The Consultant Life

In this episode, I sit down with my uncle, a first-generation immigrant whose 30+ year career as a consultant took him across the country—week after week, year after year. From early days of mainframes to the rise of the internet, he shares what it was really like to live the “road warrior” life. We talk about the tradeoffs, the relationships, and what it takes to influence without authority.

What emerges isn’t a story of careful planning, but one built on curiosity, adaptability, and connecting with people. A grounded look at what actually sustains a long working life.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Real Exchange. I'm Lakshmi. I'm super excited for this conversation because it's with someone who's really close to me, my uncle. He's a first-generation immigrant whose 30-something year career as a technical consultant has taken him all over the country. From big changes in technology to thousands of client meetings, he's seen it all. And now he's finally retired and at rest somewhat. So we're going to be sitting down to explore what that journey has taught him. So, Jairam, congratulations on your retirement and welcome to the Real Exchange.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Thank you for that very kind in introduction. Yeah, it's nice talking to you. And I considered myself fortunate to have experienced a rather wide spectrum of activities.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Yeah, so we'll get into each of those in detail. But over the three decades in the US post-year graduation, and we'll get to the beginnings. You've worked for companies like PeopleSoft, you've worked for Cap Gemini, Accenture, several others. You've seen big shifts in technology and had to adapt to those. And most people who know you would agree that you'll be among the most outgoing people in any room. So you've built friendships and relationships everywhere you've gone. And you've made a home far away from home. So I want to ask all of these questions that have intrigued me about your career and your life. So I want to dive right in and dive in

Coming to America 1985

SPEAKER_00 1:43

at the beginning, you know, and the beginning I consider to be your arrival here in the United States, right? So take me back to was it 1985? You arrived as a graduate student, University of Tennessee. What was the plan then? And how did you end up as a consultant rather than, let's say, academia or research or even a corporate job?

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Yeah, it was indeed 1985. And you said, what was the plan? I think we would be misleading the audience if we were if we were to say that I had a plan. I had a sort of a vague idea. I I was just excited to get admission and be cleared of all the legal rigmarole, the turtles that one faces. The rest of the things were I I kind of just had assumed that things would just fall into place. Rather uh foolhardy of me, you know, I started my master's program and uh soon enough thought about now I need to go find an assistantship for myself, which was the computer fixer for the university. Even there, it was a client-facing role in several ways. So I had to go around from office to office. They would call and say they had to have this done or that done to their computers. And by the way, those were the days when the PC was brand new. The PC revolution had just occurred and it had become a thing to be taken seriously, not just to play video games on. And I earned quite a reputation for myself as that guy who comes to fix the computers. So, yeah, I made friends and I consider myself fortunate because through this I was exposed to a very broad cross-section of people, you know, mostly from the Tennessee area. But then if you weren't a regular student, your interaction should be limited to the student body. However, in and there may be a few faculty or thereabouts, which was the case in most of the other friends of

Oak Ridge Breakthrough

SPEAKER_01 3:43

mine. But uh, I was able to go to pretty much every office in the university. That led to my next job, which was it was not even a job, it was an internship. Somebody in the maths department who said, Hey, look, there is this lady called Mary Emrich in uh Oak Ridge National Laboratory who has internships open. So there was a lot of computer science graduates who used to go and work in Oak Ridge National Lab at that time. And then uh that led to my job. And that was on the academic side of it. And if I remember the sub-questions in your uh initial question was how do how did I end up in a consulting job as opposed to some kind of research or research, yeah. It was I think in a way this was sort of consulting because I joined this when I talked to this lady, she and she hired me by the way, as an intern, the the way it f it it operated was the DOE and DOD would provide funding. There was a lot of funding at that time for projects. And uh because of Oakrid's uh connections to the DOD, DOE and reputation and availability of talent, there would be these agencies, like for example, one of the first projects we did was the inactive ship fleet, which was under the command of Navse or some such thing. You know, there's nothing. Basically, it was the US Navy had all these big warships, including aircraft carriers and these huge war battleships that were out of commission, but they were in fairly decent shape. They had to be maintained. So there were all these facilities around the United States where this fleet was just basically parked. And there was a maintenance schedule that had to be automated. We we wrote a system to automate their uh maintenance schedule. That was my very first job.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

That's exciting. So was this a full-time gig or was it just an internet?

