Defying Peter's Principle - A guide to sustenance

Peter's principle highlights that in an organizational hierarchy, every employee will rise or get promoted to his or her level of incompetence.  The situation is more visible in the upper strata of the middle management layer, where there is overcrowding.  Also with organizations trying to rationalize cost by downsizing, it becomes survival of the smartest. Here is a remedy kit,  that will help an individual defy peter's principle, sustain and grow.

Maintain Thy Flock:

The Flock is those bunch of selfless souls who are brilliant, always happy and contended without aspirations to grow and are innovative. It takes time to cultivate this flock. You need to look back at the years you passed by in the organization, identify your flock and have them together.  With a strong flock you can get them to innovate and execute while you effortlessly take credit by projecting as if you are giving the directions to the flock to execute. The flock will be your shadow in all challenging situations that you handle, be it with customers or senior management who is looking at you as a candidate for rationalization.  With you being the architect of the screen play in all meetings, laurels come to you naturally. A word of caution though is to take care of the flock, make them feel they are important and create an illusion of grand recognition by throwing in some titbits every now and then at them.

Be the Profane Visionary:

Profanity is a key trait to be showcased if you want to be perceived as an aggressive go getter. Whether it is chairing a staff meeting or reviewing a proposal profanity helps.  When you review, always go with the assumption that everything is wrong and start with an analogy - the more dirtier and vulgar the better it is.  You will definitely get to hear in the corridors that you are a great reviewer and any proposal or presentation needs your scrutiny before it is delivered. With a multicultural and diverse community in place, how can you get away with this?? Acronyms are there to save your day. For e.g.: you can say "WTF" (I leave the expansion to the reader) and you will definitely find a bunch of sycophants around you to applaud you and appreciate your aggressiveness. Profanity can also be used as a very effective diversionary tactic to hide your incompetence and lack of understanding of the subject under discussion.  A word of caution - Study your audience before you apply this technique.

Hallucinate Confidently:

Projecting an aura of confidence is an important pre-requisite to apply this technique. If you get this right most of your hallucinations will be perceived as "thought leadership".   Through your persistent and  confident hallucinations, you would have established yourself as a "thought leader" and you can leverage that to create aspirational business cases, which will increase your equity as a business leader also.

An example could be " Whatever I talk on a microphone in any language should be understood by the system and translated to code. Deployment will be through a IVR system. The system will have a self-recovering capability that will enable a roll back through pre-recorded message instructions that are stored in the system".

Now read the above paragraph again. Doesn't it sound visionary, if you just read it and immerse yourself in it, without even giving the slightest consideration as to who is going to implement this.  A word of caution - don't make any attempts to understand your hallucinations which are revelations that came to your probably in a dream or after gulping four large Johnny Walkers. In addition, don’t ever make the cardinal mistake of trying to empathize with the poor souls who are going to be tasked with the implementation of your hallucinations.

Be a new broom:

If you have exhausted the above techniques in your current organization and you still are in the limelight for all wrong reasons, then be assured that your true colors are out in the open.  A very high probability is that you had Judas in your flock and didn't identify him/her, and this person is gunning for your position now. But don't worry- you can still use the above three techniques to get into another organization.  As the proverb goes "A new broom sweeps well".  You can use the cool off period as a new broom to get into the inner circle of powerful people in the new organization and also cultivate your flock.  A word of caution - this is a time bound technique and you should quickly adapt yourself and apply the above three techniques in your new organization for sustenance; else you will be wiped off without a trace.

Hog the Limelight:

For any of the above techniques to work effectively, you need to be in the limelight. A fundamental pre-requisite that will act as a catalyst for you here is proximity to the people who matter. After all seeing is believing isn't it? You can also follow Machiavelli - "Ends justify means". Even If it requires projecting someone else's work  (be it a member of your flock or someone who trusts you) as your work do it. 

The Fallback:

You feel all of the above are too much for you to handle? You still have an option. Become part of someone's flock. A word of caution - sincerely evaluate yourself against the required traits,  if you are competent enough to be part of a flock, else the outcomes could be disastrous.

 Thank you Mr. Scott Adams for being my inspiration.

When rewards demotivate……

In most organizations, there is lot of introspection and thought process applied to establish a well-defined rewards and recognition program. The Human Resources teams view these as essential to maintain and increase motivation and passion towards work among employees, thereby aiming to create and project a vibrant organization.

But do these established rewards and recognition programs achieve the desired goal. They are indeed created with the right intent. But many times they backfire because of the way in which they are manifested by managers and can be extremely demotivating to employees.

Here's my view on what some of these manifestations can be and their negative impact on an employee's morale.

