Management of Career and Business

Focus HR on Process Improvement - Brad Power - Harvard Business Review

2012-02-09T18:45:00.000+05:30

Focus HR on Process Improvement - Brad Power - Harvard Business Review:

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Preventive Maintenance to Keep on Productivity

2012-02-03T12:42:00.000+05:30

To keep productivity high, it is essential that all machine be maintained in good working condition for which preventive maintenance, before any breakdown in the machine, is essential which gives multiple benefits, the most important being maintenance of production schedules.

Preventive Maintenance to Keep on Productivity

Challenges of Virtualization before established World of Business

2012-01-30T15:18:00.001+05:30

Internet has revolutionized humanity like nothing else could do in the human history. Now, with evolved virtualization through Internet, every individual of the world may become everywhere in the world all the time and be effective in accordance to his/her the best of his/her capabilities. Lying in my bed in India at midnight, I could ask my friend in America lunching with her family, how she was doing with her backache with a feel of sitting next to her.

Such a globalization of each willing individual all over the globe, is affecting life of the whole humanity and virtual collaborations of such individuals are challenging the established business world with inducement of labor pains in the latter and they are thinking of fighting it back instead of aligning with the new development to gain benefits of it for their businesses.

Collaborative versus Monolithic Enterprises

Human resource of a business organization is the most important asset of itself, with the quality and quantity of it being capable of reaching the organization to the top of the world or dumping it in to the ocean. Concept of collaborative enterprising led by Google, Wikipedia, etc has the possibility of attracting the best talents towards it, leaving the established monolithic business enterprises into wilderness, unless they too gear up themselves to adopt the idea of collaborative enterprising into their working. Good news is that some so-far monolithic enterprises are changing themselves to attract personnel to have open collaborations with them.

Important benefits of virtual participation of people with business enterprises are low capital and recurring costs to the enterprises as each collaborator gears up his/her own resources to collaborate instead of depending on the enterprises. This amounts to the virtual collaborators’ participation not only as human resources but also as capital investors for the enterprises. In return, this provides a freedom to the collaborators to work when they like to work and also of working with any or many organizations of their individual liking.

End of Capitalism

Efficiency, effectiveness and innovation are other benefits the enterprises have due to their open selectivity of virtual collaborators. With these benefits to the collaborative enterprises, the monolithic enterprises are going to be in-competitive with ultimate failures. Sticking to monolithic structure of an enterprise in the face of virtualization of the world humanity is a sure sign of capitalistic bias of the enterprise. Therefore, spirit of collaborative enterprising is going to lay the capitalism in its long-awaited coffin.

Writing on the Wall

Internet connectivity and hence virtualization of the humanity is like an engraving on the rock of time which is going to deepen as well as widen with passage of time. Therefore, none can afford to remain isolated or unaffected by this development. Those who establish synergy with this shall survive happily, with all others slated to be buried under sands of time. Let every individual and enterprise understand this writing on the wall of human history.

Optimization and Extension

What monolithic enterprises must do are optimization and extension of their operations with view of virtual collaboration with individuals scattered all over the globe. So far, they had been working behind raised walls and deciding on their respective profitability by themselves through cutting costs or raising prices. This won’t be possible now, forcing the monolithic enterprises to have sea changes in their work cultures. Material values they had been creating through their built-in workforces and rewarding them accordingly, have to be extended globally in the both directions. Surely, they are not going to be losers in the game.

Business Ethics and Morality

Virtual collaboration provides more opportunities to both – the individuals and the enterprises to be unethical and immoral in his/her/their dealings for short term gains. For the enterprises being with a higher bargaining power may find it easy to cheat the individuals for short term gains. Such a tendency of any individual or enterprise is going to prove suicidal due to global connectivity of the affected people. This is going to put a higher premium than ever before on business ethics and morality of individuals – a good reason for the sensible humanity to cheer up.

People, Politics and Government: Why Business Corporations under Governments in India are Ailing

2012-01-27T01:53:00.000+05:30

officials of business organizations under government in fields of public services keep on making the organization and the people to suffer with gains for themselves. Unless the above-said tendencies are changed to like those of private enterprises, the organizations shall remain ailing and failing in their officially-stated objectives.

People, Politics and Government: Why Business Corporations under Governments in India are Ailing

Setting and Defining the Goal for an Achievement

2012-01-23T02:35:00.000+05:30

Success is an outcome of a complex combination of many things. But its way is straight and simple –

1. Set and define your goal,

2. Plan the strategy,

3. Put your best efforts, and

4. Persist even after transient failures.

Here, in this article, I shall be dealing with the first ingredient of success – setting and defining the goal. Other aspects of success shall be dealt with one by one in later posts.

What is a Goal

A result in terms of preset quantity and quality for being achieved within a given time frame is how a goal could be understood. It has been found psychologically productive if the goal is given an expression particularly in form of a question, such as – ‘How do I author 50 articles in this month?’ In this frame, the goal is authoring of 50 articles in the month, but its phrasing in form of the question puts a psychological pressure on the mind of the person to find various ways of achieving the goal.

A friend suggests to create a visual form like a picture, chart, etc, for the goal and hang it on the wall in front of your work-desk as a continuous reminder helps a lot in achieving it. This may prevent your mind from loitering and wasting time elsewhere.

Important considerations in the setting of the goal are discussed here.

1. Set the bar high, yet feasible

The target should be good enough to keep a pressure on the person’s mind to keep him/her active and alert, for this the level of achievement should be high enough. But, on the other hand, it should not be that high as to convey to the person’s mind that it can’t be achieved and make it to give up making efforts.

