What! Me Stressed?

It's Monday again. Piles of files and a mountain of work welcome you at work. Too many tasks, too little time, and you start shifting priorities. Slowly, the line between what you think is achievable and what you know isn't - between what you can finish and what you can't - is blurring. You can't take it. An adrenalin rush and then...

And then you are history. They call it 'Cortisol' - the stress hormone. It's the reason behind those uninvited headaches and uncalled for temper tantrums - severing more than just working relationships - and it's destroying your health.

Research links stress to six causes of death: heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis, and suicide.

Let's agree: stress isn't going anywhere. So, how you deal with it matters more than ever. Each person has his own way of coping with it. Twelve IT leaders share their stories.

Breathe In Work, Breathe Out Stress: V.Subramaniam, CIO, OTIS

In this fast pace world, the reality our lives is that we work in a professional, challenging, and performance-oriented environment. We are constantly under physical and mental stress as we are continually pushed to perform and succeed.

At the same time, I think it is necessary for us to remember that every company, every function, every team and every individual has strengths and limitations and that it is part of our job as CIOs to manage expectations mutually. Because it is when these expectations are not fulfilled that frustration, depression and agony are created. Naturally, these manifest as stress.

However, it's not the stress that kills us. It is our reaction to stress. It is our choice to be stressed or not. The reason for this stress is that we become slaves to desires and uncontrolled emotions such as hatred, jealousy, anger, etcetera. We feel powerless and limited in what we can do. But we should remember that one cannot control stress, but one can definitely manage it.

And in that lies the secret to staying healthy. Being healthy is necessity. Staying healthy is an art. Work-life effectiveness means being effective at work - as well as in life. Eating healthy food, following healthy diet and exercising all help to stay healthy and keep stress at bay.

I believe that if you are cool in stressful situation, you can turn around most situations and lead your team and your project to success. By being stressed, all that you are doing is adding more stress to the situation. How do you ensure a cool mind? Yoga. Yoga can help you to stay agile and meditation can elevate your soul to calmness. Combined, both can help tune your body, mind and soul and lend effectiveness to work and life.

Here is some food for thought from Patanjali. (Patanjali was the compiler of the Yoga Sutras, a major work containing aphorisms on the philosophical aspects of mind and consciousness):

When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds. Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.

On a more practical note, to continually be able to beat stress, I practice yoga. I also follow well-defined values and principles. I believe that life is a series of principles that need to be applied. If you practice these principles, you will profit from them. Principles are non-negotiable and they are a way of life for me. I practice yoga to stay fit mentally and physically, and meditate to stay spiritually fit.

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I also like to spend quality time with those close to me. I de-stress by spending memorable moments with my family. I love to visit places of worship and attend spiritual discourses. I also read motivational and spiritual books. I try not to bring the office home. This helps me effectuate a well-balanced work-life approach.

Professionally, I deal with stress as way of life. After all, it comes with the terrain. I like to spend quality time and efforts in leading, driving and managing objectives and goals. These lead to high degree of performance through effective teamwork. As a team, we also learn continually in order to imbibe best practices to achieve excellence in terms of performance. This approach helps manage expectations and deliverables - in addition of having effective communication and collaboration. At office, I practice what I call Management by Walking Around (MBWA). I do this to meet and interact with my team and internal users so that I can render service to all. For me, this is also one form of exercise that helps to de-stress.

I try to work with my team on maximizing our strengths to over come our limitations in order to create a winning situation. I believe in leading by example so I do not display any stress or signs of burn out to my team. I also groom them on leadership principles, and help them learn the art of de-stressing by being organized, focused and structured - besides giving them spiritual insights.

Finally, be what you are. Don't try to be what you are not. If you try to be what you are not, you will never be successful. You will always feel incomplete and unfulfilled. If you simply try to be what you are, you will have an incredible reawakening experience, a mystical transformation of consciousness. You will attain true and lasting peace and happiness. You will become one of a small elite group who realizes their full potential.

Remember: three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for.

-As told to Gunjan Trivedi

Living By the Gun

He lived by it. It took over his life. Work constantly demanded attention and was never satisfied -- until it burnt him out.

