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Management lessons from Driving-6

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 08 Oct 2016 11:50:00 +0000

Here goes one more Blog posting on Management Lessons from Driving and it also happens to be my 100th Blog posting. Hope you would enjoy reading it.

# Accountability – It’s all about taking accountability for what you do – be it in driving or in your executive role.

I remember a joke that read a very long time ago wherein two friends are driving back home after the party and one guys say to the other..

Dude.. We are fully drunk and you are not actually supposed to be driving. So you need to be very careful while driving. Should you need any help, do feel free to wake me up. Because I am going to take a nap now.

The other guy says: Dude. It’s not me who is actually driving the car. It’s you. Do you realize that??

Being in Driver’s seat is all about assuming accountability for safe driving and you are the only one accountable and no one else.

Similarly, even in Corporate, you are responsible for every decision you take and for every action in your work. It has to be in the best interest of the Organization. You need to be fully aware of that and carry yourself with utmost accountability.

Let me give a real-time example that talks about taking accountability, owning all the actions including the mess-ups and demonstrating absolute integrity.

GoZoomo is a start-up company started by three IITians couple of years ago and the thought-process behind their Business model was, in the US, three used cars are sold for every new car, whereas in India, it is only one used car for every new car sold. This is in spite of the well-known fact the Indian market is a very very price-conscious market. The major reason attributable to this is the lack of trust in the pre-owned car segment, ie., you don’t have a clue about the car that you are buying, whether the car is stolen, the documents for genuine or forged etc.,

So they wanted to crack the “Trust-factor” in their Business model wherein cars inspected and verified by GoZoomo only will be listed. The business went on well however, they had a problem that dragged the Business down. The problem that GoZoomo faced was they could not standardize the price. Their pricing was comparatively higher than the vehicles listed in OLX or Quikr. The buyers preferred such vehicles without realizing the hidden problems with such vehicles. This resulted in delayed transactions and eventually, it killed GoZoomo.

The CEO of this start-up had millions of dollars in the Bank funded by top VCs. However, having realized that this model is not matured yet in India and they will continue to incur loss, the CEO decides to shut down the operations and retune the money to VCs instead of toying with new ideas or continuing any further and making the loss bigger.

I think this talks volumes about taking responsibility for what you do, even though you don’t have anyone right after you or even though you are not questioned by the other stake holders.

To sum up, it’s all about taking responsibility for what you do, be in it driving or in your work especially when something goes wrong. No one else can be blamed.

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Management lessons from Driving-5

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 01 Oct 2016 11:49:00 +0000

I though I can write few more points on the topic - Management lessons. Hope you would enjoy reading it. Do check and leave your comments.

# Which is more important – Engine or the Nuts; production or Marketing?

Which is more important? The engine said I am the heart of the car and without me, the automobile will be immobilized. The brake said, without me, every car will end up meeting with an accident and the heart which is right in the front the car will be the first one to get crushed. So every component had its own justification for being important and everyone decides that nuts are the least important components in the car.

So the nut thought, let me know show you all how important I am and it decides to give up when the car is at its full speed.

It was no more holding the wheels tight and all the wheels came off and starting running in different direction.

Then the reality struck that each and every component is important and they are expected to work in harmony, not to fight who is bigger or who is more important. This was beautifully narrated by Swami Dayananda Saraswathi in one of his speeches.

So, which function is more important in the Organization? I still remember the debate that I heard when I was a trainee. Two people from two different functions, one from production and the other one from marketing, were arguing who was more important?

Without marketing, all your products will not move out the Facility, said the Marketing guy.

Without production, you will have nothing to market and sell. You will not get your pay cheque. Said the production guy.

But, in reality, every function is important and they are expected to understand the bigger picture and work in harmony.

When you have a client meeting, on that important day, if the admin / facility guys has not ensured the rest room is clean, it will stink. If they have not ensured that there is enough fuel in the generator, you will be in for a big unpleasant surprise in case of any power cut. You would not want your Business presentation to be stopped or disturbed due to power cuts.

So there is no function which is bigger or more important. Every function has got its own roles to play to achieve the Business goals. Let us appreciate and respect it.

# You will scrap your new car one day – You would leave this world one day – But Let us enjoy the journey and make it count.

All the scrapped cars were once Brand new cars and all Brand news cars will be scrapped one day. But we always enjoy journey and make it count / make the journey worth it.

Similarly, the eventual destination for all of us is our graveyard. 100 years from now, except a few, all of us would have hit our destination. Keeping this simple fact in mind will helps us carry ourselves with humility and respect & treat other equally, not just at workplace but everywhere in our life. This will help us put our priorities effectively in terms of what we want to do with our life Let us enjoy the journey and more than that, let us make it count and worth it.

This might sound little philosophical, yet it makes lots of sense and puts everything into right perspective.

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Skills of effective Recruiters

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 29 Sep 2016 17:28:00 +0000

In this posting, I am going to write about certain important skills required for a recruiter. Recruitment is often thought to be one of the easiest job but in reality, it’s one of the challenging and critical jobs.

As a recruiter, you don’t just forward job spec, get some CVs from your vendors and line up the candidates. If it’s just that, it’s a post-man’s job and there is no value addition from HR or recruitment perspective.

But it’s just not that and much more than that.

So what more an effective recruiter does or what more you need to know and do to be an effective recruiter?

Let us look at some of the important skills that any good recruiter should necessarily have and try to refine & hone such skills on an on-going basis.

# Business knowledge: This is the first and foremost skill that you need to have. You need to know the Business that you (your company) specializes in, Business specific skills required for various roles and at various levels across the Organization. You need to know your competitors, they hiring models & practices, comp & Ben policies etc., It’s not for copying for what they do but for you to know where you stand, ie., are you ahead of them or behind them.

#Network: Networking is all about knowing all the relevant stake holders that you need to know to get things done effectively and quickly. Wider and bigger the network, the easier it is to tap and identify that talent that you are looking for.

It’s another important skill that any recruiter should necessarily have. What a riffle is to a solder, networking is to a good recruiter. So if you don’t have a good network, you are like a soldier without a riffle.

For example, when you want to initiate campus connect programs with colleges, a recruiter who has good rapport with all the placement officers of your target colleges can drive your initiative much more effectively than someone with poor network.

With good network, you can easily accomplish what hundred follow-ups cannot do.

That’s why, as far as recruitment role goes, it’s always a good idea hire someone from the same region with good network rather than an out-station candidate

Expertise and Consulting role: When you get a job spec for a particular position, you just cannot immediately start sourcing or give it to your vendor.

You need to review it with the Manager concerned (the one who gives the job spec) and you should be able to evaluate it in terms of availability of such talent in the market, its demand in the market, cost range etc. and you should be able to refine the job specs. You may suggest to your Manager as to what needs to be defined as a mandatory skill and optional skills

This is the first step for effective sourcing and if the spec is incorrect, all the sourcing efforts will go waste and you would lose the precious time. Your sourcing effectiveness depends a lot on how clear

# Culture: No recruiter will look for the best candidate, rather he will look for the right candidate not just in terms of skills but in terms of cultural fitment and adaptability. The recruiter should understand the culture of his organization in terms of certain behavioral traits and values required and look for such qualities in the prospective new hires. You should also know how to assess those qualities through effective behavioral interviews.

A good recruiter needs to have certain behavioral traits necessarily such as

Very good interpersonal skills and consulting skills - as you would have to work with many people probably at sr. levels and suggest changes without rubbing them on the wrong side,

Result-orientation since recruitment is also like marketing in a way that you need to close all the positions within the SLA. What matters more is the results than the efforts.

Very good co-ordination skills as you need to co-ordinate with many stake holders internally and externally as well.

Hope this posting was information. Do share your feedback and comments.

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Management lessons from Driving-4

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 28 Sep 2016 10:45:00 +0000

Here goes one last write-up on the same topic, Management lessons from Driving. Hope you would enjoy reading it.

# Changing gears and learning – both are step by step process

You are in a hurry and to drive fast, can you start with 5^th gear?

No. It’s not possible.

You need to start with 1^st gear and then change the gear up. It’s a step-by-step process.

Similarly, to give an example, you cannot become an effective communicator or leader overnight.

Any skill that you need to develop is also a step-by-step process and it goes though the competency development cycle. There is no shortcut to it and you need to be prepared to pull up your sleeves and work hard. That’s how you can reach the 5^th gear, your peak performance.

# Maintain a safe distance with other vehicles and your colleagues too.

A reasonable distance is better to maintain for a safety and any breach will not always result in accident. But when an accident take places, it could be due to breach of this distance.