In case the goal is not achievable in a single stroke, its sub-steps in form of quantum jumps must also be set in the goal itself.

2. Acknowledge obstacles on the way

No big target is easy to achieve and without obstacles on the way. These obstacles need be precisely identified for finding ways of their elimination from the path to the goal. Brushing aside obstacles as minor irritants may prove costly on the critical path of achieving the goal. So, find them, ponder over their elimination and act accordingly before these prove as stumbling blocks for you in achieving the goal.

3. Quality of goal

How much the person values the goal determines his/her dedication to achieve it. So, the goal should be in a field that the person loves to do and treats it as highly respectable. Goals such s those add respectability to the person’s status are easily adopted and adhered to by persons. Goals related to achieving good health, a performance level in a sport, a merit in the University examination, etc, are some examples that add respectability to the person in his/her society.

4. Avoid fantasies

Fantasies for their thrills often attract mind easily but these prove perilous to confidence when their reality comes to surface. In my opinion, those with their minds on ideological quotations, etc. develop more fantasies around them and in their minds. Reading quotes and getting some occasional inspirations from them may be alright, but relying on them as guiding lights and ways for achievements prove futile. Every solution to a problem is always subject to circumstances of the individual while quotations are of general nature hence can’t provide solutions.

5. Progress chart

A simple chart to keep track and display current progress is an essential part of a goal setting and planning, but the chart should not be cumbersome in updating and become a project in itself and hence a source distraction from the goal. Keep it handy for updating with actions on the project daily for a short duration project like those of a few weeks, or weekly for long duration projects.

Talking too Great Things Imperils Conduct

2012-01-21T09:59:00.000+05:30

Each of us has his/her own imperfections for circumstantial compulsions, ambitions for name, fame and wealth, lack of guidance from elders and most importantly for misguidance by many others in contact. When one comes to realization of these imperfections in him/herself, a desire for a change for the better is the natural outcome. With this desire, he/she looks around for guidance. The quotes from great minds of the past available from books provide him/her much of the wanted solace. In this solace, he/she misses the realization of how much of these ideological quotes are adoptable in his/her own life and he/she blindly using and spreading such quotes.

An Example from Real Life

An online friend of mine for over 5 years always writes very inspiring quotes from her own mind as well as of great minds of the world. Her most favourite topics are health and wellness, morality in conduct, and social relationships including sensuous love. Everybody coming in her contact gets highly impressed by her, resulting into a huge number of friends close to her.

I think I came in closer contact with her than most others, hence came to know reality of her life. She has imperiled her health beyond recovery by her bad habits like smoking, drinking, over-eating, etc, she declares her open love to too many of her friends with no body sure of her real love.

The Analysis

Her example compelled me to ponder over what is that thing that makes a person to behave differently from his/her words, and reached the conclusion that using too great words with realization their adoption in real conduct being impossible makes the person’s mind to be in compromise with difference in words and conduct of the person. This mental compromise plays to create more gap in words and conduct of the person.

Firstly, since his/her words become independent of conduct, these keep on becoming more and more ideological and impossible to be taken to life. His/her own mind flies high to even cross the skies in use of words. Quotes from great minds of the world prove a big aid to his/her thoughts on selection of words for saying to others. Secondly, his/her conduct being detached from his/her words feels free to go to any level, which may lead to disasters in his/her life.

The World of Quotes

Many persons in the world have been in the business of creating quotes for various reasons of their own. This began with ancient minds, like Socrates, preaching others to stick to morality and how it was practicable in their respective lives. They never created words for being used as quotes, but their words are considered quotable by others much later than their lifetimes. Their words are of great value but subject to individual’s circumstances. No words or way of life is applicable to all the circumstances people face in their real lives.

Second group of creators of quotes are spiritualists and religious preachers all over the world, who intentionally create high-level quotations to misguide people to come to their respective folds or schools of thoughts they run as their business for earning name, fame and wealth for themselves. Creating quotes for preaching to others is their commercial activity, but they put these words in such ways that others don’t realize their commercial realities. Such preachers, indeed, consider all other human-beings of sub-human level inferior to themselves, and try to have them as cattle in courtyards of their respective Gurudoms, as status symbols for them. Many such preachers have millions of disciples tied in their courtyards. Their purpose of creating unfathomable quotes is to keep the minds of disciples in a state of appreciation with unfathomable confusion.

What is the Desirable way

For an improvement in lifestyle, after a realization of own deficiencies and will to change, is to go in small steps through her own inclination of mind and with due considerations of own circumstances and limitations. No great words or setting high goals of ideological nature come to rescue for any individual.

A friend of mine weighing 95 kg set a target for herself to come down to 80 kg within a few months through some idealistic prescriptions which she came know of through her readings. This has been going for about a year with frequent deterioration in her health and with no decrease in her body weight.

The most important realization by the person willing to change is anticipation of obstacles in his/her way for an improvement. It is a matter of commonsense that no problem can be resolved without its clear identification. Therefore, unless a person identifies obstacles in his/her way for the desired changes, the obstacles remain there and the person fails to change in-spite of his/her best intentions and efforts.

Seven ways of winning a Concurrence

2012-01-18T16:25:00.000+05:30

As social animals, our successes depends on winning concurrences oh others we are dealing with. A few well known ways of winning concurrences are –

Compelling others,
Manipulating others,
Persuading others through reasoning,
Impressing others, so that they don’t refuse to concur,
Negotiating a compromise for an exchange of concurrences,
Pleasing others with your service, manners, etc and finally
Moving others to show mercy.

