Indian American

The most recent communication and anecdote from a very senior person in my current Indian company made me think I was still working for my old American company....

The Japanese have always loved fresh fish. But the waters close to Japan have not held many fish for decades. So to feed the Japanese population, fishing boats got bigger and went farther than ever. The farther the fishermen went, the longer it took to bring in the fish and hence the fish got stale. The Japanese did not like the taste. To solve this problem, fishing companies installed freezers on their boats. They would catch the fish and freeze them at sea. However, the Japanese could taste the difference between fresh and frozen and they did not like frozen fish. So fishing companies installed fish tanks. They would catch the fish and stuff them in the tanks, fin to fin. After a little thrashing around, the fish stopped moving. They were tired and dull, but alive. Unfortunately, the Japanese could still taste the difference as they preferred the lively taste of fresh fish, not sluggish fish. So how did Japanese fishing companies solve this problem? How do they get fresh-tasting fish to Japan? To keep the fish tasting fresh, the Japanese fishing companies (still) put the fish in the tanks. But now they added a small shark to each tank. The shark eats a few fish, but most of the fish arrive in a very lively state. Like the Japanese fish we thrive only in the presence of a challenging environment. Challenges are what keep us fresh.

......It was the unavoidable human collateral statement, “The shark eats a few fish, (but most of the fish arrive in a very lively state)” which really caught my eye…

God Bless India!

As I went to go through immigration at Bengaluru airport last night I was a bit stunned to be stopped and whisked off to a side counter. After much babbling in Hindi between two immigration officers it seemed that there was a problem with my passport. It transpired that I had gone through immigration in Bombay (Mumbai) on Monday morning before getting my internal Air India flight down to Bengaluru. On arriving I was erroneously pushed through immigration for a second time – two stamps for the price of one in my passport. I thought absolutely nothing more of it – I was more focused on finding Smiling Satya before starting my 90 minute taxi ride to the hotel. However on the way out of India last night, immigration weren’t happy and I got to see firsthand how escalations in the Indian bureaucracy are done....Low level first line refuses to take a decision and pushes you to his boss, his boss gets very angry very quickly and tells you to sit down, he draws in his boss and the two proceed to get rather confused and hot under the collar. They rope in a third obviously more junior individual to go away and check the computer systems and make numerous photocopies of my passport, “again, please sit down again sir”.... the passport in triplicate comes back with the third Indian and the three proceed to have another pow-wow in Hindi. And then, as if by magic, two big bosses wander by and get drawn into the conversation. One walks away very quickly and the second, rather placidly, shakes his head before turning to me and says the Air India are a bunch of jokers and that I need to get the second stamp cancelled the next time I come back to India. Job done and I am suddenly no longer facing the rest of my life becoming the Indian equivalent of Tom Hanks (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362227/) destined never to see the family and Pich again. I suppose I should just be thankful I wasn’t dealing with US Homeland Security....

Hats off, grey clouds over Bangalore!

Just as I was preparing to leave Bangalore on Friday night the heavens opened. One of the downsides of this is that the dusty Indian roads become muddy very quickly and the tiled walkways in the Wipro campus become quite treacherous underfoot. However that was only part of the grey cloud – it transpired on Friday that someone in the UK has been using my credit card fraudulently to the tune of a few thousand Euros – hopefully everything is going to be ok but there were a few frantic calls back to France before I headed to the airport. I do however have to say hats off to American Express Fraud department because it was they who rang me to alert me to what looked to be suspicious activity. Given my recent travel schedule, where I could be in up to four different countries in any given week, it is no mean feat on their part to be able to detect that some spending in Bishop’s Stortford in the UK was indeed errant. I really wonder how the little toe-rag, whoever he was, managed to get my card details. As I sit here in Paris Orly airport waiting to board my final flight to home, blogging about it serves as a useful reminder of the need to be cautious with such information in this age of convenience and the internet.

Checking Out

I was happy to get out of the hotel for a run in the surrounding area this morning. Although this trip has been a lot of hotel, taxi, office, taxi, hotel, I do feel like I was able to comprehend the country and culture a bit better than the last time. Even as I ran through the shanty towns this morning I was slightly less shocked than 6 months ago. I was also happy that I forgot my iPod so for the first time in addition to the sights and smells, I got to hear the start of the rural Indian day with people washing themselves outside, waiting for rickety buses, ordering and eating food in one of numerous road side snack shops, and riding creaking rusty bikes over speed bumps and potholes. That said, as I weaved my way around sacred cows and stray dogs I did think to myself that I am very happy to be coming home tonight. We have another full day of work before dinner at the restaurant. I’ll go to the airport from dinner and my flight to Paris leaves around 2AM on Saturday morning. I should be home for about 2PM on Saturday afternoon. The other really good news is that I don’t have any trips planned for next week.

