A Fairyless Tale

Serious motivational stories worked in the past. Stories, where a brave princess kisses a frog that turns into a charming prince; and so followed a brilliant tale of hope and courage. In today’s world, everyone knows, no matter how many times you kiss a frog, the frog will remain a frog and nothing else. Besides, who’s got the courage to go kissing a frog anyway? The youth today want believable stories, so today we shall have one. A true story of hope and courage in a brand new froggy version.

Deep in a well in present day rural India there lived a frog who could talk. He had never seen the outside world but he could sense it through the voices of the passersby. Green trees, chirping birds, blossoming flowers, colorful rainbows; he longed to see the beautiful world. He would beg every passerby to help pull him out of the well. The passersby would look down into the well out of curiosity but show classic apathy and walk on by without doing anything. Then one day, a good man happened to stop after listening to the frog’s pitiful cries. “I am in a great hurry right now, but I promise I will come back for you.” he said. And true to his promise the good man came back, but to his dismay he could no longer locate the frog anywhere in the well. Then suddenly he heard the frog stuttering behind him. “Hey! How did you get out? I promised to come back for you!” “Well,” the frog replied, “I discovered a snake in the well. I did not have time to wait for you so I managed on my own.”

Sometimes I wonder if this is the reason why our global economy is just not able to snap out. An increasing number of businesses and professionals have started stagnating and seem to be waiting for a catastrophe before taking those few last courageous hops to get out.

Did you like the story? You might want to try and google it. Name any helpless cuddly animal and there is a motivational story of hope written around it. If you are still not satisfied, there are professional story tellers who tell stories for a living. These are called life coaches and they make tones of money, and its easy money. You too can make it by learning the art of storytelling in three steps. Step 1: Convince your listeners that they are a low life form like a frog, tadpole, puppy or baby dear. Step 2: Scare them, with a lion, vulture, shark or a snake. Step 3: Slip in a punch line and save them from being eaten up in the story by the scary animals. These steps work like a charm. You have probably not heard of coaches like these. Do you know why? Because these coaches don’t come to Cybage and are keeping busy with the competition. Let me tell you why these stories don’t apply to Cybagians.

Number one; Cybagians don’t live in a well. They live up in the sky, this sky that goes west over Europe and all over America. This year our sky just got bigger; from north Scandinavia to South Africa, to Far East Japan, to mid-East Israel and Oman and to far flung Australia. Most companies pursue the quest to grow vertically towards the sky, but the horizontal conquest of the skyline, is a growth spoken about only in Cybage.

Number two; let’s for a second assume that our industry is indeed slipping into a well. Do we really need the help of any outsiders to get out? Don’t we have enough tall Cybagians on whose strong shoulders we can take a lift and step out? Here is a list of few of those who made us stand tall and proud during the preceding year; the Asia’s HR leadership award has been bestowed upon our Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Deepak Nathani at a great ceremony in Singapore. CTO of the year award was conferred upon Jagat Pal Singh in Dubai; and the young achiever’s national award was presented to our SVP of Business Development, Amit Gajwani in Mumbai.

Number three; since when are Cybagians afraid of snakes and lions? As if we are any less ferocious. We take our rivals by the horns and keep pushing at the line of control. Be it several notches up to become the country’s eight best IT employer according to ‘Dataquest’, global leadership recognitions by Zinnov, IAOP, GS, or storming into the elite SEI-CMMI level 5 Ver 5.1 club. And finally; we are no ‘frogs’; we are Cybagians, who hoped over the magical 4000 mark earlier this year. Also, at the pace we are moving, Cybage seems very well poised to beat our own target of 20% for this financial year.

All this makes us over-qualified to be listening to fictitious stories of courage and of ‘frogs’! Our planet is cluttered with great companies, buzz words of courage are given things – not victory recipes. These fairy tale success secrets are best left in fairy land. The real life success mantras require real life people.

Let me share an escapade of a very simple, very shy Cybagian. Ironically, Cybage was not the company of choice for him, he had actually quit working with Cybage in favor of a big five; and then came back within a few weeks to have a ‘pro’s and con’s’ kind of debate. He then mathematically concluded that the probability of intellectual stimulation is greater in Cybage in the long run. Thank heavens for his Maths! For this year alone, the systems architected by this individual were directly indirectly responsible for four national innovation awards. Ladies and gentlemen, you better make some serious noise for the professional who catapulted our Excelshore as a disruptive differentiator that is redefining the Indian IT landscape; Mr. Amit Mulay!

But here is the thing; any good company worth its sort has a few brilliant stars on the top. So what’s so special about Amit Mulay’s meteoric rise? Well the fascinating part of Amit’s journey is not how he climbed the Cybage hierarchy, rather how he is least bothered about ascending corporate ladders. All he ever asked for was an ecosystem for his logical mind to flourish. No politics! No Ego! Just some breathing room for his straightforward data driven thought process to thrive.

If you were to peep into Amit’s brains, you would discover that the word courage only has a marginal role to play in the frog’s story. It was not big courageous hops but several well placed small hops that lead to the frog’s successful escape. For if they were big hops the frog would have fallen back in the well with a splash and not have the opportunity to perfect his steps to achieve his sure shot escape and would have caught the unfortunate attention of the snake in the well, bringing our fairy tale to an abrupt end. Here the frog’s action would then be termed as reckless rather than courageous. The frog had a choice; to stay in hiding till the good man came back to his rescue. That is what, my friends, beautiful minds are all about. They tell you when to be courageous and also when not to be courageous. People like Amit Mulay who approach their daily decisions by applying small logical steps don’t waste too much time worrying about the big picture. For, if you are a professional or an organization of reason all long term goals sort themselves out on their own.

Take our company Cybage for instance. Our goal, from day one, has never been about building a company that is known for its premium brand, or quality services, or cutting edge technology, or global clientele and not even employee friendliness; instead our goal has always been singular, to build a very intelligent company that takes daily decisions in the most scientific way possible. In the process, today, your Cybage, is known for its premium brand, that delivers quality services, using cutting edge technology, to global clientele. Employee friendly?! We are not known for that. Instead we are known as a company of close friends. It is because of this group that is packed with the likes of Amit Muley, that I as your fan, have the great privilege of gazing upon an ever increasing beautiful sea of you all as my friends.