Languages are funny. In a very recent chat with one of my friends, even though I wanted to appreciate her being sane, it came across as if I wanted to mean otherwise.
It is said that words are stronger than words. Right now, even I am feeling the same. Hope she forgives me.
I saw Kites yesterday and even though I might not give it a review which might make someone shell some money for it, I would still say that I did like the concept of the language sans the words. I like the way Hrithik and Barbara were trying to communicate through emotions, through their teary eyes, or the smiles.
I believe that in this information age, where everything is in white and black, we have somehow forgotten the art of alternative communication.
In the few days before going to IIMC , that is exactly what I want to learn,in the form of painting or music.
Just to express myself better.
Sunday, May 23
Saturday, May 22
Monday, May 3
THOUGHTS ON HRM
I was just wondering what the driving force is for a man. I understand this is a very abstract as well as a very subjective question. But seeing Chak De India for the 10th time made me ask that.
But to break down this question and to give a bit of a direction to this article, let us take into consideration all the organizations that we see around us and how in particular an organization can develop from various aspects to this question. The first and the foremost kind of organization that we see around us all is the one which is in us , ourselves. As we move to the higher layers of the hierarchy that is the society, the next layer is the institution of family. With the trend of nuclear family coming in, the extended family layer has somehow disappeared. The next sense of belonging comes from the schools that one goes to. May be the reason that the schools find a place therein is because the time that one spends there and in due course the friends that one makes and the learning that one imbibes in in there. Analogically, it should be the corporation that one works for which should come in the next layer of ones social hierarchy. Unfortunately, for many organizations, that is simply not the case. Why, let us think on that front.
What I like about Chak De is the temperament that the coach shows towards building a team. Before the players actually starts playing, what the coach indulges the individuals to do is to build the team. Having seen the IT industry for the past few months, the time that the organization has to build the team is quite less, and moreover unfocussed, with the individual being in as many as 5 teams. In this globalized world where every organization is short on time to roll its products, alternatives need to be found to build this organization.
Below I would be discussing about methods on how to build such an atmosphere for the junior employees, who mostly work for only 1 team and who have the luxury of time at their hand. The same may be from my 3 months of experience or just a result of my imagination.
I believe the lunch table is the most important place where such a thing can be done. It is extremely important that each of the players (yes that is what I consider each employee to be) share a common interest, so that there is no barrier in the flow of information. I believe that in addition to the responsibilities of the team manager to give direction to the product that his team is developing, the soft skills of giving direction on the discussions on the lunch table are as integral to his job. Software in many aspects is a projection of the real world in the digital format. Imagine the efficiency that an organization would achieve when the philosophy of software or the design aspects of their product and a debate on the type of pattern a product is based on gets discussed at the lunch table. Also, due consideration, time and attention should be given to each member of the team, surveillance by the team manager, giving everyone a sense of belongingness and appreciation for them pitching in their ideas. Is there wastage of time in arranging the whole team to go for lunch and making the others sit while a slow eating person finishes his food? The trade-off would always be there, but well, it would be better than them browsing social networking websites individually.
This brings me to the second method on how to make the team gel. Allow employees to share social information as well. With the kind of job that they do and the kind of hours that they put in working in IT, it would be impossible for them to perform at their best without some break. Let that be done in the form of discussion on an article or a video session or a tutorial or a really funny joke that they would have read in a magazine or heard on the radio. Let them be a bit informal amongst themselves. The team manager should facilitate the same, but not become a part of it, lest he is started to be taken for granted. In addition to the same, have a methodology of monitoring the time that an employee spends to browse such websites, and let them be aware of it.
In my observation, employees in a rung of the corporate ladder learn and would try to ape either the ones who are immediately above them (in a vertical organization) or the senior most (team manager in a horizontal organization) in their corporate reach. Both of the classes should be made aware of this special responsibility. The loyalties and the sense of belonging that an individual develops for an organization are set in the first 100 days of his work there. It is this sense of belonging ultimately that drives an employee. In addition to inculcating this feeling , it would also give this employee that his team members and in a broader sense the organization cares for him , his efficiency, his knowledge enhancement or simply wants to know him better. An informal relationship between the employees does not really hurt, till the time it is not competing with the employee’s service time.
To top this whole up, a team outing or just eating outside on the weekends would be a great idea, and better with some of the members being topsy-turvy with the team member. Or a game of Werewolf or T.T during their breaks.