Step 1, Done

I wouldn’t say the world was changed, but I was very happy at the way in which the meetings Tuesday onwards have been structured. I believe that they were much more productive than those of Monday afternoon. We’re now almost at the end of our week of FY12 account planning. I have to say that if I take a step back, I am impressed at both the quantity and quality of the work that has been done, and the commitment of the organisation to invest so heavily in the account planning process (the full senior management team together for a week in India). That said we do need to take some time to reflect on the detail we have gone through to make sure we really are seeing the big picture, and the real test will be how much we actually live the plan over the next 12 months. Only time will tell....

Indian Leopard

On Monday we completed the first day of account planning meetings for one of our key clients. It really was a day of two halves. The first half went really well. We had the global head of banking deliver some important messages to help “focus our minds” for the week, and we then listened to a senior client who had been invited to talk to us. Thankfully they were both saying essentially the same thing which is “develop deeper banking knowledge to enhance success”. All good stuff. All the more reason why it was frustrating in the afternoon for us to fall back into our old ways of discussing long lists of possible technical projects when trying to shape our strategy. Maybe it’s just too difficult for a leopard to change his spots especially when he’s been feasting so successfully for the last 5-6 years. After all, surely you don’t change a winning team right? Or maybe the constant reinvention and organisational turmoil that Accenture would inflict on us every couple of years did have a point? After an early bed last night, I am feeling refreshed and optimistic that maybe I can change the world....more anon.......

Indian Driver

As I stepped out of the airport at Bangalore at 4AM on Monday I was very happy to see a familiar smiling face of Satya, the taxi driver who I use each (both) time I come to India. It seems that we typically get a nominated driver for the week so I make sure that I ask for Satya. There’s just something nice about seeing someone you “know” after having travelled for 17 hours to the other side of the world.

Indian Night

It is 1.45AM local time and I’m currently sitting in a nice pale brown, orange and red Air India aircraft waiting to head from Mumbai to Bangalore where I’ll spend the rest of the week. It’s been a long trip which started with a hire car from Biarritz to Pau at 5AM CET. For the attentive among you, you’ll know it’s the second time I’ve been to India. Whilst it is difficult to be away from home, especially when 3 young children require so much attention, I was sort of looking forward to coming back whilst I was on the flight from Paris – I really couldn’t get my bearings the last time I was here and I am hopeful that maybe it will make a bit more sense this time.

The trip so far has been fine, albeit long. The initial flight to Mumbai was a touch surreal in the sense that it felt like I was chasing the night – I went to sleep in Paris and it was daytime but when I woke up a few hours later over Tashkent it was pitch black outside. My travelling companion this time was a 3.5 year old Indian boy who was heading back to Mumbai (Bombay) for a month’s holiday. He was impeccably behaved and he was even quite happy to share some of the leg room under his seat so I could stretch myself out – I’m almost tempted to say that travelling with children (or dwarfs) has some distinct advantages. I was all the more impressed by his behaviour when his mother told me they had just flown in from the US – Paris was just a stopover for them! Little Samju would have done almost 24 hours of solid travel...I recalled my 80 minute flight to Stansted with Maxime for Christian’s wedding with shame....

We arrived in Mumbai at 9 minutes past midnight. Lucky really because arriving at this time meant that it was a cool 25C....a far cry from the end of the harsh winter in Europe. Furthermore it wasn’t long before I was reminded of the sheer number of people, noise and general bustle of India – 2AM in Mumbai airport is like rush hour in Paris CDG.

In honesty I didn’t have a great deal of time to clear immigration, check in for the next flight and get through security and customs and then to the gate in an airport and a country that is quite unfamiliar to me. A few factors however have ensured that I could board my trusty, yet gaudy, orange flying machine in good time (surely I shouldn’t be worried that my seat isn’t actually attached to the rest of the aircraft especially because this flight has already proved to me that you can take off even when the runway is full of pot holes).... immigration that would make US Homeland Security turn in their grave, a seeming desire to push the white man with a suit carrier to the front of the business class queue (I only had an economy ticket but no-one thought to check), and a rather lax customs system where I almost ended up stamping my own ticket. But make it I did, and the other piece of good news is, that despite their being no formal announcements other than an old gentleman shouting “Bangalore Gate 4” in the corner of the room, I’m actually on the right flight. Obviously the fact that the TV screen above Gate 4 was showing “Egyptair – Cairo – Boarding” has seemed to have proven to be completely irrelevant. Handy really because I don’t think I really want to go to the country of the Nile and the Pyramids at the minute. So the morale of the story is that when travelling in India, even after having already done 15 hours, make sure you keep your wits about you.

