"Take a leap of faith," I said to myself not long ago. The decision to choose career over other things had arrived too early on, but the jump was too big to let go. The amount of learning that could happen, the amount of depth I could gain and above all that, the trust that my people placed in me that I could achieve, pushed me to pursue, working from the highest office in a state government! Within a week, the shiny halo around it started seeming like a crown of thorns!
The learning curve has been steep over the past few months. So steep, that sometimes I shudder to even look back at how far I've come. I've always loved that, when I can learn a lot in very little time, it gives me a sense of being. The pace at which things have happened, on multiple fronts in my life, make me wonder if it all is leading to something or I'm just being pushed around by events. Banking on my willingness and capability to learn, I made the leap of faith into the role that I felt (still feel) is too big for me.
The first day in office, I was provided with a gate pass written on a piece of paper which made me wonder, why do people still write these things to be later replicated onto a register and then thrown away? Something as basic as an excel sheet could help out. Internet still works on LAN cables that need to be requested for in writing. My mind awoke at the sheer number things that could be worked on here. I've always loved challenges, they keep me focused and motivated. I sat in the cramped office and started making a list of things I needed to achieve in the following days. Have a meeting & discuss 8 points, make phone calls to get an update of work, create a summary report of the work done by others, attend a day long meeting, fix some more meetings, create an excel sheet, send an email... the list was quite long. I hadn't missed anything and all of them were key to smooth functioning of all the gears in the machine, but...
The people I meet and work with have experiences I can't even imagine at the moment. Their roles have been carved out to fit a picture much larger than anything I've ever encountered, they're the people that I've only known as The Government. These are not babus in the different government offices I've been to in my life, RTO, Passport, Police Station, BEO etc., these are people who run hundreds and thousands of such offices. These are people who make those decisions which can change an entire state. The more I stayed around them, the heavier the air felt. I remember one day I left office early to work out of a coffee day because of the sheer amount of things that went on around me. This wasn't some cold feet I got or lack of clarity, this was something different, something I had never felt so far, a sense of being too small. Had I jumped too high?
In the domain I work in, you always start out doing the leg work. Visiting different places, understanding the work there, meeting different stakeholders to put the pieces together, putting some structure to the thoughts and then coming up with solutions to the problems. It takes time and energy, but the results are quite tangible and in your hand. It also gives you a chance to experience the billion shades of the country, to meet people so different from the next, to see the problems ground up and to put the diverse thoughts into one framework that makes sense. All of this gives you perspectives so deep and nuanced, it changes your very being. And I've experienced that before when I taught kids, rather, when they taught me! Its a very enriching journey that you keep for life. I look forward to them not only because of all that it helps me learn, but also because when I go up the ladder, I want the base to be rooted and strong. And right now, I'm on a ladder that is high but because of my lack of varied experiences, quite shaky.
Every time somebody asks for support in doing those things, I can't help but doubt my right to be giving them ideas. I haven't the faintest idea of their context, of the people they encounter or the issues they face. My only source of all that information is an excel sheet or a phone call or if I'm lucky, a relatable dilemma. Its like being a big tree with a hollow trunk. Every time there's a little wind, you sway and with every oscillation, a part of your root below gets exposed leading to more oscillations. I only have so much knowledge and skill to hold on to.
One of the senior officials I work with advised, "You've to think like a state now. I'm sure you have your work to do, but you need to think bigger." The struggle really then is within me and not on the outside. What this is giving me is a chance to learn something new. I'm learning about myself, my strengths, my weaknesses, my interests, my motivations and above all, balancing all of them. Failures have been quite a few but I've learnt how to manage better, how to move ahead with full force even if personal motivations are elsewhere, how to push ahead even if challenges are not to one's liking, how to strike that balance between what you want and what you get, how to be completely and so far outside your comfort zone and still deliver, how to move the smaller pieces to fit into the larger puzzle and above all, how to grow your feet to fit the shoes!
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