Kiran Bedi…Yours, I remain

I am not the kinds to be inspired by random people, even if their biography boasted of great achievements. This is not because I doubt them, but I place more emphasis on the circumstances and the opportunities that led to them. Given the right setting, many more could have shone brighter than them is what I have always thought. Sheer talent is one, but that alone cannot make one an achiever. I had the opportunity to listen to several such prominent people at IIT/IISc and my corporate life, yet they failed to move me – on second thoughts, maybe they were not as great orators as they were achievers.

And then there came Kiran Bedi. One whom I had grown up wanting to emulate since the day I saw Udaan, but I lacked the physical stamina or mental dexterity. What passion and energy she combines, and packs a powerful punch. Her one hour speech was nothing short of stating the obvious, but what made it for me was the way she spoke. Dimunitive in size that the podium almost blocked her out, but she made up for it with her vigour. Here was one who was destined to be an achiever. I came away convinced, that if you have the mettle, even circumstances mould themselves to suit you.

It is not even a classic filmy case of facing the odds and then overcoming it that convinced me about this. After all, most great men and women have this story behind them and it somewhat glorifies further their status.

It is perhaps something unexplainable, it is maybe an extra dose of Horlicks, or  it may even be mass hypnotism by her . But then, I remain her fan.

My day begins

This is one of those days when I reached the office before the sweepers came in. I am ashamed. I am not equipped enough to do that job, yet I am here early. So I log in..it is quite a feeling when the swipe machine shows the time. And then there are puzzled faces all around..from the walls, the computers, the silent yet persistently ringing phones and the security guards. It is ominous. I vow to myself that I shall be early to bed early to rise, but shan’t come in early, I shan’t go late from office.

Then, as if on cue, there is a meowwwwwwwwwww….black cat with green eyes, disturbed from its slumber in the high security – no cell phones with cameras – no storage devices – body check every time you are in and out of even the loo, air conditioned to suit the Eskimos- office. I am phoonked.

No more early to office for me.

Ps: You really believed that I could be early to office?! Okay..I add this post under the fiction category.

Hard’ly’ working

I wanted to help the HR in my organization understand what drives one to boredom at work, I wanted to kill time at office, I wanted to fill blog space, I wanted to start off my research direction for a future phd that I might want to do some day, I wanted to increase the hits on my blog, I wanted to… ok I dunno why I designed the following questionnaire.

1.What makes you feel more bored at work?
a. Lack of work
b. Office Chat tool not working
c. Regular chat/gossip buddies in office suddenly busy or on leave

2. How do you tackle boredom at work?
a· Write blogs
b· Browse aimlessly
c· Attempt to break the firewall to access mailbox/social networking sites

3. Do any of the following make you feel happy that you have tackled the boredem’on’ for atleast a short while?
a· Long Breakfast/Lunch breaks
b· Several tea breaks
c· Offering unsolicited career advice

4. Which delights you more after a boring day at work?
a· The clock ticking to 6pm and the feeling that 1 more boring day spent successfully
b· Early day off from work for some shopping
c· Elated at having re established phone contacts through the day

5. Who do you think is competition to you on the “most bored yearly golden globe” award in your organization?
a· Your boss
b· Your reportee
c· Noone, I am the undisputed winner

P.s. I am doing a psycho analysis course from this Who must not be named university in Neverland. If you send me the answers to the above questions, will get back to you on your personality type. Allow sufficient time for process delays.