In some cases, more than one of these ways may work simultaneously, while in some others, reason of a concurrence may be different for the persons involved in the concurrence.

Then, I was recently married and had to take frequent leaves from duty to attend to my ailing wife. When I approached my boss for leave once again on the same ground, he granted it but warned me that I had taken too many leaves in then recent times and i would not be granted any more leaves for the next three months. The boss was friendly with all of us young subordinates of his, so I replied in light vain, “Sir, you never gave me any leaves, but I took them, and will take again if I need”, with a wide smile on my face. He burst with a laughter, “Naughty boy”.

Different persons conduct themselves in different ways under different circumstances. So, for winning a concurrence, you need to understand the other person nd create circumstances congenial for a concurrence. Of course, your genuineness is always a must and appreciated generally. Now, I deal with the above-said seven ways, one by one.

1. C 1. Compelling others for concurring

This is the way of rulers and of those who have little respect to human value of equality of treatment to others as you would like for yourself. All and under all circumstances are not capable for using this way of winning a concurrence. For the civilized humanity, this is the beastly way where might is right applies. Its modern version is political and administrative corrupt practices.

Compelling a person to yield through applying a disciplinary norm is different from simply compelling through force or terror. This falls under third way listed above.

2. 2. Manipulating others for concurring

I think this way is highly prevelant in India since ancient times. Brahmins, religious preachers, so-called saints, sanyasis and sadhus, etc manipulate others psychologically with their dress and other outfits, display of their so-called divine links, false promises for bestowing their blessings for the latter’s welfare, and other manipulative tactics such as divine terror, etc to make them to yield to their desires but without directly asking for. And lastly, they say that they don’t ask for anything but people give them on their own which they accept as divine gifts.

Another class using the same tactics are called cheaters, but tactically there is no difference between cheaters and above-said divine representatives. Both aim at leading lavish lifestyles of their choices on others’ hard-earned money without doing any productive work by themselves. At one time not very long ago, nearly 50 percent of Indian population was involved in this practice. At one time, Boddha religion persuaded millions of youths to become monks and enjoy their lives without working under the same manipulative tactics. With spreading education in masses, people are gradually understanding such manipulative tactics and not yielding. But still, it continues to a great extent.

3. 3. Persuading others through reasoning

Persuading others through use of reasoning or logic is what is required by most of the upcoming intellectuals to establish their authority as a righteous person in the eyes of others coming in their contact. This may be with or without any authority with you. When you do it without any authority you need to do it as a social service to educate people on right conduct and morality etc.

When you have some authority of imposing discipline on others, again you need to be logically right in teaching discipline to those under your control. For this, you need to be self-disciplined first to inspire your subordinates to follow suit. Of course, if some one does not behave, you may go for punitive measures to enforce discipline. Executives and managers in business organizations are empowered with such authority.

Im4. Impressing others for concurring

This is the most humane and intellectual way of getting concurrence of others on your views on any matter, but it is time consuming and your integrity is a prerequisite. For this, you need not to ask for a favor for concurrence from anyone but build your image of a trustworthy person dedicated to your objectives. Once, such an image is in the air, people treat you and your words with reliability and trustworthiness and they concur on whatever you say. But you must be careful in not misusing this trust of others in you and say anything superfluous.

Persuading through reasoning discussed above makes a good beginning of creating such an impression of trustworthiness.

5. 5. Negotiating a compromise for an exchange of concurrences

‘Give and take’ is the right way particularly of the business world that may be applied to social fields also for winning others’ concurrence by providing yours to them on some other issues. But this is just a bargain.

P6. Pleasing others with your service, manners, etc

One way of getting what you want from others is through pleasing them by your good services or sweet words. Poor and needy persons having some talent in them often use this way for their survival through help from others. In olden times, kings used to be pleased by various kinds of artists to get their favors for survival.

M7. Moving others to show Mercy

Finally, there are persons - poor, needy yet having no talents with them to please others to get their favors, they resort to display of their pitiable conditions to affluent persons to get something from them as their charitable acts. Such persons are often called beggars, the lowest level profession of humanity, yet it exists.

Impress Others to Succeed Fast

2012-01-15T14:46:00.000+05:30

In working at home, society or in an organization, it is your impression on others that works for all the 24 hours a day, seven days a week while you hardly work for even 50 percent duration of this. Therefore, it is your impression on others that matter more than your actual working in bringing down success to your feet. Since, collaborative working has been enhanced in modern societies and business organizations, importance of influencing others with your personality and functionality has also increased.

To expand your influence, don't limit yourself to narrow responsibilities of yours, but interact with all those coming your way to understand their problems and help them whatever you can. The measure of your good impression on others is how many persons come to you for your advice on their own problems. Impression on others is for three reasons principally -

Your personality - alertness, smartness and physical characteristics of your person,
Your natural way of working - decisiveness, aggressiveness, harmony of relationships, technical expertise, etc.
Your tactical moves to impress others more that your natural impression.

Physical features of a person are more or less naturally gifted to him/her with slight margins for improvements. The most important factor that makes your personality is your health that in turn affects everything of yours and your impression. So, first of all, pay good attention to your health in a natural way without developing stresses for it and inviting more of health problems. Remember, a general alertness is a sure indication of good health both ways - mental and physical, while muscular power is indicative of only good physical health only and may imperil your mental health.

Other things that matter are your straightness in sitting and standing, swiftness in walking, clarity in speaking, looking directly in eyes of while talking to somebody, and most importantly welcoming others with a smile.

A person has a natural way of working but that may be improved upon through training and conscious efforts by the person himself based on written guidance in this regard. Two most important factors that affect your functioning are -

How much disciplined you are, and
How much harmony you have in your thoughts, words and actions.

