Tag: Work

What’s your ideal?

Prasad Ajinkya4 Comments

I had written about Purpose and also how Perspective can be used to change the society, well … what does one do if one has neither? I did not have an answer for that now … if a person is devoid of both, then is his life a wasted time? Does he not achieve fulfillment??

Today, I get to throw one more term in this quagmire of confusion. If one has neither, then one need not worry … one simply needs to choose an ideal and uphold it. Simple. Pick an ideal of your choice, and live by it. I know its an axiomatic way of life, but imagine a world without living by any ideals.

Without an ideal, one may not know what is good or what is bad (think about this before you dismiss it). We talk about work-life balance … well, we choose work because we have career success as an ideal, we choose life because we choose being a good son as an ideal (or a good husband, a good father … the list goes on). \

The best part is that, there are no rules once you choose an ideal and live by it. Choice making is easier. I know a friend who lives by integrity as an ideal. Even if her job depends on it, she will choose to go take the path of integrity.

So what’s yours?

Technology and Faith

Prasad Ajinkya2 Comments

It’s times like these when supporting a good cause gives you fulfillment. When you make a difference by adding to the cause … not monetarily, not through force but through faith.

A friend recently made the leap of faith from Windows to Ubuntu, you can read her first hand review here. It does include the slight apprehension, the initial teething problems … but the story also has elements which make it a good technology script … the need, the learning curve and the triumph!! Here’s an excerpt –

It’s been a month since I first grappled with the overly sensitive mouse pointer on my brand new OS. Having solved that and many other problems (whether by exploring the functionalities, or plain screaming murder at Prasad and Ankit – our IT-literate friends), I seem to have adjusted surprisingly well to it. Phantoms of Linux have turned out to be bigger than Linux itself. Its fast. Its intelligent (use it and you’ll see what I mean by that). It has multiple workspaces. Which means you can chat and browse on another workspace without those irritating colleagues, who have the habit of peering into your screen and shaking their judgmental heads, ever finding out! So far, so good!

The point I am trying to make is that often people will sit on the fence when their knowledge about a technical product is low, the goal then is not to push the product, but to give as much information as possible but wait for the user to make the leap of faith.

I see this happen at work almost every day … we call it creative faith. The technology involved may not be related to computers, but it can be as abstruse if not more. So, the next time you are involved in selling a complex solution, try some faith instead.

Criticism

Prasad Ajinkya4 Comments

I often contribute to the team blog of the company where I work. It is fulfilling, where else can you blog at work :-)

In the past two days however, the team blog … specifically my posts have come in the spotlight. By a critic … the comments are coming from a different perspective, maybe by someone who has engaged with the philosophy and found it either too abstract or too disillusioned.

The outcome being that there is criticism about the ideology and some more criticism about the author. Personally speaking none of my blogs have ever attracted much traffic, so I never had to face much applause or critique other than my immediate circle of friends. Critique from an unidentified source, adds that element of mystery and even a little bit of surprise (Ohh!! Someone does read my stuff!).

What I have not picked up over the 4-5 years of passively active blogging I have done is … how to handle criticism. A post I recently found is pretty good and maybe it will help other bloggers as well, so sharing it here.

— Appended —

Pallavi commented that the critique might just be a different perspective or a different opinion. The final choice of taking that is always upto us. I looked back at the comments I was getting, and have decided to take the new perspective and try something new on the team blog. Will update once I get the results.

The Hell Curve

Prasad Ajinkya12 Comments
The Hell Curve
The Hell Curve

No, I deliberately wrote it as Hell instead of Bell.

Managers who have run teams must surely know this model. A friend of mine works in one of the top IT organizations this country has, every year he worries incessantly about how he is going to survive appraisals. Not his own, he is consistently in the top 10% of the firm, but his teams.

They carry out appraisals using the bell curve in this organization … that means in any project team, someone has to be top performer, someone has to be average and someone has to be in the bottom 10% … survival of the fittest in this corporate jungle … that’s the rule.

The problem with this rule is that managers are forced to take under-performers and average team members as opposed to top performers. This is so, because when appraisal time comes, he cannot appraise everyone as a top performer. So if he has more than 10% of his team putting their hearts into the project, then after a year, someone will get an unfair assessment … someone will be disappointed in his superiors. Someone will get disillusioned. And that someone would be reporting to the manager who appraised him.

The only solution available for the manager then, is to select a mediocre team and hope that they deliver the project. An entire organization that runs on mediocrity!

My question to HR personnel then are two-fold –

  1. Why the bell curve?
  2. What will you do if the curve becomes skewed (towards the top performer side)?

No risk, No return

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Or No pain, no gain … the adage holds, is what empirical data says. A working paper by Harvard Business School presents its findings on human capital, performance incentives and ownership models.