Time to go

The best times at work are when you are serving your notice period, post your resignation from work. The taste of honey only gets better when it is longer, and the management is unwilling to award you any concession. You will understand what I am saying when you look at it from my point of view. How does one put this time to best use?
1.Do a thorough research of the various coffee vending machines in the campus, on as many floors as there are in yours. At the end of it, you can share a well thought out and useful report with the unfortunate ones who choose to stay behind even after you have left the organization!! It can contain information on which are the privileged ones to be frequently visited by cockroaches/mosquitoes/ants or other unrecognizable once living forms, the sugar/milk/coffee/tea strength of each, the crowd pulling capacity – could be a time series analysis if need be and the like.
2.Examine your computer hard disk, identify ways to discreetly delete useful data, create multiple copies of junk and automatically give them relevant different filenames based on the hottest business killer topic in office at the moment, create several partitions on the hard disk – maybe one for each new project you will be assigned to work on while you are on notice period.
3.Re-read all the mails in your mail box that you have received in the past ‘x’ years (? Months ? days ) , especially the forwarded ones, and forward them back to the one who sent it to you in the first place. If you are afraid of annoying that person beyond measure, add a line on top saying “remembering you…”
4.Prepare handover documents (it is highly unlikey you will be asked for one anytime before the relieving date, still it is also highly unlikely that you will not be asked for one on the day you are packing your bags for one last time…you get the gist..) such that it is atleast 25 pages long. You are free to include blank pages in between the 3rd and 22nd page. Set the font to binary, and circulate to your manager just when he asks for it. Then exclaim surprise as to how the virus that attacked your laptop has managed to infect his too.
5.Say hi to every member on the floor; if they do not respond at the first instance, go stand at their desk and make small talk. Remember the decibels of the conversation should be just a wee bit lower than normal hearing, so that it raises suspicion in their minds about possible attrition from others.
6.Discuss the appraisal process, and include unachievable or previously conveniently ignored topics as additional targets for the team. Whoever said your successor should not miss you!
I could go on, but my dear readers will begin wondering if it is my personal experience..to clarify to one and all, hell and heaven, no..not yet. I am talking about my manager kicking the bucket…oops…how I wish!
For all those who are smacking their lips on hearing how there is one more boss-hater in their midst, sorry…i adore mine…He is an angel without the wings These were just Dilbertian moments!

How true, Mr. Buchanan….

I hate anything titled “7 habits of” or ” 5 ways to” and the like…but I could not help myself from reproducing the following essay here!

7 signs that employees hate the boss by Leigh Buchanan, Inc.com
There’s a reason Dilbert, The Office, and their ilk are so popular. Satire gets old fast, but the appeal of realism endures. And the real world, sadly, is full of lousy bosses. Someone ought to do a study on where these louts come from.
Were they abused by their own bosses? Did they toss overboard the ballast of human kindness to hasten the ascent of their career balloons? Or is this an example of absolute power corrupting absolutely? Such research might also demonstrate how ubiquitous miserable managers are.
The proliferation of boss-bashing screeds with titles like When You Work for a Bully, Nasty Bosses, and How To Work for an Idiot suggests a plague.
A few months ago I enumerated five ways in which bosses could be great. A bookend column about bad bosses would never fit in this space, because while goodness tends to be monochromatic, badness comes in every color of the rainbow.
But bad bosses of all stripes evoke similar responses in employees; consequently, you can often tell that people hate you, even if you’re not sure why.Inc. readers, of course, are all purebreds among top dogs. But on the off chance that a misfit manager stumbles across this page, here are seven signs that you are a bad boss:
1.The staff has developed guidelines for dealing with you and quietly passes them to new employees. “Never suggest that there might be another way of doing something,” they might say. Or “Act self-deprecating so he doesn’t feel threatened.”
2.You have one or two fanatical acolytes. Yes, such devotion may be a testament to your fabulousness. But often when a boss is perceived as universally loathed, the staff opportunist offers herself up as sole confidante and friend, seeking power and favor at the expense of more honest, critical employees.
3.You never see people walk by. Employees would rather circumnavigate the entire office to get to the coffee machine or bathroom than take the shortcut past your door and risk being invited in.
4.Your 360-degree evaluations come back short and full of generically positive comments, with one very mild criticism (“Sometimes she works too damn hard for her own good”) thrown in for credibility’s sake.
5.People don’t volunteer for your pet projects. The idea sucks, and they’re afraid to tell you, or it’s brilliant, but the consequences for letting you down are too terrible to imagine. And, of course, if it’s your pet project, you’ll probably work on it as well. Which means more time spent…gulp…with you.
6.You have legions of former employees, but they rarely give your name as a reference for new jobs. Either they don’t trust you to give them their due, or they worry that because they were so miserable working for you, your recollections will also be dismal.
7.You have legions of former employees, period. If your staff falls away like linty Post-it notes, ask yourself: Is high turnover the problem? Or am I?