At workplace, you need to work as a team players and you need to do everything possible and required as a team member. But, what you need to understand is your office colleagues are colleagues not your friends. There is a world of difference between these two and you need to know what you can share and what you shall not share with your colleague on the personal front.

When you do this, you don’t turn a good colleague into a bad friend and a good colleague continues to be a good colleague. It’s good for you, for your team and the Organization.

# Indicators and our work-style – both needs to be Proactive

Indicators need to be used proactively, not at the time of taking a turn, so you give sufficient notice to the others driving along on the road. Otherwise, it defeats the purpose.

Similarly, even at workplace, you need to be proactive and anticipate bottlenecks to finishing your project, find solutions and finish the project on time. Reactive approach will not serve the purpose and it will show you as a poor executive or Manager. Let us be proactive.

# Vehicle maintenance and skill improvement – both are continuous process and not a one-time affair

You will always be in for a surprise, a bad surprise if you don’t maintain your car on a periodic basis. You would not know when your car will stop or it can stop when you need it the most.

Similarly, you need to keep building your competencies required to succeed in your career. It’s said that you need to keep running to stay where you are. Competency building is a continuous process and not a one-time affair.

# You need to fill gas however busy you are

Let us say you have a pressing priority that cannot wait but you realize that fuel is less in your car.

Guess what, you would have stop the car in the nearby fuel bunk and if you don’t fill gap, the vehicle will stop, even if it were to be Lamborghini.

So this takes a first priority over your pressing priority that you thought cannot wait.

Similarly, however busy you are on the professional front, there are certain things that you need to necessary take care of on the personal front like Your Health, your family, work-life balance and things that are closer to your heart – hobby that you are passionate about. These are things that fuel our motivation and morale. This help us charge our batteries to perform much more effectively at workplace and both are equally important. One cannot be at the cost the other. It’s all about prioritizing.

So let us charge out Batteries on an on-going basis.

Hope you enjoyed reading this series of postings. Do share your feedback and comments.

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Management lessons from Driving-3

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 27 Sep 2016 10:10:00 +0000

Here goes one more writing on the same topic, Management lessons from Driving. Do check it out and leave your comments.

# Change gears to drive faster- learn more to grow in executive ladder:

If you want drive faster, you know that you need to press the accelerator pedal down. But, it would not help even if you keep pressing it all the way down to the floor if you are not changing the gear up. You would rather end up burning more fuel, burning your engine and will not achieve what you want to. So the key lies in changing gears appropriately and not just pressing the accelerator hard.

Even at workplace, you cannot keep doing the same thing over and again and expect to grow up. You need to enrich your role on a regular basis, be open to take new tasks and assignments and ensure that you pick up all the skills required to grow. If you do the same thing for a year, your experience is one year. If you keep repeating what you did for another 9 years, your experience is not 10 years, it’s still only one year and the remaining 9 years are more of repetitive experience.

# Unleash your car power - Turn your talent into performance

How does it feel to have brand new Lamborghini in your Garage? Nothing less than being on top of the world.

What if you don’t know that your new car can do 500 to 600 HP and hit 0-100 in 3 to 4 seconds. (Lack of awareness) OR

What if you don’t know how to handle your car? (Lack of skills) OR

What if you are not keen to drive the way it has to be driven ? (Lack of interest – Attitude)

It does not make any sense to own a Lamborghini and you can very well have an Alto.

Similarly, even at workplace, it does not matter how talented you are and what matters is your performance. You need to realize what your potentials are, pick up skills required to grow up with utmost determination and commitment and show performance.

You need to perform well and demonstrate your performance consistently. Even if you are highly talented but your performance is just meeting expectation, it’s as good as driving your Lamborghini as 40KM per hour.

So unleash your true potential and demonstrate consistent performance at Workplace.

# Blow your horn – Blow your trumpet

The horn that you have in your car is not any kind of musical instrument and it certainly adds to the noise pollution. However, you need to use when it’s required and whenever it’s absolutely required.

Similarly in Corporates, if you are not getting recognized for what you do, you don’t have to wait indefinitely or feel victimized. This will affect your morale.

May be your boss was busy or it was not intentional that he just missed or may be he missed it intentionally. Irrespective of whatever be the case, you should not hesitate blowing your own trumpet and getting yourself recognized.

The caution is you should do it only when it’s required. Overusing it for your personal advantage will result in noise pollution at Workplace and it will never be appreciated.

Be cautious but don’t hesitate to blow your own trumpet if you genuinely deserve it. (BTW, This is called as “positive stroke” in transactional Analysis which means asking for positive compliment when it’s not given)

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Management lessons from Driving-2

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 26 Sep 2016 10:12:00 +0000

Here goes one more posting on Management lessons from Driving. Do check this out and leave your comments.

# Safe Driving and Good performance at workplace – both are everyday affair:

You could have many more years of experience in driving and when you drive for the day, what matters is how you drive NOW and not how you’ve driven in the past. Past is history and it will not save you if you were to make a mistake today.

That’s how things are even in corporates and it’s very competitive. It does matter how well we performed in the past but it matters very less. You are expected to perform and give your best every day. On the other hand, even if there is no such expectation, that’s what you need to do if you want to be honest to your employer and grow fast in your career.

“So yesterdays’ performance is history and what matters is how well you perform today”.

# You need a brake to not only slow down the speeding car but even when you become overconfident

What would you prefer to drive? BMW or Maruti Alto.

If you had said BMW, hold on for a min and let me share the missing piece of information.

BMW has NO Break and Maruti ALTO has a Brake.

You need a break to slow down /when you are over-speeding even if it’s a BMW or Merc. It’s a suicide to drive a vehicle without a brake. It’s not just suicide. You may also mow down the people on the road if you don’t have a brake.

Even at workplace, you need to have restraint or control and should not become overconfident however competent we are. Over-confidence and arrogance are like driving a car that has no brake and it’s a sure recipe for killing your career. Over-confident and arrogant Bosses and colleagues demotivate others too in the Organization.

So, never become overconfident however competent you are. Remember, no one is indispensable; Overconfident employees are the most dispensable ones even if there were to be in indispensable roles or positions.

# Love driving, not necessarily your vehicle- love your job, not necessarily your Organization.

You certainly love your car and I would be absolutely wrong in saying you don’t love your car. But then, when it gets old, you exchange it for a new car and start loving your new car. So what happened to the love affair that you had for previous car!! So you got my point.

More than the car, it’s actually driving that you love and the love that you have for the car is not permanent.

Similarly, what you need to focus is your career, not necessarily where you work. Some of the important indicators that you need to look at are

1) Are you learning enough and on a continuous basis? Is your learning curve going up steadily?

2) Are you doing what you wanted to do so everything that you do on a day-to-day basis helps to reach your bigger goals?

3) Is your experience adding up to your employability and demand in the market?

If the answer is no, there is nothing wrong in looking for a better opportunity. BTW, I am not suggesting job-hopping here and it’s not a sustainable career plan. It’s short-term and it’s not worth taking this risk.

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Management lessons from Driving

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 24 Sep 2016 16:47:00 +0000

I strongly believe that every experience has something to offer in terms of learning and it’s up to reflect on what we experience. As people say, experience is not what happens to us, but it’s what we do what happens to us.

In this blog, I’ve thought of sharing few simple management lessons that we can learning from driving. I guess it will be easy to relate to, yet a bit thought-provoking. Let us check this out.

# Driving and problems at workplace: When you start your vehicle and hit the road, you certainly expect lots of vehicles on the road and some unexpected traffic jams and it’s not going to be an empty road. Similarly, when you go to a Workplace, do not look for a day without problems or don’t be disappointed seeing problems. Every workplace is bound to have various problems & issues.

However, the very purpose of we going to a workplace is to resolve those problems and otherwise, we would not be required at all. After all, we don’t go to work for socializing and let us get that fact straight.

So let us anticipate and be prepared to handle problems at workplace. When you find yourself caught in a problem, don’t consider yourself unlucky. When there is no problem to handle for the day, do consider yourself Lucky. It’s as simple as that.

Driving and Emotional balance: Driving in Chennai is more than crazy and you are always in for a surprise and it’s certainly not a good one. Be it someone honking continuously right behind you in high decibel OR OR someone suddenly taking a turn without any indicator OR that 2-wheeler guy driving like fast & furious and scarring everyone on the road that he might fall down off his bike.

You would really wonder if there is something called as common sense. But then nowadays, common sense seems to be uncommon. So the surprises are in plenty and it’s the real test of one’s emotional balance in real-time and you don’t need any other psychometric battery.

In spite of all these, if you can keep your temper intact, you can do so even at your workplace.

# Skill improvement - It’s all about doing it on a daily or regular basis: When I bought my first car, I was excited. I planned and did my driving class much in advance. I bought the Car from my saving and every penny came from my hard work.

