My take 8:Rules

A company’s organizational discipline speaks volumes about it. Management, with in the company’s premises, can choose to control the employee’s behavior or give them all the freedom. Both of these strategies will have different outcomes, but in my opinion only companies which have overall control, at least with in its premises will have good productivity.

If the employees are given all the freedom, then there will not be any commonality among them, as they will be more representing themselves than the company, which in turn takes away the sense of oneness. As the norms of the company play a big role to generate this sense of oneness among employees.

Secondly, if the employees are let loose then there is a good chance that they will concentrate in accomplishing their personal work during the office hours and probably with companies resources, which would decrease the company’s productivity. Also if they have the freedom to go to office at any time they choose to, then the work or decisions which are interdependent among employees will be heavily delayed.

Many can argue that company’s tyranny will be demoralizing for employees, I agree to some extent, but too much freedom will do no good for company’s performance. It will be like government giving all the freedom to its citizens when driving on roads. Then we can not imagine the number of accident that would occur. No one would follow the speed limits, the stop sign and yield warnings, signal rules etc. The whole traffic will become chaotic. The same chaos will occur if companies give too much freedom.

For the benefit of company’s productivity and atmosphere it is always advisable to have control on the employees. This is the only way to ensure effective and smooth running of the company.

My take 7:Freedom of ideas

There are various ways of getting work done, either you create set of steps to be followed to reach a result and ask everyone in the team to stick to them or you can define the task and ask the team to come up with its own ideas to accomplish it. Though both the approaches will fulfill the requirement of finishing the task, you will get a better output when creativity is tapped by giving the freedom of approach to the members of the team.

There are two big disadvantages when you tell people exactly what to do. Firstly it communicates a message that they are working on your project and it is your solution they are implementing. This reduces the output as everyone wants to get the work done and get out of the project.

Secondly, as you are not getting any fresh insight, you have limited the number of approaches and ideas. Also, since you have not given any scope for analysis and critique, the chances of errors will increase in the project.

Finance team at my client place was looking for more flexible ways of reporting financial data as the current method required lot of manual work. When they approached me with the problem, I presented ideas of designs which can make it easier for the users at the company. Looking at ideas they constructed a design which would work and assigned me the task to finish it. Instead of presenting ideas, had I shown him a prototype report which worked, they would either be very hesitant to implement the same or would be cynical of the approach.

When you give people the freedom of approach, they form ideas and develop a sense of commitment towards the project. It is always a better to tell people what could be done rather than tell them how to do it.

My take 6: What work ?

One of the most important things in anyone’s life is work. Irrespective of what work you do, how you do it is extremely important. Edison said ‘Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, Tesla, who was his contemporary, said that the 90% perspiration can be reduced to 10% by planning and doing smart work. In my opinion hard work is good but smart work is better.

Life is no longer a simple routine where man leaves the house to farms in the morning, and woman would cook and take care of kids at home. In today’s life each individual juggles between various tasks and in such a scenario just hard work is not sufficient.

Usually as we have a heap of tasks to complete in one day, prioritizing and doing the most important ones first is extremely important, otherwise we would be buried in the pile of tasks waiting to be finished and we would have absolutely no time to relax or unwind.

For example let us say a supervisor is extremely hard working and sits and finishes every task that comes his way, then no amount of time would be sufficient to finish all the tasks, as he is not distributing them among his group, this would also make it difficult for him to meet all the deadlines. On the other hand if he or she smartly assigns work to his or her team members based on their individual capabilities then the burden is reduced and he can accomplish more work in less time.

In our work life, accomplishing the tasks that are challenging and being recognized for them is motivational. On the other hand, doing mundane work day after day would be demoralizing and depressing. This in turn will have a negative effect on our personal life as well because we would reach home exhausted and depressed.

It is always in our benefit to prioritize the work and pass of some of the tasks if we are not able to handle all the load. This way we would create a healthy balance. This is smartest way of handling the work life.

My take 5: Plan

Focusing on long term needs brings out a discipline and helps us in living a worry free life. Some people might argue that fun of life is lost if we do not satisfy our immediate desires, but if we forget our goal, then vicious cycle of fulfilling one current desire after another will take us no where.

One of the main ingredients of successful life is planning, if we have not planned our future, then we would not know what to do when we get there. Of course we might take decisions on an impulse but that might do more harm than good. Also if we get busy with satisfying immediate desires, then we would have no focus and this would create chaos in life which would lead to frustration.

Unplanned spending is one of the reasons which drove us into current economic recession. When we bought houses at very high interests, we did not plan for a way to make its future payments or affording life’s other costs in general. We preferred huge homes for current living and did not save a penny for the rainy day. As a result we have foreclosures and eventual job losses.

Banks on their end focused on short term gain with high interest rates. They gave away loans to bad creditors for exorbitant rates to gain profits. This resulted in many of the retail as well as investment banks going into losses and even file for bankruptcy.

In my opinion, it is always good to focus on a long term plan than to focus on short term gains. This would improve the stability and quality of life and we would be better equipped to deal with the changes and responsibilities with which life surprises us.

