Category: Uncategorized

“Pole Star”

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A young aspiring professional recently approached me to seek some guidance at work.  He was a bit agitated because he had more questions than answers to what he saw and felt on happenings around him at his workplace.  I think this is quite a common phenomenon amongst the youth today.

When a young professional starts his career after completing his education from a good university, he or she gives their best to grow faster than others in the organisation they join. They are willing to work hard and also contribute beyond what is expected from them. Their attitude to work is ” work hard and party harder”. I envy them for this attitude since I believe this lays the foundation for them in their career. It also helps them to strike a good balance between work and personal life.

This young man told me that he was happy to work hard and extend his contributions much beyond what is expected of him. However, what irritates him is when he sees other colleagues at work, who in his perception or qualified less but get paid almost equal if not more than him. What irks him more is that these colleagues do not work hard nor do they contribute as much as he does. I think this is a fair issue to be concerned with.

After listening to the frustrations and anger of this young guy, I shared some axioms of organisations and how performance is measured in them. The first premise is that your pedigree is only useful at the time of joining an organisation. After you enter the precincts of an organisation, it does not matter where you have studied from. What matters is what you bring to the table. If a person brings more value to the table than you, then that person would be assessed as a better contributor irrespective of which university he or she has come from.

The second axiom in organisations is that you need to prove your worth without comparing yourself to others. Many a time individuals tend to compare themselves with other co workers and make a judgement for themselves. Instead, individuals should be encouraged to talk to their managers about their goals, their aspirations, their development,  their achievements and their rewards. The moment we are able to de link ourselves from the rest of the colleagues, the feeling of disproportionate contributions of others and their rewards will not affect us and our motivation.  It is our duty to focus on our performance and trust the judgement and fairness of our manager whose job it is to compare and contrast our performance with our peers.

The third and the most important axiom for a young aspiring professionals to follow is to excel in whatever they do. If you are the best in what you do, you can never be ignored by anyone in the organisation, least your boss. Sometimes, you may feel let down but patience and perseverance is the key to excel. It may even be a good idea to strive to better yourself with every passing day in your career. It is good to be competitive with yourself rather than others and be clear on what you want to achieve in your career. This focus and quest for excellence will enable you to have inspiring conversations with your boss and thereby will lead to self confidence and success.

We need to strive to be like the “Pole star” in the sky, which shines in darkness irrespective of millions of others stars which are present.  The mantra could be “How do I outshine myself every day and shine like a pole star amongst my peers?”

S Ramesh Shankar

 

To be with Nature ……..

Our life has become hectic today. Most of us live in cities not by choice but because of better opportunities and facilities. We are surrounded by concrete all around.

We begin our day by looking at other buildings and cars and trucks on the road. We are impacted by the pollution all around us. Many times, we are not able to even go for a walk or pursue any hobby of our choice.

We do not have the time to even admire the beauty of nature. However, I am lucky to live just opposite to the Arabian Sea in Mumbai. It has been a dream come true for me. The largeness of the ocean keeps me grounded. As I set to office, I am again in the midst of traffic and pollution. Even at work, it is just concrete all around and hardly any trees, flowers or birds to admire.

I sometimes wonder whether it is worth leaving our villages or towns to a distant land in search of a vocation. Although, it is true that most of us have moved to cities more by the call of duty rather than our preferred choice, it is sad that we miss nature all around us every day of our lives.

I had been spent three weeks recently in a village on the outskirts of Coimbatore in south India. It is surrounded by the western ghats. I woke up to the call of the rooster and then hear the melodious sounds of birds with the morning coffee. When I go for a stroll, I see peacocks, cattle, birds and other animals co-existing peacefully and harmoniously with the villagers around them. If I look around, we have green banana groves or rice fields ready for the next sowing season. I can hear the sound of the train gushing through the horizon on the hill side. The western ghats are daunting and beautiful in the backdrop. They make you realize that as human beings we are tiny tots in front of them.

The happy and contended people around makes you realize that it is not money and material facilities alone, which keeps you happy in life. You sync with nature and enjoy the smell of the earth and the song of the birds around you.

I also wonder how we have have forgotten to enjoy these small and beautiful things in life. We justify ourselves by stating that we are working hard and building the future for our families and so on.

I would recommend that each of us should spend at least one week every year in the hills or the plains in the villages and be with nature. We may not realize what we miss unless we experience it.

Let us be humble and enjoy the beautiful things Mother Nature provides us.

S Ramesh Shankar

Decisions are contextual


All our decisions in life are contextual.  I have sometimes wondered as to why we feel bad when we need to review a decision we have made sometime in the past in our personal or work life.  In my view, all our decisions are the best we could have made in the circumstances we made them.  As time passes, the context may change or new awareness may come in and we may feel like reviewing our own decision.  Although, we may be convinced that the decision we made may have been right at that time and needs a review now, we are generally reluctant to do so.  The reason for the same in most instances is either our ego or our inability to recognise the change of context.

Let us try to understand the same from two situational contexts in our personal and professional lives. I have experienced this both in my personal and professional lives.  In the personal context, I had bought a house and had decided to settle there post my retirement.  I was staying there for two years and suddenly my wife realised that the house was not Vastu (Indian architectural science) compliant.  I took a stand that we had decided to buy it only a few years back and never in the past considered Vastu as a criteria to buy a house.  I decided not to sell it and buy another house for this purpose.  However, two years down the line, I also read a bit of Vastu and understood the benefits of its compliance and decided to sell it and buy another one.  The context had changed since I was more aware and now I was anyway shifting from Bangalore to Mumbai to change my job so it facilitated my decision easily.

Now let us look at a work situation.  We decided to specify the type of mobile phones and the price limits, which could be allowed for different categories of employees.  As the market environment changed within two years, the models of mobile phones available in the market multiplied and the prices crashed.  While all of us were convinced that our policy on mobile phones was redundant, we were reluctant to review the same since we had taken that decision after a detailed analysis.  It took us some more months and discussions before we reviewed our own decision and agreed it make it more flexible.

These are just two simple examples.  The fact is that all of us take decisions every day.  Our decisions are always based on the best available information and judgement of ours.  As time passes, the context may change and we may become aware of new circumstances and hence we could review our own decisions.  However, we are reluctant more due to our own ego issues, our reluctance to move on and accept the change of circumstances or sometimes “who will bell the cat”attitude.  It’s like a chef not keen to change the temperature of the oven after summer is over and winter sets in.  Even our mothers did not hesitate to do so.

Let us realize that all decisions are contextual and may have an expiry date.

S Ramesh Shankar