Indeed, both of these are mutually inter-related and may be considered as parts of each other in a general sense. To put these in the simplest words is to say how much morality you like to pursue in your functional life.

Now, coming to the thirds aspect of impressing others through strategic moves, I notice that this has become more prevalent in today's business world than in routine life. You need to learn about these strategies at least to safeguard your own interests if not for harming others by dominating others through creating a better impression of yours in the organization. I shall be dealing some important strategies here one by one.

1. Do what others ignore to do

In every business functioning, there are always slips and omissions in working of most of the executives and managers, be on the look out for such lapses of your colleagues and superiors and do them by yourself without saying a word about these. Let people notice these acts of yours by themselves. This way, they would appreciate you without getting hurt about their lapses.

2. Think in advance of others

Problems are always there in an organizational working, and there are persons to take care of these. But they do so after the problem has come to surface. If by any means, you can foresee a problem before it is faced and make a note to your colleagues and superiors about this, your foresight shall be highly appreciated by all concerned.

I myself used this technique when I began my engineering career in 1972 at Durgapur Steel Plant as a maintenance engineer with shift duties. During my duty hours, whenever I had some free time, I used to take a round of the whole plant under my jurisdiction and look at functioning of various machines to foresee their problems and make notes of these in the logbook of shift working for others to take note of and take corrective steps. This reduced a lot of breakdowns in the plants and everybody concerned felt happy about these fore-sights.

3. Act on what you think before anybody else does so

In an organizational working, executives and managers are paid to think and act. It often happens that one thinks of making some improvement while somebody else acts on the improvement and gets the credit. Therefore, whatever comes to your mind, keeping it to yourself, act on it fast even if its effectiveness is doubtful. This way, you experiment with a new idea, learn more of the problem and become a researcher in your own right.

4. Don't say anything that can't be prove by you

The biggest part of job of executives and managers is use of words that are disused, misused and properly used. Limit your words to proper usage only and say only what you can rightfully prove and assert ultimately. Keep your logic and reasoning ready in advance before a discussion takes place on such an issue. In case of a doubt, don't put forward your guesswork but ask for some time to think over and come up with a solution. Put your time on this and finally come up with a sure-shot solution.

5. Admit your mistake fast

Each of us may commit a mistake. Moreover, more a person works and faster a person decides, more mistakes he might commit. It is no sin. So, admit your mistake at the moment you realize it before anybody pointing out it to you. This saves time and other resources in the mistake affecting its derivative decisions. People generally appreciate admitting mistakes by others without any ill-will against them.

6. Negotiate a compromise

Nothing is absolutely true or false in the world but subject to individual circumstances. Therefore, never stick on a doubtful assertion of yours but negotiate a compromise fast enough before anything is forced on you. People appreciate when you make them feel victorious and are willing to be cooperative with you.

7. Collaborate with as many as possible

Organizational success depends on collaborative working. So instead of monopolizing on credit for a certain performance let others share it with you in the larger interests of yours and the organization. Discuss the problems even with your subordinates and encourage their suggestions for a wide collaboration of solving problems.

8. Provide others with chances to improve

Whether they are your superiors, colleagues or subordinates, all are prone to have shortcomings and may commit mistakes. Instead of hurting them on these, give them your frank feedback and suggestions for improvements for their considerations and let them decide on their actions free from you. People generally want to improve their respective performances and appreciate guidance if not forced on them.

9. Try being a role model for others

Without asserting your rights to inspire others, try your best to be an ideal person what you would like to be if everything becomes possible to you. It is almost the same attribute I discussed above about being disciplines and a moralist.

With these nine points in mind, I am sure you are well set to win the world in your favor. All the best to you.

Make Your Work-desk Well Defining to your Personality

2012-01-13T03:29:00.000+05:30

A work desk of a person is a reflection of his/her personality and his/her style of working. Convenience of the individual while working is the most important factor about condition of work-desk and this depends on differences individuals have with each other. Once a boy of my family began arranging things on my work-desk that often is scattered with books, loose papers, a number of pens and pencils, etc leaving little space for putting any thing new or even hands on the table. I had to ask him not to touch anything because I work in this condition and know where to find what in case of a need. The computer case often remains open for checkups and temporary re-setting. In-spite of my knowing that this looks shabby, I can’t help it. This reflects on my own personality as highly disorganized yet functional in-spite of heavy odds before me. I confess things could be organized better even in my home office now.

I am not just what is projected here. During my working in official positions, my desk used to be clean with no pending papers of other things. Of course, there used to be staff to take care of my office organization to suit the needs of all concerned.

Ideally speaking, there can’t be a standard setup or arrangement of things for a work-desk. It is related to psychology of the person rather than an idealized layout. It also depends whether the work-desk is for an individual or belongs to many for joint operations with the two situations demanding quite different prerequisites. In a joint working environment, things should be rule-based for everyone to understand and comply with considerations of mutual convenience.

The branch of psychology that studies optimization of working environment for a good performance is known as ‘Environmental Psychology’. This science deals with working furniture, color arrangement, sitting postures, illumination, house-keeping, etc of the work-desk and is more relevant to group-working rather than working of an individual, although some features may be equally beneficial for both the situations.

Some common, yet generalized, considerations for work-desk may be enumerated as that follows.

