Winter Soup

Can you imagine yourself laughing at the most humongous soup that you got into at work? I can. In fact, I AM laughing! It's a point of happy sadness. A point when you know , that you've done what you could, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. I speak, standing right at that point. 

It wasn't too long ago when I used to boast about being the analyst. Now here I stand, having committed the blunder of my life, trying to cope with it . I've just come to realise that it's a very high beta profession. Lives depend on the correctness of data.

Before I ramble any further, let me give you some background. 

I'm not the best this company has in its 'talented' list and I never thought I would feature in that list either. The fact remains that I'm most definitely not the worst. I was put on a critically important project. I slogged for three weeks. I delivered. I did my job and I believed that I did my job well . The work was presented to the right people. The results weren't that good. The clients had to listen to some tough and terse truths. But that wasn't my problem, was it?  I mean, I'm that bloke who swore by the Geeta, saying " I shall speak only the data and nothing but the data."  But data, like the truth, deceives sometimes. I'm at the forefront of one such deception. I made an error, more of an error of judgement. A misjudgement just enough to screw my results. Just enough to render all the effort that I had been putting in to maintain the sanctity of this project, absolutely worthless.  

The analytic world essentially works on the Pareto principle. The correctness of 80 percent of your effort, depends on that 20 percent of right effort, put in the right direction. I think, that's exactly where I faltered. I forgot , what I keep reminding people not to : the importance of 'little' things. 

It was only because of a colleague's persistent insistence , that I feel a desperate need to keep account of this tragedy. I'm just thinking about the pros and cons. It obviously prepares me well for future mistakes. But that said, somewhere my complacent self hints, that if mistakes don't keep happening at regular intervals, I'm bound to make one big one, to compensate for all the rightness. That's exactly what happened this time. I was driving this project, like I was driving my car on a highway, without inquiring if I had an extra tyre. Now, the odds of a flat tyre are less, but they are there aren't they? Smartness is in knowing that the tyres are tubeless and the odds are really really less, responsibility is in knowing that you-never-really-know.  

In retrospect, I think that it's risk management that differentiates smart people from responsible people. And it's not as if responsible people aren't smart , but so could be the case that they might not immediately seem so. Being called smart is obviously cooler, but the point driven here is, that if you're not responsible, smartness won't help. It's like an interview situation, you might be the topper of the class, but if you aren't carrying your own pen, the chances of getting through reduce drastically. It's like when you're asking out a girl, you might be the smartest , most handsome lad in town, but if you can't wear a decent shirt on a date, she might just say no. It's like when  you're with your girlfriend, you may be the most happening couple around, but if you can't let go of your sophistication to have five gol gappas together without worrying about how wide you should open your mouth, so that it looks appropriate, then you're grossly missing the point. 

Life's in the little things. It's in making someone's day just by telling her that she's looking good. It's in humming the song that you're lately in crush with. It's in saying : it's okay, it happens, shit happens.