The life in Finland

Time to update the blog. The journey from sales to India marketing to global marketing has been a four year old journey. From the day to day execution to making presentations in the country to making presentations for the world.

How do I like it? I think its much nicer than what I used to do back home. The main reasons for those are increased complexity in business which makes you aware of many cross -functional aspects . It also teaches you to deal with various kinds of people & cultures from various countries which is always an eye opening experience. I am not going to build sterotypes here but some myths got broken,some shattered & some got re-instated. It also taught me to be non-judgemental which I think is one of the best things I have picked up here

There is something else which has made me happier. I don't have to worry if I nodded my head at what my boss or some other person in senior management has said. I don't need to smile & pretend that everything said by someone in top management makes sense. I don't need to sycophantic, I don't need to make polite conversations & laugh at their supposedly funny jokes. Well, don't get me wrong here - I am not saying that back home people in top management were bad people. They were a bunch of talented experienced managers but the culture made them into demi-gods & the rest of us sycophants. If you didn't lick ass, you clearly could not be top performer

I am happy that I don't have to do that here. My work matters & thats what matters. At the level at which I work there is almost no politics involved & people are brutally honest. Everything is said out in the open & people are open for discussion & debates. I don'tgo back home & worry what someone thought about my plans.The fact that I don't have the mental burden of carrying my work back home makes a gigantic difference. I am happier & have the ability to switch off. I even made my MFE on a manual synchronisation which is something I could have never thought of doing back home

But like all stories, there is a good side & a bad side. Some drawbacks which we have is clearly the inability to understand various markets. There is a very Europe dominant view of the way the company works. From purely a business perspective, it does kind of make sense as the dependence is very high but the growth lies elsewhere. The concept of BRIC no matter how hyped it is, still holds true. There is a very myopic understanding of what actually is required to make the business a roaring success there. It has been doing well but the potential to do better is much larger than the current scenario
The other big drawback is execution mindset. After having worked here for six months, I have realized that we love presentations. We love new ideas, new brainwaves & lots of new initiatives. I think it should be compulsory for everyone to read "Execution" by Ram Charan & incorporate this into their thinking & daily actions. Ideas get generated in the global level & execution is done at the local level. The person generating the idea is not responsible for execution & that gives the person complete freedom to carve out loony ideas without any iota of responsibilty for execution. Now don't get me wrong when I say this. There are a lot of good people who are aware of the need for execution but equally there are a lot of people who neither know nor care about. A good demonic idea would be to to send all these people to various countries to actually execute their ideas :)

But overall, it has been a good experience till now & I have learnt a lot in the past five months & hope that my next six months are equally good. The next update shall be about people & that would be sarcastic black humour