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Deciding not to drag horses to water when they wont drink April 24, 2008

Posted by arunpurohit in Leadership.
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The following mail on the eve of Grand Finale has evoked a lot of responses from people. This is a predicament every leader would face.  King Leonidas faced it when his own countrymen didnt want him to fight a war. This is what we face in a modern IT company. Your own men who are reluctant to contribute to the winning cause. Read on… 

Hi,
 
        Reflecting on the event, I am sure we had the highest potential to Win this War.
We have fought well and emerged on Top/Finalists of some events.
 
With a little bit of spark from some nimble feet we could have increased our tally significantly today but its sad ,we shall go unrepresented in the Dance Event. The response of Spartans to Clarion calls from Archana anjd Supriya for Dance event was abysmally low. We had to call off our participation in this.
When our  postion  slips further probably we will have our Work schedules as our shields but our Conscience will prick us. For the honor of our battallion , probably some amongst could have done away with half an hour of coffee break or leisure surfing or reading a forward or attending a call or overcome the inertia of coming together for meeting or practice. The aura of victory which we carry with us is what stays with us through out our lives. Its the avoidable loss which will haunt us.
 
An optimist, I will still dream of some Angel dancers coming in the last minute and dance to the glory…Alas , I had more soldiers who believed in miracles.
 
Nevertheless, lets all be there this evening to celebrate some of our victories with clappings which will send  down sudders. Thats the least we can do to honor those who brought pride to our Team Spartans
 

 

 

War of Titans April 24, 2008

Posted by arunpurohit in Leadership.
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 The Pune Development Center flagged off a an event called War of Titans. Amidst a meeting I got a call from my Director who asked me if I can take up the role of  Captain. He had named the Team as Spartans and asked me if I knew the significance of this . I knew that Spartan is a small town in Greece but was not sure where he was coming from . He asked if I had seen the movie ‘300′ and then went on to tell me that he had seen it 4 times during his US visit. I remember having seen first 15minutes of the movie during my last year’s trip to  Mumbai when my Brother recommended it strongly. Late in the night 2 AM ,I was too tired  to carry on.

                 This day got me charge to see this. I went to market in Evening and bought the DVD. The moment we platyed it on at home I was glued. Never in my life had I seen such glorious and inspiring movie. The spirit of bravery started boiling in me. The battle of thermopyle where 300 Spartans fighting for their honor killed 20,000 Persians is one of the most inspiring stories . Gerard Butler ,Leena Headey have really brought the epic alive. I have not yet found a person who has seen the movie and has not seen it repeatedly.. Its glorious stuff. This got me going and what I reproduce here is a mail I wrote to my team members after we were few days into the event.

 

  

Dear Spartans,
 
 
 I read some where that during Chinese war when Lata mangeshkar sang ” Jo Shaheed huye hain unki.. jaraa yaad karo Qurbani” Pandit Nehru came down to tears. There is something great about narrating great battles;It inspires sea of humanity. This was another day at battle for Spartans . Some triumphs, some losses, some learnings and loads of heroism deserving half an hour of my time chronicling it. 

The day was to begin right @ 0930 for all members of Siemens team who had decided to represent Spartans. The venue was parking lot next to Pyramid lawns . Here is the report with an Spartan perspective.
 
The Setting :  
 
 6 tracks each measuring approx 25m were marked on the stone and gravel road in the parking lot next to Pyramids. The road was rough , the stones and pebbles were scary and a fall definitely boded injury which would shed blood. The thought of injury was frightening but then, when has the sight of blood driven the Warriors away. On the site was a good quality music system and 3 professional organisers who had come to conduct the event. Attached is the brief description of each event. 
 
Spoon Race : The event was kind of simple but with a catch that the  moment the lemon drops, the person goes and starts allover from start line. The Tallest person in our team was Manneri and we deided to field him. He kept the faith, balanced the spoon well and taking long strides had little problem finishing first in semis. We were hoping he will win us a Gold in the finals . The main competition was from a girl in Aryans who was doing very well. In the finals start from the word GO, Ningappa led the event but the girl closed in . They retained the lead till the last 10meteres. Then suddenly out of blue , the girl charged and started running and  upset us. Manneri finished second. This was a good start and the Spartan Cheer leading was at its best.We encouraged all to go for the kill.
 