The Posthumous Reward :  Delayed recognition is indeed disheartening.  This comes to the definition on what a recognition can be. Most mangers think that giving a good appraisal and salary hike at the end of the year is what most employees want, even though many research studies indicate otherwise. They don't realize that there are some intangible factors beyond that like visibility,  trusting an employee by giving him more accountability and giving them the authority to take decisions.  Lack of these over a period of time can be killers of an employee's passion towards work and ultimately result in loss of high performers for the organization.

The "Me too" bandwagon :  Recognition should always be personalized. Be it a pat on the back or a quick handshake with a word of appreciation, personal touch carries a great deal. One of the most irritating and demotivating factors can be this lack of personalization. These are visible through group mails with words such as "great job", " congrats keep up the good work" etc.  The more number of "reply to all" mails in the chain, the more irritating these can be.  Another reflection of this factor is in the way appreciation messages are written.  Again lack of personalization on this, where a manager lacks in taking the effort required, can demotivate as well as embarrass an employee.

The Terminal Antidote :  This is a very common phenomenon. Among employees there is a category who are silent performers. It is the manager's responsibility to recognize these employees, who are the backbone of successful projects. But unfortunately, recognition for these people is delayed or forgotten many a times. Finally, when it comes to the manager's ears through probably an accidental one-to-one meeting done with a Human resources person,  the immediately reaction is to nominate the person for a reward to boost his morale. These "Terminal Antidotes" are usually the "last straw" and are more an insult rather than a reward.  Letting the employee remain unrecognized is a better option that this , since these antidotes acts as catalysts for attrition.

Proximania: This is another key factor, especially where managers handled geographically distributed teams. This manifests itself through the manager's actions, wherein  the outside world perceives only the people who physically are near the manager as performers or his lieutenants. A manager who suffers from Proximania ultimately ends up with a demotivated remote team. This factor is also a major blinder for a manager and prevents him from implementing intrinsic motivators for an employee, like visibility and adding more responsibilities.

Glorifying Suckers:  This is the worst of them all.  Even employees who go with the philosophy of  "Do thy work and have no expectations" can also be turned off by this. This manifests where a manager invariably ends up by proving "Peters principle" while providing added responsibilities to employees.  In this situation, performers usually end up either reporting to Suckers who manage to create a mirage with a manager who suffers from "Proximania".  Managers who don't realize that they are doing this,  invariably end up institutionalizing the above four factors also into their work, and thereby lose out on building winning teams.

Rewards and recognitions are one of the key pillars of team building and is a continued area of research. But ultimately whatever be the prescriptions, it all depends on an individual and his commitment and passion to implement them.  While doing that, if care is taken consciously not to let the above five factors rise their heads, then, the probability of build high performing and cohesive teams can by at six sigma!!!!

Teaching, passion And Nobility

Last week an incident happened at work which gave me an immense sense of satisfaction and pride. As part of my work in implementing efficiency improvement solutions in testing, I have been coaching two young engineers for the last couple of months. Last week was the presentation of their two months of work to the customer. The morning on that day last week both of them came smiling and happy to my desk and told me " Girish, the presentation was received very well and from yesterday mails have been flying around congratulating us for our excellent work.  Thanks to your mentoring and guidance that enabled us to be successful". 

Why was I so happy? I had assumed the role of a teacher and coach and  the success of those two young people made me happy because of my involvement and passion in shaping up,their work.  I started contemplating.  One small instance where I was able to see the success of something I taught two people makes me so happy. My teachers right from my kinder garden to my MBA, those great people who have taken teaching as their profession and have shaped up and  sculpted the successful lives of hundreds of people. How are they able to of that? The passion, sincerity and dedication they showed towards their profession is what made people like me what we are today.

I started thinking about every teacher I had - Sherly teacher who taught me how to write the alphabet "f" properly. Sarasa teacher who took personal care of me in my first standard and Choodamani teacher who made me love Tamil classes and Balaramamoorthy Sir who made learning English grammar a pleasure. I still remember the instance when I went to give my marriage invite at my school. My Chemistry sir Mr. Selvarajan told me " Girish, I am glad to see you successful in your life and blessed me".  Then comes my REC where my teachers to name a few Dr. PSS, Dr. Thiruvengadam, Sati Devi mam and many others to whom I owe where I am in life today. A common trait, they were all, passionate about imparting knowledge to us.  Our generation were all very blessed indeed to get such teachers.  The passion of these teachers always exists. Indeed, with such teachers the profession is indeed a "noble" profession. Am fortunate to see such role models in my family. My parents, all my aunts and a couple of my uncles. My father is no more but he still is remembered by many of his students.