SPEAKER_01 5:45

I uh my internship started out with smaller projects, writing papers or reviewing papers and such. This was my first job as an employee of uh Oak Ridge. The contract was through the University of Tennessee, but then I was reporting to uh Mary M. Richard's lab.

Visa Paperwork Story

SPEAKER_00 6:04

So this is pre-H1B. So did you like land a green card? Or how did how did that work?

SPEAKER_01 6:10

Yeah, I mean, that's another funny story, right? There was a certain naivete, right? There was a certain innocence about all these kinds of things. This H1B, and there was nothing. You're right, it was pre-H1B.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Yeah, because that was a very important thing.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

But there was something called H1, I believe.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

So we were out in some conference somewhere. I had gone with Miss Emory. I think she was Dr. Emrich, I should be more respectful. And then uh on the way back, uh, we were waiting in Dallas Airport, and uh she said, Hey, why don't you come work for me full-time? I said, Hey, are you offering me a job? Wow, that's great. Yes, I will. But uh, you just need to get my paperwork done. She said, What paperwork? That's the extent of you know awareness around uh H1 and all that existed at that time. So yeah, I said, I don't know. Even I'm not very clear, but I'll get all the lawyers to give me all the paperwork. You just sign them. She said, Okay. That was my job interview.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

It seems like a different era also.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

Very different era. Yeah, I all completely.

Unwritten Immigrant Rules

SPEAKER_00 7:14

So, you know, you're a first-gen immigrant, and as one myself, there's a lot of things that you have to unlearn and relearn. And so building a career in Knoxville in the late 80s, 90s, what were some of these unwritten rules that you had to learn? You know, obviously it's not on the curriculum. What were some other things that you had to learn on your own that somehow people might take for granted?

SPEAKER_01 7:45

That's a hard question, you know. Several things which we take for granted. These may sound like cliches, some of them, but more or less it's like being yourself is one. It's important because if you're not, there's times when the disingenuousness or whatever shows up, it leads to loss of credibility. So that's I would say one thing that not on the curriculum, but you learn, well, if the curriculum does not teach you, life will teach you. There are other things. Learning to listen is important. I think I've gotten better at it over the years, and I still think a lot of good can come out of just listening and understanding before reacting. And uh I would say number three would be just communicating clearly and making sure that whatever you are saying is being understood by the recipient of that communication is important. It you know, coming to the professional side of things, it's important to constantly be aware of whoever it is that you are serving, you know and you understand their interests and make sure that they are respected. And this view of mine is slightly biased by the virtue of my uh being in consulting for all these years. As a consultant, it's always important to have their interests in view and making sure that they are served. Those are, I would say, some of the things that you don't learn from books but learn from other sources. Primary among them being life.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

When you pack up and move to a different country, there's there's this kind of fear or what you might have heard about that place, and you form opinions without having all of your data. So I think bias works both ways. And so I feel it's important to not have your sensitivity antennae up all the time either. So just kind of give people the benefit of the doubt in situations.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, I I equate it to a situation like this, right? You are an outsider in in that setup and you have just landed amongst them. Imagine if the tables were turned and uh somebody new had come to you are, especially you know if it was a smaller place. So you would stand out and you would be naturally curious. And how that curiosity plays out, you have a lot to contribute to it. So it's not good to automatically assume that it is hostile if there is that understanding built up through genuine expression of goodwill.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Yeah. And and genuine curiosity on both sides.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Absolutely, 100%.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

I like that. It was a great trip down memory

Road Warrior Consulting

SPEAKER_00 10:30

lane, I think. I want to kind of zoom in now on your consulting career specifically. So you spent what, three decades traveling to clients sites like all over the country. And I'm not just talking the mainland. Uh post-COVID, though, would you agree that this kind of road warrior type consulting lifestyle is on the way in?

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Yeah, COVID definitely in in one way. But then uh I would say there's uh equal or perhaps bigger contribution from the technology. Yeah. So there you know it it's not as essential for somebody to be on site as a specifically consultant.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Hold that thought. Hold that thought because I have that very specific question about being on site. But I want to know as a traveling or a road warrior consultant, tell us, you know, what was your life like and what does that kind of lifestyle do to you, both the good parts and the hard parts?

