Be impatient, very impatient...

 

I was lucky to spend few years of my life in New Delhi, right after my college days. Used to take local bus service "blue line" (private bus service, notorious for their bad road safety records). Also notorious for not starting the trip unless the bus was full with passengers. They used to have simple sentence printed near the driver seat. "जल्दी आपको है, हमें नहीं" (you are in hurry, not us). 

Now, let’s apply that to your career.. 

• Not everyone is in hurry
• Take it slow
• You need to take other people along
• Let’s accommodate...

How many times have you heard that? I guess multiple… Nothing wrong in these statements. But here is bad news. If you followed these statements, you most probably gave up on something you were passionate about. Just because 

• someone else was not ready with their set of work
• someone else was busy with something else
• someone else didn’t care enough
• Someone else had other priorities. 
  

Can you see a pattern? 

Your growth, your success depends on ‘You’, it’s Your responsibility. Not just for getting the research done, or implementing it, but also taking it to the end. If someone else is in the way, whether it’s a person, or a system or a process, you need to find a way out. You need to overtake.

It’s not easy to pull yourself up to accomplish something, and once you have already put all the effort, don’t get held up by external reasons. Be impatient, very impatient for your growth.

The difference between the guy who became CEO and the one who retired at manager level, is not just talent.

Long time back, I failed in my first interview, it was the best thing that happened to me...

 

Recently I was part of a campus hiring exercise. Reminded me of my first interview during college. Compared to other students in my MCA batch, I was among few who had a good computer/coding background. 

During MCA also, I was fond of coding and picked up on many software technologies popular at that time. Was good at Algorithms, data structures; all appealed naturally to me.  

While going for the interview I was quite confident. But a few minutes into the discussions I realized my level, rather how vast the software industry. Was not selected, another batch-mate made it, which was a further blow to my confidence. No, I was not jealous, I felt good for him. 

Though sad for the whole way back home, it was the best lesson for my professional life ahead. No matter what you know, how much you are prepared, there will still be a lot to cover. There will still be failures.

Learn and move ahead… 

 

Unclutter…

 

 "Work desk" - We try to keep it ergonomic, comfortable to work at. But over the period, it gets cluttered.

On weekends, most would do a cleanup exercise. Removing the unwanted things, adding the required. Keeping frequently needed things at arms distance and moving no so useful things to the corners.

Now look at your life in the same way. Just replace the things with “thoughts” and “people”. Over the period, we need to remove useless thoughts and negative people from our life. Need to keep meaningful relationship close by, also adding more positive thoughts to our daily life.

People reach to a particular level, say - good job, house, nice car, vacations… Does that mean the work is done? No. Uncluttering is still required.

Life is like a work desk, constant repeated efforts are required to keep it uncluttered, smooth, happy.

Stop focusing just on the life goals, also focus on yourself, on your “work desk”. 

 

Loading team with too much work

 

What happens when you load your team with too much work and unrealistic goals:

 Honest People

• Will be able to cope for sometime and then burnout would start
• ‘Innovation’, ‘work quality’ will take a back seat
• Eventually they would either leave or become ‘clever’ - read below

Clever people

• Will utilize the situation to have good repo in organization
• They will pick a lot of things, even if they are not able to manage them all.
• Result - Lot of things would be half done or done with bad quality. But these problems are ignored and even rewarded, as theoretically the person is doing a lot and not complaining.

Slackers

• They know how to slack even with more work.
• Most of them would go on long leave or take frequent leaves.
• In some companies they are often moved to other ‘easy’ projects (bringing further burden on Honest people). In few, they are asked to leave, which is often a long road anyways.

Even though above eventualities are well known, overloading team members is very common technique, as it gets short term benefits of lot of work getting done. 

Few managers/leaders don't care about long term damages as by that time they move to different position, but hurting the organization in the process. Some don't have the long term vision, or simply deny any kind of damage due to the practice