Sunday, October 14, 2007

The Band in the Titanic

I am sure you must have seen the movie or read about “The Titanic”. Did you notice the role of the music band in the titanic towards the end of the movie?

I lead a big Programme as part of my work. A programme consisting of multiple components but all working towards a common goal (atleast they are supposed to). Quite often I find my teams totally lost in day to day delivery pressures and myself struggling to bring them out of that. There is absolute chaos all over the place.

The major problem I face is that there is not enough collaboration between teams as required, people left to themselves are happy operating in individual silos and view the other teams as competitors. My major worry is that people are not ready to look at the bigger picture, pressurised by and used to traditional working models and are finally not focused on the value delivered collectively.

I am not blaming my team. I understand what they are going through and I myself am struggling to find out of ways of getting them to come out and focus on better things. I am trying to cut across barriers and send these messages day in and day out to the team with the hope that some of them will get inspired and step out of the well. It is not that I am fully satisfied with my approach. I am still refining it and learning every day. I myself am pressurised by mundane things so many time. It is my reflection on this and the strange thought of the band in the Titanic that I wanted to share.

I would fancy calling myself the captain of the ship but quite often I find myself in a strange situation. I liken myself to the band in the titanic, playing non stop when people are running all over the place, unmindful of whether anyone is hearing or not but with the hope that the music is helping someone somewhere in the crowd.

Whether I am the captain or the band it doesn’t matter as long as my ship doesn’t sink and it reaches the destination. I am sure it will.

3 comments:

Janani Srikanth said...

Beautiful thought..I have also loved the band in titanic..The way they were focussed on their work. Nice comparison Partha..!!

raj said...

got here from jannu's blog.
This post I can empathise with. But atleast it is better to be the bandmaster than the drum getting beaten all around, which is what programmers are :-)

-rajesh

Partha said...

raj,

programmers are the people running around without listening to the band, definitely not the drum getting beaten around:-)