The Pratishthan Blog

Effective Teams – Fiery

Sharing my experiences, anecdotes from my software industry experience and things we incorporated in our culture.

June 2001:

I was a new comer into the now famous IT industry. So with lot of hopes of a very suave environment and parliamentary discussions where we would ‘ phrase ‘, ‘ re-phrase’ , ‘paraphrase’ and then conclude etc. I joined this product team after 3 months of corporate polishing and scrubbing.

Well we were a batch of 46 people who joined the development team. A satellite office it would operate from, having a culture of its own. So we were standing at the corridor waiting for our desks, Our manager came then and said grab whatever seats you get, so there was a mad scramble to pick a seat. I was slow of the blocks and hence had to sit in the main corridor with no privacy whatsoever. So thus started my journey of watching and learning how an effective team is made.

My first day, i heard a booming voice telling ‘Ye nahi chalega’ (this will not work), followed by another voice which said ‘ Kyon nahi’ (why not? ). I slowly looked up to see to see what happened. I saw two or more samurai warrior ready to battle, baring their teeth, clenching their fist. It went on, and on and on……… until three hours or so, then suddenly they all ran around ‘Eureka!! Eureka’ and went for tea at a nearby stall. This was my first introduction to ‘Design Discussion’.

There were many a discussions where even yours truly bared his teeth and clenched his fist. The reason was the passion for the work we did and the we were unafraid of each other as we trusted that we would never take the arguments home and a tea at the end of the discussion is assured.

This openness, trust and passion for our work was the reason we were an effective team.

We follow this at Pratishthan Ventures too.

This blog was first posted on LinkedIn by Pradosh Nair here.