I know ‘Chak De!’ is a bollywood flick and the chances of something happening like that in reality are very slim, but getting inspired and giving such things a thought never hurt anyone.
But to break down this question and to give a bit of a direction to this article, let us take into consideration all the organizations that we see around us and how in particular an organization can develop from various aspects to this question. The first and the foremost kind of organization that we see around us all is the one which is in us , ourselves. As we move to the higher layers of the hierarchy that is the society, the next layer is the institution of family. With the trend of nuclear family coming in, the extended family layer has somehow disappeared. The next sense of belonging comes from the schools that one goes to. May be the reason that the schools find a place therein is because the time that one spends there and in due course the friends that one makes and the learning that one imbibes in in there. Analogically, it should be the corporation that one works for which should come in the next layer of ones social hierarchy. Unfortunately, for many organizations, that is simply not the case. Why, let us think on that front.
What I like about Chak De is the temperament that the coach shows towards building a team. Before the players actually starts playing, what the coach indulges the individuals to do is to build the team. Having seen the IT industry for the past few months, the time that the organization has to build the team is quite less, and moreover unfocussed, with the individual being in as many as 5 teams. In this globalized world where every organization is short on time to roll its products, alternatives need to be found to build this organization.
Below I would be discussing about methods on how to build such an atmosphere for the junior employees, who mostly work for only 1 team and who have the luxury of time at their hand. The same may be from my 3 months of experience or just a result of my imagination.
I believe the lunch table is the most important place where such a thing can be done. It is extremely important that each of the players (yes that is what I consider each employee to be) share a common interest, so that there is no barrier in the flow of information. I believe that in addition to the responsibilities of the team manager to give direction to the product that his team is developing, the soft skills of giving direction on the discussions on the lunch table are as integral to his job. Software in many aspects is a projection of the real world in the digital format. Imagine the efficiency that an organization would achieve when the philosophy of software or the design aspects of their product and a debate on the type of pattern a product is based on gets discussed at the lunch table. Also, due consideration, time and attention should be given to each member of the team, surveillance by the team manager, giving everyone a sense of belongingness and appreciation for them pitching in their ideas. Is there wastage of time in arranging the whole team to go for lunch and making the others sit while a slow eating person finishes his food? The trade-off would always be there, but well, it would be better than them browsing social networking websites individually.
This brings me to the second method on how to make the team gel. Allow employees to share social information as well. With the kind of job that they do and the kind of hours that they put in working in IT, it would be impossible for them to perform at their best without some break. Let that be done in the form of discussion on an article or a video session or a tutorial or a really funny joke that they would have read in a magazine or heard on the radio. Let them be a bit informal amongst themselves. The team manager should facilitate the same, but not become a part of it, lest he is started to be taken for granted. In addition to the same, have a methodology of monitoring the time that an employee spends to browse such websites, and let them be aware of it.
In my observation, employees in a rung of the corporate ladder learn and would try to ape either the ones who are immediately above them (in a vertical organization) or the senior most (team manager in a horizontal organization) in their corporate reach. Both of the classes should be made aware of this special responsibility. The loyalties and the sense of belonging that an individual develops for an organization are set in the first 100 days of his work there. It is this sense of belonging ultimately that drives an employee. In addition to inculcating this feeling , it would also give this employee that his team members and in a broader sense the organization cares for him , his efficiency, his knowledge enhancement or simply wants to know him better. An informal relationship between the employees does not really hurt, till the time it is not competing with the employee’s service time.
To top this whole up, a team outing or just eating outside on the weekends would be a great idea, and better with some of the members being topsy-turvy with the team member. Or a game of Werewolf or T.T during their breaks.
I know ‘Chak De!’ is a bollywood flick and the chances of something happening like that in reality are very slim, but getting inspired and giving such things a thought never hurt anyone.
EVERYONE’S A DOG….OR A CHICKEN
The discussion of the need of a gym in my life has crept-in in all the conversations that I have with my family. Sometimes recurring seven or eight times a day when I talk about finding myself a girlfriend ( kindly note how important the search is to me that I am talking 7-8 times about it in a day …. And that too to my family … and yes…forgive me if the word ‘finding’ is offensive …. Yeah … I am a feminist … if that lets me gain some brownie points) and the only roadblock I can identify that in so many years of my existence why I haven’t been able to do so is the lack of a Sunny Deol body.