I’m now going to try and get some sleep on this flight. I’ll arrive at around 3.45AM and then it’s a taxi to the hotel before meetings start at 8.30AM. Oh, did I forget to mention, the taxi ride to the hotel is only 1.5 hours at this time of night.......

Two year old teenager

I had a lot of fun with Maxime this weekend before heading off to India. A number of friends tell me that kids are getting older sooner and that adolescence sets in much earlier. I’m not sure if wiping bogeys from his nose on his Dad is a sign of adolescence but if it is, then I’ve got a two year older teenager. That said, I don’t think he’ll be trying that little disgusting habit again for a while. Even if that is not typical behaviour that one expects of a well brought up little boy, it is not this incident which makes me worry about him....the fact that he sat down in the evening in front of Cbeebies and began to read the phone book from cover to cover was a lot more disconcerting. His assured conviction that Papy John could actually hand him his Makka Pakka soft toy through the computer screen whilst we Skyped on Saturday also worried me....or maybe that’s just a glimpse into the future....

Baby Number 4

Fear not family, this is not any sort of announcement that Sandie is pregnant again and that we’ll require even more babysitting assistance. It more bears reference to the fact that for a couple of days this week I’ve been sick as a dog with some sort of stomach bug. The upshot was that whereas Sandie was initially delighted to see me when I got back from Zurich and London, her joy was short lived when she realised that rather than having a helping hand with Maxime, Gaston and Capucine, she actually had a fourth baby that she needed to look after. Normally she’s not renowned for her Florence Nightingale levels of patience, but I have to say she was an absolute star and she didn’t even raise a whimper as I crawled off to bed at 7.45PM on Thursday night. Thankfully today I’ve been much brighter and Sandie is already planning her day off tomorrow with a jumble sale and a mega siesta in the afternoon.

And the source of the stomach bug? I’m pretty sure that in addition to a distinct lack of sleep this week (late nights and three flights at 7AM on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday), trying to eat Indian with Indians in what they considered a real Indian restaurant in Zurich on Tuesday night, wasn’t the best plan. Whereas I am normally a fan of when in Rome do as the Romans, the experience of Tuesday night hasn’t filled me with confidence ahead of my trip to Bangalore on Sunday (especially because it’s currently about 30C over there). Thankfully the trip is only a week long, but even then I’ll be happy to get back to see the family. Maxime is currently on top form and very much a fan of Makka Pakka, and Gaston and Capucine are growing up well despite a spot of asthma for Gaston which we’re hopeful will clear itself up. Thankfully the breathing issues haven’t seem to dull his appetite...and that’s where I’m off now for the final meal service of the day.

Home Sweet Home

Frugal innovation this, the rise of the East that, beware of the Indian Tiger and the Chinese Dragon, the future is Africa now that it is no longer a “hopeless continent”........ as I sit here in (yet another) plane, there are some things that make me happy to be a dull, risk averse, steady Eddy European....notably air travel.

I read a most interesting article last week in the FT entitled “The Final Approach” which examined how safe air travel is and has become over the last few decades in different regions of the world. Despite the Air France crash (my regular carrier) in 2009 in which 216 people died, the number of fatal accidents per million flights in the Europe has decreased from 3.8 in the 1970s to 0.6 in the 2000s. Reassuring stuff especially when you consider it’s not the same the world over – air travel has actually got more dangerous in Africa (a rise from 5.3 to 6.3). Thankfully Asia’s statistics are also good – down from 4.5 to 0.9 over the last 40 years – exactly the peace of mind I need before I head off to India next Sunday!

Some other stuff which I found interesting was that something called an airline blacklist exists in Europe. This basically bans certain carriers from flying in Europe – in 2010 over 280 airlines were banned including 50 from Kazakhstan, 46 from the Philippines, 45 from Indonesia and 33 from the Democratic Republic of Congo (with all the civil war there I’m amazed they even have time to have 33 carriers!) However I thought that the best news of all was that, alongside Southwest Airlines, it is Ryanair and Easyjet that are the only airlines who have no known fatal accidents. I can now sit back and enjoy the rest of flight EZY3706 to Paris CDG Terminal 2B.....

U-Bend of Life

2 piles of books that I have read sit next to my bed. Unfortunately these piles are much smaller than the 3 piles of un-read books that sit alongside them. The really demoralising part of the story is that we haven’t even started talking about the audio books that I have downloaded but haven’t got round to putting on my ipod yet.