My take4:Draw A Line

In the times of Facebook and Google+ it is difficult to draw the lines of privacy in our lives. But we should at least make an effort to keep our professional and personal lives separate because of following reasons.

First let us start from hiring process. If my hiring manager gets on to my friend list even before the interview, then he has already formed an opinion before I walk in for the interview. He would have an idea about my religious views, my political views and my lifestyle in general. This could affect my chances of getting hired, in either positive or negative way and I would definitely like to be judged based only on my professional skills rather than my personal views.

Secondly after I am hired, I would want people at my work place to take me seriously and value my opinion. If my colleagues or my boss have checked my funny or funky pictures on the Facebook, then there is a lesser chance of them considering me a mature and professional individual.

Thirdly process of ‘Friending’ people at workplace will affect other way round as well. If I have checked out pictures of my boss in Speedos or intimate pictures with his girlfriend or any personal photographs or writings on the wall, then there is a very good chance that I might value his decisions less.

When we club professional and personal activities then it is an open invitation for work place gossips. It is a good idea to have social outings with colleagues, but these should be kept socially professional.

In my opinion it is always better to keep the professional and personal lives separated. I would never want people from my work place follow me every minute of the day. These are two separate lives and to have a healthy life style these should be kept apart.

My take 3:One for All.

A famous adage goes “Team work is more work”. I agree with the fact that people working as a team, rather than working individually performs better when working towards a common goal. But it should be directed by one person who is responsible for managing the project. He/She should be the central authority and be responsible to get the task done.

Team discussions and planning is essential and productive part of a project, but if one person is not given the responsibility to lead the team, then there is a possibility that the discussions will go in all possible directions and no decision is reached, a point of gridlock. So after any discussion, optimal solution should be identified and a team should work of the solution in that direction.

Another reason to have one central authority is that, he/she is responsible to keep the team motivated in all phases of project completion. There can be many road blocks when completing a task, like the plan might not work the way it was intended to during the design, new budget constraints might come up, due to external reasons deadline might shrink. If one person takes the responsibility to make required changes to the plan or solution, then sailing through such difficulties becomes easy.

For example in my project, our team regularly has meetings in which our next agenda is discussed, progress is analyzed and any change required to the current plan is discussed. At the end, it is the supervisor who distributes the work based on the person’s ability and time crunch.

It is always easy to deal with one point of contact rather than, different people and different opinions. So I would say that any team should have healthy discussions but one person should be responsible to steer the team in the right direction to get the work done effectively.

My Take 2: Follow your Heart

At some point or other, everyone has a confusion to choose between what we truly feel inside and what everyone outside is expecting from us. At that point choosing what your heart says may be difficult, but is a sure path to happiness and success.

I always felt this in my life; I am an undergraduate major in engineering, but I did not choose to work in core engineering process because of my inclination towards business. For now, I choose a platform that supports business operations and at the same time requires engineering skills. I am really happy that I made this decision.

If you choose to work what you love to do, then life and work becomes fun. Steve Jobs, Apple founder, which is the biggest US Company as of today, attributes his success to following his heart. He was a collage drop out, took classes in calligraphy because of his genuine interest. This helped him later to design Mac computers into beautiful typographic machines.

I am sure everyone has heard it from someone or other that one should follow his/her heart, and it may sound cliché. But this statement is lot more powerful than we realize. There are a million examples to prove the same. Buddha, founder of Buddhism was a king by birth, but he followed his heart into monastic life and became inspiration for millions of humans around the earth.

Following the natural instinct has always worked, right from Gautama Buddha to Steve Jobs. For successful and happy life, all we need to do is follow our heart with little courage and discipline.

My Take 1: Whose Responsibility ?

In today’s competitive world every company tries to save an extra cent on its manufacturing cost and beat the competition by any means. In this race there is a good possibility that a manufacturer can stoop towards unfair means for monetary gain. Hence the manufacturer should be held responsible for safety of the product.

Many argue that sometimes companies are sued for very trivial issues and people walk away with millions of dollars. This is not true; one classic example is a lady suing McDonalds, over hot coffee spilling on her, causing minor burns. The actual case was that McDonalds used to serve coffee with temperatures from 180 – 200 F and this temperature can cause third degree burns. This temperature was maintained in spite of many earlier complaints because, hot coffee would force consumers to drink it slowly and which intern reduces number of free refills.

We use finished products for almost everything in life. And to save money, if manufacturer use lower quality substitute we can run into life threatening risks. Imagine the number of accidents if a car manufacturer compromises on breaking pad material, burns and rashes to the new born if baby products manufacturer compromises on diaper materials, there are numerous examples.

Another threat which can arise with irresponsibility of manufacturers is environmental damage. If the company causing the damage is not accountable then mess done to the nature will never get cleaned. Last year when BP spilled oil into the Gulf, it killed millions of animals in aquatic life. Fishes, micro organisms, sea birds are still trying to find a balance in spite of rigoros cleaning efforts.

In the final analysis, as consumer products affect many innocent lives, it is the responsibility of the manufacturer to ensure their product safety.