SPEAKER_01 11:38

You know, in my case, I didn't choose consulting. I just had to have a job, and it so happened that this was the job I ended up getting into. You know, I was for a few years a pure developer, nine to five developer. I would go to the office, come back home. And then, you know, in the night, if I had to do some offline work, I had to do it. Those were the days when not even, you know, you didn't even have a laptop. You didn't do your work on a laptop. It was a terminal that they gave you. And you would only be online if you were in the office. So I had to bring a big wax terminal. So I had to bring it home and I set it up in the house so I could dial up over a modem and connect there. That was what? 1990. So what does the road warrior life do to you? How is that life? I think in a way, it is sort of like an army man's life where you are with this band of people who are in a similar situation like you, who have all been, who are all away from home. They are living in some hotel, and usually it's in the same hotel, and then you are you're banding together like you know, you're like blood brothers. That is one aspect of it. The second is you are in an environment professionally, like you know, in an environment that is you know is a temporary home. The hotel aspect applies to your office aspect as well. So if you are a developer or if you're if you are a corporate job, where you go there 9 to 5, you have an office and you work there, and uh your name is pasted on the office or whatever it is. I'm talking about older times, not right now. But in those cases, you can see, right? In their office, they have pictures of their children or some art that their daughter drew that they have pinned to the wall, some trophy that their son won in some corner, all of those things which kind of give you sense of home feel, right? It makes you feel like it's uh it's a little bit of a home away from home kind of a feeling. As a road warrior consultant, you don't have that. You're just told to sit in a desk where you know some undesired place in the office where all the other non-office people. So you sit there and you do your job. And uh the other thing that comes along with it is there is this certain uh family aspect that creeps in along with it, right? You say, hey, where are we going for dinner today? Which restaurant should we go to? We had Chinese yesterday, maybe we should have Italian today, or we'll stop by in Thai on the way back on Thursday night. This whole routine comes in, which and then when you are at dinner, you the guys that are with you are the same ones that are uh doing the same work. You talk politics, you talk shop, you talk all kinds of things. When I say politics, it is work politics. So there is that community that builds up over time. And you know, these things happen in large, long-time projects, things that go on for, for example, I used to go to Minnesota for three years. I used to go to LA for three plus years. So at the same time. Even as in capture. Yeah, same client. So you're going there week after week after week after week. And then these friendships they kind of last a long time. And uh you have that bonding with these people. That those are the uh, I would say, good things.

Travel Life Tradeoffs

SPEAKER_01 15:02

The bad things are, of course, you know, the family life that you're missing out on. And and uh you are not there for a lot of events, I guess. Mundane things, which kind of, I won't say they they almost constitute like the the atomic, the molecular uh layer of the relationships that you have, the the most important ones, the family ones. And those they get compromised on. For example, something as simple as being at some Saomiya's recital or Rahul's sling boat or something like that, you you're not there. You keep thinking about it and you are told about it afterwards, and he did this, he did that, she did this, she did that. Or you just have to rely on videos and pictures and whatever. And uh the other thing that happens is by virtue of you not being there for the rest of the week, the weekend becomes a highly concentrated affair. So you want to pack in as much as you can in there. It's a disconcerting lifestyle in in many ways. And it takes a certain kind of personality to be able to put up with it, thrive in it, and and not let the bad part overwhelm the

Traits That Make It Work

SPEAKER_01 16:23

good part.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

What are some of the attributes you said it takes a certain type of personality? What kind of attributes in a personality help you balance or thrive even?

SPEAKER_01 16:34

So it's like not letting things bother you too much, finding solutions where you know somehow keep the wheels turning. And the the third thing is making sure that you get along with whoever you are you are you are with. So there are certain people who it really annoy you, right? And and you need to make allowances for that. And then I guess having that kind of uh mindset where you say, yeah, okay, this is the package. So along with the uh rough comes the smooth. So give him that space and just discount that part of his uh personality, that attitude. The other thing that happens is when things are not going well, when you're far away from home, yeah, the effect is amplified. It feels a lot more uh depressing when uh uh you are away and things are not going well. So being able to withstand that and cope with that is important. Those are some of the attributes. And of course, this is not an attribute, but then you gotta have someone strong back at home who can who can manage and run things. Of course. That that is like, you know, without that, it just doesn't exist. So that has to happen.

