From curd rice to pasta – a flight to client centricity
Hailing from what is considered a slightly conservative part of south India – Chennai – I came with a few typical idiosyncrasies when I joined Borderless Access in 2014, one of which was an almost absolute devotion to curd rice. To add to it, I am also strictly vegetarian.
Now cut to 2015, when I was traveling abroad for the first time for work. I was in London for a client meet and I was having lunch at a multi-cultural restaurant. The stewardess – Jenny (the name tag suggested) welcomed us to a table and brought in the customary breadbasket with croissants, along with the menu card.
The menu card was my first moment of truth – curd rice was missing as an option (oh-no!).
I did not understand many of the items on the menu card. Luckily for me, one of the client representatives accompanying us for lunch was from Kerala, another South Indian state. He ordered pasta, with cheese. He was a vegetarian, and I thought the safest option for me would be to just order the same. When the pasta arrived, I could eat only a few morsels, and an overload of cheese in the serving didn’t make matters any easier! While most others had finished their meal, my plate of pasta was largely untouched.
But what happened afterwards was a beautiful gesture from Jenny. Seeing that my meal was largely untouched, she first asked me if everything was OK, and despite my assurances that it wasn’t her fault at all, she said “I’ve decided not to put that in your bill”. She didn’t consult anyone to take that decision – no arguments, no internal approvals, just a plain and simple decision not to charge me. That was a socio-cultural moment of truth for me. It was obvious that Jenny had the empowerment to take such decisions, and she exercised that empowerment that day.
This was a learning I took home with me. It struck me as an important example of how important empowerment is, in any setting – whether it involves a £ 20.00 pasta, or a £ 2.00 MM business strategy.
Having spent nine years in an organization like Borderless Access, I can proudly say that I have experienced the same kind of empowerment at my workplace. Being a part of the leadership team for almost a decade now, I have witnessed and been part of countless decisions and what I have seen and practised in all of these decisions is a bottom-up approach. And most of these decisions led to spectacular success. The most important management lesson for me was that If empowerment is viewed as one end of a stick, accountability is the other end.
If empowerment was one facet of my metamorphosis, an expanded socio-cultural outlook was the other. I still relish my bowl of good-old curd rice, but have grown to relish Greek, Lebanese, Moroccan, Ethiopian, French, and Bavarian cuisine as well, thanks to the diverse and exciting milieu of people I met while wearing the Borderless Access badge.
Over these 9 years, Borderless Access has been instrumental in transforming both my personal and professional journey. That I wear the Borderless Access badge to work everyday, with great pride and profound dedication is a testament to the organization, the people, the culture and the air we all breathe there.