All that David Briskman, VP and CIO of Ranbaxy, wanted to do when he joined two start ups in Silicon Valley was to 'get things done.' There was just too much to do and he was constantly on his toes. "I burnt out. I realized I had to take stock of my life and redirect myself in a more balanced way," he recalls.

And he got back on that horse. The experience made him stronger and from then on he began to respect work pressure. "Today, I thrive on pressure and usually can do my best work under the gun. Pressure does not always lead to too much stress. Without it, I think we can get too relaxed," says Briskman.

Briskman says that the secret of being an inspirational leader is finding happiness in life and leading by example. "It is good to understand the capabilities and limits of people. When you make people responsible for too much, it can create a bad situation or help them can rise to the occasion," he says.

Briskman credits stress with being the best motivator for teams. "Sometimes your team should be stressed. When there is too much time at hand, there is an equal amount of distraction. You can achieve an incredible amount in a shorter period of time. It forces people to be focused and productive."

A firm-believer in work-life balance, for Briskman family comes first and it is important to make every effort to 'be there' for his family. A top priority in his long 'to-do' list, is that simple - yet easily forgotten - word: fun.

"Have fun, never get personal. Remember that this is work, definitely not your life. Hunker down and get things done. Prioritize the important and delegate the urgent," he says.

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From victim to victor, Briskman has made his weakness his strength. Today, Briskman stands by the old adage: when you look back at life, you'll never wish you had spent one more day at work or an extra meeting. But you will wish you had spent more time with your kids or gone for another vacation.

-Shardha Subramanian

Don't Work Yourself Up

What will I do if my servers crash? What if my DR plan fails? What if my team quits halfway through a project?

'If' is the operational word. In that word lies the seed of stress.

Satish Das, CSO, Cognizant Technology Solutions, knows this because he's been there. "When I had to trigger a business continuity plan as part of an annual BCP test, I came face to face with what they call 'burn-out'. It was extremely stressful. The thought of not being able to recover some projects made me break into a sweat," he says.

It also made him realize that stress has its roots in the mind, when there is a perpetual anticipation of a crisis. "I feel most burn outs happen because of unrealistic expectations from people around you and the promises you makes to meet those expectations. I've learnt to identify the sources of such expectations," he says.

He figured that there was no point in fretting over things that were not in his control. "I decided to work around my problems with all the passion I could gather. I trained as many people as possible in DR and created a second line of resource to manage a crisis," he says.

But to use this approach, Das believes it is important to be disciplined for the benefit of your subordinates. "If you chasing work 24/7, your subordinates will do the same. And then both will be completely stressed out."

But when stress does loom, Das beats it back with games - indoor on weekdays and outdoor games on weekends. He also jogs 5 km everyday and never misses an opportunity to watch movies with his family. He's happier because he believes in crossing a bridge once he gets to it.

-Shardha Subramanian

Take it or Leave it: Arun Gupta, Customer Care Associate & CTO, Shoppers Stop

Work pressure is a reality. It's the stress that is optional. It's the balance between work and life, this see-saw that continues to keep me on my toes.

There is no single aspect of the job that causes stress. It is always a combination of several factors. For me, the most challenging parts include cross-team coordination and dealing with vendors who over promise and do not deliver.

The problem is, when I am under severe stress, I tend to get aggressive. Occasionally, this hurts people. There was a point in my life, about a decade ago, when I took on a lot of stress. Eventually, it affected my ability to think rationally, my health and my family. It was more or less a burnout. That is when I realized that I needed to introspect. I asked myself where this stress was leading me. It took some hard decisions but I moved away from this adrenalin rush.

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Today, it takes effort to keep things this way, given the number of constituents exerting influence on the team and I. I try to keep my aggression under control with help of music and sometimes just walking alone. This helps me focus on the issue rather than people. On most days, I am able to shut shop by 7:00 pm. Over the weekends, I rarely spend more than a few hours working. There are exceptions and on such weekends I try to devote one day to the family. While I treat listening to music as a great stress-buster, I have developed nature photography as my passion. These two habits help me keep stress at bay.

