing and healing. Organisations will have to invest time and resources in educating about , improving, and monitoring the mental wellbeing of both employees and their families.
Earlier, from a company’s point of view, there was a hard separation between the employee’s work life and personal life. The latter was an area the employer would prefer not to interfere in or be involved with. However, in this new ‘virtual world’, with work-from-home being a norm, this hard separation will be blurred. So companies need to be aware and conscious of the challenges each employee faces and provide an environment that takes into account each person’s unique constraints. It would need to define the areas it can support and what it would consider as employee’s private matters.
Clearly, all the big doses of self-awareness have not translated to actions. These are some of the misses in 2021 that I intend to act upon in 2022:
- Focus on personal health and adopting a structured exercise regime.
- Rekindle some of the lost/ forgotten relationships and spend more time, even if it’s virtually, with people.
- Read books instead of merely going through articles and following news sites.
- Attain a better and deeper understanding of environment changes and actions to be taken.
Unlike the previous year, we expect a reasonably high growth year and look forward to an exciting 2022 where we not only grow, but also create a culture within the organisation that can take the learnings from the Covid times and institutionalise them in terms of processes and practices.
To summarise, 2021 was a hard year personally, a good year officially. Most importantly, it was a year of intense self reflection, personally as well as professionally, prompting me to move towards a ‘people first’ era at Centelon.
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