Work Life Balance Reality

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Yeah, so I want to get to that a little. You said weekends when when you have this kind of traveling lifestyle, they get packed. There's so much to uh take care of personally. I mean, even something as mundane as I don't know, mowing the lawn or whatever. Everything happens on the weekend for you. So, you know, you would leave home what, Monday morning very early or Sunday night, yeah, and then fly back on Thursday and week after week you do this. Yeah. It's gotta be hard on everyone, you know, the traveling spouse and the spouse at home and the children. How do you maintain any sense of normalcy when you're so on the move? And this whole concept of work-life balance, you know, is that even a thing? Does that even apply to this type of a lifestyle?

SPEAKER_01 18:35

Yeah, how do you maintain a balance? I don't know if there is a clear-cut answer to that. You just make it happen. It's one of those things where you you just have to assess all the things and figure out this is my reality, I have to make it work. That's it. I don't know. I have not thought very deeply about how exactly you would make it happen. I don't know uh if I would uh consider myself that analytical, but uh you just got to just just do it, you know, as the Nike slogan says. And then what do you do? The even the mundane things have meaning, they have they're done for a certain reason, they have a cumulative effect. Knowing that and and just accepting that and working around that and making it happen, I guess, is the way I would look at it. Work-life balance. I think work-life balance is what you make of it, really. To a large extent, it is to what extent do you uh make work your life and make life your work?

Finding Work Life Balance

SPEAKER_01 19:33

Is where the equation kind of resolves. So in my case, I think the uh work-life balance, quote unquote, came because of Mita being at home. That I think gave me the confidence that at least your number one priority is always when the children are small, how are we going to bring them up? And how are we going to make sure that they are safe, secure, well provided for, well-taken care of. Having that eased my mind a lot. I think that contributed, I would say, upwards of 50% to the work-life balance that you're talking about. The rest of it is the struggle that comes from living life. And I said, okay, I'll I'll deal with it. I'll I'll make sure that whatever needs to happen, whether it's money, whether it is, you know, hard work, whether it is some lifting that others are incapable of doing, that we know those things we'll somehow figure out. But then these kinds of things, the the core, stabilization of the core, that I think happened for me by virtue

Social Connections Fade

SPEAKER_01 20:34

of this. One more thing that suffers, your social connections, they suffer. Because you're not there, you're not connected in the same way that happens if you are in present in situ. So that again, we lost out on it to some extent. There's a fading away of connections that has happened. So we have to compensate for them in other ways. And and like I said, you know, to what extent do you make work your life and life your work, and then figure out where that line lies. And just and it's not like figuring out statically. It's like figuring out and continuing to figure out is how I would

Remote Versus Onsite Work

SPEAKER_01 21:13

describe it.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

I want to come back now to a point that we were talking about earlier, which is being at a client's site versus not. Now, granted, we've settled into uh some kind of steady state, but this whole remote versus in-person work still evokes a lot of strong emotion on both sides of the argument. You've done both, you've been on site at client locations and you've done remote consulting. So I want your take. What is actually different about being there in person versus working or maybe doing the same thing remotely? What do you gain and what do you lose in each scenario?

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Um that is also a dynamic e equilibrium. Because when this remoteness was new, even the people, the clients whom you were working for did not know how to deal with it as well as they do of late. You know, I think clients have gotten better at being clients remotely. So that has uh evolved. And you said, what do I, what do you gain or what do you lose by being on site? There is something to be said for human-to-human uh interaction in person. There is a certain unspoken body language, a certain aura that surrounds a person, which you can only get when you are face-to-face. You lose that. But to what extent is that important in a professional setting, right? Is what it boils down to. Even like, for example, we're talking uh on uh Zoom right now, this kind of an interaction with clients, even that was different when this remote consulting became a thing. And you get used to

Human Connection In Consulting

SPEAKER_01 23:01

that. The other thing that happens is that human-to-human connection, right? There was a time when after work, even clients and consultants, we all used to sometimes go out and interact and get to know each other better. And that is is not there, right? Once this call is over, we we get off, and then even though we are seeing each other face to face, that goes away after the call is over. I think that adds a certain dimension to consulting, which um is a good thing. It eases the professional side of things to some extent. What do you gain? Of course, you gain the fact that you are home. You know, you don't have to hop on the plane and fly X number of hours to get somewhere. That is an obvious thing that you gain. And otherwise, I think it's how well you adapt to it and and make it work.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Yeah, we this whole thing centers around the clients. You know, we talked about how clients have gotten better at being clients remotely. But I w and you've you've spent almost your whole life, uh save for those four or five years that you were in like software development, your whole working life was in client-facing roles in w some capacity or other. I want to understand what it takes to you know be successful in these types of client-facing roles. In-person, remote, agnostic. You've worked for hundreds of clients over your 30 years, 40

Influence Without Authority

SPEAKER_00 24:32

years. When you go to a client side or when you start a relationship with a client, you're the outsider. You're coming into the client's space and you're telling people how to change their I don't know, systems or processes or whatever. What's the key to being effective when you are in that outsider type position and you're the one providing that guidance and providing that advice?

