Friday, May 9, 2014

Are you open enough to unlearn?

Assumption: You are not from among my colleagues!

Risk: If you are and you get the hint move on with positiveness!

Actual Design:
Change is the only constant in life. But how well do we welcome a change in our lives or a challenging counter thought to our way of thinking? And how well are changes brought in by Laterals (or in the process of bringing) seen by the existing workforce.

I had the great opportunity to have good Team Leaders who would lead by example and I heard them say that fresh guys (i.e. Lateral hires not freshers) can think in a different fashion and can challenge the status quo. I have recently joined as a Lateral. I was smiling to myself when one of my colleagues was boasting about one of the Seniors: he is quite experienced, blah, blah!. The reason for the eternal (Oh! ok internal) smile was that I could challenge that Senior's experience cross examining him on the closed way that they have chosen to work & create an atmosphere of mediocrity. In other less stronger words, Politics minus work/improvement.

I think it would be a great work environment which constantly demands or propagates an open culture of allowing to rethink, redesign, speak up without the fear of a backlash.

Some suggestions as a lateral:

1) You don't need a damn, since times immemorial, Suggestion hand made Box in an age of Telegram (not the old Telegram!). Either your company is too old fashioned or it is in bad shape financially. Or too good a state to give a damn about suggestions!
2) You don't need to hire people on a salary approx four times that of  the normal hires to do something great. What you need is to connect closely to existing employees and new laterals to work out a solution. In our case, I am sure the latter option will work.
3) Allow liberty and don't bank on statistics! This one comes from my Team Leader and I agree with him. Statistics don't include the time required to follow up via email and the time spent in your call/meeting with you manager! Also, jargon and technical complexity is not required to remove clutter from your environment. Rather simple tasks executed efficiently would help.
4) Preferential treatment won't help! Rewarding would. My Team Leader declined my gift to him. And in doing that I got a lesson of life from Islam (which he hinted) - no space should be left for preferential treatment. Transparency and reward for the best performance and not for personal connections! No politics!
5) Hire on salaries which match the experience. And to do that you need experience or those who are experienced to filter profiles. Guys with exceptionally higher salaries (but not so exceptional credentials) would create noise!
6) Don't reward without performance otherwise performance and no performance become equal. There is a big difference between "Pass" and "Fail". Performance should be explanatory and measurable.

Will learn more and increase the list (if required).









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