A Manager’s Val(YOU) +

This is related to the previous post in this category in some way. If you have reached that stage in your career, where you are preparing the content of presentations to be made to external teams/senior management, you would know what I am talking about. The mandate that one starts with is to make a presentation that brings out your work and puts your views across, while we engage in a dialogue with ‘them’ to further our efforts into real action. Then you spend countless hours regurgitating facts, grinding theories, crucifying opinions, posing mind benders, culling out the solution, and posing actionables. If one had spent 3-4 weeks in working through the idea before it germinated into something worthy of showcasing at the higher level, another 3-4 days is spent in putting this ‘adorable’ ppt (Hail Microsoft) together. After all this, what catches the eye of your manager when she/he wants to ‘value-add’ to your work?
-Isnt that font a little too small or archaic to be shown on a bigger canvas
-How about replacing that mundane round bullet, with a flashy square blue button with a hole.
-Why are there very few slides in the Appendix? Did we not do more than this?
-Great and easy to understand process flow diagram – but do not demystify everything we do.
-Arent the colours a little too bright for the late evening presentation that we want to have?

(The Slide Master used was the same as the one used by the Manager, centuries ago(OSO style))

Deliverable – Urgent: Before 00:00 hours today

If you are a manager, then you would know this trick by now. Several times, circumstances demand that you get meaningless work done out of your team. Not all the work you do, is going to find some use somewhere. There are also times when there is absolutely no work at all. What does one do in such times, one can’t let the team rust away..one can’t let the team harbor ugly thoughts that can hurt the organization in the long run( like wanting to move to seemingly greener pastures)…so keep them busy with work that may or may not see the light of the day.

One is subject to this misery more often when one is a junior level team member..but then it is bliss at that point of time as very few people understand the difference between work and ‘real’ work at this point.

The next level of misery is when you are a reasonably senior member in the team and is privy to the real deliverables that affect the team. Here the situation gets tricky, as by now, one knows that the work given is just a tactic used by the manager, but a skilful manager can mask it under the shroud of secrecy or how important it is to lead to a bigger better project in the coming few months.

But the best is when the same treatment is meted out to your managers; they end up working late for a supposed meeting and it then gets cancelled at the last minute..whoa, what pleasure!

Performance Evaluation- Cynics view of a good appraisal

What the bosses say and what it means?

1. It has been a good year – I have kept a tab of all your flaws, but I am being benevolent by not pointing them out to you.
2. You have delivered as per expectations – I never thought you were up to any good, so I set the expectations low anyways
3. This rating reflects your performance – I have nothing to do with assessing you.
4. Expect you to continue in the same vein – Give me sufficient warning if you plan to leave.
5. Better things to come – Keep waiting
6. Is there anything else you want to discuss? – No questions entertained.
7. Lets go for a tea-break – Forget all that was discussed in this meeting. They add no value to you or to me, or to anyone else any time.

Google on GPRS

Cell phones fascinate me. The features on them continue to explode. Every time, I zero in on a phone thinking there is nothing drastically new that is going to come up in the next version, I end up poorer by atleast 25 grand for this farcical thought. I do not claim to be a master of the technologies, but to date the most useful one to me has been the integration of gprs on cell phones. Combined with google, imagine the power it can unleash.

1.I can hire a share taxi already on the road, heading in the direction I want to go.

2.I can search for the delicacies in a restaurant, at my own pace, without having the self assumed knowledgeable hunk from the restaurant explain it to me so that I decide I do not want to order food from there.

3.I can check out the latest news while in office where most websites are banned.

4.I can do social networking over orkut.

5.I can check the weather at my destination before heading there.

6.I can price compare anything I want to buy, even while at the shop.

7.I can source inputs for any creative solutioning that my work demands without having to wait until I can reach an internet access available computer.

8.I can integrate and upload my calendar on the web.

9.I can check parking availability in the mall.

10.I can check movie tickets availability much before entering the queue for a current show.

Now if only gprs speeds would increase, and my mobile is more palm friendly….

Mobile Service Providers-Om and Amen

I got this message on my cell phone from my service provider a few days back. A message from the Bible will be sent to you everyday for a monthly subscription on Rs. 15/- Besides making me ignore the message, it didn’t evict any other reaction. This is followed by a message today which was the one that set me thinking. A message a day from the Bhagvad Gita for Rs. 20/- a month.

If all religions are equal in our secular society, if all religions impart the same teachings of God, if we are not to distinguish amongst Hindus, Muslims, Christians or any other religious groups in any act, then according to the laws of the land, why should businesses be allowed to differentiate in pricing and take advantage of majority and minority groups?