Project Story: “Vivek, I Trust You on This Project”

Project Story: “Vivek, I Trust You on This Project”

In 2018 at ZS, I signed up to manage the operations of a tech project. During a business visit to the US East Coast, I was invited to the West Coast by the Principal of the tech project to meet him in person. He told me, “I was uncertain about your capabilities, but now after meeting you, I am certain you can take up this task.” I also made a mental promise to deliver to the best of my ability. 

However, within six months, things took a turn for the worse for me on this project. I was relieved from the project and received negative reviews. Unfortunately, this happened during my promotion cycle. And then in the next cycle despite performing very well on my other non-tech project, I wasn’t promoted because two consecutive cycles of consistent performance are required. I took this as a sign that my time was up and decided to leave the company.

Fast forward to 2024, I am now leading not one but five tech projects, handling both operations and setup. Is this magic? No, it’s firstly due to the opportunity provided by the ZS tech Principal, and secondly, it’s my persistence. While working on the tech project at ZS, I gave 150% of my time and energy, but things didn’t go in my favor for reasons beyond my control.

However, the learning was mine, and no one could take that away from me (a little filmy dialogue since I watched a Bollywood movie just before writing this post). When I joined EVERSANA in 2021 and was assigned to a tech-ops project, I had no fear. I knew what to do and how to execute it. And good work on one project lead to staffing on two, then three and then five over couple of years!

To this day, I am grateful to the Principal for taking a leap of faith (I’m a fan of the movie Inception) and giving me the opportunity.