manedge

Six months back I took over as Senior Principal of Bhilai Steel Plant(BSP)'s number one school - Senior Secondary School, Sector-10. The offer came two months prior to that, literally as a bolt from the blue. But the gut feeling was that I should say YES. And I did in less than a day, though I had never thought about moving to Education from core engineering. In fact in my twenty years at BSP, I had worked in different sections of Distribution Networks (DNW), later Power System Department (PSD). The very nature of the department meant that I had the opportunity to have worked with all the departments of BSP, except Education. In the interregnum I had completed by Masters in Business Administration from IGNOU and later a Diploma in Training and Development from the Indian Society for Training and Development. These two distance learning courses and my foray into quizzing and writing thanks largely to my mentor, V Ravi, had helped me develop my skills as a trainer. I must confess...

There are three questions every manager should ask themselves while evaluating employee goals. If anyone of these three questions cannot be answered in the affirmative, then it might not be the best goal for that employee. Is the goal achievable? As leaders we want our employees to succeed. Failing to achieve an impossible goal can be demoralizing to the employee. Once it becomes clear that the goals won’t be achieved; motivation will wane quickly. Is the goal difficult? This might seem like it is in conflict with whether the goal is achievable, but it is different. The goal must stretch the employee. Successfully stretching employees will naturally improve productivity. Will the goal move the strategic pendulum? Every employee goal should be linked to a company or team strategy. The employee needs to know how their success affects the organizations success.

Writing in his column THE HUMAN FACTOR in the Business Standard, January 22, 2010, Shyamal Majumdar rightly announces,  Managers of the world seem to be united in their passion for wasting time at work. According to the Late Sumantra Ghoshal a whopping 90 per cent of managers waste their time by procrastinating, becoming emotionally detached, and distracting themselves with supposedly busy work. Some examples of how many things “busy” people are doing that will never be missed. ·          just stare at just about anything so that people around them think that they are pondering something intense. ·          schedule meetings just to tell juniors to “work smarter, not harder” and to “think out of the box” etc. ·          send emails and call up people to find out about things that would have got done anyway without their intervention ·   ...

In 1990, psychologists Robert Hogan, Robert Raskin, and Dan Fazzini wrote a brilliant essay called “The Dark Side of Charisma.” It argued that flawed managers fall into three types: the High Likability Floater , who rises effortlessly in an organization because he never takes any difficult decisions or makes any enemies. the Homme de Ressentiment , who seethes below the surface and plots against his enemies. the Narcissist , the most interesting of the three, whose energy and self-confidence and charm lead him inexorably up the corporate ladder. Narcissists are terrible managers. They resist accepting suggestions, thinking it will make them appear weak, and they don’t believe that others have anything useful to tell them. “Narcissists are biased to take more credit for success than is legitimate,” Hogan et al. write, and “biased to avoid acknowledging responsibility for their failures and shortcomings for the same reasons that they claim more success than is their due.” Mo...

In his latest book How The Mighty Fall, Jim Collins describes the five stages through which a proud and thriving company passes on its way to becoming a basket case: - hubris born of success - undisciplined pursuit of more - denial of risk and peril - grasping for salvation - capitulation to irrelevance or death Toyota's president Akio Toyoda, who took over in June 2009, believes his company, world's largest carmaker since it surpassed GM in June 2008, is in the fourth stage . He surprised business journalists and his own company by making this announcement at a press conference in October 2009. Collins elaborates that companies in the fourth stage 'react frantically to their plight in the belief that salvation lies in revolutionary change usually hastening their demise'. Such companies 'need calmness, focus, and deliberate action'. Mr Akio Toyoda is the grandson of the founder of Toyota. His approach is not visionary. It is simple, incremental and r...