I don’t look that bad … just to keep everything straight .Except for the unasked potbelly that I get after every meal of the day for a few hours, the rest of the time I am quite lean to look at. My sister tells me that that’s like the ‘in – thing’ but I believe it is only to keep my spirits high. Thankfully she understands the need to do that. For a 21 year old guy who has been written off by all the girls he has met as just another sweet and fun guy (well …. I like them considering me that, but not just just that …. Come on…) it can be pretty hard to hit the gym. How can one let the balance sheet of exercise be so skewed that except for getting a hulk-kind of body, you get no other benefits, after shelling about 15 KFC buckets at Talwalkars each month.
According to some experiments conducted in the wild wild west, a dog needs daily snacks to learn a newer trick or to forget a bad habit, little electric shocks to tell him to mend his ways in a course of a month (the nature of the experiment confirms that it was indeed conducted in the west where they are so wild not to understand such an intuitive thing). The results of the same experiment are also employed in organizations where employees are given smaller tasks and are rewarded with every new trick(read technology in the IT space) that they learn ( Dear Tom , Dick and Harry …. Yes! Your job is no different than Tommy, Cherry or Goldie learning their own set of tricks.)
And so even I am in the search of my mentor (this is much better a word. I wanted to use ‘master ‘but well that would have given my to-be girlfriend a wrong idea. I am not looking for a client-server configuration , I want our relationship to be on the P2P pattern … well , just to make myself clear ; and then people ask me how I am that optimistic. And yeah! I can sometimes be that geeky … just in case that helps my profile in your list of prospective candidates , hoping that I am there) , who would give me the snacks( :P ….) when I do my trick right( go to the gym ) and give me electric shocks ( well , don’t take that literally ) when I act bad ( skip the gym). Constant appreciation is needed.
But Alas! This is the same viscous circle, who would come first in my life, the girl or the gym. The chicken or the egg question needs to be answered…..just to draw an analogy. But in reality, I am the chicken …. who is enjoying his KFC.( better get rescued by the beautiful girls of PETA before the Kernel fries me up.)
I don’t look that bad … just to keep everything straight .Except for the unasked potbelly that I get after every meal of the day for a few hours, the rest of the time I am quite lean to look at. My sister tells me that that’s like the ‘in – thing’ but I believe it is only to keep my spirits high. Thankfully she understands the need to do that. For a 21 year old guy who has been written off by all the girls he has met as just another sweet and fun guy (well …. I like them considering me that, but not just just that …. Come on…) it can be pretty hard to hit the gym. How can one let the balance sheet of exercise be so skewed that except for getting a hulk-kind of body, you get no other benefits, after shelling about 15 KFC buckets at Talwalkars each month.
According to some experiments conducted in the wild wild west, a dog needs daily snacks to learn a newer trick or to forget a bad habit, little electric shocks to tell him to mend his ways in a course of a month (the nature of the experiment confirms that it was indeed conducted in the west where they are so wild not to understand such an intuitive thing). The results of the same experiment are also employed in organizations where employees are given smaller tasks and are rewarded with every new trick(read technology in the IT space) that they learn ( Dear Tom , Dick and Harry …. Yes! Your job is no different than Tommy, Cherry or Goldie learning their own set of tricks.)
And so even I am in the search of my mentor (this is much better a word. I wanted to use ‘master ‘but well that would have given my to-be girlfriend a wrong idea. I am not looking for a client-server configuration , I want our relationship to be on the P2P pattern … well , just to make myself clear ; and then people ask me how I am that optimistic. And yeah! I can sometimes be that geeky … just in case that helps my profile in your list of prospective candidates , hoping that I am there) , who would give me the snacks( :P ….) when I do my trick right( go to the gym ) and give me electric shocks ( well , don’t take that literally ) when I act bad ( skip the gym). Constant appreciation is needed.
But Alas! This is the same viscous circle, who would come first in my life, the girl or the gym. The chicken or the egg question needs to be answered…..just to draw an analogy. But in reality, I am the chicken …. who is enjoying his KFC.( better get rescued by the beautiful girls of PETA before the Kernel fries me up.)
