Autopsy of a meeting

Ah, recently I attended a meeting where concerns were (supposed to be) addressed.
But I will make a generic analysis of such meeting before moving to make it specific.

What actually the statistics like employee survey or company policies reveal?
Ok, we will take an instance of any employee satisfaction survey and how the management plans to handle the good and no so good results.
1.
An employees perspective of the survey:
Its anonymous, so if I have any frustration, complex or complain I would rather express myself generously.

Managements response:
But we do conduct personal meeting with employees and we encourage freedom of expression so ideally the employee should do that upfront as and when need be.

Reality's take on it:
Its a human attitude to be timid, pretentious and introvert. Most of the people will rather keep quite then to stand up and speaks (Specially in India other wise some mediocre politician could never out speak us to be voted).

2.
An employees perspective of the survey:
If something is bad I must make it look worse, may be then they will consider it seriously.

Managements response:
All the employee response are facts so lets address them in a meeting and get first hand account whats wrong.

Reality's take on it:
The employee made the bad look worse anonymously, will he not make the bad look good when its public? I lier remains a lier. No meeting can fetch you clear data.

Now what happens in the meeting:
The employees never take these meetings seriously. Cause they manage to hide themselves behind a mass and hence feeling secure. For them its another meeting where issues will be just discussed. Cause they never revealed the root cause. So they know the management just knows anything but the real reason.

(Reality is the survey needs to be changed. Satisfaction is not objective. It cant be answered in binary. Satisfaction is subjective, there is always a degree or extent involved in it. They fundamental flaw is when they ask if you are satisfied under different norms, they actually are not interested in knowing the real reason. The attempt is to bias the answer in an indirect way to suit to the picture we want them to be projected in. Hence the real concern remains under the hood.)

The management equipped with wrong (mostly exaggerated) data start a rather wrong analysis in a failed attempt to zero in on the real cause. Hence the disinterested employees look blank through out the meeting and when they come out they have not reduced but added to the woes.

Specific scenario:

Compensation related: The management declares we are competitive as per the last survey. and there is no problem.

Employees psychology: A person unlike prefers to work against the law of gravity. They don't intend to leap from high ground to lower. They intend to or aspire to leap from high to higher ground. The salary of a same category company can never satisfy one after a while for the simple reason they don't aspire to go there. But they aspire to go to the ones considered higher to the one they are in. So may be marginally but being a little ahead in terms of salary from the peer or competitor just to be above the current bracket and create a category of own will never hurt but add to the company reputation, satisfaction and other parameters involved for the delivery.

Sense of accomplishment: This is something really specific to one instance. The management always is driven by statistics cause statistic is supposed to be fact and figure. Not always. (You can't apply statistic to gauge the average depth of a river to decide whether you can cross it. Mostly you will drown your self. And may be thats why we have so many (in)famous jokes about statisticians.)
There are ground reality that statistician not project. A human mind is complex thing, pie chat and histograms can't represent it.

When taking a fierce decision of changing the technology facts beyond assumptions were never taken into consideration. The training need, the creation and substantiation of new job profile. the migration of product was planed but migration of employee psychology was not. Migration and road map for deliveries were planned but new road maps of opportunities were never discussed.
Change of technology is like changing a home. The fact "Its takes time to prepare the same delicate Biriyani flavor in a new kitchen" was neglected. NO training formal or otherwise were planned. The domain people had mastered over years was altered and represented in a different manner which looked like a generation gap. The involuntary first reaction to change that any man can give is "reluctance" and avoidance.
The people who had a reputation who had a knowledge base built over quite a period of time were not able to accept the change like nothing happened. In the battle to protect their self and public image and now the reality of being unable to cope to new changes they floundered and they floundered hard. This frustration creep in to every where. Cause it becomes a preoccupation to defend "what I was" and accepting or building "what I am". You had been a performer but you don't see yourself anymore to be. Cause what now you are in is completely new. And you dont have any time for making yourself feel home, feel comfortable.

Comparison to other lines: Not comparable. Juxtaposing facts to make something look prettier is stupidity. To show a straight line bigger you can just draw line smaller to it. All you can achieve by it is illusion.