Let us cut back to my first car experience. Believe, the biggest excitement turned out to be a biggest regret of life since I miserably failed in just driving the car out of the showroom and forget about driving on the road.

I thought I should have stuck to my 2-wheeler and put this money in FD or in some investment schemes. My thoughts were then, What a waste of money and what do I do with a car that I cannot drive? Should I go for a driver but can I afford.

But, believe me. I’ve done around 150,000 Km with a clean record and done long drives single-handedly across the Country and looking forward to a world trip on the road some day (provided someone could sponsor me). So I love driving.

How could that have been possible?

I did just only one thing and did it on a daily basis. It did improve my confidence in just 4-5 days.

Though I was not confident, I started driving to office on a daily basis. I had a fantastic idea to manage the crazy traffic. I used to start early in the morning and again I used to start late from the office to reach home. But, I made it point to drive on a daily basis and I’ve seen my confidence growing up day by day. I did nothing more than that.

The point is, if you want to develop a skill and get good at it to be successful in your career, you should never give up. The key lies in practicing and doing it on a daily basis and there is no shortcut to it. Nothing else.

Hope you enjoyed reading and do share your thoughts and comments. I will write few more Management lessons from driving shortly. Do stay connected and happy weekend.

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How to measure recruitment effectiveness

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 13:00:00 +0000

In this posting, I thought of writing about how to measure the recruitment effectiveness more effectively.

As you know, recruitment is one of the most important functions. To put it into perspective, if you don’t get the right person and on time, it’s likely that it can affect your project delivery, new project’s bidding, customer’s satisfaction and eventually the business. As the famous saying goes, if you hire average employees, your organization will also be an organization of average employees.

How do we measure the effectiveness?

There are three criteria that are most commonly used to measure the recruitment effectiveness. But, would it reflect the effectiveness in the real sense?

First, let us look at what those parameter are and then let us try to answer this question.

1. TAT or SLA – It just means the total window period within which the right talent needs to be identified and offer letter should be given. It does not include the time taken for the selected candidate to join. For most of the recruitment positions that you get to work, it’s for yesterday’s requirement and hence you need to act on every position on war-footing. Hence, this criteria is important and with this, you can measure if the positions are closed on time or delayed. If delayed, what is the percentage of deviation?

2. Conversion ratio: It just refers to ratio between total no. candidates screened vs no of candidates selected and offered. To give an example, if you have screened 100 candidates and selected 10 candidates, the conversion ratio is 10%. Higher the conversion ratio, lesser the recruitment efforts and lesser the conversion ratio, higher the recruitment efforts which is time consuming and it may not help achieve your TAT.

As per the current industry trend, 10% is considered to be a decent conversion at the entry level in India. India, as a country, has less employability index and hence this turns out to be contributing factor for lesser conversion ratio. The conversion ratio would vary at Junior, middle and sr. levels.

3. Offer – rejection ratio: If refers to the ratio of no of candidates selected (no of offer letters given) and no. of candidates who have refused to join. For example, if you have selected and given offers to 100 candidates and 80 have joined and 20 have not joined, the offer rejection ratio is 20%. Ie., 80 candidates have joined and 20 have declined the offer. 10-20% offer rejection in considered to be a decent ration and anything more than that needs a review of hiring process etc.,

So can we go back to the question that I asked in the beginning ie., Would these 3 criteria show the recruitment effectiveness in the real sense from Business perspective?

The chances of measuring the real effectiveness with these 3 criteria alone are less. So what more, do we need?

I can think of 2 more criteria and it does help. Let us look at them.

1. Performance level. I mean the performance level of the candidates hired. If you have on-boarded a batch of 25 candidates, what is the performance level of each of the candidate after 6 months or 1 year? How many exceptional performers are there and how many are in “below expectation” category. You don’t necessarily have to have all of them in exceptional category but you should not have too many in “Below expectation” category.

The point is, as a recruiter or talent acquisition team, have you contributed to building a high performance organization by hiring high performers?

Challenges: It will be easy to track the performance of new hires if they are on-boarded as batches like fresher. When you on-board laterals, they get to join on various dates. However, it’s certainly doable to track their performance levels.

2. Retention: The meaning is self-explanatory and to put is simply, how long the new hires have worked with you or the tenure from their joining. As a recruiter, you need to understand your culture and assess if the new hire would be a suitable fit or square peg in a round hole. You need to look at their career track in terms of how long they worked in each of the organizations in the past.

You don’t hire someone to lose in short-term. You need to hire candidates who would stick for a decent tenure( I think this makes more sense in today’s context) if not a very long-term career.

Why should we look at these two parameters?

Recruitment has, unfortunately, become number game. You have 50 positions to close, you have closed 40 and you need to close another 10 in a weeks’ time and how do you reach my target? This certainly has a negative effect on the quality of hiring process.

With performance and retention as criteria to assess the effectiveness of the recruitment process, there will certainly bring in a paradigm shift in terms of how one should look at their recruitment target and the importance of hiring the right candidate on board. As you a recruiter or TAG, you are not just responsible for SLA, Conversion ratio and offer-rejection ratio. You are going to be held responsible for getting employees who are high performers and employees who would stick for a decent stint.

Are these two criteria relevant for the recruiters?

You may argue that the performance and retention factors depend on various other factors that are dynamic and the recruiter has a very less say on that. And in spite of one’s best efforts, not all hires are good hires. That’s true. Not all hires have to be high performers and should stay longer.

However there are many factors that can be controlled right in the upstream and wrong hires can be weeded out. TAG has to work closely with the Data analytics team or Post recruitment team to understand attrition related insights. Some of those insights can be controllable and hence useful for TAG. For example, if you see high attrition amongst laterals from particular organization, you need to introspect on the cultural compatibility and need to be cautious if you are again hiring anyone from that particular organization. If you are hiring fresher and you see high attrition from a particular background (particular subject or degree), you need to avoid or be cautious about hiring them again.

So, in this context, what you need to look at is how much of your hires are high performers and what is the average tenure of all your hires. Can you try to keep increasing this nos year on year. For example, 15% of my hires were rated as average performer in the last year and can you bring it down to less than 5% this year. 35% of the new hires (fresher) have left in the first 5-6 months and can you bring it down to less than 10%.

Remember, in recruitment, every hiring decision is a Business critical decision. That’s how every recruiter or TAG should look at it. If you really do so, you’ve understood your business and you know how you are part of the bigger picture.

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Signs of being a lousy colleague.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 09:00:00 +0000

Lousy colleagues create toxic work environment and they are not health for the Organization. A simple posting on being a lousy colleague. If you have any of those sings, you would wish to self-introspect. Let us check this out.

Who is bigger – You think your function is more important and you contribute more to the Business than all the other functions. This strong belief is getting reflected in how you carry yourself and how you treat others. You tend to look down upon other functions and other colleagues.

You miss the big picture and you are not a team player: In many of the organizations, one function’s output is an input to the next function in the production line or otherwise, many functions need to work together closely to achieve the business goals. You just refuse to understand how you are part of the bigger picture and you don’t collaborate with others.

You don’t reciprocate: When you approach other depts. or other functions, for whatever support you need, you expect that to be provided on time. However, when others approach you for any report or any support, you don’t reciprocate it promptly. You don’t even care to reply to mails on time. Without continuous follow-ups, things don’t happen from your end.

To put it simply, your priority must be treated as a priority by others and others’ priority is not a priority for you.

You criticize to your team members: You tend to criticize your colleague/s to your team members and they tend to carry the same image about your colleague/s. So you act as a negative brand ambassador for your colleagues. You love backbiting and gossiping about your colleagues to others and you are like an unofficial BBC or AIR spreading gossips about your colleagues. In a way, you kick start the office politics and politicking.

You hate healthy disagreements: You expect everyone to agree to what you say and any disagreement by anybody is not taken well by you even if it were to be in the best interest of the organization. You take disagreements personally and you tend think they don’t like you. So every disagreement is treated as a debit in the relationship and the relationship deteriorates.

You don’t respect work-life balance: You don’t hesitate to call your colleague off the working hours or on off days or early in the morning or late in the night for something that is not important or something that can will till the next day. While you do this, you don’t care to attend to the calls made off the working hours or on off days even for something important that cannot wait till the next day.

Blow up the mistakes: Not all mistakes are big mess ups that need escalation but you blow up even the small ones and never fail to copy many others and end up rubbing your colleague on the wrong side.

Have you come across bad colleagues ? Do share your experience.

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Bottleneck

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 12:58:00 +0000

It was a Monday late morning and I was driving from Tidel Park to my office in mount Road. The traffic was moderate and I was hoping to drive faster and reach my office before 11.00 am. The reasons was I could just use my permission instead of half a day of leave. It was just 10.15 am in the morning and I was left with 45 minutes to reach my destination.