Affirmative Action
I feel like taking a long sojourn and travel India. In just more than a month and a half, I am going to join amongst the most coveted institutions of India, IIMs. With the reputation of going to the place comes the responsibility of what the education imparted there is going to teach us. That is exactly why I want to travel the length and the breadth of India; to spread a bit of awareness amongst people. I believe that it is a very small time to do that, specifically for the purpose I want to derive from it. And so I would start from my family and the peripheries of it.
It pains me to see that most of the candidates coming from the affirmative action of reservation constituted by the government of India into the hallowed portals of the elite IIMs are the ones who have done their under-graduation from another such national institution of repute. Since it has not been more than 3 years when reservation for OBCs was made they might be exempted from being in our sample set. But nonetheless, the government has invested us tax payer’s money in their under-graduation study.
The problem that I see in the implementation in the affirmative action and its rewards not being realized by the ones who really need is the lack of accounting in the same. It is understandable that when there is no record of a student, the accounting of whether the student is genuinely in need for reservation is extremely difficult. But cannot a centralized database of the students of national universities be made? I believe the system of book-keeping is there, my alma- mater had, what just is required is sharing of the data. And with the UID project going to realize itself in the next four years; we could have this accounting happening at the grass-roots level. At least a considerable amount of seats can then go to the ones who actually deserve it.
But I cannot see that happening. With the state of politics in our country, I have my doubts about any member of the parliament coming up with such a suggestion in the near future. Nor is altruism an inherent part of us. What then is required to at least let everyone know that there is something like a reservation for them. One of our chauffeurs and his family at my place come under the OBC category. Talking to him just a few days back after seeing in first person the fallacies in the implementation of the so called affirmative action I realized that he had no idea what reservation is. He knows that the Dalits have found their new found power and confidence due to their vote bank, but how?
Hope the government realizes the latent potential in spreading the news into the rightful candidate’s ears. Hope the rest of the General masses spread it through word and mouth rather than feeling sad for themselves. Hope the UID project realizes itself on schedule, a rarity in our nation. Hope education rises above being just a dog eats dog business for students. Hope.
The above would not mean benefits in the short run. The gap between the deserving and the benefiter is huge. But it would guarantee that the ones who have taken benefit once are again not standing in line once again for the benignity of the government. In two three generations down the lane, may be the lines would actually be made of people who actually need that benignity.
And I hope to see , and I know it is too distant to be seen , but even though the government has it lines, nobody actually wants to stand in them .
It pains me to see that most of the candidates coming from the affirmative action of reservation constituted by the government of India into the hallowed portals of the elite IIMs are the ones who have done their under-graduation from another such national institution of repute. Since it has not been more than 3 years when reservation for OBCs was made they might be exempted from being in our sample set. But nonetheless, the government has invested us tax payer’s money in their under-graduation study.
The problem that I see in the implementation in the affirmative action and its rewards not being realized by the ones who really need is the lack of accounting in the same. It is understandable that when there is no record of a student, the accounting of whether the student is genuinely in need for reservation is extremely difficult. But cannot a centralized database of the students of national universities be made? I believe the system of book-keeping is there, my alma- mater had, what just is required is sharing of the data. And with the UID project going to realize itself in the next four years; we could have this accounting happening at the grass-roots level. At least a considerable amount of seats can then go to the ones who actually deserve it.
But I cannot see that happening. With the state of politics in our country, I have my doubts about any member of the parliament coming up with such a suggestion in the near future. Nor is altruism an inherent part of us. What then is required to at least let everyone know that there is something like a reservation for them. One of our chauffeurs and his family at my place come under the OBC category. Talking to him just a few days back after seeing in first person the fallacies in the implementation of the so called affirmative action I realized that he had no idea what reservation is. He knows that the Dalits have found their new found power and confidence due to their vote bank, but how?
Hope the government realizes the latent potential in spreading the news into the rightful candidate’s ears. Hope the rest of the General masses spread it through word and mouth rather than feeling sad for themselves. Hope the UID project realizes itself on schedule, a rarity in our nation. Hope education rises above being just a dog eats dog business for students. Hope.
The above would not mean benefits in the short run. The gap between the deserving and the benefiter is huge. But it would guarantee that the ones who have taken benefit once are again not standing in line once again for the benignity of the government. In two three generations down the lane, may be the lines would actually be made of people who actually need that benignity.
And I hope to see , and I know it is too distant to be seen , but even though the government has it lines, nobody actually wants to stand in them .
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