Using my experience with stress management, I try to help my team with their stress. I also recommend leading by example. A word of caution though, stress cannot be an excuse for non-performance.

-As told to Gunjan Trivedi

Nip It in the Bud

CIOs aren't just made of people with great technology and man management skills. It's not just about beating project deadlines. It's also about accepting that some things can't be avoided. Certain things are inevitable - like stress. It's how you deal with it that differentiates you.

Eicher Motors', DGM & Head-IT Ajay Khanna, doesn't let stress build up. "The best way to handle stress is to take it head on, analyze the situation and the take necessary steps to deal with it immediately," he says.

Which is exactly what he did when a stressful situation screamed for attention. "We were observing strange network and application problems - stuff we had never anticipated or observed in the past. But, a positive attitude and a confident team helped in resolving the crisis and completing the activity - in time," says Khanna.

He believes in handling stress pragmatically. And for him taking frequent but short vacations is one way of approaching it. "At times it becomes difficult to spend time on a regular basis with my family, more so if I have been travelling or have been involved in critical projects. I prefer taking a break once in a quarter to spend some quality time with them and create work-life balance," he says.

When stress begins to take its toll, Khanna turns to Reiki. "I learnt Reiki on the behest of a friend. I started feeling better. While we attempt to combat stress by diverting our attention to other activities, our bodies silently absorb stress. This starts damaging our body over the long run. High blood pressure, headaches, arthritis, back pain and diabetes are some of the outcomes of stress. Reiki helps to remove this unknown accumulation of stress thereby cleansing the body and the mind," he says.

If that doesn't work, there's always Khanna's favorite hobby: cooking. "I enjoy making vegetable and chicken salads and garlic cheese breads. My favorite is making vegetable cheese omelettes which I learnt while observing a chef in Shanghai," he says.

-By Kanika Goswami

Take the Silent Monster Racing

Sleep wasn't peaceful anymore. For Animesh Singh, VP-IT Operations at Brickred, there was no mercy, work pressure kept mounting, he was getting crushed under it and there was no escape.

"I was becoming very temperamental, irritated and irrational - and I knew it. My mood swings were becoming common. I felt tired and low a lot of the time," he remembers.

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Slowly and steadily, stress gnawed its way into his life and became an intruder even in his household. "Other than my behavior, stress gradually started affecting my personal life. I began spending less and less time with my family," he says.

But what set the alarms off was when he started was losing interest in work. It was a gradual realization. "I realized that I was no more doing what I actually enjoyed doing," says Singh. "It was then that I decided to create some balance between my work and my life, so that I could enjoy both."

But just as stress took its toll slowly and chipped away at his life, it was important for Singh to understand that the road to recovery would also be slow.

He started by segmenting everyday issues into different compartments, attributing a separate thought to each. "This helps me analyze a situation rationally and prevents me from over-reacting and also helps me identify an apt solution," he says.

Recently, for example, Brickred had to move its entire datacenter. And, of course, it had to be done with minimum downtime. Singh says that it was terribly stressful for everyone in the team. But they did it in exactly two days. "All that was required was strategic planning," he recalls.

He also says that stress lies in the unpredictability that life has to offer. "It is not possible to foresee each and every upcoming issue. But, more often than not, it is a small problem blown out of proportion, solely by our imagination," he says.

And if logical reasoning fails to impress as his stress levels, Singh takes to car rallying. He says nothing detoxs him more than racing up the steep slopes of Leh and Ladakh.

Today, if a stressful situation makes its presence felt, Singh looks at it in the eye and says, "You have happened. Now what?"

-Shardha Subramanian

Ticked Off

Plan your work and work your plan, the saying goes. Here's another one: easier said than done. But it's worth doing says K.T. Rajan, Director-Operations IS & Projects Allergan India.

That's because working his plan allows him to move down to the next item on his to-do list. "When I have a list of things to do and I can't tick off some items, I get stressed. But I don't waste time mulling over it, instead I move on to the next task on my list," he says.

This style of work gives him a chance to catch a break. So that when he restarts, it is with renewed vigor. In most cases he says, "things work out."