3 Leg Race : This race I had previous experience on and just wanted an able partner. I startegised and told Manneri that only I will give call for each step. We tied our leg hard. Synchronising /practicing was proscribed. The first prelim round was flagged off . Manneri and I were gallloping like seasoned horses and quickly established a lead of arouund 3m with the nearest competitors. We finished first in the prelims.
The Final was bigger test as 2 other best teams would stake a claim. I again told Manneri that I will give all callsand slowly build up a crescendo.In the final the moment , the whistle was blown, our synchronised 1-2, 1-2 and long strides gave us a liead and we finished first on the half way mark and turned for final lap. The competition was catching up but so was our synch call. in the last 15 m, we were almost racing in tandem. Manneri told me to slow down .We synchronised we were the first to finish the Race. THe ground was reverberating with the Chants Spartans, Spartans.. The organisers acknowledged that Spartans were doing very well on all counts: Cheering, winning and sporting.
 
 
Sack Race : This was difficult as jumping with sack on gravel road was most likely to cause falls and injuries. The mandate from my side to  Mihir and Manneri who were participating was, take small(75% of max capacity) , consistent and quick jumps. Mihir put in his best effort and was in top 3 but closer to half way mark, he slipped and fell off.. This loss increased the gap and he could not make up. He nevertheless showed great spirit in the event. 
             Manneri on the other hand had a great head start in the prelims. He finished first @ halfway mark and took a very large leap. This didnt find grip on ground and the sac slipped. With a large thump he fell. The skin on his palm was chipped off, the gravel had gone in it. The Jeans torn off. The blood made imprint on it at many places.. Yet he got up and resumed the race. He finished 2nd in spirit of the battle he was the winner.. This is the attitude Warriors/winners are made of.  
 
 
Slow Cycling : This event was riddled with organisation problems. The organisers were not clear as to how they could conduct this. Prashant Dhonde of Aryans, Chetan Patil of ..??? were too good in the event .. I strongly recommend you see the video of this event when its uploaded on intranet or kept in library.. Our fight i this even was not much.. and didnt figure in last 3.
 
 
Tug of War : This was the mother of all events and as Spartans we wanted to win it.. We ran out of soldiers in this.. In comparison to heavy and sinewed 10 hunks of other teams we were barely managing 7 people .  I gave a last minute call to my Boss ..if we could get Bhim and Mhatre  for the event.. He gave me mhatre’st’s no. I made 3 calls to his # and couldnt get connected. Arrival of Vipin  for the event was a morale Booster. Finally, we decided to take the battle with whatever we had on the moment. 2 girls and 5  not so match for the heavy opponents. The whistle was blown and we could find that the brute force of opponents  was impossible to surmount. We put in our all , our arms hands got bruised, we went down fighting just like the last scene of movie 300.. WE misssed some of our strongest soldiers who due to reasons best known to them kept way. Probably , their presence on field here would have made the difference.
 
Needle and thread race : The rule in this event was twisted .. one person was to run with thread in hand, and another man on other end was to put thread in needle and finally the girl had to run with needle and thread to the other end.Rohini who was participating from our side was apprehensive to run as she was not wearing sports shoes. Vipin was the first person to run. He did a great job by running fast. There was a little slip as I struggled and finally put the thread in .. Rohini took the thread and needle and started running.. There were 2 girls ahead and she could not bridge the gap.. We ended up 3rd in the event.
 
 
 
Reflecting on this event, I have following to put :
  1. Manneri Ningappa emerges as our leading athelete who has tremendous spirit , energy and attitude to Win.
  2. In Three leg race, we are the Champions ..and we need to consolidate on this.
  3. Cycling race, we need to improve a lot wrt our competitors.
  4. The pride , sense of belonging and  bonding in the Siemens group  is far behind Aryans(Talent Pool) and  Marshals(MSC) today. Probably ,we have too few proud Spartans.
  5. Supriya has confirmed leading our Dance Team with Archana Hegde and we hope to put our best in this last event.( Choreography, Costume and coordination).
I hope , in the Grand Finale we will have the famed Spartan spirit and participation which will stake claim to the victory.

 

 

Regards,

                  

Siemens PLM Chess Championship 2008 , Pune April 17, 2008

Posted by arunpurohit in Big Fight in a small Dog, Chess.
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  The Warriors

Subsequent to my semi final victory the stage was set for Finals. I had heard from my peer that one of the semi finalists was an extremely good player of chess. He was champion in 2005 and 2006. I decided to gather more information about him. The first step was to find out at what level in organisation he was in. I searched the corporate directory and was amazed to know that he was at a level which was equivalent to My Boss’s Boss. Further , finding  out that he worked on Finite Element mesh abstraction raised his aura in my mind. FEA is something I always dreamt of using and here was the guy who was developing software to solve FEA problems.

