Page 22 - HERE AND NOW Dec 2022

Looking backwards to go forward

By T. T. SRINATH

The title of my article is, perhaps, an oxymoron. And yet,
reassurance is offered to me by life when I know I have passed
through many 'dark nights' and emerged from 'larva to butterfly'.

Sometimes though, as I realize I am still a work in progress, I see
myself as not quite a caterpillar, and not yet the butterfly and
instead as a 'caterfly' emerging with genuine effort.

In a recent talk, one of our very accomplished colleagues from
ISABS stirred us with questions that ISABS itself, over the years,
has called me to respond to. I have ducked answering them for
they tend to shake me up. But if, however, I do not answer them,
sooner than later I may become a casualty?
The questions he posed were:

1. Why do I ask that life MUST be fair?

2. If I skirt what I know within and is perhaps repressed (if not allowed to surface), might I be ruled by it
and then classify it as fate?
3. Can I live in a constant state of ' unknowing'?

Through my journey as an ISABIAN, these have been questions that, time and again, have been tossed at
me over the years. I deflected them, simply because the 'mirror' that I stared at was unwiped and fogged
due to confusion and was thus hazy. However, when I heard our colleague speak, I realized that his asking
came not from a place of interrogation but from genuine curiosity.

It was a great shift: my willingness to receive such questions without fearing that I was being put in a spot,
realizing that the questioner operated only with the 'desire' to walk alongside me.

Till 2 years ago, I used to be briefed by senior members in my client organizations to focus on assisting the
leadership to stay relevant and help build into their psyche the possibility of making themselves redundant
over a period of time. This request has since been altered. Instead of suggesting I work on relevance and
redundancy, the invitation to me now is to help the leadership in the organization remain relevant but
build in them the required resilience to cope with new challenges. The urgency with which this is being
asked has convinced me that organizations are gripped by a feeling of fear and great discomfort with
ambiguity.

A model that has shown up for me in pursuit of this effort is a cyclic one. It starts with the need to establish
clarity of intent, to build immediate capability, to demonstrate courage in the face of onslaught of
uncertainty and be able to experience congruence; and to stay centered even when wafted by the winds

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