But when things don't and stress takes over, Rajan finds comfort in surfing news sites - especially the offbeat ones. "Once you read something about the not-so-fortunate, you tend to have a positive flow of adrenalin," he says.

Another stress buster for Rajan is spending time with his family. He learnt the importance of this after he heard this story: "A busy dad comes home from work and his kid asks him how much money he makes.

When the father says he gets paid 30 dollars an hour, the child breaks his piggy bank, gives his dad 10 hard-earned dollars, and asks for 20 minutes," Rajan recounts.

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"If one wants to get worked up, one can get worked up over the smallest thing. Similarly, if you can keep your calm, you can wade through any chaotic situation," he says.

-By Balaji Narasimhan

Step 1: Admit IT

I am a CIO and I am stressed.

The solution to many of life's issues lies in first acknowledging that there is a problem, says S. Hariharan, Sr. VP-Infrastructure Services at iFlex Industries. "With stress, half the battle is won if one accepts that there is stress and you are willing to address the issue," he says.

Personally, admitting that he was stressed took serious introspection on his part. "In 1995, when we were implementing our product for our first few customers, we had about 50 resignations in five weeks. People who had sculpted the product, who knew product in and out, left the organization. I was left to manage multiple implementations with a set of completely new people. That's when I decided to seriously look into ways of coping with stress," he says.

When he had accepted that he was stressed, he quickly decided he had to do something. So, at the age of 45, he started learning Carnatic music. "The power of classical music combined with yoga brought about a dramatic change in my capacity to handle stress," he says.

Hariharan's also spends time with children with special needs. As part of its CSR initiative, iFlex Solutions identified challenged children it would like to help and spending time with these children gives Hariharan that rare insight into the magic of human nature, and helps him stay grounded, he says.

"Beating stress is not a one-time activity, it has to be continuous and conscious. One has to indulge in what one enjoys most, then the impact is best," he says.

-By Kanika Goswami

Playing Dodge-Ball with Stress: Abnash Singh, President, IT Operations Center of Excellence, UCB Pharma

My idea of managing stress is pretty straightforward: avoid. I try to avoid getting into stressful situations through a strong positive attitude. I think, agreeing to disagree is a good philosophy when your managing the stress created by opposing positions between people. As managers, we need to keep an open mind if we are to accept different points of view and perspectives. We also need to use an objective decision-making process to take fair decisions. When participants of a discussion see there are no sides or positions to take, stress levels automatically decrease.

At office, we approach work in a collaborative fashion. We encourage people to follow processes and plan their work accordingly. Mutually-agreed deadlines and organized work help reduce stress levels phenomenally. I believe that if you plan for the completion of a job through design rather than chance or destiny, stress will not really affect your life.

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On a personal front, I strongly believe that it is important to consciously pursue a work-life balance. I believe that once you recognize that different facets of your life require prioritization, work-life balance naturally emerges.

However, it is not like I had this outlook towards maintaining work-life balance right from the beginning. About 15 years ago, I was chugging along in the typically associated with the IT industry. Obviously, with work pressures the stress started to arise from project deadline pressures, meeting senior management's requirements and expectations, hectic travel schedules and long hours or meetings.

When you go through this kind of phase continually, your health and way of living are impacted the most. Soon, I realized that I had developed high blood pressure. The health problem coupled with long working hours did not help my family either.

This is when I had decided to take back control and enrolled into a gym. I soon discovered that this was a way to de-stress and maintain work-life balance. In just about three months, I not only shed about 15 kilos but also developed into a long distance runner. It still works for me.

Today, my daily 10-kilometer jog is among my most powerful energy re-vitalizers and removes stress. I strongly believe that everyone should have one such 'white-hot' passion to enable stress relief.

-As told to Gunjan Trivedi

Remember, This Too Shall Pass

Nothing in life is permanent, right? That means it isn't only the good stuff that comes with an expiry date - so do the bad times.

Unfortunately, it takes maturity to understand that. An important part of dealing with stress at the workplace is knowing that it will end, says Hilal Khan, Head-IT at Honda SIEL Cars.

"The older you become in your profession, the more your outlook to situations changes. When I look back, I feel that I was too stressed when I was young. Today, despite many more responsibilities, my ability to handle them with a 'different' outlook has changed the stress scenario," he says.

