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I could but only give a knowing smile to the drained-out cashier and wish her good!

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"Yes, the crops did get 'stolen' under my supervision but that was fate; I need the hike for my hard work" he reasoned to his wife
"I still can't believe he is asking for a rise", said one of the software professionals
Assuming that the 'farmer cum watchman cum caretaker' was a paragon of virtue and had no hand in the robbery of the crops, it is bound that he thinks he had toiled for a year, got the crops to bear fruits and thus had achieved his targets; just one incident of robbery shouldn't outweigh the other goals that he had achieved

"I like a job where there are a lot of changes and travel across the globe", said a friend who was looking for an alternate career after his service in the military

"This is not the kind of work I signed up for. I like dynamism - solve a problem here, solve a problem there...", said a colleague of mine

"I am the kind who is innovative. I can start off something great but then I get bored soon, so I need constant change" another friend said proudly, as if it was his right to wash off his hands mid-way since he is a self proclaimed 'innovator'

I've been lately hearing such comments from friends, colleagues and even college pass-outs! It is but a matter of self esteem to declare that one is impatient...

Is this cultural or merely the modern generation with low tolerance or is it escapism?

Some confuse impatience for aggressiveness and 'learn to become impatient', since aggressiveness is considered as a virtue for business acumen; there is a reason that these are two different words in the English dictionary

Success however is all about implementation as much and much more than innovation!

Learn implementation; learn from China. Their method is very militaristic- the Leader commands and the rest implement - no questions asked. This makes the execution extremely strong. The leaps and bounds in their economy talk for themselves - they being a $9 Trillion and we at $2 Trillion

Of course they have their own fall backs and the militaristic model may not be sustainable. However the power of implementation is something that we need to learn from our neighbors

With more and more of us lacking patience to see things through, we would falter in our journey. A small aberration of impatience could cost our country dear

Last week, I had traveled to a holy place with my family. Usually the trip is planned just a few days in advance and we book accommodation in one of the local places. This time around, the trip was planned months in advance so as to avail the special tickets for darshan & accommodation from the temple administration

We planned to stay overnight, have the Darshan the next day and return back. We reached late in the night and realized the process overhead in getting a room allotted. Since we had booked on-line, we did have a room somewhere around but in order to get an allocation, one had to go to a reservation center, stand in a queue, get an allocation and then go to the allotted cottage for check-in

I braved the queue and after certain hassels got the allocation letter. Armed proudly with the letter, we marched along to 'discover' our cottage. One of the main motivation to book on-line accommodation was the lovely cottages that we had seen from the outside, during our earlier trips

Our cottage looked appealing from outside however the interiors were not well maintained. Our disappointment would have been evident for whoever cared to look at us... sadly not even the attender bothered to take the pains to notice! The attender groggily guided us to our room and we were shocked to see that the bedspreads were dirty. We asked him to change the bedspread

"What is wrong with it?", he asked surprised, totally jolted off his sleep

"See these stains, we need clean sheets"

He wore a look of disbelief, almost as if I had asked for the moon

"They are clean, sir", he emphasized.. It was evident that these were the best rooms by their standards

"Ok, can you at least replace with a new set?"

"All the sets are like these", he insisted

It was a war of wills. I kept persisting and he kept insisting. In the end, frustrated he said

"Sir, all the sheets are like this. The washer-man cleans them - not me"

We resigned to our fates and decided never to use the temple accommodation again

The attender scoped what he understood was his responsibilities and blamed the washer-man and absolved himself of any professional guilt!

I have noticed similar instances, where the software engineer does not think beyond his work because his manager did not assign him that activity

Mostly it is an issue relating to Roles and Responsibility and the type of leadership practiced by the Manager. In Situational Leadership theory, leadership styles are characterized into four behavior types - Telling, Selling, Participating and Delegating. Unfortunately in the intellectual industry, manager's sometimes get caught up in the "Telling" leadership style, as they feel this is the least risk averse approach - probably yes, if they are knowledgeable - but helpful only in the short run. The impact of continuous use of this style would end up in making our engineers take less ownership and divert their focus on 'assigned task completion'

In the attenders case, his responsibility had probably been to clean the room with the available resources. Management had not educated him to also ensure Customer Experience; therefore he was oblivious to the dissatisfaction caused by him

The rewards and recognition committee was presenting the rewards and rewardee list to the Management Team for the final sign off. There was just a month to go for the big company annual event which was celebrated in a grand fashion year after year

As they were going through the rewardee list, they came to the reward category for the "Business Unit having best self initiated improvements". This award was to encourage the teams within each Business Unit to strive towards continuous self improvement which was driven by the employees. It was a bottom up approach where-in employees identified improvements and solved it themselves, thereby taking the project and the organization one step closer to be a more efficient place

Unlike other award categories in which there would be at least one awardee for each Business Unit, this award category was limited to a single award - meaning only one Business Unit could win it

The moment this was presented, there was a lot of furor among the Management Team

"My Unit has maximum number of improvements, why isn't my Unit getting the award", said one Unit Head

"My Unit has key improvements which has positively impacted the bottom line", said another Unit Head

"Our Unit has been appreciated for our improvements even by our Customer", said the third Unit Head

"The measurement criteria you have used are incorrect", revolted one of the Heads to the Rewards committee

The arguments went on and on, with the reward committee trying the explain the objective and criteria but to no avail

After 10 minutes, the Site Head intervened "Team, lets not fight over this - Mr. Jack, please cancel this award category for the function" and the meeting moved on

What the site head had done was to choose the path of least resistance. This case is comical especially if you can picture the heated arguments and the sudden final decision. However this indicates weak leadership. One may push it off claiming it to be a trivial issue however these indicate a person's character & leadership skills. To avoid conflict, such irrational decisions would have been taken in other circumstances too

One cannot please everyone at all times - Decisions should be taken by applying Principles and Rules

In this specific case, the reward category had already been approved, which means the reward was found necessary. The Site Head should have been capable of objectively arriving at a conclusion on the awardee rather than shying away from conflict

A friend of mine posted this question "Does the needs of many outweigh the needs of a few?" What do you think?

Surprisingly I found many agreed that the needs of the many outweighs that of the few, in fact this was even associated to Rewards and Recognition system

Consider a situation where you have a large team whose overall performance varies from average to just above average; on the other hand you have a smaller team which has consistently performed well - but they form a smaller portion of your organization. If you apply the above principle, it would be wiser to reward the larger team, as a larger portion of the company would end up with a higher morale after the awards ceremony

While this may sound logical and many Senior Manager's opts this method in the hope to reduce attrition & improve team morale - in reality this has the opposite effect on the organization. The team which performed well feels disadvantaged they would realize 'no matter how we perform, the result would be the same - so why sweat it out?'

The larger teams' Manager would rejoice - he would, with all probability, like to believe he has done a good job; however the team knowing better, understands there is no value in the reward and thinks either there was a political angle for the award or that the senior Management has no clue on the ground reality. Also, the team would think that this is the 'level of work' expected by the organization and would continue working on these lower standards - Thus a simple R&R has lowered the expected working standard of your organization!

If you apply the same principle to a society - where there are 8 thugs and 2 good men; what would be the greater good? Theft, murder, bribery? The 8 thugs would vouch that the 2 men are murdered, for the greater good, as there would be no one to report their misconducts!

So by blindly satisfying the needs of many, one only facilitates in degrading the society. Whether in projects or society one should take decisions based on Principles and not rules bent to satisfy situations