Guest Post: Dallas to Dubai by Arun Murali

I am honored to feature a client of mine, CEO Arun Murali of Revele. Arun is an incredible leader and communicator. I asked him to share some thoughts that would be impactful for you, the reader. He leads a company that has been named to the Inc. 5000 list ranking as one of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. Revele has an international presence and provides an incredible service for the health care industry. Enjoy.

As a child, traveling back and forth to India to visit family, required a transatlantic flight to Europe and then a connecting flight to India. Being from one of the non-hub cities for major airlines in the US, the journey usually involved an initial flight to Chicago or New York and then the transatlantic flight over to London or Frankfort or Paris. If we were lucky, the flight from Europe to India usually landed at our ultimate destination, but on occasion, it required a connecting flight from another port of entry. Regardless, the journey over was a tedious one. As I grew up and eventually started a business with offices in India, it was the travel part that I enjoyed the least. It is never fun to sit on a plane for so many hours at a stretch, struggling to sleep next to strangers and ignoring turbulent air, eating less-than-desirable meals, and figuring out what movies I need to watch to get your mind off of things. Luckily airline experiences have improved. Now we have personal monitors with on-demand programming, power outlets for connecting phones or laptops, even wifi to make the journey a bit more tolerable. In many ways, the journey that was required to visit the offices in India became an analogy for how I approach leadership.

Truth be told, I have never been comfortable with long flights. I have probably seen too many plane crash movies. If the transatlantic flights weren’t tedious enough, then came the flights through the Middle East. Now, I can fly from the US to India in less time than it took before, but that requires you to take a longer flight between the US and the Middle East, and vice versa on the way back. The first time I took one of those flights I almost had a panic attack. The pilot told us our flying time would be 13 hours. I wanted to pull my hair out thinking of being on a plane for 13 straight hours. 13 hours before I would touch ground again. The thought was gut-wrenching. But, the experience turned almost the minute we got in the air. Once airborne, I realized there was nothing I could do and I was completely at the mercy of time. Then something interesting happened. Once I reconciled that the journey was necessary, my panic settled down. Instead of focusing on the tediousness of the journey, I started to find things that I could do to use my time effectively. These days, I travel the leg between Dallas and Dubai which is even longer at 15 to 16 hours of flying time. In fact, now, I almost hope that the flight won’t land on time so I can get something else done.

Here are three tips to how you can reframe your focus on a long journey:

Prepare for the milestones

As I mentioned, its easy to get bogged down into the fears we have about the journey. What if the flight is delayed?What if my bag doesn’t make it? What if I sit next to someone rude on the plane? Instead, remember that there was a reason for your journey. In business, it’s usually the objective we think will make us a more successful company. Once we remind ourselves of why it’s necessary to go through the trip, we can easily calm ourselves down and endure. This allows us to focus on milestones. Take quarters for example. When you focus your annual goals on milestones that can be arrived at on a quarterly timeframe, then you tend not to focus and panic on the ultimate objective. Then break those milestones down into behaviors. What do I need to do for the first quarter of a year – or the flight. In my case with travel, I would start to look at watching movies during the first meal of the flight. Perhaps after dinner, I would enjoy reading a few chapters from a book I was reading. I might even find time to turn on my laptop and prepare a few things for the meetings I would undergo when I was there. Sometimes there is no better time to focus on preparation than when you are on a long flight.

Unplug for a while

Of course, a good meal, long movie, or just time will make you too sleepy to focus. That is when it is time to just close your eyes. For some people, sleeping on a flight is easy. For people like me, that might not be the case. But unplugging is important. At work, as we work tediously to achieve ambitious targets, it’s good to hit the pause button, either to reflect on the progress made or to reset and figure out whether a pivot is required. If we don’t unplug and take a moment to rest, we might find that we have veered off course. We may even wear ourselves out, fear repeating the same experience, and keep from ever making the journey again. This is common in companies today where a poor experience working toward an objective made us never want to set goals again.

Refresh

In a flight, a long one, with a little time left, it is good to refresh. Take that trip down the aisle to the lavatory – splash some water on your face, brush your teeth, comb your hair, which has no doubt been disheveled to the level of embarrassment. Get your shoes on. Do some duty-free shopping. Watch that last episode of Veep that you know is too good to waste your focus anywhere else. The same is true in our work objectives. As we near the completion of a task, take the time to reflect – what few items remain that will help us get this complete and get that done right away. Now that we know that we are going to hit our objectives, or maybe even miss them a little, what do we need to do next. What went well with this objective that we can repeat on the next one? What did not go well that we might consider doing a bit differently? This is the opportunity to make sure that the next journey is ready to start on time. After all, the flight is almost done, but not completely over. It’s another good way to spend time on a lengthy flight.

On my trips to India, the time spent while I am there is short. The worlds of my team members don’t pause so that they can spend all their time with me. We get our meetings done. I make the big speech. Then it is time to let everyone get back to work. Before you know it, the visit is over and it is time for me to get home. In the old days, there was dread about that flight back, but now it is easy to take these 3 steps into consideration as I embark on the next journey, albeit a journey home. After all, being a leader also means moving quickly to the next objective.