The myth of indispensability
Summary
In teams, no one is, or should be, indispensable.
In about five weeks, I’m heading on a three-week trip to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park—a wilderness that spans three countries: South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia. I realise that trips like this are, in effect, three trips for me. I’ve been planning and anticipating this trip for a couple of years now. I made my bookings about 10 months ago. Since the start, I’ve let my imagination run wild on a trip in my head. In five weeks, I’ll go on the real trip. And when I return, I’ll edit my photos, write blogposts and revisit the trip to savour it, one more time. One trip equals three trips for me.
My work offers me some of the dividends I seek from life - time to myself, with friends and family and in the wilderness. Indeed, that’s what I work for. On this trip, I have my friend and colleague, Nag, for company. I’ve spent about 18 years at Thoughtworks now, and it’s incredible how rarely I’ve been on such trips with friends from work. It’s one thing that I don’t have many friends at work. Most colleagues are excellent teammates and splendid human beings, but that relationship often ends with the project-based nature of our work. It’s easy to mistake the camaraderie in teams with lasting friendships.
One of the other reasons I haven’t travelled enough with colleagues is that very few people are willing to step away from work for so long. To be clear, this reticence isn’t limited just to colleagues. Few people, including family, plan as far ahead for breaks as long as the ones I take. There’s a feeling among many that their work, or their teams, could come to a standstill without them. On days that I take myself too seriously, I harbour such misapprehensions as well.
But the truth is that no one is ever indispensable. Let me illustrate what I’m saying. Over the last few days, I’ve been following the test series between England and India. Indian cricket hit a low, a few months back, as they suffered their first home defeat, a whitewash no less, in a dozen years. New Zealand, a team that hadn’t won a test on Indian soil since the 80s, had breached our fortress. In the weeks that followed, the Indian team toured Australia. Despite being even at the bookmakers’ table, the Indian team, replete with the world’s most famous cricketing superstars, succumbed 3-1 against the Aussies. Mid-series, R Ashwin, the world’s leading offspinner and bona fide Indian hall-of-famer, announced his retirement. Fans, such as myself, were at panic stations.
A few weeks back, when the Indian Premier League was in its final stages, two other greats announced their departure from test cricket. Rohit Sharma, the captain, and Virat Kohli, our charismatic batter, hung up their test whites. All of us fans returned to our panic stations with vigour. Indian cricket couldn’t go on without Ro-Ko, could it? How would we win without our two most accomplished batters and the best offspinner of the generation? They were indispensable!
We were wrong. The board appointed Shubhman Gill as the new captain. They moved cricket’s greatest underachiever, KL Rahul, to Rohit’s opening spot. Young Washington Sundar took the spot Ashwin would otherwise have played in. In the first three tests of the England tour that have unfolded thus far, Rahul, Gill and Sundar have matched the peaks of Rohit, Kohli and Ashwin. It’s a small sample size, no doubt, but many fans are feeling secure again. The replacements are young and could form the nucleus of a team that plays together for a long time.
The story of Ashwin, Rohit and Kohli’s sudden departure is one we’ve seen in many sports and spheres. Even in cricket, people of my age remember the summer of 1996. After a squabble with the team leadership, Navjot Sidhu withdrew from that year’s tour of England. Sanjay Manjrekar, the Mr Technical of that era, was out with an injury. Those exits paved the way for two future captains of the Indian team: Rahul Dravid and the Prince of Kolkata, Sourav Ganguly. Both young men had a sparkling series, and no one missed Sidhu and Manjrekar thereafter.
Indispensability is a myth. Someone always puts their hands up in a team. If you’re critical enough for a team’s success, then your job is to help your team thrive even in your absence. Achieving such resilience, however, takes effort. It requires an investment in knowledge, processes and systems that enable and encourage team members to back each other up. More importantly, though, we must recognise that myth of indispensability. If we were so indispensable, we wouldn’t see the sudden, overnight layoffs that our industry practices with gay abandon.
As I’ve said earlier, most of us are mere cogs in the machine. I, for one, revel in my insignificance. If I’m insignificant enough to disappear from work for weeks, then I am indeed vulnerable to a layoff. But am I significantly more susceptible than others who take leave with extreme caution? I don’t know, and I can’t judge. A question to answer in the future, I reckon. What I do know is that in the present, my insignificance offers me time for the things that bring me joy - a game of cricket, time with my family, reading, writing, and of course, time out in nature.
Do I have any advice for you? Not really, but I have some thoughts to share. Our companies will continue without us, even as we grow older. Our kids will fly the nest. There may not be a tomorrow for the dreams we don’t choose to live. Friendships, family and time for ourselves should be more important than the hustle. Do you need a break? Take that break, then. Take yourself less seriously. The world will go on, just fine.