I took right turn near the Chennai cancer institute junction and hit the kotturpuram road. As you know, it’s a broader road with 3 lanes on both the sides and I was hoping to reach my office on time.

But, after few minutes, I found myself stuck in a huge traffic jam and realized that it was going to be pretty difficult this time. It was almost like a vehicles procession literally inching at snails’ pace. This turned out to be a kind of test for one’s patience, mental & physical endurance and driving skills. I literally had to change gears couple of times every minute.

By the time I reached the end of the road, it was almost 10.45 am. So instead of 5-10 minutes, it took almost 45 minutes. When I crossed the road and hit the kotturpuram bridge, there was no traffic at all.

So what was the problem in the kotturpuram road and what was choking the vehicles movement to cause such a huge traffic jam?

It was actually a road repair work (just before the bridge) that was going on and it narrowed down the road from 3 lane to almost a single lane and it caused a huge traffic congestion. This turned out to be a bottle neck for all the vehicles passing through.

I am sure many of us would have come across a situation like this in a city like Chennai and you could very well relate to what I am talking about here.

Points to ponder

#Anything that affects the free flow of work is a bottleneck. Once you remove it, the problem gets addressed and normalcy is restored. In the above example, the road repair was a bottleneck that affected the free flow of traffic.

# We come across bottlenecks at workplaces. It can be in the production process, management, decision making etc., Bottlenecks are bad for the Business. It can kill your efficiency, motivation, competitiveness etc.,

# Identify and remove the bottlenecks: It’s important to identify and address them effectively and on time. In the above example, they could have done the road repair during the night time or during non-peak hours.

Example-1 – Bottlenecks in recruitment: If you are looking for a niche skill in the market that has a premium and you have kept your budget at a moderate level, the chances of identifying the right talent within the given time and at that cost is very less. Rather you can look for trainable talent instead of looking for all the skills and this can open up the talent pool.

Example-2 – Bottlenecks due to absenteeism: If you have seen higher absenteeism due to festivals, it’s better to anticipate absenteeism for critical projects during festival time. You can remove the bottleneck by way of introducing any special attendance incentive or you can think of deploying the required no of resources from non-critical projects to your critical projects so the project delivery is not affected.

# Are you a bottle neck? When you are busy or are on leave, do you see that many approvals are pending or reviews are pending affective the performance of your team or function? If yes, no doubt, you are bottleneck and in that case, you need think of decentralizing your authority?

Example - in one of the manufacturing companies that I worked, we had a negotiation committee headed by the purchase dept head and his approval was a must to proceed. In one particular instance, when he was on leave for about 3 weeks, we could not place the purchase order for buying safety shoes and uniforms for the workmen though everything was negotiated and finalized by the committee. The bottleneck was the approval process.

Later, we redefined the approval process in such a way the approval authority was broken into various levels based on the cost of purchase. This ensured to a very large extent that the approval can take place even in the absence of the negotiation committee head.

There can be lot more examples to add.

Have you come across any such bottleneck or have you yourself been a bottleneck to your team? Do share your experience.

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Incomplete stories

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 11:35:00 +0000

This is more of a simple experience sharing or rather reflecting upon it. A few weeks ago, when I went into the office rest room, I saw an office boy who was busy cleaning the washbasins and the mirror. It was a new face and I realized that he must be a new person. Housekeep staffing is outsourced and sometimes, these staff are rotated on a regular basis.

Suddenly I’ve heard him saying, rather very loudly, Hey.. Are you done man? I turned to see if he talked to me. No. he was not talking to me. And there was nobody around in the rest room. I was wondering what was wrong with him.

My mind was racing and thinking of various things in just a few nano seconds.

# Is he a normal person?

# whether the staffing vendor has done background check on these staff?

# What if he is abnormal and what are the risks we are taking especially with

so many women employees etc.,

And then, I heard the sound of someone opening the door and it was another office boy who went into one of the rest room for dress change. Then I realized that it was me who has mistaken the situation and the new office boy was actually talking to the other office boy.

Let me tweak this scenario to put into perspective in terms of what this incomplete observation could really mean.

# What if I left the rest room before that office boy came out of the toilet? I would have formed and continued to have a wrong perception that the new office boy is probably abnormal. I would not even known what I knew is incomplete and I was wrong.

# What if there is any complaint about the new office boy from the employees or anybody? I could be acting based on the perception that I already formed, a wrong perception, that I already formed and I will not be objective.

# I could have asked him directly whom he was talking to, instead of letting my mind race like a google engine only to form wrong assumptions. Had I asked, he would have just explained it. But I did not do it.

When I reflect on the above, I think it has couple of valuable lessons for us. At workplace too, we come across many such situations – escalations, complaints, incomplete stories like what is given above and it could be our own observations or someone else’s observation etc.,

What if we were to act on them without knowing the full story, a complete story? We would be grossly biased and wrong in our action and we would end up hurting someone who is not guilty.

Wrong perceptions and decisions are certainly not healthy for any organization.

So next time, when we have a situation to take decision, let us find out if what we know / what is presented to us is complete or incomplete.

As I know, there are two simple ways of checking this out.

1) Listen to both the parties of the story

2) Look at the data to validate the story – even if the information were to come from some who is the most trusted and respected. We shall respect the individual but shall never decide without looking at the data. There can be no other better way of validating.

So have you ever come across a story that you thought was complete but later you realized that it was incomplete? How has it changed your perception later? Do share your experience.

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Competency building

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 16 Sep 2016 17:41:00 +0000

When I wanted to stop the car that I was driving, it did not stop. Then I realized that I was applying the accelerator instead of the break.

Fortunately, I had little more reaction time to correct my mistake and slowed down the vehicle. There was no accident and I was on the edge of the seat sitting with profuse sweating.

This happened more than a decade ago and let me share this personal experience of mine.

When I started my career, I worked in various plants in down south of Tamil Nadu and I was provided with company’s guest house in the quarters situated very close to the factory. I used to go on time to the factory and mostly leave on time too. I could walk and reach the guest house in just few minutes. This left me with plenty of time to kill.

I wanted to spend this time (productively) that I never used to get in the Chennai city was learning how to drive a four wheeler. After speaking to few colleagues in the office, I joined a particular Driving institute and the driving was started the next day. The instructor was a young chap and I was looking forward to sit behind the wheels and realize my childhood dream of driving a car.

The first day activities included understanding the traffic signals, brief on how to drive the car and I got to observe how others were driving. Nothing beyond that except my disappointment.

However, the next day, I got to sit behind the wheels and drive the car myself. I was very nervous, but I realized that my instructor who was sitting right next to me could also control the car since he had another set of break and clutch pedal under his disposal. It eased off my nervousness and I got to drive about 3-4 on a daily basis for about 10 days and I could see my confidence going up and picking up my driving skill well.

However, it was in the last 3 days, unlike all these days, the instructor was not sitting next to me, but behind me and it was just me sitting in the driver’s seat and I had to drive.

This meant, the instructor was not available to correct my mistakes immediately and I needed to be careful and drive independently. Things could go wrong and if something goes wrong, it can be serious. That was probably a big risk factor. However, the instructor was confident that I lacked.

The first mistake that I made was applying the accelerator when I wanted to stop instead of the break. Fortunately, I had more reaction time and I managed to slow down the car. There were few more mistakes but it made me to be alert, focus and learn driving effectively. Believe me. What I have not learnt in the first 10 days, I’ve learnt in these few days.

Points to ponder

This whole experience taught me not just driving but few management lessons that I apply even now.

# If you want to train someone, you need to put him in driver’s seat, ie., learning should take place in real time environment, of course with your (mentors / Manager) monitoring and support. Your support needs to be reduced gradually and brought down to zero level after which you need intervene only if it’s required.

# When you are in driver’s seat, the whole paradigm about learning process shifts. You would realize that the responsibility of learning and doing things right lies with you, not with your manager. You would realize that you have to be responsible for your mistakes and the risks resulting from your mistakes. This itself would turn out to be a good motivator.

# Putting someone in the driver’s seat is the real empowerment and nothing can facilitate effective learning better than this.

# When I was in charge of training and development function during my early part of my career, I had to learning public learning and I did not have any training or no one taught me how to do it. I still remember my first few speeches that I had to deliver. It was not good or rather a mediocre delivery. I remember that I was very nervous and conscious of each and every word I spoke. However over a period of time, I found myself improving myself in a consistent manner. One of the primary reasons that I could attribute was, I had to sit in the driver’s seat right from the day-1. It is as simple as this - if you want to teach someone teaching, you need to first push them into the pool and start the rest of the training.

