Sunday, March 23, 2008

The Great Indian Blame Game!!!!!

I often wonder and at times discuss this with close friends, why do we always end up finding a scapegoat - real or otherwise, to blame for our failures?

The failures could be as trivial as reaching late for a movie show or a meeting, it could sometimes be as serious as breaking down a relationship and you can count anything in between these extremes. We end up finding a scapegoat (mostly anyone other than ourselves) who can be blamed for the failure.

A little bit of introspection and soul searching most times does point the finger back to ourselves, but where egos are mighty and heads heavy, wiser sense rarely prevails. A scape goat is quickly found and publicised to the wide world. Soon messages are floated around to near and dear ones explaining how because of someone else i got sidelined from a certain promotion or i missed my flight or my wife ran away etc.

A blame game indeed!!!!!!

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Power of Trust...

I have read somewhere that Trust can get you a lot of desirable affects and I am probably the great benefactor of being able to trust people.

I have always had tough situations looking me in the eye and there have been months at a stretch when I would be so hard pressed and under intense pressure. In crude Hindi a friend and me would always joke about it saying it happens so often that instead of god, there was a Jack Ass writing down my destiny while God took a break.

Now when I look back, it all seems so easy and straight forward, very seldom, I even felt like conning myself into believing that I did it, I did it on my own. Of course when the drink was over and sanity prevailed, I knew I was just part of it all and a lot of it got done because of the kind of people I had around me, especially those on my team.

Trust is a function of Competency and Character and once the trust is built, things just move so smoothly, communication lines are clear as a whistle, people feel a lot of freedom and the overall achievements go up significantly. I have cases where we have achieved so much more with a trust based approach that I would personally want it to be deployed everywhere.

The challenge for me has always been in promising more delivering even more with lesser resources. I believe a good way to start of is to inculcate a feeling of trust in the team that you have and then watch the magic work.

And yes someday I would learn to turn it around where people also start trusting me a lot more than some of them do today, especially on the personal front :)

Sunday, March 09, 2008

Woman's Day - 2 close friends

On the eve of this woman’s day (08 March 2008), as I sent a message to my team and few other colleagues, my mind could not help but ponder over the past one year and think about 2 specific friends.

Person A is a young, energetic girl all of 24 who started her career on my team. A brave girl who stood up to her convictions amidst lot of opposition and trial from parents, relatives and all else.

Person B is a competent professional, thinks she is smart and has all the things figured out. A mature woman of 27-28 who could not stand up to her own convictions, flip flopped on decisions to land many people close to her in agony. Today she is little else than a wreck living under constant vigil, supervision and threat to family and close ones including few friends.

When we talk about women’s liberalization and coming of age, How big a role does education, job security, money and power play? Well in all this, Person A is less educated, relatively younger and therefore probably a little less mature(?), earns a whole lot lesser than Person B in pure money terms.

I felt it was the clarity of thought and conviction, the power to stand up to yourself and for yourself, the ability to resist what was wrong without bothering to think who it was coming from is what sets Person A apart.

Person A and Person B are my close friends and will remain so for ever, Person A is like my little sister and was a personal favorite too (I never told her this while she worked for me, also I believe that Great/Good Managers too can have personal favorites!!!).

I am proud of both of them as friends but I feel a lot better when I see, meet and hear about Person A. I wish Person B could one day build up the courage and conviction to stand up and be counted for the sake of all those women who are waiting to fight for themselves.