Why do I write?

I have been asked this question a few times. Occasionally the question changes to how do I get time to write? Usually, I just smile and attribute that as the blessing from Above. Today I decided to give it a thought. Without much burning of my grey matter, I reached an answer. Here you go, the much-awaited revelation!

Picture this.

My mobile starts to sound at 4 AM on the assigned day of the week. A specific alarm goes off which I had kept as a reminder. I reach for my phone and the text on the alarm reads, 'Time for the next story'. I head to my favourite corner in the house taking the laptop and specs with me.

I pull the chair and get settled. The coffee cup, my constant companion for all my writings is promptly present on the desk. I then take out a lengthy list of topics and select a random one to write for the day.

The writing process begins and exactly after thirty minutes and thirty seconds, a story is ready with its title. One round of proof reading, followed by selecting an appropriate picture from my collection and as magical as it could get, the article is ready for posting in the relevant social media!

Hope you enjoyed the above fiction? Now let us talk reality.

Most often, a thought comes to me at the least of the probable locations. In the middle of washing dishes or waiting at a red signal or picking up the usual list of groceries, what not? There is nothing fancy to the inception of the idea though I would not say the same to the evolution of the thread. It is literally like formation of a new life. Sometimes the idea grows and flourishes within my brain. Then there are other times when it dies down.

The thought that was lucky enough to bloom inside me, will soon reach a stage when it needs to be given birth. That is when, somehow, I find the time to quickly put that down on my laptop. The only thing common from the fiction above and reality, is the selection of the picture from my clicks that suits the write-up.

Writing, is a passion. I do not find time for it. It finds me. I will continue to pursue this as long as Providence smiles at me.

Hope each one you experience something passionate that drives you beyond the usual grind of life and enjoy while it lasts...

 

Mother Hen Managers

If you were lucky enough to grow up in an environment where you saw how a hen raised her chicks, I shall say you had been privy to one of the greatest lessons you could ever learn from mother nature. Do not be surprised, if I say, the learning from this experience applies to all managers across the corporate world and, closer home, to all parents as well, irrespective of your gender.

Soon after the eggs hatch, the mother hen takes the chicks along with her and searches for food and feeds them with what she finds. The process continues for a while until a day arrives when you will see a significant behavioural change in mother hen. Instead of keeping the chicks closer to her, finding and feeding them with food she searched for, she now appears to mercilessly drive them away. The action is not to be considered as a lack of love, instead one that is intended to make the chicks self sufficient so that they can find food and feed themselves. That is the only way they will survive the big bad world out there.

Now let me take you to the corporate world we are in. We see two kinds of managers exhibiting behaviours you read in the above statements. There are those who constantly feed aka nurture the people who report to them. These are the managers who feel it is easier if they get things done for their team so that it is helpful for the team to finish the pieces of work. This is a behaviour, that is expressed, at times, due to fear of incompletion and other times from an obsessively compulsive nature which do not let these managers delegate their work. Then there are others who constantly challenge their direct reports to go above and beyond their capabilities so that one day they become equal or even better than the managers themselves.

I have been fortunate in my career to have worked with both kinds of managers. While the first ones may appear quite regressive, in the initial years of your career, getting a manager like that helps you as a shield from the wrath of some of the senior executives, when you make mistakes. But as you grow into senior positions, you may want this shield to be broken and learn to fend for yourself, in which case, a manager of the latter kind is better.

Interesting enough, closer to our families, these behaviours resonate well with each of us as parents or children. Parents who help their children with everything always, may think they are helping them survive. But the fact remains that the parents who are like the mother hen who wanted the children to be self-sufficient will be doing a great deal more of a service to their children in the long run.

We all don the roles of either the children or parents. Like it or not, these roles are inadvertently laced with our corporate personas. On this Mother’s Day, when we celebrate mothers, what else can be a good reminder than the mother hen and her strategy to empower those who work with us.

Happy Mother’s Day to all managers out there, irrespective of your gender, who learned from this simple yet powerful lesson from mother hen!

ULD on Rails – An Underground Airport Magic!