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Learning orientation

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 12:35:00 +0000

One of the important things that would be expected out of any prospective employee is learning orientation. Let me give a real-time example for better understanding.

Few years ago, we were looking for a MBA fresher for Management Trainee position. Of many candidates that we interviewed, we came across a candidate who could not answer some of the questions asked on motivational theories. However, she had a good attitude, good communication and traits that you would want to see in a good candidate. So we gave her topic of her choice and asked her to make a presentation for about 10 minutes the very next day.

After a week, she made the presentation and she did a good job. She was confident, did a decent amount of home work and communicated her points well.

We selected her right after the presentation and it was not based on the presentation she made.

Can you guess what else the basis was?

Her learning orientation.

During the presentation, I asked her the same set of questions on motivational theory that she could not answer during the first interaction and unlike the previous time, she was able to explain it confidently with examples too. Simple inferences that we could make out of this are 1) though she never knew that she was going to be asked the same questions, she took efforts to learn what she did not know. So she is keen to learn things that she does not know 2) though she had to prepare for the presentation the very next day, she did learn the motivational theories. So she is willing to find time and learn things sooner and faster.

She was on-board the next week.

Points to ponder

# Learning orientation is the differentiator: In any hiring process, do try to find out one’s learning orientation. Do understand what the candidates knows. If they don’t know something important (for the role for which they are being hired), do find out how keen are they to learn it and are they learning it faster and sooner. These are the candidates who can learn things faster and on a continuous basis and make a difference, probably a bid differences at Workplace.

# A candidate without or with a less learning orientation will take longer time to scale up. A candidate with aggressive learning orientation can learn things fast and probably overtake the candidates with less learning orientation.

# Do more with less: Candidates with good learning orientation are potential candidates even if they were to not have all the skills that you are looking for. The advantages of hiring such candidates are 1) You get a candidate at a competitive cost. We live in a business world where we are expected to deliver more with less. Hence this turns out be a differentiator. 2) There is a high retention chances since they would get opportunities to learn which means enough work challenges.

# If you are doing 2^nd level interview, do talk to the person who did 1^st level interview and find out the questions that the candidate did not answer during the first round. Find out if the candidate is able to answer now.

# If you want to check one’s learning orientation at workplace, don’t check how many mistakes they are making, but do check how many mistakes they are repeating and not repeating and thus scaling up their skills on a regular basis. A good indicator of one’s learning orientation.

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E-mail – A powerful tool

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 14 Sep 2016 16:06:00 +0000

E-mail is not just a communication tool but a very powerful management and leadership tool and it can be used very effectively to motivate employees, to get things done, to be assertive etc.,

In this blog posting, I’ve just thought of sharing how to deal with few common workplace scenarios using e-mail. You could have done it or you could have certainly come across these things. Yet, I guess it should help reinforce what you already know in terms of how to use email as an effective tool at workplace.

# Let say you have a Boss who listens very less which means you get to listen most of the time and very less opportunity to share your views and perspectives.

Nothing can be more demotivating than finding yourself in a communication that’s just one way from your boss. Absence of opportunity is not the end of the world. Do send an assertive mail to your Boss with your perspectives.

There can be two possible outcomes – 1) you are successful in convincing your boss or 2) successful in conveying your perspectives effectively to your boss. Both are fine than being a victim of one sided communication and accepting things without any attempts.

# Your team member has done a good job. One of the easiest and known method – do send out an appreciation mail to the employee concerned and copy the team. If it’s a company-wide initiative or the contribution is at company’s level, do copy all the employees. A simple yet very effective motivation tool.

# Your team member or someone in other team has messed up something: It’s easy to copy everyone and kill one’s motivation. If you think the person is genuine, it’s happening for the first time and it’s not such a big mistake, but you want to take it up firmly, do send a mail without coping his L1. The other person would be sure to appreciate your good intention. If it’s getting repeated, do copy his L1/L2. End of the day, the Business interest comes first and it should be affected at any cost.

# You are misunderstood and you were not listened to - A mail with all the details can clear the differences for sure.

# A reactive Boss who mismanages you. If you don’t want to be a victim to a bully boss and if you want to define the boundary and convey the message, do send out mail expressing your views. Yes. A written and a well drafted mail without hurting one’s ego will certainly help in conveying your point very effectively, at least in most of the situations.

# You are not a quick thinker – Not many of us can think on the feet when we are part of a discussion. Better late than never. We can still recollect all our points and send it across to all and make our points heard.

I am sure there are many more scenarios wherein e-mails be used as an effective problem solving / motivation tool. Do share your experiences.

Remember, what gets communicated through an e-mail carries more weightage than what we communicate orally.

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10 ways of being a lousy team member

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Sep 2016 10:29:00 +0000

Another simple blog posting written in a hilarious way on how to be a lousy team member. Do check and leave your comments.

1) Don’t complete the job on time: You don’t complete the work on time that includes priority works too. You think deadlines are meant to be bent, broken or anything other than keeping it up. Nobody can dare give you a deadline.

2) Poor quality of work: You don’t give your best and the question of Quality does not arise. There is no orientation to do things with quality and nothing can move without someone else checking on it. You are consistently inconsistent.

3) You transfer the Money to your Boss’s shoulder. You don’t anticipate potential issues and even if you were to do, you don’t proactively escalate it on time. Even if you do escalate, you don’t suggest possible solutions or you just don’t own it. You think it’s your Boss’s responsibility to handle the issue. You successfully the Monkey (Issues) from your shoulder to your Boss’s shoulder and be done with that.

4) Confidentiality is not for you: You don’t discriminate between what is confidential and what is not. You disclose every information and to the right person to avoid any possible communication gap. You are always bang on. You feed the grapevine and ensure that the information is out even before it’s officially communicated. You are the unofficial BBC or AIR for the team airing all confidential information unofficially.

5) Work in silo: Team work does not come in your dictionary. You think others in the team are not a big deal or you are most comfortable working as an individual. You don’t care to co-ordinate or keep the team posted about things that the team needs to know. You just undermine the importance of team work. You don’t even like to be part of team outings or team lunch or anything that involves teams. You are allergic to seeing, interacting and working with your teams and you want to continue the same style of working at any cost.

6) Bad mouth– You love gossiping and don’t show any partiality between your boss and team members. You badmouth everyone to everyone. Again, you are the unofficial BBC / AIR for the team or the grapevine SPOC.

7) You have your own punctuality policy: You are punctual, not in the reporting but in leaving for the day even if there is any important pending deliveries or reports that need to be completed.

8) You don’t align and unlearn: When your Boss is talking about automation or moving to a new technology, you just don’t work on that. You don’t explore how it’s can be automated or how the other have done in the market. You just leave it to your Boss to figure out how it has to be done and continue with what you’ve been doing.

9) You are not flexible: You are as rigid as a strong steel. Flexibility to stretch or take up your colleagues work in his absence or to raise up to the occasion in case of any new project is just out of question. Your boss can think of anyone in the team but you. When it comes to your flexibility, what is known to you and what is known to others is 100%. No room for any possible communication gaps at all.

10) You are contagious: Finally, you don't keep your traits to yourself. You ensure that your traits are passed onto others or as many as possible. You are a role model on all these traits and you influence others by walking the talk very effectively.

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10 ways of being a lousy Boss

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Sep 2016 11:58:00 +0000

This Blog posting is a simple note on how to be a lousy Boss. Do check and leave your comments.

1) Goals - Don’t set the goals and priorities clearly and thus, you ensure that there is a tug of war kind of situation in your team. No one knows what they do and how it contributes to the bigger goals.

2) Recognition – You recognize your team hardly and if there is any good work done by anybody, you steal the limelight and the credits. However, if something goes wrong, you are very prompt in pointing fingers and reacting in front of others. Monday blues continue till Friday and week on week. Team Management is a big mess up.

3) Micro manage – When a task is given, you are literally after the employee at every step with tons of follow-ups. You don’t define the outcome and leave it to the team members. Rather you also define how it needs to be done and rely on frequent reporting and follow-ups. Your team members will get surprised if you are not after them.

4) You are preacher, not a role model: You love preaching and not following it yourself. You think rules are for others and not for you.

5) Never attend to the grievances promptly: Grievances from your team members are the least important thing and sometimes, it does not even figure on the list. You think it’s not a high priority

6) Being unfair – you may not recognize everyone but you have your favorite employee in the team and it’s not based on the performance factor. You give him undue recognition. You don’t care about equal treatment and internal parity.

7) Task is important at any cost – You don’t care about your employees’ personal concerns and what matters the most is they completing the task at any cost.

