Career Planning Insights

After Committee interviews stretching through whole night,at 10.30 in morning i was thinking about whether to attend the alumni interaction session at 11 am or not.

I was thinking about it throughout the breakfast & at end of breakfast i made up my mind that i will attend it but i was still circumspect whether it will be worth it.

But now it has ended and i have just reached my hostel room and i can surely say it was worth it.

Mr.Amit Shah from Yes Bank gave a broad overview on how you should go about building your skill sets & competencies & relevant aspects of our personality over period of two years in NITIE & forward throughout the life.There was a faint picture in my mind about how should i plan but the insights offered by Mr.Amit definitely have made picture clearer.What i liked was he didnt went into core & detailed aspects of banking but told us what is required if you want to succeed as an individual & how you should go about it.

He talked about 4 main aspects :

1.Skills

2.Competencies

3.Delivery

4.Aspirations

I think Competencies & Aspirations are most important that should be worked upon.Skills & delivery can be learnt over a period.Agree they too require efforts but Competencies & Aspirations are the one which will get us through.Aspirations are the most important.

Mr.Amit also told how you can always find opportunities & work upon your skills even if you dont know anything about it at that moment.He gave example of himself in which he explained about how he didnt know anything about banking.But as we all know he has established himself well know in banking.So it is not about what you have done to get here.But its all about what you will do from here that will take you places.

I find it good that we get to interact with many such people from industry who offer there point of view & detailed overview of industry & how to go about planning career.

Looking forward to many such interactions.

Organisational Culture

Let us understand what is organisational culture :

Definition :

Anything that is not officially written or conveyed to the employees of the organisation but the majority of employees follow it than this is known as culture of that organisation.

Culture develops over a period of time & it is very difficult to change the culture of any organisation.It can be changed but it needs powerful leadership alongwith employees who r willing to change.

Example :

I would like to give a example which i came across in my earlier organisation.
Official working hours was from 9.30am to 6pm but people used to sit till 8pm because people use to think that  "Extra working hours = Hard working Employee".
Hence sometimes even if work was not there they used to sit till late hours especially during appraisals.
This was the late sitting culture prevalent in my earlier organisation.
I can say to some extent this was due to my bosses which gave due importance to late sittings.
This was classic example of leader controlling the culture.

Culture diversification :

Different Cultures can be prevalent at different levels.Different cultures can be present at level of small unit or departmental level or at Industrial level or at national level or at continental level.

Also different culture are present at dilevel of employee.
At lower level that is at level of worker of daily wages .They dont think too much about job.They are just happy that they get day's food.
At middle levels that employee are more concerned about job security.
At top level mangers are more concerned about the quality of work & level of power they get in decision making.This also is an example in cultural thinking of diferent level of employees.

One interesting picture depicting corporate culture :

This picture shows the culture that is prevalent in most of organisations.
Mostly evry1 agrees with what top managemant or bosses say to save their jobs or to be in good books of the bosses and this continues from top to bottom.

Hope you have got the basic understanding of organisational culture.
Thanx for your valuable time.

LBT ( Learning by Building Towers )

In Life there are different ways of learning a same thing.In this post we will be learning process of goal setting & nice concept of Pygmalion effect

Tower Building :

Tower building  exercise is one of interesting way of learning many things  .
It is actually  a game of building towers which involves putting one cube over the other and achieving the maximum height as much as possible till all the cubes would fall down .

Lets now set the goals for this tower building.
Consider that before the process started one attempt was made to build the tower & tower of X blocks was built.Now we all predict that our goal will be to build Y block height of tower.

After Setting the goal of how many blocks towers comes the next process :

1.Those whose goal are below history(X) must reassess their goals as their goals set are less than the achievable performance whereas in reality it should be the opposite i.e. goal set should be more than the achievable performance.

2>Those whose goals are more than history(X) it might be possible for them that they might actually cross history & build taller tower.This was due to Pygmalion effect.

Pygmalion effect :

"Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he shall become as he can and should be."

This is great meaningful proverb i had came across which sums up pygmalion effect.

