Why we should not be afraid of taking risks

P Rajagopal Tampi

This is a true story of the initial risks I have taken in my second career and how they panned out in my life. 

In July 1997, as an Indian Navy Captain, 41 years of age, I had returned to India from Nigeria where I had completed my tenure as the Defence Advisor at the Indian High Commissions in Lagos, Nigeria and Accra, Ghana. I had already put up my premature retirement from Service application seven months ago to Naval Headquarters. The Chief of Personnel, then Vice Admiral Arun Prakash had assured me that after a cooling period of three months in India, my premature retirement application would be approved by the Ministry of Defence and Naval Headquarters and I would be free to leave the service. 

I waited patiently for three months. When the papers were not cleared even after three months, as is my wont, I decided to push my papers by myself. I was busy for the next three months pushing my papers till they were finally approved. My last day in the service was 31 December 1997 after completion of twenty years and six months of impeccable commissioned service, my entire youthful life in the service of India. Such a great feeling!

Very happy with having obtained my objective, my family and I decided to attend the New Year’s Eve Ball of the Indian Navy in Colaba Mumbai on December 31st, 1997. It was a great evening, and we were all in very pleasant spirits. I was in uniform for the last time. We spent the night at a close friend's house in Navynagar. 

At 6:00 AM the next day, 1st January 1998, I woke up without an alarm clock, completely clear headed, sauntered to the balcony and stretched myself. That's when it hit me, between the eyes as it were. I was job-less. Me, who always had a job from age sixteen.  This came as a big shock. I had been so busy fighting my case for leaving the Navy, that I had completely ignored my need for a job immediately afterwards. I had a wife and two school-going daughters to support. 

Yes, I must mention another factor, one of complete and unquestioned faith in the belief that I would get a good job. This faith gave me no reason to worry. I have often marveled at the power of faith.

In the Indian Navy, I had headed teams that built and maintained defence computer simulators in addition to periodic postings on board warships at sea. These simulators where much more advanced than computer systems then existing in the commercial world. However, even a well qualified and experienced Armed Forces technology person like me would not be accepted in the civilian world of core software development. 

The long and the short of my next job was that the Managing Director of a leading global software company gave me exactly the job that I asked for in my very first meeting with him in February 1998. At that time, the Y2K problem was threatening the whole world of banks and computers systems. The year was represented using two digits only in the code and this could not handle the transition into the new Millennium which required four-digit years. So, all the software worldwide had to be fixed to eliminate this bug which hung over the world like a Damocles sword. 

It was a highly risky proposition for those undertaking to do the work because if the updated software did not work after application of the fix upon transition to the 21st century, there would be huge losses for businesses, nations and people. And naturally the people responsible for the projects would likely get sacked from their jobs for a job shoddily done. 

I got the responsibility of managing all the Y2K projects which were won by my company from Banking customers world-wide. The reason I got my job was because none of the dozen or so Senior Managers in the company wanted to take on the high risk of Y2K projects. So the company had created a special new vacancy for a Y2K Senior Manager. I was lucky, came along and grabbed the job being offered to me with both my hands.

My usual openness, sincerity, dedication, willingness to learn, discover and work with people who were younger than me helped me to establish a good rapport with my large teams and my customers. We developed processes for delivering very high-quality Y2K fixes for the software. It was laborious, and we tested the fixes thoroughly. We deployed the tested fixes successfully sitting in Mumbai, using our customer's dedicated global leased lines connected to the Bank's mainframes at the other end in many continents. 

The transition to the new Millennium was smooth and achieved with absolutely no failures for each and every customer of ours. This was a big feather in my cap and for my teams. But it was earned at the cost of huge risk. 

I had made the very big and important transition into the center of the software business world from the Armed Forces, exactly to the position where I wanted to be. Where it was so difficult for me to get to. This was the starting point of my new second career.

Immediately thereafter, a new technology called Active Server Pages [ASP] became available and it was the time to build marketplaces on the Internet. My company won our first ASP project in 2000.This was a commercial shipping portal project for a very large Indian business group. As usual, none of the Senior Managers in the company wanted to take the risk of managing a new unproven technology project. After all the Managers had refused the new technology project, it was finally offered to me. I jumped up and grabbed the new opportunity that was opening up for me. It would catapult me from Y2K directly to the other end of the spectrum of software technology. 

I read about the new ASP technology and worked hands on with my project teams to ensure we understood exactly what we were building. IIT Bombay (where I had done M.Tech in Computer Science) had given me the gift of self-learning and it was put to good use. In barely nine months, we were very successful in delivering the shipping portal on time meeting the high-quality specifications fully. This project became very successful, and our billing amount kept increasing and became quite a significant amount by Indian business standards. It was only at this time, that other managers wanted to jump on board since the technology was now firmly established by my teams and me.

I was not aware of the refusal of the Managers to accept these high-risk projects till the time my boss, mentioned it in his farewell speech in my honour during my farewell party. I left the company after three years and a great deal of learning. I am truly grateful to my wonderful bosses who gave me opportunities to work and learn on core business projects and for the sophisticated training processes of the company which included business leadership training.

In closing, let me say one should not ignore risk the way I did. We should be fully aware of the levels of risk in any task and be prepared to manage it intelligently. There is no need to be afraid of risk because risk can in most cases be measured and managed. People who are honest, sincere and dedicated are already managing risk continuously on a daily basis in their lives. 

Investors, entrepreneurs, and people charting new career and life paths need to introspect and discuss with people they trust.  Some of these areas require sophisticated risk management systems to ensure adequate risk return ratios and adequate filtering and categorization of risk. We should not make hasty decisions when taking life and career changing decisions. Particularly, we should not take decisions and put ourselves in positions which are not conducive to our basic nature. 

It is relevant to mention here that before I left the Service, I had, over a period of nine months, in my spare time, written a very large successful 'C' program for automating a retail store including the data structures coded in C. This was my way of preparing for coding if necessary. This gave me great confidence and I knew my technical proficiency was adequate. A major concern out of the way. 

As far as faith is concerned, if we act with integrity and fully in accordance with our conscience, faith is the result. It sets at rest all worries and misgivings and along with hope, helps us find our way forward.

Copyright: P Rajagopal Tampi 2022 (R) ©