Utpal Writes          On Project Management, Leadership, Technology and Self-Help

In my decennium long experience journey, I have seen organizations which have a great vision – a vision to become a world class company which is super-positive. 100% win-win for all the entities involved, performance centric, employee and society friendly, ultimate customer delight centric… the best!

But with very little actions.

Little actions lead to fewer results and thus little experience to count on.  But they have great measurability of the results.

Measurability is the lens of their vision.

The other type of organizations is “Action” centric. They do not have any permanent vision to stick with. For them “crafting vision” is an overhead. They are in fascination of actions.

High actions lead to more results and more experience to count on.  But they lack the essential – measurability.

And, anything which cannot be measured cannot be repeated with 100% surity, no matter if it is success or failure.

Actions are in harmony only when they are measured, chaos otherwise.

Better if software services organizations have only a few simple and strong regulations for their people.

Regulations are substitutes for faith…faith in your people’s goodwill, faith in their competence and faith in their commitment. The more the organizations doubt their people, the more rules and regulations they impose.

Some organizations treat their software engineers like illiterate laborers of 1970 and impose pointless regulations which greatly influence them to be unproductive. For example:

• The software engineers should sit on their seat for the whole day and do work, work and work – what the heck is ‘thinking’.
• If they go out to for refreshment or a tea break more than once a day, it is not tolerated.
• If they are 30 minutes late from their regular day in-time, their half-day salary would be deducted – it won’t be considered that yesterday night the same engineer had spent 3 additional hours  to support an important client.
• Etc.

Such regulations do nothing better for the organization’s growth but make employees de-motivated and managers annoyed.

Ability to produce great results never comes from imposing a thousand strict regulations on your people. It comes from trimming out the complexities from your systems and replacing it with creative freedom and self-possession.

As an organization, do you have a mission…a long term goal that is based on specific values? Do you believe in your people? Or do you want to hide behind the list of regulations?

3 Idiots is one of the most enjoyable Indian movies of this decade. The directorRajkumar Hirani has shown us a bollywoodified yet marvelous view of the masterpiece – Five Point Someonefrom Chetan Bhagat.

Here are nine rock solid thoughts you may love to revisit from the movie’s perspective.

1. Knowledge is just a dead thing without its timely application. (Salt water is good conductor of electricity)
2. Do whatever gives you utmost enjoyment . Do what you can do effortlessly – if you don’t enjoy whatever you are doing right now; it’s the time to revisit your goals. (Farhan with a passion for photography drops engineering and opts in for assisting a world renowned wild life photographer)
3. You need to know what you are doing. Doing without knowing leads to disasters.(Chatur’s Chamatkar speech)
4. Common sense is so uncommon.  (Definition of ‘machine’ and ‘book’ in the classroom)
5. Thinking outside the box is not common but if applied properly it can lead to new innovations. (Baby’s delivery using vaccum cleaner)
6. Don’t run after success; chase the excellence in whatever you are doing… and success will follow.(Phunsuk Wangadu!)
7. Even if you win the rat race, you end up being a rat. (Virus’ encounter with Rancho)
8. Degrees earned just by rote memorization are not valuable in real life but actual learning is.(400 patents by Phunsuk Wangadu compared to Chatur’s position)
9. Keep your heart as your foolest friend. Tell him that ‘All izz well’ and things would start becoming well…in your perceived world at least!  (many instances throughout the movie)

The best thing about 3 Idiot is, it feels like a real team effort than just to be an Aamir Khan centric movie. If you take out any character (even the character of millimeter!) and the effect would be dimmed. Watching 3 Idiots (again and again) is a rattling experience to learn how to live life powerfully and add some “meaning” to it.

1. Domineering leadership: Leadership does not accept disagreements out of anxiety or haughtiness. “Yes mans” are climbing the wall of quick success here. High employee turnover ratio in senior management.
2. Poor evaluation systems: Inefficient feedback and evaluation systems incapable of providing correct leadership and management performance evaluation data to the top management.
3. Hidden agendas: Existence of invisible profit centres by cutting employee benefits. Hiring and promotions are based on political agendas. Hiring from personal references or relatives to pocket personal loyalty at the cost of other really qualified employees and/or organization needs.
4. Biased rewards: Promotions, salaries, perks and bonuses are unfairly linked with performance.
5. Wasteful use of resources: Resources are allocated based on favouritism and on personal agendas rather than real business needs.
6. Departments are like internal kingdoms: Department heads believe that more people they manage and employ department specific processes, they will become more powerful. This results in intense influence battles around operations and strategies.
7. Asymmetrical work distribution: One department is over-utilized while other are weighed down. Managers twist work distribution activities to satisfy their personal egos and play the push and pull game to their benefit.
8. Over management: Deep hierarchies and many management layers are in the organization which encumbers communication and results in slower execution and wide-ranging red tapes.
9. Disjointed organization efforts: Operating in own silos and turf wars between rival managers are normal which decreases transparency. Such silos almost always result in fragmented projects and budgets.
10. More talk and less work: Talks regarding ‘What Should Be Done’ and ‘What Could Have Been Done’ are in the air. Individual Image building and management is more important than work.
11. Uncontrolled and inefficient meetings: Heated cross-departments meetings with debates and focusing on scoring points rather than sharing responsibility and collaborating to solve the problems which generally end without conclusions or clear action items.
12. Controversies in unity and unity in controversy: Every person thinks of the self. Low sense of unity and teamwork.  The chief decision making criteria is “What is in there for me to take benefit?”
13. Consistent chaos: Management allows continuous chaos in place. They spend most of the time in building strategies to keep consistent pressure on execution teams and blame them for not completing the tasks.
14. Moral decline: Muted level of pledge and enthusiasm by the teams. Little or zero celebration due to internal negative competition.
15. Bad-mouthing: Bad-mouthing among the executives and managers becomes common and sometimes even public.
16. Extremely stressful workplace: Unclarity of work. Extended work hours. High rate of absenteeism and high employee turnover.