8) Don’t care about work-life balance: You don’t recognize the importance of work-life balance and you don’t care about someone leaving late and why they do so. Leaves are difficult to get. You don’t hesitate to call your team on weekends for things that can wait till Monday.

9) No domain expertise: You think you know it all but you really lack the expertise that you need for the position. Hence the deadlines set are not realistic. Team members find themselves under work pressure, always. You don’t want anyone to disagree with you and you think that’s what team work is.

10) Not approachable: Don’t be approachable or accessible to your team members. You don’t know if someone is stuck and they need your facilitation.

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Don’t get used to it

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 09 Sep 2016 16:22:00 +0000

So we come across situations and circumstances that make us feel uncomfortable for all the right reasons. Some people act on it, some make few attempts and give up; some don’t even think about acting on it.

So what do they do?

They just get used to it and live with the problem. What was once uncomfortable just remains the same. It does not change but our attitude towards the problem is changed. This is not healthy.

Let me give couple of examples to put this into right perspective and for better understanding.

Example – 1: It was my first day in one of my earlier companies and I was given a shared cabin with another colleague of mine. I was looking forward to start my first day and when I stepped into the cabin, it was really messy. Though it was spacious, there were pile of papers everywhere and there were so many network cables lying everywhere. I thought I should do something about it.

When a MBA new joiner that we on-boarded stepped into my cabin on his first, he gave the same reaction that I did on my first day. Then I realized that it’s been 3 weeks since I thought I should do something about it however, I never did anything about it. The situation just remained the same. However, my discomfort has faded into a thin feeling in few weeks’ time.

So what happened to me?

I’ve just got used to it. I did not act on it promptly.

Example – 2: Let me give one more example that I’ve come across.

There was an Associate who had few issues with this boss. The reporting relationship turned into sour. The Boss is reactive and does not priorities resulting in ambiguity. Same unprofessional reactions if asked for clarification. The reaction was much more when he happened to meet or interact with his Boss’s Boss. So this Associate met up with me and explained the situation. I’ve suggested few things that he could do assertively without hurting his Boss’s ego.

He seemed little relieved when I again met up with him after a week. I was little happy that the suggestions given were working to some extent. I again happened to meet him after a month to hear that the situation has not changed much and it was as bad as how it was before. He did not come back to me nor did he take it up with his Boss and expressed his genuine concerns.

When asked, how comfortable are you to work?

His reply was, now I am used to it. It’s fine.

However, I found that his motivation and performance level came down considerably over a period of time.

Similarly, we come across many such problems at our workplaces like

# A reactive boss who does not respect his team member

# A bad colleague who back bites or gossips

# A poor performer who does not take any visible efforts to show improvement in his performance

# A problematic team member who works is silo and does not respect team work

# Grievances that disturb you and affect your focus and work

And the list can go on and on.

When we face such a situation, what do we do about it?

Let us do anything other than living with it and getting used to it. Because, when the situation does not change, it does affect you and take a toll on your motivation level and self-esteem even without your knowledge.

To conclude, if you have a situation that you don’t like for all right reasons, do take it up and do it without any delay.

Do make things better. Don’t get used to it.

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Negative reinforcement

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 08 Sep 2016 11:20:00 +0000

It was one of the weekdays wherein I had an unexpected work and had to take off in the morning. I did not realize then that this particular day was going to become a day to remember for the wrong reason but it had nothing to do with the unexpected work that I had.

BTW, the unexpected work was my son’s progress review with his teacher. It got delayed, however I had to wait patiently with a smile intact on my face since she is my son’s teacher and she looked strict even to the parents. By the time, we could complete our reviews, I was delayed and was hurrying up to the office.

When I say hurrying up, I mean driving little faster than your usual speed which helps only the extent of saving a couple of minutes and it’s not a big deal. Even then the sense of urgency in me was pushing me and was overtaking the logic. After all, you feel some time is saved when you overtake few vehicles on the road. An illusional satisfaction without any real sense. So I was driving faster, of course, within the limits but missed the NO-FREE TURN (which means you cannot drive without green signal) to be stopped by a traffic constable.

Things that happened right after that were 1) verification of driving license 2) verification of vehicle documents and 3) Penalty and then I was let go.

Points to ponder

The penalty that was meant to be a negative reinforcement for violation of a traffic rule had 3 important elements as given below: I really liked it and I think it should be there in any negative reinforcements and at Workplaces too.

# Immediate: It was “immediate” without any delay. If it’s delayed, it gets diluted and loses its effect.

# Future risk: Every penalty is linked to your driving license and repeated violation will spell a doom. So you know the risk potential which would act as a mental deterrence for not repeating in future too. If it’s not linked to the driving license, every violation will be treated as a stand-alone violations in an isolation and there will be no mental deterrence to not repeat it.

#Quantum of punishment: I remember to have paid few hundreds which I think was is in line with the gravity of the mistake. Anything less or more would have defeated the purpose of the negative reinforcement.

I think all these three elements are applicable in any workplace situations too wherein you want to give an effective negative reinforcement to change an unacceptable behavior. The only thing that you would want to add is to not reprimand in front of other and make it one-on-one.

All these element are applicable to positive reinforcement too when you want to encourage and reinforce the acceptable behavioral traits, i.e., it has to be immediate, should have future benefits (instead of risk), appropriate quantum of rewards (instead of punishment) and should be in front of others (instead of one-on-one)

So next time, when you want to give any reinforcement, be it positive or negative, do bear in mind these important elements. They could be game-changers.

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Beyond classrooms

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 10:29:00 +0000

Like any recruitment professionals, I’ve interacted with thousands of fresher candidates and I’ve seen one thing in common amongst almost all the freshers who have done part-time job during their education, be it under-graduation or MBAs or any degree for that matter.

Unlike others, they carry good amount of maturity and balance. They are realistic in their expectation. They are grounded and they carry themselves much better than most the other freshers. They seem to know the value of money and job. They seem to take rejection much better than most of the other freshers.

In my experience, of many HR interns that I’ve seen, Interns with part-time job experience during their MBA were much different. They show lot of seriousness and accountability in doing a job and they don’t carry themselves as a student. For a moment, you could mistake them for your regular employees. Campus to Corporate transition has already taken place for them and they are for real. BTW, when I say part-time job, I don’t mean internship. I mean the real job wherein you get to take up real time work and you are accountable for that.

So what is so special about them and what do they learn from their part-time job that they don’t get to learn in MBAs?

I think they come out of their protected and pampered environment and get to face and experience the real world. When the “real world” becomes your school, the lessons are real-time and life lessons.

In this Blog posting, I just thought of sharing couple of examples that I’ve come across.

1. Billionaire’s MBA son in India sent to do odd jobs for a month

I’ve recently come across a News update wherein a Gujarat-based Billionaire dad decides to teach his son doing MBA a real world experience. He persuades his son to go and survive in an unknown place for a month with certain conditions as given below

# He should not disclose his identity.

# He should try to get a job, earn money and survive on his own for a month. He should not work in any place for more than a week.

# He will be given Rs.7000/- but he should spend it only in case of emergency, not for day to day expenditure.

Though it sounds unrealistic or like a movie, it did really happen in Gujarat.

His son accepts the challenge and goes to Kerala to realize many things about the real world. He could not get any job for about 5 days. No place to stay. After lot of struggle, he would find jobs in few places and mostly odd jobs. However, the lesson learnt, according to him, were many life lessons that he did not learnt / would not have learnt in his MBA.

This life skill lesson in real world was planned by a Gujarati based diamond merchant of Rs.6,000 Cr company.

Mr. President’s daughter taking up restaurant job in the US

You would have come across this news that Obama sent his youngest daughter to work in a restaurant. Can you imagine the daughter of most powerful person in the world taking up a job in a restaurant? I guess, the lessons meant were - To be a grounded person in life, to understand and respect the other people, to understand the value of money etc.,

Points to ponder

# What the class room cannot teach, a real world will teach us:

If you are interested to know what it means to face the real world and want to come out of your pampered /protected world, do get into some kind of part-time job.

If you want to become a recruitment professional, do take up a part-time job in any head hunting agency. Just reading about recruitment and case studies on Books will not help much. If you want to know what customer care is all about, do take up a part time wherein you get to interact with customers directly. You will have hands-on experience on all about customers and how to handle them.

If you look at some of the most successful people in the world, they were not necessarily formally educated which only confirm the learning potential that lies outside the typical classrooms. Example – Thomas A Edison

So there are many things beyond class rooms that could complement and enhance your studies. Are you ready to explore that?

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Resistance to change

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 06 Sep 2016 12:32:00 +0000

It was a Monday morning in first week of June and unlike all the other Mondays, this was going to be a little challenge, probably a big challenge for me.

