A White Collar Crime!!!

The first thing in the morning as soon as I switched on the news was the Breaking news " Another Satyam Story- Reebok scam,In what could the second biggest corporate scandal after Satyam, Reebok India has alleged a Rs 8,700 crore fraud by its former Managing Director Subhinder Singh Prem and former Chief Operating Officer Vishnu Bhagat.Reebok lodged an FIR with the Gurgaon police alleging that Prem and Bhagat had 'stolen' products by setting up 'secret warehouses', fudged accounts and indulged in fictitious sales to cause a multi-crore dent to the company.

Its high time to think about the tone at the top management and how it affects the employees at lower levels.

Why do people at responsible positions make mistakes? Or is it in our system to tolerate mistakes?

Right from the bribery which happens at a traffic signal, RTO, and corporate manipulation of financial results, its very evident of the unethical behavior of those at responsible positions.Does this happen basically because of those managers at top setting unrealistic goals from their subordinates. When executives put pressure on their employees to meet unrealistic goals to yield profits for the company, they are essentially forcing employees to do whatever it takes to achieve those goals, whether they achieve those goals improperly or not. In their minds, the end justifies the means.

Is it also because people at the top satisfy their greed with power in hands, are not answerable to those who report to them?

Also such wrong doings are never reported mainly due to fear factor.The fear of retaliation from their superiors caused not to report such misconduct.

 

So Does Unethical lies the head that wears the crown ???? or the crown resides at unethical hands??

Personal branding... Is it Really Important ????!!!!!

Two young students Shahul and Sada, graduates from a reputed engineering college and joins an organisation in a same team under the same manager through campus recruitment. Both are very hardworking and competitive and learn the work quickly and show positive contributions to the team.Over time, management and team leaders are very happy for having both of them in the team.

Shahul is a very shy guy, who is very good at his work, understands the big picture of his domain and delivers what is expected of him with very high quality on time. Being shy, he does not communicate regularly with his bosses about his future oppurtunities like onsites and promotion. He believes that his work will speak for itself and does his job sincerely.

Sada is a smart guy who is good at his work, very hardworking and talks about his work and accomplishments at regular intervals with his manager. He also projects himself as a person looking for travel oppurtunities and promotional capabilities.

After 5 years at work, Shahul and sada are at same levels as senior engineers in the organisation. During an informal meeting Shahul gets to know that Sada is slightly better paid than him and manager has selected him for an onsite oppurtunity. Shahul feels bad that his capabilities are not recognised and looks outside of his organisation for better prospectives and finds one of his choice. So Shahul leaves the organisation and finds a career path in the next organisation as a Senior engineer in his respective project.

 

As time pass by 3 years since Shahul joined the next organisation, He is promoted to the next level. He is also recognised for his outstanding work. Sada works in the same organisation and after 3 years , he gets promoted twice and becomes a manager.

Now Shahul still works as a technical leader and still has a long way to get managerial assignment where as Sada is now a manager.

So its all about Personal Branding!!! how important it is??

Its about how people perceive you.Many a times,I have come across situations in life where people take us in a different context although that may not be true.Such negligent situations cant be completely ignored as these are the situations that builds an image about ourselves in a professional set up and help us grow in an organisation.it is not just applicable for marketing guys and sales people, but each and every individual in an organisation.Its about how the management and peers perceive you.

I remember a saying " Only the crying baby gets milk".As we goes up the professional ladder, the talent doesnt really matter.Its how well one carries oneself is what matters.So its very important to project oneself to his immediate supervisor about his/her accomplishments in a positive way and work on the negative behaviorial traits to build a reputation about oneself.

 

So build your brand, A brand called YOU!!!

 

Write a Kahaani on a Wonderful Journey called Life!!!

From a conventional Iyer middle class family in Kerala, Here comes a second daughter of the family who is educated in sociology. After completing her masters, she realizes her interest in acting.

She eventually lands up in a movie offer but the film is shelved during production. She doesn’t lose heart and signs two other films but the destiny works against her. She loses the offer from the films and the fim which she does shoot also is shelved. Although she doesn’t fit into stereotypical look of an actress, she doesn’t lose heart and she does few ad films.

If something at hand goes bad, then there is always something better awaiting. With this hope, she continues to do her work sincerely. Her manager of ad films is impressed with her work and signs his film with her. The film eventually releases and she makes a mark. But success doesn’t follow easily again and few of her films does only average at box office and she is criticized for the unconventional looks in the industry.

She realizes her potential is not in looks but in performances and focus on making the character she plays to come alive on screen. She plays the role of a southern siren Smitha popularly known as silk and earns the National Award for the Best Actress.She has redefined the women of substance in showbiz with her Kahaani.

Here is a Kahaani of her journey which emphazises one to not to work on weaknesses and be average, rather work on the strengths and be above Average. A Kahaani for all women to realize their inner potential and make a difference. A Kahaani to do the work with passion and sincererity and make the heads turn around. A kahaani of an individual from humble background who made it to top echelons.

A Kahaani for future generation to follow on.

Hats off to all women who has identified their path with their Kahaanis.

