by Ramu
5. March 2010 21:37
Development is an improvement in our capabilities relative to our current capabilities. It is not relative to the capabilities of others. Thus our objective has to be to better ourselves.
Often children are shown others as examples to inspire the children to do better than what they have been doing. We highlight to children that the neighbour’s child has scored far better. We highlight the achievement of that other child studying in the same class. Such comparisons do not stop at childhood. As adults we compare with others. Progress becomes a relative to that of others. A colleague is earning far more that that we are earning. That other classmate has reached a very high position in the corporate ladder.
Such external comparisons have very limited use on the positive side and is detrimental to a large extent. Children grow up with a sense of inferiority complex. They tend to have lesser belief or appreciation of their own capabilities. As adults we fail to recognise our achievements and in turn feel that we are always lagging.
Such external comparisons or relative to others does not make sense. They are more often negative and drain ones energies.
Development is a matter of “bettering” oneself. If the child is scoring 40 marks out of 100 in a subject, encouraging the child to score, maybe, 45 in the next exam. If the child ran the 100 metre race in 14 seconds, encouraging it to do it in 13.5 the next time. If the child made a drawing, encouraging it to make something better and tougher one the next time. The idea is to challenge the child relative to itself, help the child do better than what it has been doing so far, make it stretch its capabilities. This builds confidence in the child. It helps the child feel good about what it is doing now and gives a confidence that it can do better. It drives the child to strive to better itself.
This is true for the adults too. It would be better off if the manager encourages her salesman beat his sales achievement of the last quarter, encouraging that programmer to write better code the next time, that machinist to deliver better precision. When one is taking self initiative to develop oneself it would help to set targets for oneself based on ones own past achievements – “better than what I did in the past” – spending more quality time with family, making better savings, spending more time on learning those new developments in technology. Such improving our abilities is far more satisfying. It gives us a confidence that we can do even better in the future. It builds a positive approach by giving us those achievable targets – its ours coming from within us and not from others. In short it makes do better and feel better.
Can we increase challenging ourselves, and reduce comparing with others?
by Ramu
24. February 2010 02:55
In today’s era of talent I find it important for people to gain mastery not just in one skill but in more than one, at least in two. Well, this may even be a necessity.
During the course of creating our website/portal ready I was looking for people who could create our website. Our technology partner are adept at creating the applications but creation of the front end / UI / design is not there forte. I went about looking for people who could create the UI or do the designing for us. I faced many challenges in the process. There were people who were adept at the tools and technology – html, photoshop, coreldraw, CSS and so on. But the problem with almost all these people were that their aesthetic senses were very poor. The designs they created were very poor in quality, they were not appealing, the human element in the designs were missing. So here was a set of people who were technically good but poor in creativity. Then I found the other set of people who could do the creative part very well. They were able to absorb the concept create visuals, the colours, contrasts and layouts were very appealing but they would not know how to turn them into web pages.
The ideal person would have been those who had the aesthetic or creative abilities with the technical skills. This is what I call by being skilled in multiple faculties. Is it about yin and yang in skills? Is it about the well developed right and left brain? Maybe.
We can find parallels of this case of combination of creative plus technical talent for web in other areas too. A functional specialist in a software industry has to be able to appreciate the software engineering to contribute to creation of appropriate solutions. A civil architect like our web creatives, need a combination of capabilities in civil engineering plus the aesthetics involved in architecture. A surgeon needs to be adept at the surgical practices and also the technicalities of the medical equipments. A combination of functional expertise and business skills in required for successfully running an enterprise or business unit. A good music composer also is one who is adept at sound technology.
Such combinations are rare to find. I realised this in my search for web creative person. I also believe that the same situation prevails in organizations where such combinations are required. There is a premium one would place for such multiple skills. HR, managers and leaders in companies could look for people within the organization who have the aptitude for such dual specialization and nurture them. But such spotting of talent would require out of the box thinking, a classical performance appraisal system may not be able to bring out such talent. Lets say we want to nurture the creative talent in engineers and that we would like to sport such talent. Maybe the organization could organise a competition which involves modeling, drawing, sketching, painting, etc. for engineers. On the part of the individuals when they believe that their field may require dual talent, maybe such talent can be nurture if the basics (aptitude and inclination) are there in the individual.
Realising the importance and the value of the duality of skills is the first step.
by Ramu
25. December 2009 19:43
We do so many tasks during the day. In our job we are assigned projects that need to be carried out. We set out to plan for these projects and assignments. We prepare assuming things will happen they we plan. But more often things do not happen the way one plans. Good operations personnel understand this and have ways to overcome such unpredictable situations and deviation from the expected.
There was this colleague of mine who I worked with. He was a phenomenal guy in terms of making things happen. He had many behavioural traits which were his strength but then there is something I learnt and have tried to build in my own ways of working. It has helped. It could help others too.
The practice is of having backup or even better, backups.
We are talking of situations where we are doing the planning and not about those that we cannot or do not. Those situations are different from the ones we are considering. For example, one day we start to our office and take the route which we normal take to commute to the office but unusually we find that the traffic has got choked because of some accident. This situation is different. Take the case of something different. I am planning to go for an important customer presentation. I have worked for days and think I have made a world class presentation. I am really charged up to make the presentation to the customers. The morning started off well with nice cool breeze blowing. I walk into the room set my laptop. Suddenly the file would not open. Something has happened. I am fighting hard. The clock is ticking and my heart is beating fast and I am sweating badly. What was supposed to be an exciting day has turned out to be a nightmare.
What could have been done? I believe that I should have taken some kind of backup to carry my presentation. I could have carried the presentation in a pen drive or could have sent it the day before to a colleague to carry it with him or cut into a CD. Maybe it would have eased the whole thing.
There are many instances in different areas such things do happen. Order from one customer is delayed. Approval which was expected to come has not. Material which should have arrived has not. Sample test which was expected to come has not come. Budget approval has not come for 100% of what was expected; only 90% of what was expected has been approved.
This happens often, sometimes on small and sometimes on large scale, sometimes at minor level and sometimes as highly significant level. Planning is not just about expecting things to happen the way we expect or want it to but to plan for contingency. What if? Let’s prepare ourselves thinking not just “Yes, it will happen” but also “What if it does not happen the way it should”. In one sense, i.e. psychologically this acts as a shock absorber in case we hit a road bump. Since we have factored the “what if”, we are not caught unawares when something untoward happened. Thus it helps us face the situation better. In another sense, i.e. practically this ensures that things move on. We after all have a backup to take care of the situation. Of course how many backups can we have? No hard and fast rule. But I would give a thumb rule of three. Think of two alternatives to “what if”.
Adapting to something unforeseen is being smart. Planning with assumptions that something will not happen the way it should is being smarter.
Lets get smarter. Lets have backup.
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