One of the most exciting news from the aviation world last week related to the expansion of Al Maktoum International Airport (DWC) in Dubai was the announcement of a plan to have an underground railway network for transporting passengers across Terminals. This will enable high speed movement of passengers at the airport thereby saving precious travel time and facilitate on-time departure better.

Many times, changes such as these get limited to what a passenger see at the forefront. Operations behind the scenes get omitted or parked for future which may or may not become a reality.

Being in Airport Operations in the current assignment, news of underground train for passengers, got my colleagues and I thinking on a parallel business case for ground handling. If an extremely complex operations such as passenger movement can be facilitated underground, what is stopping an airport planned at the scale of DWC from thinking of ULD transportation in a similar manner to take bags, cargo and other products across the length and breadth of the airport?

DWC is already speaking of passenger volumes of 260 million making it 2.5 times more than the busiest airport in the entire world at present, the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. When you operate at such high volumes, you need to have an automated and extremely agile design for both passengers and rest of the products that need transportation at an airport.  

Unit Load Device (ULD) refers to the container in which a ground handler carries bags, cargo and other products such as courier, aircraft spares etc. for an airline and delivered to the aircraft awaiting departure and vice versa. Most of the airports as we know today have this operation handled as an activity above the ground. There are certain exceptions such as Dubai International Airport (DXB) where bags are transported underground through a high-speed baggage handling system which is a smart and intelligent automated installation which takes the bags to its right destination.

Like the automated baggage movement, the idea is to have ULDs filled with these bags or cargo or other products travel below the ground, programmed to reach the destination intended. If it is for a departing flight, the ULDs reach the bay just in time where an aircraft is parked and injected up to the ground level so that these units can be loaded safely.

What could be even better is if the automation can be extended to have these ULDs loaded without the help of manual intervention. The concept of Robotics as we speak has developed enough to make this a reality. The reverse feed applies to an arrival aircraft where the ULDs are automatically unloaded and injected down to an unmanned programmed transport mechanism whereby it heads to the intended baggage carrousels or cargo warehouse depending on the product loaded in the units.

The whole idea may sound colossal but is something we could think only at the time an initial design of an airport is getting sketched. Nothing suits the bill better than DWC which aspires to be the most automated airport in the world. The benefits are numerous. The busiest airports in the world today itself require hundreds of equipment operators driving tractors across the airport to transport bags and cargo to and from the aircrafts. Imagine taking this entire traffic below the ground sans the drivers and tractors. It is a benefit straight away to decongest the otherwise busy operations on ground in a highly optimized manner with zero dependency on people thereby eliminating manual intervention.

An airport being a finite area with clearly defined boundaries and locations for bays and other operational areas, designing this should really be feasible. Combine this with automated underground passenger transport, we are looking at efficiencies reaching heights never before seen, making large scale airport operations seemingly simple.

Here is an earnest wish from a passionate aviation enthusiast, bestowing full power to the airports of the future where people will happily hang out doing what they love and spending to their heart’s content instead of wondering when they will move forward while waiting in the queue!

Tale of Two Knights

The war was on. King summoned both his Knights. They had pledged their allegiance to the kingdom in their blood. Off they went, two powerful Knights heading East and West since the attack was from both sides. 

K1, the first Knight waged an epic battle against a mighty enemy. He applied all techniques of war learned over time and came out victorious with not even a single scratch on any of his men. It was a flawless display of brilliant strategy and skill. History named it, the Battle of Usual.

K2, the second Knight had to face the fiercest attack in his whole life. He lost hundreds of men and suffered severe damage to the troops. It was a total bloodbath. Nevertheless, fight he did, a battle that went down in the history of the kingdom as the one that was fought by the bravest Knight ever. Victory finally was with him, while the chroniclers turned a blind eye towards the lives lost. History named it the Battle of Extraordinary.

Centuries went by. History students still learn and speak high of the Battle of Extraordinary while the chapter on Battle of Usual was forgotten and eventually removed from the annals of History. The reason: Usual brilliance was underrated than extraordinary mediocrity.