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“Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”― Mark Victor Hansen
 
Have you ever wondered what makes someone successful? What makes someone good at academics? What makes someone a top performer? Why do some people achieve their goals while others do not? When we answer these questions, we usually think that their talent and intelligence is what makes them successful but researchers say that talent only accounts for 30% of their achievement. Then what makes a bigger impact than talent? It’s their MENTAL TOUGHNESS.
 
Mental Toughness is the ability to move towards our goals, irrespective of what the circumstance might be. People who are mentally tough, just don’t adapt well in face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or stressful situations but they also thrive in such situations. Irrespective of whatever the situation might look like, they face the challenges head on and find ways to thrive.
 
Have you ever heard of astronaut – Chris Hadfield? I’d like to share with you a really fascinating story about his experience during a spacewalk where he exhibited incredible mental toughness. During his first space walk there was contamination inside his suit that got into one of his eyes and stopped it from working but he kept doing the work he was doing with the help of his other eye. Since there is no gravity the tears from the contaminated eye balled up and flowed to the other eye through his nose. Now, his other eye was also contaminated and he couldn’t see completely.
 
Imagine if we were in this situation what would our reaction be? I bet we would’ve been cripplingly scared and panicked but Chris maintained his calm. Instead of being worried and overly dramatic with the problem he was thinking of ways to try and solve the problem. He says in an interview “In this case I was incapacitated to some degree but I could talk, I could think, I was still fine, I could communicate with everybody, I just couldn’t see.” In the end he did come up with a solution, he opened the purge valve of his suit and let the contaminated atmosphere exit. Once the contaminated air was out, he was able to see again.
 
He says that there were only two things on his mind in that moment when he completely lost his vision while floating in the outer space.
 
1) He was thinking about what caused the problem and what the solution could be.
2) He was frustrated because he couldn’t do the things that he was supposed to do.
 
He should be building this huge robot arm on the outside on the spaceship but he was floating uselessly. Even when he wasn’t sure if he’d regain his sight, he was all concerned about finding a solution to the problem and completing his mission. To become successful we need to cultivate this kind of mental toughness – the grit – the perseverance and passion to achieve our goals.
 
In ordinary course of events, our life holds some good times and some bad times as well. Everybody has to face some stress, challenge, pain and tragedy in one form or another. But the way we respond to such hardships makes a difference. Some people wilt and crumble and quit when things go badly but others seem to consistently rise to the situation, no matter how bad it is, meet their challenges courageously and confidently. The one thing that separates those who weather the storms in their life well and those who are consumed by them is their Mental Toughness.
 
In the recent months, we all have seen a redefinition of life in an unprecedented scale. The shifts we’re seeing have affected nearly every aspect of our lives, so it’s essential to develop the mental toughness to stay strong and resilient in the face of adversity. We cannot have control over all the difficult circumstances in our life, but we can retain a sense of stability by controlling how we respond to hardships. Feeling strong and balanced allows us to adapt to changing circumstances more readily and find creative solutions to problems, which is important to achieve our goals.

As the world continues to tussle with the ongoing Corona Virus Crisis, I realize that Working from home which was initially hoped to be a temporary adjustment is transitioning into the “new normal”. I remember the day when partial lockdown was announced in the Bangalore city, I could sense panic, paranoia, anxiety, and uncertainty in all of us, we were not sure if work from home would be an easy transition for us.
 
Today, I realize that we have come a long way since then. Our culture of trust and collaboration is what has helped us to adapt to the current situation. Also this transition has helped us become more empathetic, kind, strong, supportive and closer than we have ever been. Below are some details on the principles and measures that we have taken to help our people during these trying times.

Act with Urgency:

 
As soon as we heard that COVID -19 has been declared as a pandemic by the WHO our biggest concern at that moment was our Team. We know the team is our corner stone and it’s from them that we derive our strength so our sole focus was on keeping them safe physically and mentally. We quickly educated our team about the precautionary sanitary measures that has to be taken inside and outside the company for their physical well being and also on how to work from home productively. The housekeeping team was instructed to regularly clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces. We understood that our employees might balk travelling to work because of the fear of catching the virus and their mental well being has been our top priority so we had given them the option to work from home even before the lockdown was imposed. After the lockdown our whole work force is required to work remotely. Being agile and leaving no stone unturned is what has helped us in such a seamless transition.

Communication is Paramount:

 
The corporate leadership team frequently meets digitally with our people to address how the organization has been impacted; it’s response to the crisis and offer many other advices, guidelines and protocols. During the session they answer the tough questions asked by our employees honestly, offering reassurance.
 
