FACILITATING EXCELLENCE

It is simply impossible to work alone. We can live alone, eat alone, but working. I can say for myself. I need people around me. Rightly so I am the People Manager in a Social Work Organization. I genuinely believe that 'Saathi haath badhana saathi re' does create a sense of joint effort.  What Am I saying; any day it’s better to do things ourselves rather than to involve someone. With the kind of effort it takes for us to train someone to get a work done I think it will just make the life easier to do it all by ourselves rather than attempt to make others understand our style or to adapt their styles. This is the dilemma I see myself in everyday now a days. I do try to separate myself in a team that I work with and at the same time I also try to work together with them. Working together is the only way I believe I can work productively. However sometimes or most of the times the behavior, dynamics, attitudes in the team make it very difficult to work.  Just the other...

As the name of my post suggests that this is all about Moving into an unknown territory, challenging yourself. Recently I took on an assignment  which though has a certain level of familiarity but requires me very often to revisit my thinking, my challenges and my age old beliefs. I have often found myself questioning myself. and recently I attended an event which shook my confidence completely. On the way back I kept thinking how to get my confidence back, what should  I do to make myself more confident and less vulnerable. It had taken a lot of encouragement from lot of corners to help me over come my fears. But I also realised after a point of time you are on your own. No one has the time and/or energy to act as a sounding board. Everyone is fighting their own battles so looking outside for encouragement is an expectation which is bound to fail. Its just that I need to take life in my own hands. Come back every time I think I am thrown off course. Plus I also have this...

Many of us are faced with situations wherein we find ourselves struggling to arrive at a decision…we see ourselves in a state of indecision. Personally, I have been in such state a couple of times. Being in this state has caused me botheration because it neither allows me to move forward nor backward….confines me to a state of limbo, a state of vegetation (sic). Given my own personal viewpoint on this, what surprises me, is the zone of comfort which people can enjoy while being in a state of indecision. This has often intrigued me… I mean what makes people live in this state, survive and at times even thrive. My observation has driven me to certain viewpoints on this which is as follows: There are some people who, when faced with tough situations, requiring firm decisions, resulting in resolute actions, develop cold feet. They would often create a mini parliament around them, look for voice votes and then get further confused with fractured verdicts. Th...

In a casual conversation with one of my friends, a passing comment stuck in my head. We were discussing about how people get noticed and acknowledged in organizations eventually leading to opening of the doors of career growth. And then I heard an almost emphatic feedback “Profiling matters a lot…how you portray yourself…how you talk, whom you talk to…etc…” Well the conversation ended but the thought stuck in my head. Let me admit that I have myself been at the receiving end of this “Profiling” and have believed that it matters in your professional growth. There have been instances where I have felt that “Substance” has often fallen prey to “Profiling”. While I continue to use the word “Profiling” I think my interpretation of the same before I move ahead is warranted at this stage. For me “Profiling is an act of projecting oneself as being capable of handling the circumstances / situation at hand while in full knowledge of the intellectual ability of self – the act often an atte...

I love this quote by Peter Drucker and as a strategy graduate and HR Practioner I haven't found a statement so true and yet so ironical. Amidst the heated debate for strategy I am well aware that if the environment of an organization does not give it the due space to implement; strategy dies a very painful death. So what are the cues that allow us to identify the possibility during its planning stages 1. Strategy is not driven by the top- What does it mean; This categorically means that despite the conviction or the thought of conviction at all levels in the organization; there is no one person driving it. It is a collective responsibility and yet nobody is accountable. Please do not confuse my statement as against team spirit but I genuinely believe leadership has to be a one person agenda. 2. Cynicism- Now it is simply impossible to get rid of cynics or answer all or even pacify all doubts during the planning sessions. To quote Alan Lakein," Planning means to bring th...

I am a trainer and I love to train.. I am a supervisor and I love to supervise... I am a counselor and I love to counsel...... I am a teacher and I love to teach....... I am a mentor and I love to guide... I am experienced.. I love to share.... We often come across situations where we realise that we insist on sharing our knowledge. 'Gyan' as I call it. Our years of experience give us an edge over others or that is what we would like to believe, especially in a position where we manage people. I have been lucky. Whenever I am in a talking mood, there is someone who is in listening mood or so I presume. But more often than not, that might not always be the case. Just yesterday I was sitting with someone to share some of my experiences in order to help him deal with a situation. By virtue of being head of HR and his senior, he had no option but to listen to me as I advised him on how he needs to handle the situation, how he need to be the bigger person, etc. However the en...

“… Tadpole management is very time consuming. The tadpoles are total carnivorous, and can be raised on live tubifex worms. They will also readily eat each other, and there are two ways of dealing with this. The first is to place each tadpole into its own small jar, and the other is to place all the tadpoles into a large tank of water that is filled with masses of floating plants (real or plastic). Food can then be placed on the floor of the tank and the tadpoles will swim down, feed, and then swim back up to hide in the plants. Both methods require labor. The first involves changing dozens of individual jars to keep the water clean, and the other involves morning and evening siphoning of the large tadpole tank…” ( Source: http://www.anapsid.org/ornatabreeding.html ) And what about humans with traits of Tadpoles – I don’t think we can deny their existence around us. We come across people who love to pull the person down intending to rise to the occasion. They are happy creatin...