SPEAKER_01 24:59

I mean, this is a classic case of influence without authority, I think is the phrase that is commonly used. You don't have authority. You are, as you correctly pointed out, an outsider. And when you start the relationship, it's almost that genuineness that I spoke about earlier. You need that. You need to make sure that you are representing their interests. So I think that first phase of the relationship where you're establishing yourself and it's important to understand what their interests are. That I think is number one. Even if you're in a regular job, I think there is a client, right? Somebody wants something done, which is why you are getting paid. So it is that angle that needs to be paid attention to. And making sure that uh whatever it is that you do ends up serving that well enough that the desired result comes out of it, at least as close to the desired result as possible. And then there is a spirit of compromise. You're not always going to get the ideal client who will say yes to everything that you are saying or agrees to all your suggestions and agrees to do things the way that you have it planned. It doesn't happen. And there is always something that has to be understood and worked around. And I'm not talking technology here, right? So technology is, of course, it comes like two or three layers of the onion under after you appeal the first two, right? So the business purpose, the personalities, the overall need for whatever it is that you're doing, what is the larger picture? Understanding all of these is what I mean by understanding their interests. And once you have that interest, you take it to heart initially. It may sound somewhat uh far-fetched. You have to kind of bring yourself into that mental space where you understand, you acknowledge, you respect it, and then you kind of align to it and work as a convergent force and bring it to fruition. So that is, I think, uh critically important uh when you said you asked about how do you start this relationship and how do you and and uh once that is established, right? And when there is a certain dynamic that I would imagine goes on in the client's head also. So they think, yes, this is a guy who is fighting on our side, right? He's as as has happened in many cases. That I would say is the foundation to success. Almost all the rest of it, you know, technology, other things like systems, processes, they will all fall into place. First, the uh the interest angle has to be aligned. That can only be done through genuine engagement and genuine uh heart-to-heart discussions.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

Now,

Trust Built In Person

SPEAKER_00 27:46

I I love that you said that you know the first layer is the human element. Do you find then that in order to establish this relationship and to gain that mutual trust, is being there in person does it lend itself naturally to a better quality relationship?

SPEAKER_01 28:06

I think so. It helps. It certainly helps. Uh, there have been cases where I've been able to establish just by talking on the phone or talking on a video call or something like that. But I think in in in uh many cases, it uh certainly helps because even even your first call, uh, you may do it on the phone. You then you may have a conference call or a video call, and then you may uh get to like 50% there. But after that, if you make an attempt and have a face-to-face meeting, it goes a long way to cement that and uh make that grow.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

So um you talked about you know fighting the client's cause, so to speak, and making sure that you take their interests to heart and act on it and gain that credibility.

Balancing Ideal And Practical

SPEAKER_00 28:49

So, how do you balance what is technologically optimal with what the client can actually absorb and implement? And what are some strategies that you use to influence this balance? You know, and does it get easier with time?

SPEAKER_01 29:06

It definitely gets easier with time. It's uh it's definitely a learned process. Uh, but I don't know if there is any one particular way or two particular ways of doing it. It's it's it's like a sum total of little bits and pieces that happen uh in in a way. And how do you balance what it is? If it is big enough, it's clearly something that you can point out and say that, hey, don't do this. This is not the right solution that you should be going after because of such and such reasons. And you need to be articulate about what those reasons are and uh explain them in effectively. Uh but it's a continuum. There's like several shades of that. In some cases, it may be a little more expensive to do something and you may require a little more work. A lot of things fall into that space. And if you're doing that, then you've got to explain, hey, look, it's going to cost you this extra uh whatever time, money, effort, all of which are interconvertible, by the way, as you very well know. Are you okay to do that? And then again, it comes down to an analysis of the cost-benefit equation. So if you do that, if you spend this much, this is what you're getting. Is it worth it to you? Maybe it is, right? So once you do that digging, have you thought about it this way? You know, if it may be a small change in process on your side, if you did that, it will save us the trouble of having to implement all these other things. Is that something that you think you can pull off? This is the kind of the design thinking uh world. But by doing all these things, that's where these solutions pop up. And to pull out that thread and take it to its uh logical conclusion, make it give you the desired end result, I guess that's where the art of consulting lies. And to be able to do that is a big