An IITian vs X in today's IT

Uday is a very hard working individual. Being a very intelligent and dedicated student he makes it to IIT Kanpur to pursue Bachelors in Technology. After graduation, He decides to continue his Masters and continues to do M.Tech at IIT itself.His thirst for knowledge never ends. So he decides to do Ph.D in a good university abroad. Being meritorious and very good at studies, he gets a scholarship and completes his research degree successfully and lands up in his dream job and loves his work at abroad itself.

After many years of working in abroad, he decides to come back to India as many NRIs do. He shifts to India. He gets an offer from a leading research firm and accepts the job. As time passes, the research firm is shut down by the management and Management focuses more on production programmes to generate revenue and avoid costs. Since the company didn’t want to fire Uday, they offer him to work in production programme.

Uday is not very happy as he always wanted to work on advanced engineering and do research rather than focus on production tasks which are quite repetitive in nature. but he accepts the offer and works in production programme and provides justice to his work in the best possible way.

Baskar is a software engineer who joins the IT industry after engineering from a not so reputed college. He begins his career in a service company and work hard and goes up the ladder. Baskar currently heads the production programme to which Uday is assigned to.

Being from services background, Baskar focuses on quick delivery and extended working hours which is not Uday’s style of working. Over a period of time, there is a clash between the two of them. In a meeting Baskar tells Uday that he is not good at his assigned job. Being so experienced person, Uday takes lot of time to do given tasks and he doesn’t need his research knowledge at the current work.

Uday feels bad and goes to higher boss Deepak to provide him a suitable role based on his background. Deepak agrees to provide him suitable role under his division. After a month’s time when Uday meets Deepak, Deepak tells him,

Deepak: Uday, you are very good engineer with excellent background. But your background is not very essential in our division. So please do the job whatever is provided.

Uday: Ok sir.

Now Uday is very upset as he doesn’t get the work he wants to do but he is unable to resign from his current organization due to personal reasons. He also cannot work under Baskar due to his clash.

So readers, please provide your valuable inputs based on uday’s perspective and deepak’s perspective.

1. Should Uday go back to abroad?

2. Should Uday resign and find another job how ever difficult It is?

3. Should Deepak be more sensible in finding Uday a role outside his division?

How to handle such cases?

This is case to show that branded education do not matter in current IT scenario in India. Will this situation change?

Where does the buck stop?-> A work place Drama

An engineer X joins an organization and works in a Validation environment. He has good knowledge of the domain and quickly learns the tools and process used to execute his tasks and delivers the assigned tasks with good quality and on time. He also gets due recognition overtime and also shares additional tasks at times when his colleagues’ don’t make it to work for personal reasons. Being overloaded, he doesn’t complain and he tries to do justice in the best possible way to his work.

Mean while there is a development team under his manager where there is huge amount work and resource shortage. In due course, testing work is given less priority over development work and manager tries to manage by shifting the resources to meet the cutting expenditures and deliver on schedule. The engineer X now joins the development team at a time when there is just 1 week before the release with little prior knowledge about the work in the development team mostly based on interactions with his colleagues. Although the schedule becomes hectic for engineer X, He takes help of another team mate Y wrt new process and tools and delivers the release as per schedule.

Work on another release gets started within one month of joining and engineer X falls sick and do not complete the work. Meanwhile Engineer Y is not present now to help engineer X and other members of the team are busy with their own schedules and do not offer help. The deadline nears and engineer X is asked to complete the work at any cost. X manages to complete whatever is assigned to the best of his knowledge from whatever he has learned from Y and moves things to review and takes off during release time due to ill health. An engineer Z reviews, finds a bug and fixes it on X being absent and performs the release and informs the manager not to burden him next time with another team mate’s work. After two days of release, manager of X meets him and humiliates him for bringing in bad quality to work because of the bug introduced. Also gives him feedback of not understanding things and over dependency on engineer Y.

Now X is frustrated and do not know to find a solution. He is frustrated as the manager doesn’t understand his situation, for not being flexible and do not provide him another opportunity correct his mistakes in new environment.

Meanwhile a higher boss of manager is on a visit and X gets an opportunity to talk to him. X gives a polite feedback about his bad transitioning time and humiliation from his boss.

Now the manager gets to know about the feedback of X and gets even more angry with X. He continuously humiliates X at all meetings and tells him indirectly he isn’t fit to work in his team. X loses his respect in the team among the team members, gets demotivated towards work.

Now X is frustrated and confused.

What are the options left with X now?

1. Go to HR and complain and fight for right . -> This will never work in favour of X in a typical organization scanario.

2. Simply wait for team change -> the wait is ambiguous because of resource shortage in current team and uncertainty about another team

3. Explain to immediate higher boss. -> X thinks it may not work as no one is going to support him.

4. Continue to tolerate the current boss and live with it and try to do things better hoping things will change in future.-> Again there is an element of risk as the boss is already biased and may not work in X favour.

5. Resign and leave the place on good terms for better opprutunity with the knowledge he has gained in current place. -> But is resigning the only solution????

Where does the buck stop????

Please provide your ideas on how to handle such situations..