My preschooler son joined a new school and I knew that it was going to take few days or a week for him to get adjusted to it. We always faced this challenge whenever we changed his school. This was his 3^rd school and he was certainly not looking forward to it. But luckily, the adjustment cycle is less than a week after which he starts liking the school.

So coming back to my Monday morning, challenges that I had in front of me were, first of all, keeping my temperament intact and explaining the carrot – in terms of various fun activities that he was going to do, the new friends and chocolates etc., All these were of no use and he kept crying and did not want to go to school. However, we ensured that he went to the school every day and after few days, he became quite alright and he started liking his new school.

To give an example, the first few days he was screaming just seeing his uniform and nowadays, he wants to wear his uniform even on Saturdays and Sundays. I think this is applicable to any kid and nothing special about my son.

Points to ponder and lessons for Adults like us

1) No amount of crying really helped. There was no choice and he had to get adjusted to the new environment.

Lessons to learn for adults like us: If there is no choice, we will also be forced to move out of our comfort zone. But, most of the times, the choice is within our control and we don’t choose to move out of our comfort zone.

2) The carrot worked and he has experienced the carrot – New fun games, new friends, chocolates etc.,

Lessons to learn for adults like us: Everything that we want in our life lies outside our comfort zone. When we move out of our comfort zone, we realize what lies outside the comfort zone and it’s better than what we have got within the comfort zone.

3) He stopped feeling insecure since he understood his new routine and reality, ie., he would be dropped in the morning and picked up too from the school in the noon and it’s a safe zone to be there.

Lessons to learn for adults like us: Once we realize that, what lies outside the comfort zone is not threatening as we thought it to be, we would also stop feeling insecure. The biggest risk in life is not taking any risk at all.

In real life, we are also like a preschooler and we resist changes happening, be it in our personal life or at our Workplaces. Just think of this simple example that all of us could easily relate to - when we attend a conference for a week, most of us tend to sit in the same place unless we are asked to change our seat.

But we live in a world where we need to keep running to remain where we are. As people say, the only thing that does not change is change. So let us not resist to change since change is for the better.

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Can we unlearn?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 10:57:00 +0000

This is my experience sharing that happened more than a decade ago. It was a brand new two wheeler, Royal Enfield Bullet that my friend bought and it was certainly owner’s pride and neighbors’ envy. When I saw bullet, I realized their ads tag line was not an exaggeration. Their ad tag line used to be something like this - It (Bullet) differentiates men from boys. It had a huge presence and the exhaust sound was a feast to the bike lovers. I convinced my friend and started the bike for the much exciting ride. When I started, I was very conscious and told myself not to make a particular mistake. I changed gears and enjoying the ride at good speed for a while and that was when I suddenly noticed a huge speed breaker. Bullet was known for good stability and hence I was very confident to slow down. But to my surprise, it was not slowing down at all and I’ve kept applying the break frantically. By the time I realized what my mistake was, I already hit the speed breaker and my love for the bullet ended with many bruises.

Can you guess what that mistake was?

I was not applying the break.

In those days, unlike all the other bikes, Bullets used to have break on the left side, not on the right side.

This was the mistake I told myself not to make when I started the bike but it did not help.

Points to ponder:

# The biggest learning that I had was how important and difficult it is to unlearn and unlearning is more difficult than learning.

# Alvin Toffler said, the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn- But there are many things that we have learnt in our life, at workplace and in Business that are unproductive / outdated to thrive and succeed?. Are we willing to unlearn them?

# Nokia’s fall– What Nokia did to Motorola, Samsung & other players have done to Nokia. Let us look at Nokia which was a huge market player and had more than 50% market share at its peak. One of the major factors for Nokia’s fall was it failed to realize and recognize the importance of mobile software. People say that if Nokia had stuck to its own operating system instead of windows, it would have survived. Even though the windows phones were a big flop, by 2010, Nokia was introducing many windows phones. What if they introduced smart phones with android when smart phones were being introduced in the market? They could have most probably continued to be the Market leader. Now Nokia is extinct. That’s the price they had to pay for not willing to unlearn. A very big price indeed. (Source – newyorker.com)

# Kodak’s fall: One of the major factors for their fall was they ignored the new technology and the digital photography that was taking place, probably disrupting the film photography market. They hoped it would not last but it lasted. Kodak was not willing to unlearn and lived in the same assumptions that people would never part with hard prints and that people valued film-based photos for their high quality. But, digital photography not just disrupted but killed film photography and the Kodak was a big victim. (Open source)

# Unlearning some of our mindsets – Example

Let us say we have few women employees who did not show career orientation. It does not mean that all women, that too in today’s context, are not career oriented. When you are a Manager or in any decision making position, it’s important to unlearn such past experiences and treat every women employee individually and give them their fair opportunity.

# Unlearning some of our old skills– Example

When computerization was taking place in the industry more than a decade ago, those who learnt to unlearn their past type writing legacy experience and learnt computer skills survived and others perished.

# What stops us from unlearning?

As the saying goes, it’s what we think we know stops us from unlearning. Nothing else.

So Let us take a critical look at ourselves to find out what we need to unlearn. Let us learn to unlearn. Unlearning is important and what is all the most important is unlearning quickly. If we don’t unlearn and quickly, we would become illiterates and just perish.

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Are you a leader?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 08:05:00 +0000

It was a Friday evening and I was trying to complete all my tasks for the day before 6.00 pm and wanted rush to the pick-up spot by 6.15 pm. It was not just me but most of the employees in the office.

Are you wondering that what could be special about Friday evenings?

Friday evenings were kind of fun time. This was in one of the manufacturing industries that I worked with wherein we used to have a Company Bus picking us up from our factory to the nearby town for shopping. More than shopping, the fun was travelling together with the colleagues and friends. It used to be mixed group consisting of trainees to sr. managers. It used to be like a college picnic and going back to the college days. Obviously, I used to look forward to those Friday evenings.

It used to be a 45 minutes Bus ride and that particular day everything seemed to be fine until the Bus came to a screeching halt in one particular junction. The Bus driver and the helper got down from the Bus and there were engaging in a heated argument with the auto driver.

When I got down from the Bus, I understood that our company bus slightly hit the auto and there was no big damage except for couple of scratches. Since it was a one way wherein the auto was not supposed to come, the Bus driver was not in a mood to listen. He thought he was technically not at fault. The auto driver was a guy with local support and he was not ready to give in. The argument was not subsiding.

Some of the colleagues travelling in the bus also came down. We spoke to them and at last we pacified both the parties and we moved from that place.

Points to ponder

# When I went back to the Bus, I could make an interesting observation. Not all the managers travelled did really bother to get down. Most of them stuck to their seats and continued with their conversations as if nothing has happened. Those who got down from the bus to try to resolve the issue were not necessarily mangers. Many were ordinary staff, but, in the common interest, they bothered to take the risk of talking to the agitated auto driver and his group and tried to pacify them. It was actually not their job. They just volunteered and there would have been questioned if they had not done it. Still they chose to take the risk and do it.

# To be a leader, you don’t necessarily need a title. I’ve had an hands-on experience on this. Those who got the titles are not necessarily leaders.

# Leader is the one who raises up to the occasion and in the common interest. Not all Managers are leaders and the real way of checking one’s leadership quality or any quality for that matter is to see how he carries himself in real-time situations at workplace. This is called as critical instances.

BTW, Critical instances are real-time instances at workplace with which you can make more realistic assessment than any other assessment. They are authentic. To give an example, if a Manager is fudging his bills for reimbursement, you don’t need any other assessment to check his values. If a Manager is repeatedly shouting at his team members in front other others, he is not good in people skills. There can be lot more examples.

So have you come across any such interesting experiences? Do share your experience.

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Where is your eye-contact?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 31 Aug 2016 08:43:00 +0000

Few weeks ago, I had been to a Business school to meet someone and I had to wait for some time. May be it was quite a long time. However I had an opportunity to make an interesting observation. There was a Faculty who was busy looking at something in his smart phone. He was approached by a student who was giving him some updates and the faculty was responding back to him without taking his eyes off his phone. This conversation was going on for about 5 minutes and the student was trying his best to strike a decent two way conversation. He was moving from the Faculty’s left side to right and then right side to left but he was not successful.

I was hoping that he would look at his student at least a couple of times. But it did not happen and he never failed to take his eyes off his phone. May be the faculty was looking at something very important and even in that case, taking a few minutes off to talk to the students should not have been a problem. Or the student could have been asked to wait or meet after some time.

Nowadays, a scenario like this is not uncommon. Thanks to the smart phones. However, when I observed this as a third person, it did occur to me that we also miss this basic thing at Workplace or even in our family and I wanted to share my thoughts on this.