Khan takes this ability to put things in perspective a step further. "Imagine a situation where you don't have to prove ROI, where project schedules are open-ended and you have no team-related issues.

You'd be frustrated because you'd have nothing to do. There's a specific junction in your career when technology takes the back seat. The challenge is all about people management, expectation management, change management and conflict management. We must enjoy every bit of it rather then considering it stressful," he says.

But the mental shield does not always work and when that happens Khan has a reliable fix. At the beginning of his career, Khan says he put all his savings into a good music system. Every evening, he listened to pop or jazz at full volume. Today, he still enjoys listening to music, although to the more uplifting call of ghazals, and at lower volumes.

He also indulges in other activities that effectively take his mind away from the painful decisions that he has to sometimes take. His pastimes include palmistry, and, collecting pens and watches. "It started as a hobby, but now I have a pretty good collection," he says.

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But these are just props to help him stay the cheerful, positive-minded person that he is. At then end of the day, when Khan looks at the negative parts of his life, he takes a breath and blows optimism into his open palm because he knows that this too shall pass.

-By Kanika Goswami

Talk to Me

Communication. It goes beyond boundaries, it bridges differences and it helps beat stress.

For Tamal Chakravorty, CIO of Ericsson India, communication is a weapon that can conquer stress. This is a lesson he learnt early in his career, while he worked with Cargill India. One of the group's companies, Cargill Seeds, he recalls, was being sold to Monsanto, a biotechnology company. "With the exchanges between the CEO and I over the sale of assets, it was an extremely stressful time. I felt I had done a fantastic job evaluating the company's assets and negotiating with Monsanto for a sell-off. But the CEO felt that we may have over-absorbed costs. That's when I realized that communication, and more communication is the only way to beat stress that may hit you later," he recalls.

That gave birth to his methodology of handling stress: a four-step self-communication mechanism. "Whenever a stressful situation presents itself, I ask myself four questions:

• What is the task that is creating this stress?
• How long will this task last?
• Do I have enough ammunition to handle this stressful task?
• How important is this task in my career building process?

"This methodology usually works for me," he says. Armed with answers, he proceeds with the task at hand. But what takes Chakravorty's battle with stress out of the ordinary is his love for football. He started the 'Delhi Merchant's Cup' a football tournament for corporates in Delhi. He has initiated soccer and cricket tournaments at every corporate he has worked for. It doesn't end there - he also takes to the field.

After all, they don't just say 'all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy'.

-By Kanika Goswami

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Home work Doesn't Pay

Problem: There's work and then there is more work. And some more. It never seems to end.

Solution: take it home.

Between the problem and the solution, work has thrown the family out of business.

What is missing is a sense of balance and the need to restore it.

That is something that Falgun Shukla, senior GM-IT of Hikal, has mastered over time. "Generally, I do not extend my working hours too much. I prefer to spend time with my family visiting a temple or the market with them," he says.

His family is quite tuned to his moods. When they find him sitting alone and uncommunicative, it is a sign that he is stressed. But that's an infrequent scene in the Shukla household, thanks to his strong belief in maintaining work-life balance.

So how does he ensure that he keeps work at work. "Planning and scheduling are prime factors in reducing stress," says Shukla. He adds that he always includes extra time for contingencies when he makes a commitment.

However, the turning point came for Shukla before he joined Hikal. In his previous job, where he had spent around 18 years, Shukla felt his seniors ignored him. "I was so keen on quitting that I was willing to take up any job just to get away from the company," he says.

That's when he realized that he needed some equilibrium. He looked for a work environment that was friendly because that builds understanding, he says. "My stress level depends more on my comfort level with my seniors. I do not get stressed when I am comfortable because I can explain my problems to my seniors," says Shukla.

And that's what he practices with his juniors. "I tell them to talk to me whenever they have an issue, and this helps them beat stress," he says.

But when stress does get to him, he plays the tabla - on his table at work. His fingers set a rhythm on his table making way for soulful introspection in the solitude of his cabin - in harmony with work and life.

-By Balaji Narasimhan