Avoiding Disturbances

Other persons not directly related to your work either unnecessarily disturb your working or distract your attention from work. So the first requirement of a work-desk is its isolation from general view. If some passersby can’t be avoided overlooking the work-desk, their passage must be on the right side. If a person passes at the back, the performer is induced by his/her curiosity to look at who is passing. If the person passes through the front, he/she disturbs in the working. The left hand side is always more convenient for illuminating the desk, leaving only right side for the passage.

Have Restricted Freedom

Freedom is not the only thing desired by a person, it has to be a disciplined or restricted freedom without hurting or disturbing others. In an official set up, where many others are concerned and affected by your working, mutual convenience and discipline bear more importance than in a home office. Therefore, work-desk in an official environment must be well organized with things at their preconceived locations. Cluttering on the work-desk of one person adversely affects working of related persons too. So issue clear-cut instructions to others and follow them by yourself on your official work-desk setup.

Coloring your Environment

Firstly, I must admit that presence of women adds not only color to the office environment, senior women induce discipline and sincerity in the male colleagues too. Consider this point while designing a setup for your office. Red color has psychological connotations of danger, therefore, it need be minimized in the office environment. Addition of some evergreen plants suitable for growing slowly in the shade are highly recommended, provided these do not add inconvenience to working of any body and should not become a work in itself.

Feel Comfortable

A feeling of being at home through physical as well as mental comfort at the work-desk is of great value to a performing individual. Sit in the environment calmly, and ask yourself if there is a feeling of discomfort, find its cause and eliminate it with care to others' comforts too.

Free space in an office adds to a happy feeling to all apart from providing personal spaces to all individuals for their working. Let persons walk to you with a smile with making up their minds on the meeting. Your smile at every visitor adds convenience for an amicable dialog.

Illumination, Ventilation and Noise Control

These three factors influence performance of a person to a great extent. Light in the front of the person must be avoided with its optimal position being on left top side of the desk. Ventilation must be through but not directly impinging on any body. Noise control is important for an office but it can not always be avoided in industrial environment. For a big industrial complex, locating offices in a separate block helps.

Talks of official persons with their respective visitors must not cross-heard to enforce confidentiality and privacy. This requires gaps in between various tables. Cross-walking must be minimized through use of inter-com gadgets.

Your Definition

Let your work-desk be your definition and a person visiting you even for the first must know by looking at your desk who you are and how is is your working. This makes you and the visitor comfortable with each other and a lot of time in mutual understanding is saved. Moreover, with your definition clear to the visitor, either he/she will directly talk business with you or leave you without wasting your and his time sitting with you.

Undoubtedly, this definition of yours should be of a performing individual who sees directly into the eyes of the person in front and talks in no ambiguous terms. This must be reflected by smart look of your work-desk with no superfluous things nearby.

Improve your Worth in Life, Career and Profession

2012-01-11T01:24:00.000+05:30

In routine life, in an employment or in a profession, it is the worth of person that is continuously monitored and the person is evaluated on that basis. Therefore, it is essential for every person to keep his/her worth at optimum level subject to his/her circumstances. It is also true that every person can’t attain worth comparable to all others, individual differences and circumstantial factor do have their essential influence on a person’s worth. So, there is nothing wrong if a person’s worth is lower than that of another person. It is the optimum level of the worth that is important to be maintained by every individual.

I have been studying all my life so far how individuals behave and perform with respect to others and how the society, in general, and superiors of the person, in particular, evaluate a person to consider his/her reliability in a given situation. After very detailed studies, I have precisely found out three factors against which a person’s worth is evaluated.

Creative Talent

The basic difference, we humans have brought in ourselves as compared to other species of life on earth, is that of creativity. The human civilization evolved so far and the lifestyle differences we have today are products of human creativity to which not all humans so far have contributed equally. So, individual’s contribution to this evolution indicates the person’s worth. In nutshell, creativity of a person is going beyond what is already there in his/her thoughts and/or actions. I would like to brood over this matter in some details through exemplification.

The SEO techniques of publishing on Internet impress upon using terms and providing information on what people generally search for just for earning a few dollars more from the published work. For an author of some worth, the importance is how much more knowledge he/she imparts to his/her readers through his/her writings. If he/she is providing only what readers want, he/she is not doing a creative work at all. It is like asking a student what he wants to know and teaching him/her just that, thus enriching yet limiting his knowledge base to what he/she already knows, while the role of a real teacher is to keep on providing him knowledge what he never heard before to expand his/her knowledge base. Similarly, for an author, his/her creativity demands from him/her to go beyond what readers already know and looking for their information enrichment through search engines. This creative urge of the author may not provide him/he Dollars commensurate to his/her creative work, but surely indicate about his/her real worth in the field of authorship.

Productive Capability

Capability to translate creativity into tangible results is a measure of productivity of the person. While the creativity develops a new idea, the productivity makes use of this idea in developing outcome for usages by others. For example, the basic idea of a new article by an author is his/her creativity while crafting the idea into words readable by others is his/her productivity.

Many times, an idea by one author is used by another person in writing the article, thus the first person is the creator, the second person working as the writer is the producer. What the above exemplified SEO practices dwell upon are applicable to writers only, and not for authors.

Involvement

For some months now, I have been problems with my Internet connectivity which I highlighted to top levels of my ISP, BSNL, a Government of India undertaking. Now with a few days of normal connectivity, the BSNL officials wanted me to provide my positive feedback on their working which I refused on the ground that they all lack interest in solving problems of customers and never involved themselves in the rectification jobs but leave everything to their subordinate staff. Thus, they are behaving just like clerical officers instead of working as Engineers, they are being paid for. Unless there is a change in their attitudes towards their duties and responsibilities, nothing is going to improve. BSNL officials are very highly paid, probably capable engineers but they don’t involve themselves in the work they are hired for.