Points to ponder.

# What if the faculty were to be speaking to his colleague instead of his student? There is a good chance that he could take his eyes off his phone. What if his principle is talking to him? The only thing he will do is to look at his principle, not his phone.

The same thing is applicable to our Workplace too, ie., if you were to be checking something in your phone, whether you would have an eye contact or not? The chances are less if it’s your team member or a colleague and if it’s your boss, you will not look at your phone.

The point is, with or without our knowledge, we treat people based on their hierarchy. But if we want to build good rapport and working relationship, we need to treat all equally, not based on the hierarchy.

# Let us say, you are talking to a Doctor and he is busy looking at his phone or laptop. However, he nods and acknowledges to whatever you say and then end of your conversation, he gives you a prescription. What would you feel in this situation?

1. First thing is, you would feel disrespected since he did not care to look at you. After all, you are paying him for your consulting time and you would expect him to look at you, not his phone.

2) You would not have confidence in the prescription since you would not be sure if he has really understood what you said.

3) Your chances of going to him again or referring him is nil.

I think, this would be applicable to any relationship where the conversation is taking place without eye-contact.

This one is for the “smart-communicators”, just on the lighter side.

Looking at your laptop/smartphone while talking to other is wrong.

Speaking to other while looking at your phone/laptop is also wrong.

Let us have an eye-contact while talking to others, be your team member or boss or anyone. That is the basic thing in any inter-personal relationship to show our genuineness, respect and care, be it professional or personal.

So let us keep an eye on our eye-contact..

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Have you slept enough?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 30 Aug 2016 04:09:00 +0000

All of us want to grow and we want to grow fast and faster. It would not be exaggerating to say that we live in an impatient world wherein we want things to happen fast and show less tolerance for delays. In a way, it’s good and can be taken for achievement and result orientation. That’s the kind of people that you would want to have in your team. Go-getters.

But do we really have habits that compliment what we want to achieve in our life?

One of such habits that I want to talk about is sleeping, sleeping enough and sleeping enough every day. I remember to have read a research article that says that that on an average at least 8 hours of sleep is a must. I mean per day.

That’s how our bio-logical clocks work and it needs to be respected. When we sleep less, we violate this principle and we do it repeatedly, it starts hurting our systems. The research says that, when we deprive ourselves of enough sleep, it can really take a toll on our focus, concentration, thinking and analytical ability. To give an analogy, I think what fuel is to vehicles, sleep is to human beings. Even if you were to have a superfast sports car, without fuel, it cannot move a bit. Similarly, lack of sleep does really take a toll on our performance at workplace.

So, it’s clear how important sleep is.. Do we sleep enough?

The answer is certainly NOT YES.

Habits that kill our basic habit of sleeping on time

There is only one habit that I want to talk about here.

Social media.

One habit that kills peoples sleeping pattern is social media. To give an example, in what’s up last seen status is populated. When I send messages in what’s up, for many, I see the “last seen” status till late nights or an hour or two past 12.00 pm in the night. I am sure you would agree with me on this and if no, do check the last seen status, next time you send a message to someone in your friends list. I am not really sure if all these messages that we receive and send could be such urgent messages for us to be awake till midnight. I think it’s more of a habitual thing than the criticality of the messages being exchanged since in almost all the cases, all these messages can wait till tomorrow.

Similarly, the Facebook fever seem to have caught up with everyone. With so many friends, acquaintances, friends’ friends and so many others on our friends list, there are endless updates. It’s just not that. I see updates being posted in the late nights. The updates includes selfies and it looks like almost everyone has a “selfie-fever”.

BTW, the research findings by American psychiatric association confirm “selfie” is a kind of mental disorder and the severity of the disorder is classified based on the no. of selfies being taken and posted per day on social medias as detailed below. I guess you must find this interesting. (Source:https://adobochronicles.com)

Borderline selfitis : taking photos of one’s self at least three times a day but not posting them on social media.

Acute selfitis: taking photos of one’s self at least three times a day and posting each of the photos on social media.

Chronic selfitis: Uncontrollable urge to take photos of one’s self round the clock and posting the photos on social media more than six times a day.

So the easy inference is people do not go to bed early and they sleep for a lesser time. The quality of sleep suffers too.

Rules to follow to get your basic habit – sleeping – right.

# Decide on a time before which you want to go to sleep. It cannot be late night. Do ensure that you get to sleep for minimum of 8 hours.

# Do a reverse planning from the above time and prioritize what you want to do before doing to bed ie, What do you really want to do and how much time you want to spend on each of those activities, what do you want to remove from your list etc., For example, Narayana Murthy and his spouse decided to not have a Television at their home when their kids were growing up. They did not want to spend any time watching TV and rather they wanted to spend all that time with their growing children.

# Switch off the internet in your phone and Keep your smart phone away after a particular time after which you decide to not check your phone.

#If you are not able to stop your smart phone usage rule, you are addicted to your phone. So every time, you flout your own rule, do note down somewhere and review every week. You will know how severe your addiction is and take a call on how strictly you should stick to your own rules.

# This exercise is certainly required since we are flooded with too many choices. If we don’t do it, we will not be spending our time fruitfully. We would rather be wasting our time.

# Remember, Big things in life are made up of small things only. Sleeping is one such small habit for bigger results in your life.

# Habits die hard. However it’s certainly possible to make changes.

To conclude, we are not robots that can go on working or doing something. We are after all human beings and need good amount of sleep to start the day as a new day. Sleeping enough keep your alert and focused. It can help keep you on your feet. It keeps your thinking and analytical abilities agile at workplace. Do try it for a week and see the improvement for yourself.

So Have you slept “enough” for the day?

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What is the cost of your mistake?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 04:40:00 +0000

It was 29^th June and when I got up in the morning, I reminded myself more than couple of times that, unlike the last month, I was not going to forget what I had to do. It was an important action item to do and needed to be done before end of the day.

It was a busy day with reviews, meetings and interviews and by the time, I could complete my work, it was well past the late evening. I started from office and reached office after an hour of driving in chaotic traffic. With less energy left, I had my dinner and took a nap. What I again forgot was the action item that I wanted to do before end of the day. I’ve successfully repeated my mistake again.

I had to pay a penalty of Rs.500.

Are you wondering what that action item was?

It was my credit card payment and since I did not pay on time, I had to pay it with a penalty.

Seeing how organized I was, my wife opted for auto-deduction in the bank’s website. However, I did not register this information. Yes, the next month, I paid the credit on time without delay just to realize that the credit was once again auto-deducted from in the later part of the day from my account. So I had to write to the bank asking them to return the money which they did after couple of follow-ups. I am not sure what could have happened if I did not write to them.

In the above example, its very clear to know the cost of my mistake and I am sure you could relate to it or probably you would have come across similar kind of situations yourself.

Even at Workplace, we may make many mistakes with or without our knowledge and it does come with a cost, sometimes small and sometimes Big.

I thought of listing down some of such mistakes we commit and the cost it carries.

# When you are an authoritarian boss with less or no people care, you show results. But the results come at cost of people’s demotivation, burn-out and leaving the organization. The best employees leave the worst bosses.

# When you repeatedly break your deadlines, you may get extension on your work, not on your credibility. Your credibility as an employee is lost.

# When you take unplanned leave repeatedly especially when there is an important task, your credibility is lost.

# When you take sides and show subjectivity in your decisions, your credibility as a leader is lost.

# When you micro-manage your team members, empowerment is loss in addition to motivation, creativity and out of the box thinking.

# If you don’t follow the rules and you are not ethical, it can go on as long as it is not found. The day it’s found will be your last day in the organization.

# If we are not honest in our relationships, employees will see us through in the long-term, and the stake that you pay for being dishonest is credibility and relationship.

# If you don’t recognize your people, the result shown now will not be repeated because the employees will be demotivated.

# If you steal your team members credit, you will lose your credibility as a leader in addition to your team’s demotivation.

# When you don’t respect or follow the laws, what is at stake is your brand image.

How we cannot give any excuse to late payment and when we default, we need to bear the penalty, every mistake has a cost and even if we were to do it without our knowledge, we are responsible to bear the cost for it. Habitual late payment will affect your credit history. Habitual mistakes, Willful or not, will kill your credibility.

Those who violate the traffic rules don’t necessarily like fatal accidents. Some do end up meeting with one. So mistake and the cost are two sides of the coin. When you make a mistake, you are going to be accountable for its cost – all consequences. It does not matter whether you would like it or not.

So next time, when you are about to make a mistake, do double check if you are really prepared to pay the cost for it. It can probably act as a deterrence to not make such mistakes.

Remember, every mistake has a cost, SMALL and Big and they can spell a disaster.

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