light headed!

Anand writes about people put in late hours; about saying “NO”.
This really is a culture thing. Why do people think that if they work late they will be in your good books? Why do managers judge(note:i didn’t say measure!) employee ability and/or ‘standing’ by whether he comes in on time? Is this the only way to stay in your superior’s good books?

photo credit: mhartford

Its Managements responsibility to set these things right the first time. Measure not by ‘time’ but by work done! The guys who GET this, will never have problem with the amount of hours you put in. This also seems to help people relax a lot more with the knowledge of management not breathing down their necks all the time.

Saying “NO” is tougher. Ideally management would want you to work cross functionally and ofcourse have a system which will reward this. Favours, especially in small companies often go a long way where people are more closely knit. Encouraging this habit can easily become parasitic. There is really no clear path here i guess, except to pick and choose your situation.

Earlier in his post, he also speaks about companies wanting to be honest without really giving anything away.

We will also need to monitor negative comments. We don’t want our site to have negative comments about our products.”

… he writes furthur,

I was too stunned to butt in immediately. But after a few minutes, I raised the point about negative comments. “You want to project the image of an honest and open organisation. If you filter out comments that say anything bad about you, how are you going to achieve that?”

Truth be told, there is really no “honesty” only a perception of it. The more layers you peel off, the more you find underneath. Everyone wants to have an open company but nobody wants to be taken for a ride.

Have an open argument, have a forum for discussing complaints just don’t make it crawl-able. Each time you start working on a particular complaint, make it public and indicate clearly that you are working towards solving it with a clear path.

No need to highlight all complaints, pick and choose what you can and will solve immediately while at the same time privately responding to each and every complaint. This does not put you totally out there and yet addresses customer concerns. Do this each time you receive a complaint and you have managed your PR with honesty.

note:Make sure the people who really matter pay real attention to these complaints, your people!

Honesty is not really hard, but it always got me out of a fix, and i try and make sure that i never play into the wrong hands(I do manage sometimes though). I wouldn’t want my competitors playing on my complaint discussion board. Remember Apple ads? They were always a play on PC’s.

Even Yudhister spoke about Ashwathamma to Drona during the war. Just wanted to bring that up