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Rohit Narang joined
Apex Computers (Apex) in November after a successful stint at Zen Computers
(Zen), where he had worked as an assistant programmer. Rohit felt that Apex
offered better career prospects, as it was growing much faster than Zen, which
was a relatively small company. Although Rohit had enjoyed working there, he
realized that to grow further in his field, he would have to join a bigger
company, and preferably one that handled international projects. He was sure he
would excel in his new position at Apex, just as he had done in his old job at
Zen.
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Rohit joined as a Senior Programmer at Apex, with a
handsome pay hike. Apex had international operations and there was more
than a slim chance that he would be sent to USA or the UK on a project.
Knowing that this would give him a lot of exposure, besides looking good
on his resume, Rohit was quite excited about his new job.
Rohit joined Aparna Mehta's five-member team at Apex. He had met Aparna
during the orientation sessions, and was looking forward to working
under her. His team members seemed warm and friendly, and comfortable
with their work. He introduced himself to the team members and got to
know more about each of them.
Wanting to know more about his boss, he casually asked Dipti, one of the
team members, about Aparna. Dipti said, "Aparna does not interfere with
our work. In fact, you could even say that she tries to ignore us as
much as she can."
Rohit was surprised by the comment but decided that Aparna was probably
leaving them alone to do their work without any guidance, in order to
allow them to realize their full potential.
At Zen, Rohit had worked under Suresh Reddy and had looked up to him as
a guide and mentor - always guiding, but never interfering. Suresh had
let Rohit make his own mistakes and learn from them. He had always
encouraged individual ideas, and let the team discover the flaws, if
any, through discussion and experience.
He rarely held an individual member of his team responsible if the team
as a whole failed to deliver - for him the responsibility for any
failure was collective. Rohit remembered telling his colleagues at Zen
that the ideal boss would be someone who did not interfere with his/her
subordinate's work.
Rohit wanted to believe that Aparna too was the non-interfering type. If
that was the case, surely her non-interference would only help him to
grow.
In his first week at work, Rohit found the atmosphere at the office a
bit dull. However, he was quite excited. His team had been assigned a
new project and was facing a few glitches with the new software. He had
thought about the problem till late in the night and had come up with
several possible solutions.
He could not wait to discuss them with his team and Aparna. He smiled to
himself when he thought of how Aparna would react when he told her that
he had come up with several possible solutions to the problem. He was
sure she would be happy with his having put in so much effort into the
project, right from day one.
He was daydreaming
about all the praise that he was going to get when Aparna walked into the
office. Rohit waited for her to go into her cabin, and after five minutes,
called her up, asking to see her.
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