A person may be creative, and may also have productive talent, unless he/she involves him/herself completely in the endeavour, his creativity and productivity go waste, making the person worthless. Thus, involvement of the person is more important than even his/her creativity and productivity for outputting tangible results from him/her.

The Essence

Creativity is a matter of intellect of the person while his/her productivity being the subject matter of his capability, his/her involvement is a matter of his/her physical interest in his/her life, career and/or profession. Thus, the person’s worth involves all his/her three faculties – the brain, the mind and the body for creative intellect, productive talent and the physical involvement, respectively.

Thus, worth of a person is measured as combined effect of his/her creativity, productivity and involvement with respect to the problems before him/her. So, friends, improve your worth through invoking all the three things in your functionality.

Put Positive Thoughts before an Achievement, for an Achievement

2012-01-08T21:03:00.002+05:30

The general concept of happiness is that it is attained after an achievement. Let us say that you think you will be happy after you get married. You get married and then you two to perceive happiness in achieving another goal, say, having your first child. This slides away your earlier targeted happiness. Therefore, I contend here that happiness can not be attained through transitory achievements.

Achieve with a Positive Mindset

Happiness is achieved through your positive mindset about things of permanent nature with you, say your lifestyle, your work culture, your social network, your family etc.. Therefore, don't seek happiness in what you may have tomorrow but in what you have today. Once, you feel happy for some of your current environmental factors, and you have a positive mindset about yourself, your performance improves leading to easier achievements of even seemingly uphill nature.

Conversely, if you think that you will have a positive mindset after the achievement, you may never achieve or your positive mindset shall be of no value to the achievement. Therefore, I strongly recommend to be contented with your ways and situation for achieving what you want.

Link with the Outcome

Today, I sent a long message to one of my online friends in a faraway country analytically proving that we may never meet in life. She replied that I should not brood such negative thoughts in my mind. My contention has not been to give in to a negative outlook but to have a realistic analytic assessment of various possibilities and take even the worst situation in my stride without getting disappointed.

Here again, it seems, from common understanding, that I am trying to put the cart before the horse like I did above by putting happiness before the achievement for the achievement. Here I am putting my worry before the outcome to get prepared for the worst and do something positive to change the present situation, perception and hence the outcome. Usually, I should have kept quiet now and waited for the outcome with an optimism, as persons usually do.

My viewpoint in this regard is that one should not be optimistic without any reason or with any effort to make the outcome to be positive. Simply being optimistic does not alter the outcome which needs positive efforts. Such efforts are not made unless one sees the possibility of an adverse outcome. Thus, I am recommending an establishment of a relationship with the outcome through analytic approach and efforts.

Put Positive Thoughts before an Achievement, for an Achievement

2012-01-08T21:03:00.000+05:30

Work Culture of Government Undertakings in India

2012-01-06T16:37:00.000+05:30

Work Culture of Government Undertakings in India:

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Strategy of Focus and Spill-over

2011-12-31T01:03:00.000+05:30

There is line in famous poetry of Hindi poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan that reads like this –

vyx&vyx iFk crykrs lc ij eSa ;s crykrk gwWa]

jkg idM+ rw ,d pykpy ik tk;sxk e/kq”kkykAA

Through this line, the poet asserts that although there are multiple ways of achieving an objective as advised by different persons, but I tell you to take up any one path and you will reach your destination. This line best explains my concept of focus and spill-over strategy applicable to all endeavors of life including business.

This strategy say to choose a point of focus and keep on concentrating on this. As the focus deepens a stage of saturation comes, beyond which the energies put to focus spill over to related matters on their own and strengthen them. I explain this by an example. In a production unit, the management may focus on one thing, let us say production quantity, and works to maximize it. With this focus, beyond a certain point, various bottlenecks - such as poor maintenance of equipment, lack of coordination between various production sub-units, shortage or inefficiency of personnel, non-availability of inventories needed for production, etc in the path of maximizing production come to surface as spill-over phenomena of the focus. Still with focus on maximizing production, these bottle-necks have to be removed for achieving the objective.

This strategy of focus and spill-over may be used in any situation of routine life, career planning or in business enterprises. Here we deal with application of the strategy in these three fields.

Routine Life

A laborer working with a mason for a few years become mason him/herself because of his/her focus on the masonry work and gradually learn the skill as spill-over effect of his/her skill. A housewife, through concentration of loving her husband gives birth to children, and through focus on caring for the children learns all arts and sciences of motherhood. This way, in every endeavor of routine life, a focus spills over to the related fields in a natural way. From such experiences only, I have conceptualized this strategy for application in commercial fields to such as career development and business diversification plans.

Career Development

In career plan of an individual, the strategy of focus and spill-over suggests focusing on a current expertise to an extent that it needs additional expertise. For example, an authorship career needs the person to be an expert in some field to write about. If he/she keeps on concentrating on authoring about his/her chosen field, a stage comes when all contents in his/her mind about the subject get exhausted and to continue offshoots of the subject begin germinating in his/her mind as spill-over effect of the main focal point.

Business Diversification

The best and the most frequent application of the strategy is in business diversification plans wherein the way to diversify into a new product line comes in a natural way while keeping focus on the main product line. The human resource skills, raw materials, market, etc related to the main product line pave way to a new product line wherein the human skills, materials or markets already in hand of the organization are utilized in an optimum way without much of disturbances. Thus, the diversification comes as an extension of the main business for utilization of available human skills, raw materials or markets in hand of the organization.