The Goliath

          I spoke to him on communicator and fixed up a time to speak to him . He was warm and immediately gave time. I tried to know more about him while he explored my Air Force background and chess passion. During conversation he also told me that her was Finalist in Chess Championship held at IIT Kanpur in 200x?. With a score of 7.5 he had 0.5 adavantage over the other finalist.  After around 35 moves his opponent offered a draw but he declined. The adversary came back to win the game and he was Runners up. He told me a lot of anecdotes on Chess and appeared pretty passionate about the game. By the time we ended our conversation , i had already kept him on a high pedestal and thought winning against him was beyond my capabilities. A descent fight would be good enough. In my thoughts I reconciled myself to take pride in the tag of Runners up at the Siemens PLM Chess Championship 2008

 

David  Armoring up 


 My heart however wanted me to go for the best ever game of my life and play very good attacking chess. I asked my Boss if I could take a day off to prepare for the finals and he gave an instant go ahead.This is what I admire about great managers like him
                    I spent half the day at home reading chess strategies and commandments and later, I was in office  sorting some issues.

The Setting

The final day arrived, the invitation mail was sent to all company persons to watch the match. THe top floor Yoga room was selected for the purpose.The large glass windows showed picturesque hills and also burgeoning skyline of this IT industry hub Hinjewadi of Pune. Some years back Kasparov and Karpov had played their World championship match on the top floor of WTC. The vast skyline  the sorroundings gave a feeling which was something like that. At the center of room, the game was set. There were chairs for audience and we expected a decent audience of atleast the guys who had played in the tournament but till the last minute we had no audience other than the organiser, photographer and a security man.

The bigul

We begun right on time and with black pieces i didnt know when i would get a chance to attack. First initial moves we fought for central control and RK was the first one to exchange pieces. I knew i had to be very sharp to get offensive. I started threatening all his center pieces and in the process opened up 2 long diagonasl on which my bishops had a free reign.

Locking Horns

                               The amount of force Rk accumulated in center was unprecedented. I started working under disguise from this stage onwards. While , i gave him an impression that I will be still attacking the center, my hidden intention was to open an attack on the h(Kingside Rook) file. By this time a large no. of spectators had slowly collected in the hall and the eyeballs started grabbing the war of wits on board . I do not know how many ;but must be close to 20 odds were watching the battle with bated breath. The atmosphere was charged. For all the slaughters on board there were only silent screams.
 His h file was weakened as he moved more resources in center. Never before in my life I had seen such big fortification and struggle for control of central squares.  While i castled my king to safe position, he decided not to. As the pressure on center mounted, he brought almost 8 pieces to guard his King’s pawn. I diverted my attack on the h file and fourtunately he exchanged a pawn  which opened my h file. Now I was ready to mount a mammoth attak on that file . i launched an offensive and ripped open his corner fortification. His king, uncastled ,became vulnerable to my pieces which where highly mobile. With my attack in full force and he was rendered defensive. I found that with each new attack he had to spend more time thinking his defenses. At one stage he wanted to launch counterattack by placing his Knight in side my territory but I promptly nullified it by exchanging it with a bishop. At that stage he was only left with 5 minutes or more where as I had almost 17 minutes to finish. With equal no. of pieces on both sides, I realised even spending some time will secure me a win. But there  I was in relentless attacks I was 2 moves away from getting annihilated by his forces. His Queen already making inroads into my h flank

                     The Mid riff Bared ;)  

          I started challenging his King from all directions and drove him out of the shell. With hardly few minutes to go, I found that his Queen was standing alone. I do not know why, I put my Queen in such a place where either he had to move  his queen or exchange it. The exchange I calculated would work in my favor as I was in better attacking position.  With a series of checks his immediate focus was his King’s most favorable position  . He moved his King one step. I was gauging his motive but ..suddenly he screemed- ” Isssssh… ” and I immediately looked back on board. His Queeen was available for  capture free. With a swift move I captured it. The hall broke in raptures..there were claps all around . He shook my hands and hurriedly wanted to move.The Champ was dethroned and it was a new beginning for me. The unexpected had happened. The jubiliation started and my first tournament Win was under the belt. This victory has tought me a lot. The discipline, the dedication, the focus, passion, optimism, diligence and parents blessing had all gone into securing this win. This counts amongst one of the happiest days of my life and secures greater committment to perfection in the game.   I am just wondering about Kasparov’s latest book – ” Life immitates Chess“  if it does, then …. its lots of good times ahead ;)