The Pygmalion effect is the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform.
So if we set goal that we will build tower which are greater in height than history than it is most probably possible that we will actually build it.

Pygmalion effect in my Life :

I have seen that in previous life experiences that whenever i decided or someone told me that you can do a certain thing than 99 percent of times i was able to do that thing  even though i was not sure of being able to do that thing in first instance.This was illustration of Pygmalion effect in my life

In the whole process i learned the concept of goal setting.
This goal setting exercise helped me learn the actual value of Goal Setting. It is important for Goals to be set using the fundamental principles of 

SMART  (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely).
Specific: - Goal is to create the tallest tower.

      Measurable:- Tower should be greater than history.Example 27 which is greater than history of Attainable:- The target was taken 27 not too much greater than 25.

      Realistic:- Its is not too much greater than 25.

      Time Bound:- It has to be completed within the given time.

      

      This sums up the tower building exercise & its learning .

I would try to apply this principles in my future life.

MM ( Learning MANAGEMENT from MONKS )

An interesting video i have come across on Mr.Mandi's suggestion :

Now let us see overview of the video story :

A young monk lives a simple life in a temple on top of a hill. He has one daily task of hauling two buckets of water up the hill. He tries to share the job with another monk, but the carry pole is only long enough for one bucket. The arrival of a third monk prompts everyone to expect that someone else will take on the chore. Consequently, no one fetches water though everybody is thirsty. At night, a rat comes to scrounge and then knocks the candleholder, leading to a devastating fire in the temple. The three monks finally unite together and make a concerted effort to put out the fire. Since then they understand the old saying "unity is strength" and begin to live a harmonious life. The temple never lacks water again

Detailed Observations :

Monk 1:

The first  monk on arrival is Filled with enthusiasm, the monk takes all the burden on himself, for there is no one to fall back upon. He fetches two cans of water at a time and does it with glee. But soon, fatigue sets in. The initial enthusiasm is lost but still he has to carry his work daily .

Here the human resourceproved to be useful and efficient. It gave good and productive results initially.But gradually  the motivation decreases and maximum utilisation of resource does not take place .

Monk 2 :

The first monk extends a warm welcome and shows hospitality to him.Once the real work starts, differences set in. Now the first monk wants to establish his superiority and Bing does not cave in. Analyzing the root cause for their difference of opinion, we can understand that it is because no 'standards' are set to run the company. There is no higher authority nor is there a rule book for the Jing and Bing to follow. This is later sorted out when the first monk draws a scale and makes a fair ruling.This is again a lesson for any company. 

Monk 3 :

After a while comes the third monk comes. He was very thirsty and drains all of the water. When the time comes to refill the water, he relents. Now the other two monks who have been doing their work religiously start fighting too and everything comes to a standstill. Harmony is lost, once and forever

Learnings from three Monks :

1.Dispute solving attitude :

When there is more than one person on any job, disputes are almost unavoidable.But always there is a way out of any dispute.Every one should try to have a dispute redressal attitude in life.

2.Innovations : 

Innovations can make any given task simpler & increase productivity phenomenally.

3.Division of Labour :
Division of labour is always required so that the organisation functions smoothly & each employee feels that he is doing equally important job.

4.Crisis Management :
Crisis management is one of important aspect of any organisation

5.Working towards a common goal :
All the members of any organisation should always work towards a common goal. 

6.Standardisation :

There should be standard measurement practices in any organisation.

Similar situations that i have came across in life :

I have seen that various people i have worked in my past organisations had different attitudes &  

initially i didnt use to adapt to there wau of working.Over a period i understood that if work needs to be get done than i need to adapt to there working method for larger picture of organisational objectives.Hence i adapted my way of working.

Also sometimes disputes are unavoidable.But you need to sit together & work over that dispute in life personal as well as professional.I have faced many such situations but when we sit together mostly solution comes up.

I am of view that mere learning is not important.Applying them is the most important.

So i suggest you all to see the video clip of the three monks & apply the learnings in life.