Do different kinds of firm ownership drive the adoption of different managerial practices? HBS professor Raffaella Sadun and coauthors focus on the difference between the two most common ownership modes, family firms and firms that are widely held, namely that have no dominant owner. They find that the greater weight attached by family firms to benefits from control induces a conflict of interest between family-firm owners and high-ability, risk-tolerant managers. Key concepts include:

  • Family firms systematically offer low-powered incentive contracts to external managers compared with widely held firms. The differences are economically large.
  • Where incentives are more powerful, managers exert more effort, are paid more, and are more satisfied.
  • Firms that offer high-powered incentives are associated with better performance. This result holds even after controlling for the type of ownership.
  • Economies where family firms prevail because of institutional or cultural constraints are also economies where the demand for highly skilled, risk-tolerant managers languishes.

What this study suggests, is that to have high performance managers, organizations should employ the high powered incentives (this may not be as simple as cutting the current CTC of an individual into fixed and variable components). The last finding suggests that economies (and even societies) where family firms are prevalent (take Marwaris or Sindhis), the risk-appetite may be lesser. The first set of findings is also interesting since it is related to satisfaction.

So the next time you are considering a job, maybe these tips might help you evaluate that job slightly better –

  1. Is there a variable component, is the calculation of that component completely transparent?
  2. Will you be empowered enough to take risks and get the job done?
  3. How mediocrity based is the leadership? (As in, is the leadership attracting the best talent, or the talent which can be ordered around)
  4. Is your work ecology risk tolerant Or does it always stick to the safe path?

Are Corporates anti-women?

Prasad Ajinkya7 Comments

A friend’s company recently published this article on Harvard Business Review. Here’s an excerpt –

New research by our firm, Catalyst, shows that among graduates of elite MBA programs around the world—the high potentials on whom companies are counting to navigate the turbulent global economy over the next decade—women continue to lag men at every single career stage, right from their first professional jobs. Reports of progress in advancement, compensation, and career satisfaction are at best overstated, at worst just plain wrong.

The report stated that there is not much correlation between child bearing and career growth for women, there was not any significant indicator as to why women are at a junior position v/s men on the same career path. The only indicator which showed bias was the entry roles offered to women, where they had to prove their worth to the organization before being taken for higher roles (10% women were accepted at higher level roles v/s 19% men were accepted at higher level roles).

To know more of the scenarios that is in corporate India, I did some secondary research (read googling) and came with some interesting articles. This one says that the condition of women in India Inc. is no different, some excerpts –

Surprise? Not really, as experts say that a bare three per cent women occupy senior positions in private companies across India. And most of the companies only have five to six per cent women employees. What is more, a national daily quoted Pallavi Jha, former chairperson of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) (Maharashtra Region) as saying; “A study on women graduates of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, showed that more than 70 per cent do not pursue a career.”

A study conducted in 2007 revealed that this discrepancy is not only observed in the lower echelons of company management, but even more so at senior management levels.

Out of the 9,000 people on boards of the BSE-listed companies, only five are women. Indian companies seriously lack women in senior management roles, HR consultants say.

If one has to change this, then who does the responsibility lie with? The women to achieve more? The men to give women a fair chance? The organizations to level the odds for both the genders? The education system? Or the society to change their mindset?

Value of copy

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Copy as in the written text. Often organizations do not realize how important a properly worded message can be. If the communications department does a muck-up of the job, then the intended audience misinterprets the messaging.

At work, we were discussing the entire content cleaning and re-wording of our marketing communications. Anyone who has been to our flagship portal would realize that the learning curve required to understand the concept and use the product is quite steep. During this discussion, we learnt the Study Technology that Scientology proposes. I thought that I might share this with you.

Scientology states that there are 3 barriers which stop an individual from studying a particular topic –

  1. Misunderstood Word – If an ambiguous or a complex word is used in the message, then that is a deterrent to the individual. Jargon comes in this space. Look at the text you have written from your audience’s perspective, if there are any words which could be misinterpreted, then replace them with simpler words.
  2. Steep Gradient – If the student is expected to perform new actions, without getting enough time to learn from his previous actions, then this results in confusion. You can see this problem with most failed games, the tutorials are too small or are too confusing. Give them space to assimilate new actions, try to setup a practice play of the new actions. Games like World of Warcraft excel at these things.
  3. Lack of Mass – Attempting to teach something without anything concrete is difficult. Imagine trying to teach an abstract concept to a student without any solid examples.

For mainstream adoption, if these things are not done, then the level of  energy and commitment required for an individual to take up your content would be too high. It might attract like minded people such as yourself, but it certainly wont attract the masses.

Looking back, when I apply these to our own tour to the site, I realize that there are still colossal huge gaps to be filled.