The only periodical I read/listen to with any regularity is the Economist. I have downloaded ten of the special reports from last year’s Christmas edition. I have been trying to listen to one a week to try and “catch up”. We’re already into week 7 of 2011 and I have 9 of the articles left to listen to. You can do the maths yourself. The frustrating part of the story is that when I do finally manage to listen to them, I really enjoy them.

The one that I have managed to listen to was all about age and happiness. The Economist purports that when people start out on adult life, they are, on average, pretty cheerful. Things go downhill from youth to middle age until they reach a nadir commonly known as the mid-life crisis. So far, so familiar. The surprising part happens after that. Although as people move towards old age they lose things they treasure—vitality, mental sharpness and looks—they also gain what people spend their lives pursuing: happiness. It seems that four main factors influence happiness: gender, personality, external circumstances and age. One of the most interesting things I read in the article was that two personality traits seem to shine through the complexity of economists’ regression analyses: neuroticism and extroversion. Neurotic people—those who are prone to guilt, anger and anxiety—tend to be unhappy. Neurotic people are not just prone to negative feelings: they also tend to have low emotional intelligence, which makes them bad at forming or managing relationships, and that in turn makes them unhappy. Whereas neuroticism tends to make for gloomy types, extroversion does the opposite. Those who like working in teams and who relish parties tend to be happier than those who shut their office doors in the daytime and hole up at home in the evenings.

The main conclusion that the Economist draws is that people are least happy in their 40s and early 50s. They reach a nadir at a global average of 46. They go on to say that the consequence of this is that on average, the greyer the world gets the brighter and happier it becomes—a prospect which should be especially encouraging to Economist readers (average age 47). The main conclusion I draw is that maybe this explains the desire of virtually every French person of working age to have their own private office. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions… http://www.economist.com/node/17722567?story_id=17722567

Pulling the Strings

Overall it was a good weekend. It now seems that something of a Saturday routine is developing. In the morning I go off to ride Pich in Orthez which is about an hour away from home. Maxime comes with me. Whilst I am riding there is a young English girl who positively adores looking after the little terror and she often even sticks him on the back of a pony which he thinks is just fantastic. We all then have lunch at the stables with my pal Michel and a number of the other regular riders. After lunch Maxime gets back in the car and I drive slowly home as he starts his afternoon nap. Sometimes I drive so slowly (to maximise the number of winks he gets), that I even need to stop the car to have a snooze myself. Overall Maxime seems to be a big fan of this time with his Dad and the ponies – I have deduced this by multiplying the number of chicken nuggets and slices of pizza he consumes by the amount of mud and dirt he can cover himself in in the space of only 4 hours.

However the problem that I face is that sometimes too much information is shared with his mother about exactly what happens on our Saturday outings. Whereas I have to accept that the dirt is impossible to hide, there are however certain things where we can do better e.g. the tomato ketchup stains on his hands and face or the empty McDonalds bags in the car. I should also definitely stop actually telling Sandie what goes on.... for example on Saturday after 25 minutes of whittling on, and despite my best efforts to change the topic of conversation, I was required to stop the car and pull over into the hard shoulder on the motorway so I could finally put Maxime’s fur lined boots on. Whereas I thought I had done a good job by resisting his demands for a full 25 minutes, Sandie later took great delight in feigning mock horror that I had actually seen fit to stop the car to put some completely unnecessary (winter) boots on a 2 year old child. She seems to be in no doubt about exactly who is pulling the strings on a Saturday. Back to parenting 101 for me it seems.

Dancing in the Cabin

They say you can't dance faster than the music. However my watch has decided that it is indeed possible - it is gaining roughly 45 minutes every 12 hours. Unfortunately this doesn't mean I've invented a time machine, but more that it has to be sent off for repairs which is most frustrating. The upside I suppose is that it gave Sandie, who has been suffering a bit from cabin fever recently with the three children, an excuse to head out into town and speak to some adults. I'm glad I could help her out! :-).

World Peace

It has to be said that for the second week in a row Maxime’s behaviour at mass on a Sunday morning has been excellent. Whereas last week he was so well behaved I thought he had been possessed by the devil, I have to confess that this week was actually (reassuringly) slightly less impressive, but good all the same. Somewhat perturbed by the whole experience I sank into a brief but deep session of self reflection and navel gazing. It seemed like there was a common thread.....chocolate biscuits and a bottle of water. If only Stalin and Mussolini had realised how easy it was to placate an unruly population, then maybe the 20th century could have been a very different story.

孫

And for those of you not fluent in Mandarin (yet)... 孫 is the Chinese character for "Sun" - a common Chinese surname (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_(surname)).

