Thou Shalt Serve : Why service mindset is essential?
The connection between the ‘The Reason to Live’ and ‘Service Ecosystem’.
To recover from the worst phase of my life, I posted this self commandment on my desk: “Thou Shalt Serve”.
Here’s how that helped me.
Dream
I also wanted to be a pilot when I was a kid, but I did not become one like you did!
During my teenage years, I wanted to become an engineer and eventually became one.
However, in my 20s, once I started working, the harsh truth of hard work hit me.
We learned so much and came so far to work this hard ?
I suddenly realised I want to be a Hippie. I learned that Hippies have figured out everything about life — the art and science of living. They are wise, open, cool and free. They advocate that humans are the only species working so hard to live, and they act to change the huge injustice that evolution and nature have thrust upon us.
I must follow Hippies. A great mission in life!
Realisation
After a few years of boredom and slow career I realised I was stupid and Hippies were too. Ok. Stupid might not be the right word. We were allowing our emotions to override the logical parts of our brain.
Hippies fail to understand that we lost our fur during our evolution and we need a house to live. They don’t understand that we need running clean tap water to live, because we lost our immunity. They don’t understand that the human brain demands high energy and we need a balanced nutritious diet three times a day. They don’t understand that we need clothes, and without it we will look ugly.
Furthermore, they don’t understand that someone needs to build the house that does not collapse, someone needs to install and maintain clean tap water, someone needs to farm heavily , and someone needs to stitch those good looking clothes. Yes, someone needs to do that monotonous and sometimes boring work.
They fail to realize that we have evolved too far to go back. There is no “evolve back” option in nature.
They did not comprehend that we now live in a complex, interconnected service network and that we cannot survive without hard service. And it’s for good. And it’s for comfort. And it’s for living longer. It’s for going to far away places. It’s for living happier. And this is the only way.
Hippies could not survive without quality service and they were not ready to serve hard.
They were ready to live in a community and serve each other at ease. However, a mentality of providing services lightly would ultimately result in a degradation of service quality, leading to a decrease in the quality of the things we use, and eventually increasing the chances of extinction. A hippie world could have never invented electricity or vaccine or internet.
They were good guys. They simply did not know.
Enlightenment
The worst times enlighten you with the best lesson.
Nine months ago, I was standing on the balcony of my new home, sipping my morning tea and I wanted to jump and die.
‘Killing myself’ was the only escape I could see to move out from this chaotic-hectic-evil-meaningless world and my anxious thoughts about it. This was the peak of my Anxiety and Depression. I was under medication and it was not helping me.
There was a force pushing me to die, but there was a more powerful force stopping me: the force to live. Hence, I am alive today. A few months after my recovery, I started thinking about that force.
If I had killed myself, my wife would have been devastated, it would have been the most disappointing thing for my parents during their lifetime, my friends and relatives would have been in distress, and my colleagues might have had to overwork (hopefully 😉).
I kept thinking, why would my death impact them ? The answer was simple: The Service I provide.
Service was the connecting verb common to all the people who will be suffering because of my demise. Therefore, I decided to be happy about serving them and not overthink anything else. This thought helped me resist the suicidal temptation I had during my worst time.
This was the self-commandment sticky I stuck on my desk :
Serving others is a good enough reason to live.
Thou Shalt Serve
I was heading the allocations team at HashedIn by Deloitte for around 7+ years. Allocations team was accountable for matchmaking the right people to the right projects. People coming for a project change was an everyday deal for the allocations team. The most common reasons for change for software engineers were “I am coding less”, “my work is monotonous”, or “I have nothing to learn” and sometimes “have to fill excel sheets” or “need to make presentations” etc.
Our culture in the organization was to help people change if they are seeking change. And that’s the right thing to do for a great place to work. New things bring excitement, passion, commitment, and hence good results.
Few wanted to always “Create” or “Code fresh” and not “Serve”. They were running away from service because some services were algorithmic and monotonous. They didn’t connect the fact that we existed because of serving and not just creating. I wanted to pass them a message before we discuss about the change.
What I wanted to tell was — “”Ask for the change, not because serving is monotonous, ask for a change to grow after doing your share of service and ensuring that the quality of the service we provide is not impacted because of your change. And we are here to support the change you are seeking without impacting the quality of service we provide. We exist because of our service.
You need to do at least your share of filling excel sheets with the right mindset. You are doing it for the clean running water in your tap and not for others. You fill that excel sheet better with passion, and you get better water in your tap in the long term”
Karma exists in a large connected ecosystem of service.
When you fill the connection between your tap water and the excel sheet you fill, you will understand the connection between the quality of your karma (deeds) resulting in the quality of water coming in your tap (effect). The results won’t be immediate, but it flows through a chain of trends you are setting in the service ecosystem.
We should not compromise on the service we provide for the urge to create or produce or urge to do fresh things. If you are bored of current method, then
Innovate, Create or Change to serve better.
A great example
One of the greatest examples of the “Service” mindset is the mind of our current MD and Former CEO, Himanshu Varshney.
Hippie and Himanshu have two things in common. Both names start with “Hi” and both love having fun.
Yet they are two ends of the spectrum of serving. Himanshu serves with passion and hence our company provided jobs to many to serve many others.
After I joined HashedIn, I was reporting to him. He was handling a lot of things and extremely busy. One late night, I sent him a non-critical, non-interesting document for review and left the office. And I was expecting some minor comments as I knew I compromised some quality citing “time” as the excuse. The next day when I woke up, I did not see any comment in that document which I was expecting. I thought I did a good job.
But when I saw the changes in the document, I was surprised. He sat through the night and corrected a lot of things without putting any ‘comments’ on the document for me or sharing any feedback. That was a great lesson. I felt guilty for not doing the best that I could and wasting his time.
I apologised and he said, “That’s fine. I had time and hence I did it”
He has a great service mindset and hence the energy to serve so many people. He had no time as CEO. Still he had energy and time to sign recommendation letters to colleagues for higher studies after they resigned and time to go and deliver it to their home. He treated everyone as his boss and served like they are special.
He is a high-end server with high compute and memory, made of flesh and bone.
Seeing the example he set, I started working harder when I joined HashedIn. Even tried to leave the office after him every day ;)
We grow by serving better.
Great leaders are great in serving too. All of them served hard during their “Serving” phase of life. Servant leadership is a prominent theme in great leadership.
Summary
Look around us and we see service everywhere. The 24/7 support team of your flight ticket booking app, the cab driver, the security, the pilot, the receptionist, the housekeeper, the hawker on the beach, everyone!
And you shall return the service. A good reason to be alive and happy.
My key learnings are :
- Your service is essential.
- Serving others is a good reason to be alive.
- If you serve better, you get better service.
- Innovate, create or seek change to serve better.
- We grow by serving better.
You shall serve, serve hard and well!