As I move on to the present,  where we are witnessing the education boom happening through mushrooming private professional colleges and a school around every street corner.  Are most of the people who are getting into this profession doing so by choice? Sadly no, predominantly. Many of them are there as a last alternative  - like a person who completes final year becomes a teacher next year since he does not have any other job and that too for a pittance.  Something I overheard a neighbour telling my wife " I am looking for a teaching job since hours are comfortable. I want to get into a government school only since we need not work there".  A sad state of affairs of affairs indeed.

In a competitive global environment, education plays a major role and what this country needs is a lot more of those passionate and noble  souls to take up teaching as a passion first, rather than as merely a profession. 

Coming back to me, I have come to a conclusion that teaching is what I want to do  be it in a college or school or in my current profession.  I hope that I will strive to do this with the same passion and commitment as what I got from my teachers.....

Discipline - will thou Resurrect?

Discipline has many manifestations prevalent in our life ranging from our personal traits to our societal, family and professional Eco systems.  We may not feel it's existence but the lack of it always makes itself visible when when the generally accepted norms in the Eco system are not complied with. Yes, these norms may related to culture, race, religion geography but the lack of compliance for sure causes angst and discontent in the respective societies.

Coming to our own country with so many instances of lack of discipline rearing it ugly head ; be it the brutal rape of Nirbhaya or the impunity with which people violate traffic or rich politicians heirs running amuck or managers only taking a flexi time and "working from home" with consistency. The people while grumbling take all this in their stride and move ahead

What can be done to resurrect the conformance to discipline? There are three dimensions through which this can be accomplished in my view - Fear, Embarrassment and hitting where it matters most Monetary Penalties. 

 Here are a few situations which were actual instances or hypothetical wishes which can enable this resurrection if broad based.

To start with instances from the place I live. During limited water supply due to water scarcity, people were keeping taps open while leaving their homes despite requests. When the association imposed penalties and displaying their names on the notice boards, it stopped. Similar instance where all unwanted stuff was flushed into drainage. The action was penalties, displaying on notice boards and insisting that everyone from the respective block have to be present she the clogging drains were cleared. The actions worked - A combination of Fear, Embarrassment and Monetary Penalties did it. 

Is the professional world any different? Let us look at a change being introduced - be it on a process or standardization through an innovative solution. The progress in many cases is slow despite lot of education and propaganda on the benefits. A fair sized group still resist since it will reduce their criticality. The moment it is mandated through their objectives, everyone goes head over heels to comply. The reason??- fear of getting a bad appraisal, Embarrassment due to peers progressing ahead of them and monetary penalties due to no pay hikes.

Coming on to the society; - did any more bank robberies happen in Chennai after the commendable and swift action by Chennai police? Will the disqualification of convicted politicians reduce criminals in politics? The other day day in Pune, I read that there is a directive to penalize erring drivers who jump signals and possible revocation of licenses for rash driving? Would drug smuggling and brutal rapes of women and even kids like what routinely happens in Delhi stop if the punishment is swift and severe as given in the middle eastern countries. Let the human rights activists cry hoarse - but my belief is that this will be effective. But will it happen???

 To conclude; this is not a prescription. But looking at the instances, some of which I have stated, then this define lay appears to be a way forward - As the say in Sanskrit - SAMA, DHANA, BEDHA and DHANDAM. The last approach of these is the one that our country needs now.

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Of Strategy and Adjectives

Strategy is defined as "A plan of action or policy to achieve a major or overall aim".  To define a strategy, making it operational would require lot of introspection, discussions and In our experience as professionals many of us would have participated in the exercise of annual strategic plans and also crafting out strategic solutions in different business proposals that we would have worked. 

But is this exercise taken seriously and does the individual or group apply themselves on it? In majority of cases, it seems to be a "No".  Some common situation in strategising which all of us would have observed.

" our strategy should be a powerful differentiator that is articulated well enough to capture the customer mindshare and positions ourselves as a partner rather than a vendor"

" why are we in this space? Let us make competition irrelevant. Apply the Blue ocean strategy"

"Solution articulation makes our strategy very powerful"

In this whole scheme of playing with words what gets lost is the "how" part. The strategy is filled with what all things we envision to do, but it fails to address, how we will do it. 

Why does this happen? Invariably in many situations, people end up in situations where they prepare their annual strategies overnight. They end up with filling up their presentations or templates with whatever they dreamt the previous night. 

I don't mean to be satirical.  But dreams are good for a long term vision where the horizon we look for seeing results is a couple of years at least. But in a annual strategy kind of a situation, where tangible results bound by numbers are the order of the day, strategic planning should be a continuous exercise. In addition any strategic initiative proposed, should be backed by a thorough approach for implementation that should have been thought about.

