Those 7 Hours

 

Those 7 Hours

A moment comes to every one where one has to take a quick decision. These moments will be unique and there is a great chance that sometimes these may open doors for some great opportunities. At those situation it is completely with YOU how to react to that situation and manage the change and plan. Not all times we get enough time to analyze the change and do an impact analysis and then act on it, either to accept or reject. With this context set, let me share my experience with such a moment and the opportunity that tapped me, on 28th Oct 2014, during the travel [USA-UK-Hyd] back from PMI North America Leadership Institute Meeting (LIM) 2014 

As per the schedule I finished the LIM sessions, finished all the shopping and then headed towards the Phoenix airport. Enjoyed the beautiful sunset on the way to airport. Reached the airport and said bye to my friend and walked in to the check-in counters. As I have plenty of time, I was walking slowly to the gate holding the boarding pass. I was prepared that I will be alone…  But a few steps later, I saw Manoj, President, PMI North India chapter. He was also travelling back to Delhi, India in the same flight. He conveyed the message that the flight is delayed by 30 min. So there we had a quick cappuccino. There was a possible risk of missing the connecting flight. Already there’s very less time, on top of that another 30 minutes delay, it’s sure that I will miss the connecting flight. But I had no other option but to reach London and see what could be done. This is where we say “we will cross the bridge when it comes”. When Manoj and I went to the boarding gate, we saw Tajas, PMI Regional mentor for Region 11, already waiting there along with his daughter for the same flight and from there flying to Mumbai. Manoj and Tejas have their connecting flights with 7 hours wait time at London.

While boarding I checked with the staff regarding the delay. A standard answer came from them saying that pilot will cover it up during the flight. We were already running 45 minutes late. And it will be too much to expect to get to London an hour before and still be able to meet the time to catch Hyderabad flight. Proceeded to boarding leaving that tension to landing time at London.

With the timeline we can clearly see that we are going to miss the flight for sure. As we were thinking about the next plans, I heard pilot saying all the connection flights with shorter gap were rebooked through a different route. And he also said that the details will be given by the ground staff. Finally we reached London and as expected it is already late to catch Hyderabad flight. So rushed to the counters to confirm our rebooking. We were given the next earliest flight to Hyderabad via Delhi. There are 7 hours to Delhi flight. Along with me another three people who came along to these counters and working on the same. They are Kalyan, Deepa & Archana. Our introduction happened over the counters while taking the rerouted boarding passes. As we had lot of time we thought it would be great if we can go out and move around in London streets. But that needs UK transit VISA. We only have feeble chance of getting a transit visa, but we didn’t want to leave that chance. Soon after we got the connecting flight tickets, we rushed to UK boarder counter.

Our confidence is that we have Kalyan, who has US green card and also UK visa, and Archana has US citizenship. So with these two along with Deepa and myself, as a team we can request for a transit visa. Sometimes we need to think Out of the Box, and do some experiments. If not we will end up doing the same old things and you will not be able explore any new thing in life. Finally we went to UK boarder counter and explained him the situation and could convince him to give us the transit visa for 24 hours. With this we could walk on the streets of London. This was an exciting experience like doing a new project with a very much boxed timeline and open scope and completely new team members working together towards a common goal. In our team the decisions were taken very sharp. Used all the resources available, calculated risks and revisited them in a periodic intervals. Kept reminding the end goal with in the team again and again. Kept motivating each other, appreciating the skills and strengths of each other. As the team was also very new to each other, best utilized the idle time to discuss and understand more.

Finally we could travel in Bus, walked on the roads and travelled back by underground train with in given time. Had a great experience, which was not at all in the scope when we have started our journey. So Be ready for CHANGE and handle carefully to get the BEST out of it!!