Jottings - Slice of life - 112 ( Rajan, yet another milestone..)

Jottings - Slice of life - 112 ( Rajan, yet another milestone..)

Loyalty is a quaint word in an organization. On one hand, it shows tremendous sense of discipline, contentment, innovation, finding ones right footing in your field of work, climbing up a specific ladder with unwavering sense of purpose; and on the other hand, loyalty can also means inefficiency, incompetency, comprising to the lure of mediocrity and staying where you are and living out a professional life without pushing the bars of excellence for oneself and others. When you tell somebody, you have worked for a single organization for twenty five odd years, without a break or sabbatical, your listeners will involuntarily interpret your stay there in either of these ways. They can perceive you have grown and excelled into something better each year, with increasing responsibilities, elevated positions and carving out new opportunities for yourself and the organization , or they can easily surmise you have stagnated, like a pool of water collecting moss and dirt circling within limited boundaries, and you are only there because you have nowhere else to go. Again , there are others who simply look upon a job as a means of financial security and nothing else. Their aims, goal and vision are different, and they do not care so much for what they achieve within an organization as much as what they do out of it. They will probably belong to the aesthetic world of artists, social workers, philanthropists, philosophers, devoted to family or what the french like to call “bourgeoisie”.

The above paragraph was only a preamble to recognize and congratulate once again my friend, well wisher and respected leader - Mr Rajan , on his new role within our organization. Rajan belongs to that band of loyalists for whom an organizational environment is only a pedestal for excellence. Nothing less!! Last year, I had the privilege of writing a short piece on his well deserved award during our annual congregation. This time around, once again it is my privilege to congratulate him on his new expanded role, acquired after 30 years of focussed commitment to the world of IT in its raw bolts and nuts, as he now takes on the challenge and exciting landscape of intangible and yet powerful world of digitization and data sciences. What a transition? from late eighties, setting up X86 machines, wiring them up with sweated brows, and putting together a rudimentary computer infrastructure to help young students learn the wonders of software to now, when he heads a business unit responsible for digital transformation and analytics where hardware is of least concern and thought-driven technology drives IT solutions more than anything else - its been a long road, full of learning, discipline and commitment. And Rajan has travelled it with grace, style and focus.

When I sat down to write today morning, I had something else in mind. I wanted to review a book. But when I opened my laptop, this short piece just poured out spontaneously. I allowed it to unfold without interruption. Rajan is representative of the kind of top leaders we have in our organization. All of them are pioneers, and the fertile landscape of NIIT allowed their talents to blossom and spread. They are all “loyal” to the organization not because they have to, but because they want to and they attempt to fulfill their capacity to work in roles they play. That is the secret of work!!

Many Congratulations Rajan!!.

yours in mortality,

Bala