On introspection does making adjectives a taboo in strategic planning make it a relatively more successful exercise? Probably yes, since it would help us atleast the contributors while identifying the "gassers".

Memories CREC - Getting Drunk

It was a weekend and i think, both me and Harish were discussing (What else to discuss yaar either booze or girls ). Then we suddenly come up with this great thought - "maachan let us get drunk". So the planning starts. We salvage cash out of our meagre monthly allowance and then take the bus to Calicut city and land up in KSRTC bustand. The shop i think was opposite to Kairali/Sree theatre.

We go to the shop and our Talli starts off in malayalam enquiring about stuff available. The "Mash" there gives variety of options and the rates. We make a quick calculation and then decide, a full will be too much so let us settle for a half. We buy half a bottle and with lot of excitement and euphoria, come back to the hostel and go over to Harish's room.

Now we take the bottle out keep it and so much of excitement in our eyes (arre yaar first time we are doing something right??). Now comes the dilemma :( . What to mix? We need to have something to mix since drinking raw might be too much for first time drinkers. After some deliberations, we decide on water.  The drinking starts and Harish is the professional mixer. We have a couple of rounds.

Now suddenly i pop the question "Macchan Yeeruda" (Are you getting a kick?). Harish replies in the negative and me too. We are disappointed. Almost half bottle is over and we are not feeling anything. Have we become such heavy drunkards? So what to do now? the main expectation of "kick" is not happening.

We are engineers and we think hard and wow!!! a brilliant idea comes (Always ideas come from Harish and those crazy ideas..he blames poor me for implementing..). So this is what we decide --- Let us close our eyes and rotate our head fast..hopefully "sar to ghoomega" and that will act a a catalyst and give us a kick. We close our eyes and do that faithfully for one minute and then ask each other the same question "any kick maachan". Nothing we are disappointed (or) rather proud that we are now professional drunkards and half bottle is nothing for us.

We'll till now you guys must be wondering what is that stuff we had right?? Half a bottle and we were rock steady ??:) Good performance on debut??




















It was a half a bottle of wine :) . And we will be the first and last ever guys in this world who mixed wine with water and drunk it. And for the Rs. 80 we paid for it...am still wondering whether that was indeed wine or a bottle of three day old packaged grape juice :)

Music i Loved

I contemplated a lot before deciding to write this blog. Since it was a commentary on music, my apprehension stemmed from the fact that, being part of a family where everyone is learning music and sing too, I was just a listener without any knowledge if music or the ability to sing.  

Buth then I thought - music is something which touches a person's heart and I can very well write about it, because this is about a recent music album I listened to, which touched me so much with its lyrics, music and singing.

"Suchi - Music I like " - a collection of Mahakavi Subramania Bharathi's songs by Suchi.  

Hmmmmm...if there a few raised eye brows from people who say " Suchi??? Bharathiar Songs???Isn't she more of a singer who sings peppy numbers???".  Folks! You don't know this version of Suchi yet! 

Coming to the album, four things stand out clearly - the theme, the lyrics (it goes without saying!!), the singing and the score. 

The Theme is "Love", which says that love should manifest itself as - love for you spouse, love for you country and devotion for God expressed as love.

Mahakavi's lyrics are very simple and powerful.  A great job in choosing the right gems to fit the theme.

"Veenayadi née enakku" a touching expression of how Bharathi lived his wife, "Vande Maaararam", "Nallador veenai seidhu" and "endhayum thaayum" which stirs our soul with patriotism and "Kakkai Chiraginile" and " Aasai Maugham marandhu poche" reflects love and devotion to God. 

Suchi, i feel has not just rendered but had lived through each song and experienced the lyrics. This is reflected in her singing. Very clear narration and pretty expressive. My favorite is the way she says " Aaridam solve aid thozhi" in the song "Aasai mugham marandhu poche". 

Sai Madhukar had done a great composition.  Right fusion of western and traditional instruments. The score fuses with the singing while ensuring that the power of the lyrics is not lost and giving the classical  touch at the right places - like use of "Varaali" and "Sindhu Bhairavi" in "Vande Maataram" or sticking to "Johnpuri" the raaga which immortalized the song "Aasai mugham marandhu poche" - pardon errata in raagas if any since I am just a novice.

Bharathiar songs have traditionally been part of Carnatic music albums sung by different singers and the reach was restricted to "Rasikaas" primarily. Suchi with here image and reach to the "gen Y" seems to have taken Bharathiar to them with this album. Probably the next inline for this versatile, multi faceted  singer might be "Thirupaavai" :)