Tech Shifts Over Decades

SPEAKER_01 30:59

attribute.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

We've talked a lot about uh people and relationships and balance. But I want to talk about you know the other big thing, the technology itself. You've seen massive shifts in technology over your career, right? So walk me through some of those highlights, you know, exciting big shifts that happened from the time you started, what was tech like, to now. And second part of this question is your adaptability. How do you stay relevant and nimble as the landscape kind of constantly shifts and evolves? And again, did it get harder or easier with time and experience?

SPEAKER_01 31:41

Funny you should say that. I was just talking to another guy who's probably a contemporary of mine, and uh and we were just they're laughing about how a phone in your pocket today is more powerful than a supercomputer was back in those days. So to actually quantify that, uh a gigabyte was not even a unit. Now we are talking about petabytes and uh God knows what other bytes. My first computer that I went and installed in um when I was a newly minted customer service engineer back in 1984 was a uh ICIM machine which had uh I think 640k of memory. And that was modern for those days because people were used to be working with machines that had 16k. And and uh, when 640k memory came along, they were like, oh man, we can have our own COBOL compiler. It's an in-memory COBOL compiler, you know, and we would feel very proud about it. And that 640k came on two memory boards that were about the size of uh a laptop. Each memory board was the size of this laptop, and uh you went in, plugged it into the subframe or something it was called. You had to go plug it in, you had to set some settings, then you reboot the computer up, and then it comes up. And a disk drive was the size of our kitchen island. That was how big the disk drive was, and you know how much memory it held? 60 uh megabytes. So this was technology, right? And now if you ask me about the evolution of that to a laptop or a tablet or a phone, that has a hundred times the memory that that one had. Uh that a hundred times the processing power. Uh uh this is the evolution of technology that has happened. And then you come into mainframes, you come into mini computing, you need you come into uh network computers, then you come into the internet, which in itself was a huge revolution.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

And the idea of you know WWW storefront, right? It's like I'm doing online business, it was something unheard of. And then uh I told you how I had a wax terminal that I would work at in the office and a similar one brought home to be wired in so that I could dial over a 2400-bot modem to connect to my office work. That is the evolution that I've

Staying Relevant Through Change

SPEAKER_01 34:02

seen. And I'm sure there are other people in this world who have seen much, much bigger revolutions than this. But I guess the second part of your question was more important. How do you stay relevant and how do you stay nimble enough to adapt to all of these? I think technology is technology after all. That's my uh point of view. The more important thing is what we just spoke about earlier: the human element and the business element. That remains the same. And I say this, this almost sounds like a cliche, but if you if you can solve human problems and business problems, which are which are almost interchangeable, uh, then I guess you are getting the desired result from whatever reference you are putting in. And the the the second half of that equation is to be able to uh do whatever it is that you're doing well, which leads in turn to that trust that we talked about. So these these are kind of like the layers of the Anyan, which when you when you peel it all, it kind of comes down to that same old core of solving some business problem. And you know, the evolution means that the kind of problems that you're solving is different. You know, the domain that is actually being addressed is of a different caliber altogether, it's in a different plane altogether. However, the means to solving that still remains the same. That human element and the business element that we talked about. So I guess uh in a very broad sense, that I think is the principle. If I if I were to be bold enough to call it that, should stick to and then just be able to adhere to.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

So technology as a means to an end, basically.

SPEAKER_01 35:40

Yeah, because technology always will keep changing.

The Internet Biggest Revolution

SPEAKER_00 35:45

You talked about the miniaturization and the exponential growth in the power of computers, internet. I'm just curious to get your take on which of these would you consider to be the most exciting thing that happened in your world, like when you were going about your work. Which of these revolutionary things caused most interest and excitement in your universe?