Recently we even had our first digital town hall since we started working remotely back in March. Our Co- Founder, Avinash Tiwari headed the town hall and the whole team had excitedly joined to connect with each other and talk about how incredibly we have performed during a time of crisis like this.
 
Also, we wouldn’t be able to do the work we do without solid collaboration tools for Internal Communication. We are using Slack, Google Hangouts, email and many other tools that cater to specific roles to keep each other updated about the latest developments.
 
We continue to reach out to our teams, to ensure that they are safe and well. We also ask for feedback to find out exactly what can be done to make their work from home life easier.
 
Town Hall

Our first ever Virtual Town Hall

Save your team from being disengaged:

 
Remote work can be quite exhaustive. It’s hard to stay motivated without the buzz of the office around you. There are chances that your team might feel shunned and lonely. We didn’t want that for our team, we wanted them to be connected and have that sense of belongingness even while working remotely.
 
So we encourage our team to have even the small meetings using video so that the human touch isn’t lost. Also, Slack has been an excellent tool that has helped our internal communications easier. We have created new slack channels on different activities or interests for people to talk and bond with others who have the same interests as them. For example, we set up a channel called #for-the-love-of-reading for bibliophiles to share and discuss about the books they have read. We also have channels dedicated to fitness, photography etc.
 
Virtual Coffee Meet is conducted every Friday, when everybody gathers virtually to celebrate the end of long week by playing some fun games like Pictionary, Dumb charades, Taboo, Bollywood character role play etc.
 
virtual coffee hour

Virtual Coffee Hour

 
One random icebreaker question that most people like to answer and talk about is posted on the random channel of slack every day. This helps in striking a conversation among the team members, they get to know each other on a personal level and moreover it’s absolute FUN!
 
slack conversation

Random Conversations on Slack

 
Our employee’s birthdays are special and we don’t want to miss celebrating it so we throw them a biggest virtual birthday party of all time. We send them a “Happy Birthday “video montage and host a super cool birthday party over a video call. This makes them feel loved on their special day.
 
virtual birthday

Virtual Birthday Parties!

 
To ensure that everybody doesn’t have the body in the seat mentality and to encourage them to get up off their seat and stretch, we roll out fitness challenges every week. For example, 1 minute plank challenge or how many Burpee’s can you do in a minute challenge. People enthusiastically participate in such challenges to keep their body fit. We are passionate in keeping our team in good mental health during tough times like this so we have collaborated with a Meditation App to provide them free meditation and yoga lessons for a month.

Accelerating the Learning Curve:

 
Though we had a lot of fun activities introduced to keep our team engaged and happy, we realized that it wasn’t enough to feed their soul for a longer haul. We wanted to introduce an initiative that helps them learn for a meaningful and lasting development. That’s when we came up with an initiative called “A Passionate Trail – Path to Unwind Latent Talents in Three Weeks“. The aim of the initiative is to encourage our team to make use of the extra time during the lockdown period to learn something that they were always passionate about. When this situation ends, when we get back to our routine, we wanted them to have the satisfaction of having completed a long yearned passion. Nearly 30 people have signed up for this initiative and are learning diverse artistic and technical skills like speaking Spanish, dancing Kathak, digital sketching, AI, Cloud Computing, React Native etc. Sharing our progress with each other and marking milestones together has kept us motivated during this learning journey.
 
learning journey

On boarding from Afar:

 
On boarding employees has become more tricky than ever but we had it all figured out. On boarding of employees for two key positions was done successfully amidst this crisis. All the paperwork was done digitally and the day before joining they are asked to share a introductory write up about them and a video stating how excited they are to work with us, this was shared with our employees so that they get to know about the new joiner before they even join. On the day of joining they were given a proper welcome by the whole team in a digital meet this helps them bond as in a personal meeting.

Don’t forget to Recognize and thank your team:

 
Our organization continues to nurture its appreciation rich culture by rewarding LinkedIn learning subscription to the employees who have performed well in the quarter even during these difficult times. We have a slack channel called #pCloudy-stars where team members can recognize and appreciate the efforts of their fellow workers. Also, Team Leads can send digitally made appreciation cards to the employees whom they find deserving. We use such simple yet effective ways to appreciate our people for their accomplishments and show our heartfelt thanks to them for their efforts.
 
These measures have helped easily transition to remote working without causing any inconvenience for the employees. As a result, the team is happy and productive while working from home. The work we are doing, helping our customers in these uncertain times without any disruption, gives us a sense of purpose and pride. We hope we swim through this crisis and bounce back to normalcy as early as possible. Let’s continue to keep ourselves and our people safe and connected till then.