It started with an informal meeting.
Post this meeting, Mohit Pawar, Gautam, Naveen and Deepti joined us for another discussion. The agenda was to give Mohit a clear picture of where we stand as a company, which would help him identify our shortcomings as a team and as individuals. After Gautam and Deepti left the conversation took a drastic turn. Everyone was talking about Colored Cow as if it was their little infant baby, arguing over how it should be brought up and taken care of. It was the most, and trust me folks I’m not exaggerating on this part, it was the most healthy criticism i have ever been a part of in all my life. The agenda was to bring out each and every shortcoming personally and as a team so that the company is not at loss. Prateek Mohit have been child hood buddies, Prateek Rudhresh Naveen have been friends and workmates for more than ten years. Their discussions created a comfort zone that was so warm and so productive that i have never felt so comfortable in a group. I would open up and speak about my problems and also criticise others where i felt something was missing. Everything was being taken in sport because we were in that room for a vision, a cause that was much bigger than us as individuals. I think there in that room i saw a culture build. A culture that motivates people to leave their petty differences as individuals behind and move towards a goal for a cause which is bigger than themselves. I saw the vision that Prateek would often say is missing, come to life. For that one hour i knew i wanted to work like this all my life. No, i am not saying i will work like this all my life for sure but that is the feeling it generated.
Proceeding this elaborate endless discussion, Mohit suggested an exercise, all of us were to write a few lines on
As usual, we engineers were frightened of the task since it involved expressing yourself in terms of words and not codes. However, Mohit was insisting and so everyone wrote a few words with a lot of effort. None of us had the slightest idea that this exercise would turned out to be the most beautiful and memorable experience of being in Colored Cow. Even after we were done writing we didn’t have any clue of what was about to come. Next Mohit said that each one of us would read out these lines. We started in a circle. I would take the effort to recall the highlights of every person in terms of the first question. The answer to the first question was most special to us as a group, as Colored Cow.
Naveen started and he humbly stated how he looks at Cow as a company that will bring his family friends and work closer, that working full time here would be a dream come true. Sunny said he wanted to be the Happiness Manager of Colored Cow providing everyone a stress free environment with his coffee and hospitality. This guy btw i found to be the most influential, I knew wherever he is he will build Cow in his own way. Mohit talked about how from our current 600k+ revenue we must go to becoming a Fortune-500 company in the next five years. It was fascinating how he drew an yearly plan. Next came my turn but lets come to that later. Rudhresh said he knew inside out that software can be developed in a much better way. That the world deserves a better quality of artisans who can work on software as a painting, sophisticated and beautiful in every sense. At Colored Cow he would want this dream realised to its full potential. Prateek talked about how he saw Colored Cow as a place where we would solve problems and help people by using our skills in the digital format.
My words do not do justice to the atmosphere that was created in that room. But for the first time each one of us knew inside out that we would make it. We for those few minutes of that exercise dreamt. We aspired, dreamt and felt that future, as if it was in that room the very moment. I have day dreaming habits but this was something different. We were all dreaming of our goals individually while writing and while speaking we were dreaming collectively like a hive mind. Hearing everyone else speak was motivating beyond measure. It is the single most amazing feeling a soul can experience. To dream i realised was to think of something beyond your own little self and look at something bigger. Why am i sure it wasn’t just me who was dreaming? The smiles on our faces was telling us that we are dreaming and trust me its the best smile I’ve seen, better than what sex, money, or fame can bring. As a group it brought me closer to each and everyone of them. I did not for a second doubt that we would not be able to make it, all of us knew inside out. We will achieve.
We decided to document these pages and in our next meet take steps to realise these goals.
Do cubicles in Cognizant, Dell, Infosys offer you this feeling? Does the corporate circle offer you friends who want to build something collectively which is bigger than yourself, build something which is more than the sleazy competition and inequity that exists in every organization? Do you contribute in building a vision, and even if you are being a part of this process in some way indirectly, Do you get to fucking smile and feel like us ? I doubt…
– by Nishanth Kaladharan “KD”