Working with Idiots ..
causes more harm than just a bad day .
(Click image below to read )
Happy to Work?
————————————————————————————————-
Thank god its Monday!!!
Perhaps one of the easiest way to get employees to say that, is to make one of the other working days even more miserable.
Pick a day (other than a Monday of course) and cram it with weekly reporting, paperwork activities and tonnes of presentations. Viola, you would soon hear people say … “Thank god its Monday and not Wednesday”.
Archives
It does not matter whether you own your business or work with one. You will always encounter outdated theories that look and sound great in case studies, but are best avoided at the workplace.
Few ideas that I, strongly, feel should be thrown out of the window:
1. Become indispensible to the organisation: who are you kidding, unless you are truly your own boss with a unique talent, there will always be someone equally -if not more- ambitious, equally competent and equally productive.
What you can however do, is stay ahead of the race, venture new areas and be on the move.. always.
2. Bullet point Presentations: (When will everyone move on and away from this one).It is not about putting all the data there. It is about communicating effectively. The focus should move beyond how many bullet points to use and what to speak. While making the presentation make a target of what the audience should gain at the end of it all, also take feedback on whether you have succeeded.
3. Formulas for success: Sweeping statements like “HR is the backbone of the organisation”, “Operations is the nervous system of the company” and the sorts are to make the dimwits in the group happy.
Marks for neatness
On the way to work I saw some kids in a school bus hastily copying homework. Although the kid must have copied the assignment word to word, but he will get 2 marks less than the student who finished his homework at home (if he is not found out that is). Two marks less for lack of neatness, for scrawny handwriting and a wobbly diagram.
Those bonus marks are not about beautiful handwriting, they are about the attention given while finishing the assigned work. Brands score (and lose) brownie points all the time. Decors of a retail outlet, presentation of a dish are signs on the thought and attention to detail given. If it is a hastily thrown together dish you would know, not just from the taste but also from how it is brought to your table.
Works for everything, carefully written alphabets and dotted lines on the earth’s diagram look like tiny elements that can be skipped. It will however determine whether you score those crucial two marks.
Fortune lost at the bottom of the organisation pyramid
That is one of the tragedies of owning a business empire…and then overlooking the staff’s induction as part of the organisation.
Despite the principles of customer delight that govern the operations of the brand, big names in the service industry are losing money, customer confidence and loyalty to their competitors.
Some of the reasons for this – Poor point of sale service, inability of the front end employees to grasp the real meaning of the brands guidelines and their underestimation of the competitor’s .. well .. competitiveness.
Employees higher up may be working towards wealth creation, while cases of fortune lost through the bottom of the organisation pyramid go unnoticed. Where then, is the difference in the customers experience while shopping at the countries leading retail chain or at a local kirana store?
The cases of this happening may be few and far, but thats no reason to stop its occurance entirely.
Lucky Break
Most successful individuals are victims of “luck”, mostly in the eyes of self proclaimed analysts.
“She worked by day and toiled by night, She gave up play and some delight, Dry books she read, new things to learn, and forged ahead success to earn, she plodded with faith and pluck and when she won, men called it luck.”
Think about it .. when was the last time you thought you were really lucky? When was the last time things just fell into place? Chances are it was the time that you desperately needed things to work. The winning was not a consequence of sheer chance it was the detail and determination in your approach that made things happen.
The next time you write off success to luck, think about all the ‘lucky’ days that went by you.