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It must be a tough job to be a CEO !!

I had always thought that CEOs don’t have much to do except a few vision-mission meetings. But my opinion has radically changed during my stint as the Event Coordinator of MastishK. Its 7.10 AM, probably 24 hours since I last closed my eyes and have slept hardly 8 hours in the past 48.

I have been working all the while? No, not exactly. I am not working per se, but if I sleep and stop taking account from my teams, they will tend to sleep at the wrong times and fail to deliver. Is it that all teams are working 24 hours? No again. They all sleep, but there is someone or the other working all the time. So I have to stay awake to be available for him/her.
Every part of my body is feeling detached from the other, I can feel every bit of my backbone, and yet I can’t take a break. Dunno, if this is anything like the life of a CEO – but its tough man!!!
MastishK is almost an organisation now with 30+ members, and so many other characteristics. Working for MastishK, I have realised a lot about how organisations behave – an amalgamation of individuals – each one with his own life. And each person fits the goals of the organisation into his/her own life (talk of MBO??).
Every member has carved a niche for himself/herself – and you at the top must recognise the niche. You need to protect everyone’s niche from being encroached.
Then there come personal lives of everyone, and you must respect that as well. Conflicts can arise on trivial issues if people are not happy in their personal lives. And such conflicts are very difficult to resolve because their source doesn’t lie within the organisation but without it – in the lives of individuals. In fact personal lives could have been ignored but for relationships. Relationships among members are what drive the organisation, and these relationships are the intersection of personal lives and public life. We have been typically bugged by this intermingling. Because of the pressure that we have all been in the past few days due to exams, there have been some unnecessary conflicts, resolving them was a big issue.
People have their own life and schedules – outings, friends and home – all are important. So managing the times of each member and yet keeping the team together takes a lot of understanding. I personally am a bit effervescent person, but I myself only know, how many times I had to let my ego get swept aside to manage the whole affair. When people fight among themselves, you can be the third party and mediate, but if you yourself land into a feud with someone – the consequences can be disastrous – and hence you must always be on the understanding side irrespective of your own mood. Well managing ones own ego is easier said than done.
There’s a lot more that I could write, but then I need to sleep at least for a few hours before I again restart my work.

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