SPEAKER_01 36:12

More than interest and excitement, it's impact, I would say. I would measure it in terms of that. If I were to pick one, I would say that would be the internet, the appearance of the internet. It does stand out in my mind as the biggest impact-making revolution. If I look at you know, laptops or a or a tablet or a phone, to me that's a different form factor in in many ways. And then, you know, with the advancement of the power of computation and the processing power, the memory, the storage, and everything else, I think things like this have become much more possible, right? Probably a second layer of that same evolution. But I think the arrival and the maturity and the evolution of the internet has been, in my mind, uh probably the biggest change. And I think this happened in the late 90s. That's when this technology started and it became something real. And since then things have not been the same.

Career Reflections And Skills

SPEAKER_00 37:15

You've recently retired after uh you know a long and successful.

SPEAKER_01 37:20

Thank God for that.

SPEAKER_00 37:22

You've you've had a little bit of distance from this whole thing. So looking back at your career, is there anything that surprises you about how things turned out? And is there a particular skill or ability that you know ended up being more important than what you might have thought early on?

SPEAKER_01 37:42

Am I surprised? I don't know. I I would only be surprised if I was expecting one thing and something else turned up. But such was not the case, but I was not expecting much. I was just kind of like, let's take it one day at a time and then see what happens, right? That has always been my attitude. So a short time, a short time attitude helps, I guess. Joking apart, it has been that way. I mean, practically speaking, it has been one step at a time, and let's see where this leads us and learn how to deal with it. One skill that is more important than others, or that stands out. I don't know, just this communication, I think, is the biggest. I think that would be my surprise. That I was if I were to look back at it and I say, uh, you know, what is it that helped me? This ability to talk to people and be able to be open and communicative. You started out by saying, I think that was one of your initial remarks about being an outgoing person. I think that has helped me. If I were to look back at things, you know, being able to communicate and being able to communicate honestly and genuinely being interested in other people. Just a general curiosity for my environment and just what's going on outside. How do things work here? What is the dynamic of this place or this organization or just uh eternal curiosity for that has been another, I guess they're in a way interrelated, because it is that curiosity that makes you talk to people in genuine terms. And uh the information that you learn in turn feeds this knowledge of the environment that you are in.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

Yeah, being being interesting by being interested.

SPEAKER_01 39:30

Well, well said and well put. And generally being out there for the fun of it, you know, always learning and and knowing something about it.

SPEAKER_00 39:40

Yes, yes. Um,

Advice For New Consultants

SPEAKER_00 39:42

last question. If someone came up to you, you know, let's say someone fresh off the boat, or someone who is starting out in the consulting world, is there anything that you would like to tell them that you wish you had known at the very beginning?

SPEAKER_01 39:58

I think all of the things that we talked about, I wish somebody had told me. You know, the need for curiosity, the need for communication, the need for taking the client's interests to heart and aligning yourself with it. And most of all, I would say one thing is I think this is definitely a cliche. Just be yourself. And I think it's a very true cliche. It's a truism. Trying to impress or uh make a name or make an impact by this trying to put on and pretend to be someone else is definitely gonna backfire. At some point or the other, it's going to backfire. There is a certain little window where you have to fake it till you make it in the consulting space because there are times when uh you are going there as a somebody who knows something about some topic when you actually may be caught in a situation where you don't know, and admitting that would lead to uh unpleasant results. So you may have to do that, but you gotta fix that very quickly. You cannot let that prolong. You know, how do you do that, right? Which means you need to be able to learn quickly, observe, and internalize very quickly. Those are the kinds of things that I would say to somebody. I'm sure anybody coming into uh consulting and making a conscious choice to come into this, especially these days, in days of YouTube and uh social media and and you know such bombardment of information, they would know this. But again, it's it's easier said than done. It needs to be internalized and it needs to be become part of your DNA for it to be effective. So I would say that's it. And then otherwise, of course, there is the basic prerequisite that somebody knows what they're talking about and what they're doing that goes without saying. But on top of that, this is this is the collective tissue that holds it all together.

SPEAKER_00 42:01

Okay,

Closing

SPEAKER_00 42:02

thank you so much for spending the time and letting me ask all of these questions.

SPEAKER_01 42:07

I quite thoroughly enjoyed this whole thing.

SPEAKER_00 42:15

Completely true to form, there is no grand plan or master strategy in Jairam's story. What does come through loud and clear though is how much good can come just from connecting with the people at a human level by staying curious and by being willing to figure things out as you go. If you peel away all the travel and the change and the evolving technology, the core lesson here is something simple. Show up as yourself, understand what is needed, adapt without overthinking, and take your work seriously, but never yourself. Easier said than done, of course. But I think something we can all apply to. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.