Some is worse, thank god I am just bad. Its a sense of complacency. Which this industry discard of. Isn't it? So you cant infest that sense of being better just by arguing some one else if worse.

After all the presenter was heard mistakenly saying: "Actually this is the only thing where do really do not discriminate" (among lines). :D

The solution is:
1. get the survey conducted to capture real reasons.
2. make it clear to the people where they are heading for.
3. Everyone loves to see himself as a champion, do tell them that the did a good job and they are capable of doing even better.
4. If some once can run 10km, that never means every one can or have to. There are people who can't run yet swim for 20 km. We need to understand every one is different.
5. Give the employee space and time to settle down to freeze to his/her comfort level before saying come on get of the mark.
6. Sense of insecurity is good, even in relations to keep things healthy but sense of obscurity is never. Have things transparent.

Truly
Abinash

So you watch English movies?

I never used to watch English movies. Two reasons: Its in English and second reason I would never remember the lead in male and female, leave director or production house name.
For me English movies were either science fictions or high end action. Its not an English movie if I dont get to see a weird creature hunting the human race or flying saucer vanishing in to the eternal space or man clad with laser guns fighting. Cause dialogues I would anyway not understand. And I would never deliberate to do so either.  The protocol is keep your eyes fix on to movie, never look at any one they might ask you to explain what the hero just said (I never knew there exist some thing called sub titles). Take a cue from others to know where to laugh. If others are laughing, laugh. Just see those creatures and try to by heart few scenes to have post movie discussions and you dont feel like a moron jerk.

Now its been some 3 years I have been watching English movies (Well I mean watching in real sense not in the protocol I mentioned above). So this is a tribute to myself :D

A list of movie I liked genre wise, so that if there is any body who is starting his/her "watching movies in real sense" may not end up watching crap or watch just anything they stumble up on.

War Movie:
1. Saving private ryan
2. We were soldier
3. The bridge on the river kwai
4. Inglorious bastard
5. Hurt locker
6. 300
7. Schindler's List
8. Brave heart
9. The Pianist
10 The last of the Mohicans
11. The last samurai
12. Jar head

History:

1. Gladiator
2. Lord of the rings: the return of the king 3. Troy

This will be updated soon (m little too lazy :()

A pictorial depiction - it rained in my street

The drops poured and the earth cooled. Like the father in heaven rained love on mother earth to sooth her anguish and let her rejoice.

The drops flowed with freedom making the music to please the restless souls and they set on their embark to finally merge into the sea.

The cold drops soaked on to the skin and made many run back to their fate - dry. Like unaware of our own desire we crave to get away from being dry just to run back to it.

Protected they feel with pride
they take the firm and forward stride.

Haste moved few
no rest ever, phew!

Even I want to be drenched,
 with love a little care, relieved of my pain.

Hold my hand, cling to me, I will stay by
to protect and longing for thy.

In rain Shelter I found
Stranded by all flying unbound.

The rain made me beautiful, like crystal not rusty.

And the rain stopped the heaven and the earth relieved and rejoiced. Clean and pure like it should be.


Truly
Abinash

Hypocrisy?

Heard some one rebuking about caste based census saying its discrimination. But did we ever take a look how a million time we discriminate every day? I choose to call the critics hypocrites and I call this identification what they choose to call discrimination. Going by their definition every individual system in India is a discriminating system. Lets take the under graduate entrance exams they discriminate on the basis of percentage in PUC, The job advertisement says strictly students from premier institutes. Tell me how they are different from the temple priest who says strictly Hindus? Just that criteria for discrimination is different?
The same "intellectual" opinionative guy would not let his children go to the municipality school or team up with the kids from him backyard slum. Why? "Gali ke ladkon ke saath nahin khelna". Now ain't that a discrimination too? Discrimination on any ground may it be economy, social, educational, race, geography or history, it remains discrimination. So whats wrong to go for a caste based census when we have caste based education and employment? Its just the hypocrite inside us taking over isn't it?

Truly
Abinash