For example, for a company in business of desk-top computer hardware, as the saturation comes in the business, the skills available may find use in manufacturing more advanced computers, the raw materials with the organization may be used for manufacturing computer peripherals, or the market in hand of the organization may be used to push in laptop computers.

A Crucial development needed in computer technology

2011-12-31T00:49:00.000+05:30

A Crucial development needed in computer technology

How to Earn Market Leadership

2011-12-25T07:40:00.000+05:30

Being a market leader and maintaining it is a tough job for any company of business-person because of the ever-fluctuating situation of the business world. In-spite of this, there are a few factors deciding one’s status in the market, and through focus on these factors, one improves his/her business’s chances of leading the market.

Brand Power

Building a brand is a slow pocess for conventional products having a lot of competition. With fast chaging technologies, a company can easily build their brand by adopting cutting edge technologies to power their brand. A brand gets well recognized by customers if it has some unique selling points what others are lacking. Tis requires continuous updating the technologies and techniques of manufacturing of products or delivering services to customers to make them feel of getting what they had never expected. Brands that create such a feeling in the minds of customers stay long in the market.

Here, a political philosophy comes to my mind which says that messages penetrate people’s minds gradually and in layers. Therefore, to send a brand messge to the lowest level of customers, the brand message has to be oft-repeated for penetration.

Beating the Competition

Competition is the sure killer of business leadership, therefore, it as to be beaten by an aspiring leader or for maintaing the leadership. It is difficult to beat a competitor in their field of strength. Recognizing the fact that there are a number of ways of reaching and influencing customers, the leadership may easily be acquired by choosing a strategy in which the competitor is already weak. For example, a competitor mght have the latest technology for their product, but ay be wek in providing adequate services to customers. The aspiring leader may concentrate on providing the best on-site services for their products and win the race. Chinese products have the advantage of being economically priced for their mass-scale production and world-wide distribution, and hence are dominating markets.

Creating and Satisfying Customer Needs

The prime key to market leadership is satisfying customer needs, and this is easily achieved by creating a new need in the mind of prospetive customers and satisfying it through offering new products. This strategy keeps the business free from any competition for some time until others realize the need and offer their products. With ever higher mobility of people, tey were made to realize a need for communicating while on the move, and thus, mobile telephones came into existence. Similarly, laptop computers too are products developed for meeting mobile computing needs of people.

Value System

Even when the human society appears to be morally degraded, moral values are still regarded with high-esteem by the same humanity. Therfore, preparing and projecting a value system for the business pays rich dividends and may take the business to leadership heights through keeping up the business balues for long time.

Health is the greatest concern of present humanity in-spite of it being spoiled by most of us through bad habits. Therefore, it may be a good idea for a company to highlight on health-consciousness and poject their products having this aim in their development and manufacturing techniques. Other related issues are being eco-friendly, fighting against water, air, noise pollution, taking care of natural habitats of wildlife, spreading awareness about general cleanliness, etc.

Women and children make backbone of a healthy society, taking due care of them through providing education, nutrition and other health supports to them too make good sense for projecting a company’s image with social awareness.

For a Quantum Jump in Career beyond Peter Principle

2011-12-24T11:02:00.000+05:30

Age-old tried and tested Peter’s Principle says ‘a person rises to his/her level of incompetence’. For a business executive, this is matter of great sadness as this tells him/her to ultimately get proved a failure someday at the end of his/her career. But the story may go beyond boundaries of this principle. Here is how to achieve that.

Business environment up to the middle level of management remains segmented into various segments based on respective skills such as – Engineering and Technology, Accounts and Finance, Administration, Material management, Marketing, Resource allocation and Strategic planning, Communication, Human resource management, etc.

Further, as we go down, these segments have further subdivisions, but as we go up, these segments have no common grounds. Therefore, for a manager to move up the ladder, he/she must develop competency in another field, and the easiest to do this is to choose a field which is complimentary to his/her field of his/her original expertise and develop skills into that.

With each of these core expertise fields, there is one that is complimentary to each of these and that is dealing with people to drive maximum out of them through inducing and inspiring them to do their best. Indeed, this skill is required at all levels of management, but its significance keep on rising along with the hierarchy of the organization.

The complimentary field of skill for a person depends on three factors –

Person’s own bent of mind and choice

Every person has some individual characteristics, traits and tastes and accordingly finds some field more interesting than others. It may depend on his/her family background too. Such a diverse field of interest of the person may or may not be allied to his/her main field of expertise, his/her additional skill in this new field may prove useful to him/her in career development provided the new field is related to business interests of the organization he/she is working for.

In such a diversification of skill development, the person may even find that the new field suits him/her better than even his/her original field of expertise, and that he/she should have started his/her career in this new field itself. Such a self-discovery by the person makes it easy for him/her to become expert in both the fields.

Organization’s working

Working of a particular organization and their field of business makes some fields of expertise more close to others. For example, for a manufacturing organization fields of engineering and materials management are found to be closely related and complimentary to each other, while for a trading organization, fields of materials management is found to be complimentary to marketing management.

Therefore, any person looking for a complimentary skill for him/herself must take into consideration the organization’s field of working into consideration for his/here career development beyond Peter’s principle.

Interactivity of fields of expertise

Irrespective of personal choices of an individual and working of an organization, a field of expertise is found to be interactive with another field, hence thus becomes a natural determining factor for developing complimentary skills by a person. For example, fields of Administration and Communication, Materials management and Marketing, Engineering and Strategic planning, make mutually interactive pairs of fields of expertise for a business executive.

