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.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, September 9, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
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.
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.
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