Sun on the Danube? More like 孫 on the Danube!

Yesterday I went out for my morning run in Budapest. The weather was mild and there was a glorious blue sky. The sun reflected magnificently off the Danube, the river that flows through 10 different countries and 4 Central and Eastern European capitals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danube). It felt really good to get outside and do some exercise after two days where I had got up at 5.20AM and then travelled in plane (to Amsterdam and London).

That said the highlight of the day was lunch with a client. It was only during this meeting did I realise what globalisation is really about. Imagine the scene – a large Hungarian telco firm with about 5-600 people located in the outskirts of the country’s capital. A Hungarian firm serving Hungarian clients run and managed by Hungarian people and that has been going for about 15 years or so. My client counterpart invited me to look around the canteen as we ate – I could only see a handful of white European faces and the whole place was filled by groups of Chinese and Indian people. The Chinese guys were from ZTE and the Indians from Wipro. He also told me that in actual fact many of the white faces were Norwegians....The telco is running two large programs – the business application project is being done by Wipro, and a networks project is being done by ZTE. The company has also been absorbed into a wider telco group and as a result it’s the Scandinavians who call the shots.

I was amazed and it was very interesting listening to my (Hungarian) client as he talked about some of the cultural difficulties everyone is having adjusting to each other, not least the objections of the Hungarians who now refuse to come to work because of the Chinese who had been happily spitting on the floor (of what is a beautiful brand new office) and sleeping on the desks after lunch. Apparently ZTE are also going to be bringing in their own chief and catering services because the men from Beijing are not fond of the goulash. So it seems that this is what the future looks like, and I have to confess that I couldn’t help but wonder how Maxime, Gaston and Capucine are going to cope in that type of working environment......

Tough at the Top

Although it's likely to be a long week, I forgot to mention that it should also be an interesting one. Wipro Technologies recently changed their unusual Joint CEO structure, removing the two top men and replacing them with another long term "Wiproite", T K Kurien, thereby going back to a more classical organisational model. "TK" (makes me think of Top Cat for some reason), will be taking us through his changes this week (which incidently need to be operational before our new financial year which starts in April). The most interesting article I read on the subject was http://www.deccanherald.com/content/131219/premji-springs-surprise-sacks-two.html) Interesting times indeed, and something tells me that the shake up in Wipro will be bigger than that in my old company Accenture, who also recently changed CEO (http://www.emoneydaily.com/new-boss-for-accenture-plc-nyseacn/6986274). More anon no doubt.

It's Snow Joke

...a week’s skiing and not a single broken bone or twisted joint. "Impressive for you Aidan!" I hear you cry.....Admittedly I didn’t go skiing or snowboarding once, and there was no snow or ice underfoot in the village (we had glorious weather all week). That said I did nearly kill myself when I ran 8KM from Cauterets uphill to the Pont D’Espagne. It took a full 50 minutes and a good dollop of stubbornness to complete it at the end. The 8KM downhill however (done in 35 minutes), was much more enjoyable. Some other good things were a much cherished cold pint of Guinness whilst babysitting sleeping twins, and meeting a new person who joined the group (of 21) this year – 43 year old Fabrice from Angers. A thoroughly splendidly chap. However for me the highlight of the week was lots of time with Maxime. He had a great time with his cousins from Toulouse, he ate well (especially if it was pasta with tomato ketchup followed by chocolate yoghurt), slept well, and was well behaved in the main.

On the downside, at the age of 2 and still completely unable to swim, he did receive his first warning from a lifeguard about “bombing” when entering the hotel swimming pool. I think what really got the lifeguard annoyed was the fact the Maxime “bombed” even when there were people present... on at least two occasions he landed in the middle of a private conversation between a couple of grannies who were far from impressed by his unannounced arrival. Quite clearly I blame the parents, although I challenge anyone to keep a straight face when scolding a small child with such a huge grin on his face splurting out the word “pardon” without really understanding what it means. Some of the other low points of the week were evening meals that started at 10PM, a poor internet connection (how I longed for Budapest airport), a speeding ticket on the Thursday and a disastrous ride with Pich when I did finally arrive at the stables (I managed to escape for half a day to ride my horse although with hindsight I should have stayed in bed that day). Overall I can say that I was happy to go on holiday, and I was also happy to come back.

I’m now on the verge of going back to work tomorrow. At some stage between now and my flight to Amsterdam at 6.50AM tomorrow morning I’ll try and sort out the most important of the 278 emails that came in last week. After Amsterdam it will be the UK on Tuesday and a couple of days in Budapest. With a bit of luck I’ll be working from home on Friday although that currently seems like a long way off.