Factors to Improve upon Performance

2011-12-16T02:16:00.000+05:30

In real life and in business environment, every individual is required to work optimally and it is in the interest of all - the person him/herself, the employer and the society as a whole. It means getting the best from the human resource. One very effective way of achieving this is to keep on providing regular feedback on the performances of individuals. In a business organization, this feed may be provided by the managers while in our homes, elders may provide feedback to youngsters.

Every individual has a heartily desire to do his/her best always to derive maximum results from his performances. But he/she fails to do that for the following four contributing factors listed below.

1. Resources : Every performer needs resources such as knowledge and experience of the work, and tools and tackles needed for working. For knowledge of the work, the person must get training in the field of his/her work, while for experience, the performer must get it through on the job practice. In this, role of a supervisor is underlined in finding what type of training a person needs and then guide him/her during on the job practice. This demands the supervisor to be an expert – experienced on the job. Tools and tackles for working are as important as hands of the performer for working. These not only strengthen hands of the performer, but also provide convenience, speed and precision to the performance.

2. Incentive : When there is no clear-cut incentive for the person for doing his/her best, he/she may hurry up the thing to avoid hardness of work and to get rid of the job to enjoy free moments. Although, a good performer does his/her job faster than others and finds time to relax in between his/her working. Secondly, every good performance has its built-in rewards for the performer in the form of his/her own contentment but this is not recognized by all the persons. Therefore, need of some tangible and visible incentives become necessary.

3. Work Culture : A place where quality of work is not appreciated, performances go on deteriorating making a bad work-culture of the place. In such an environment, even a good performer becomes a bad performer in due course of time. Conversely, a healthy work culture of a place makes all performers to do their best through learning and getting inspirations from each other. Discipline is the essence for developing a healthy work culture.

4. Feedback : Often a performer fails to find deficiency in his/her own performance and that is where role of a supervisor comes into play, to keep watch on the performance and providing feedback to the performer – positive to boost the latter’s morale and negative to make the performance free from deficiencies. In a negative feedback, public reprimanding of the performer must be avoided not to hurt his/her honor and self-esteem.

Out of the four factors enumerated above, feedback plays the most important role in improving performance of a person. For a performer, faster the feedback he/she gets, more the improvement in his/her performances he/she achieves.

These performance factors are not only applicable to business places but also to all other places where performances matter, such as schools and even homes. At schools, the students are the performers while the teachers play supervisory roles. At homes, children’s performances need be supervised by their respective parents.

Money does not Change Life, Professionalism Does

2011-12-14T02:44:00.000+05:30

Money does not Change Life, Professionalism Does:

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Succeeding as a Team Leader

2011-12-09T15:03:00.000+05:30

Business environment puts undue pressures and hence stresses on the executives particularly in the leadership roles at project level or the organizational level. Under stress, a person loses his/her creativity at work, get irritated at minor disharmony with others and spoil inter-personal relationships and team-spirit. After work, the stresses are carried to home spoiling the person's relationships with family members.

These things may make the person to fail at an early stage of his/her career if he/she forgets importance of personal well-being and pour the whole of him/herself in to the job. Those, who are able to manage their jobs along with personal well-being, not only survive in their positions but also succeed to rise up the top hierarchy level of the organization.

There are two important aspects of succeeding - managing your job well, as well as, keeping your well-being intact. Let us see how one can do so together.

Managing Your Job Well

For any working, you need to have a support structure in the form of personnel apart from communication gadgets, tools ad tackles, etc. necessary for your performance. Check out on these and acquire whatever you feel is deficient. The support structure in the form of your team members and the subordinate persons works for you in accordance to your impression on them. For this, you need to create an image of yourself remembering that your image works all the 24 hours while you work only 8 to 10 hours a day.

Tuning up the support structure reduces your workload of routine matters, taken care of by your team members and subordinates, so that you remain free for priority tasks like foreseeing a oncoming problem, planning the next step, analyzing your teams' performance for further tuning up, etc. With all such jobs, you just keep a watch on the tasks your team is performing on and advising them on their asking, or wherever you find an improvement is possible with a little tip from you.

Here, you must remember that a performer hardly finds faults with his/her work by him/herself and hence needs a review of his/her work by someone higher up or his/her supervisor to improve upon. With this thing in mind, don't reprimand the performer for his/her deficiency in performance to your standard, but advise him/her how he/she can perform better. Show to him/her that performing better is in his/her own interests, without letting him/her feel that you are the authority to monitor and regulate his/her performance.

Relax Whenever Possible

Forget about having a particular time or duration when you will comfortably relax without being disturbed. In the present business environment, such relaxations are a thing of the past only. So, while on the job in your office, your work desk at home or playing with your children to entertain them, relax even if you find a few moments appropriate for this. Such relaxing moments in between your busy schedules rejuvenate your mind and body to a great extent. With this practice, you will notice that all such relaxing moments added together for the whole day make up a good period of relaxation what you had been dreaming for a long time but were not getting time for.

Preventive Maintenance to Keep on Productivity

2011-12-04T18:26:00.000+05:30

Preventive Maintenance to Keep on Productivity:

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Pros and Cons of Habitual Working

2011-11-29T23:10:00.000+05:30

Pros and Cons of Habitual Working:

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Keep Resetting Your Priorities | BeyondJane

2011-11-20T08:28:00.000+05:30

Keep Resetting Your Priorities | BeyondJane

Every Relationship Needs Honoring The Tolerance | Healthmad

2011-11-18T02:17:00.000+05:30

Every Relationship Needs Honoring The Tolerance | Healthmad

How Management Information System Works | Bizcovering

2011-11-12T15:20:00.000+05:30

How Management Information System Works | Bizcovering