WFH: a neglected potential strategy!

Working in IT industry does have a benefit of working from home, at times. Other folks who are in operations or any other jobs that need to be done onsite or on the operations floor do not enjoy this benefit. For an outsider, it may be a jackpot: to work while playing with kids or enjoying the waffles prepared by your wife.

No one can deny the fact that it’s definitely a great convenience for employees, and, at times, employees base their decisions of taking the job on such factors. Nonetheless, these benefits are not only limited to the employees, but also they offer a great advantage to employers.

Statistically speaking, it would easily cost a company at least $1000 per head per month to maintain a cube and to keep up the office, although it depends upon variety of factors including location of the office, rent of the property, electricity charges, condition of the building, attitude of the employees, and other regulatory and government issues. If you factor in all these costs, perhaps $1000 will sound on the lower side.

Although companies have direct saving up to $1000 and they don’t usually spend on the infrastructure an employee has to set up for the home office, companies, usually, are very reluctant on this option. The resistance, however, is not typically from the top management, it’s actually self-inflicted by the employees. You must be surprised to learn about this fact that when it is in the benefit of both employer and employees, why would employees not encourage this option?

The answer to this question lies in the attitude of the employees–mostly, supervisors. First, management needs to make sure that they have clear policies on setting these policies. Sometimes management avoids this option as supervisors resist by claiming that productivity is low due to lack of collaboration. Even if the claim about low productivity is true, management needs to evaluate whether the productivity is low to an extent that it can justify the cost saving of $1000 per head per month. Next, supervisors, at times, think that by allowing fellow employees to work remotely, putting control measures is extremely difficult. Although I agree with them on this point, control measures may, however, not work even if employees are not serious about their work in the office itself. Secondly, effective controls can be set up by setting clear objectives and thus avoiding the need for monitoring. Finally, management thinks that security may be at risk as they have to allow employees to carry the data outside of office premises. Yes, I agree that if companies do not have security infrastructure in place, it may be a challenge for some of them. But since most of the companies expect employees to work off hours and employees cannot be always online in the office, companies will have to allow employees to carry the data outside anyways, so this may again not be very valid reason for not reducing the cost for the company.

Jailbreaking – A $600 bet!

There are a lot of similarities in the glamour and technology world. For one, everyone likes to follow a trend. Jailbreaking was on such trend which was prominent long back. As per this trend, everyone who didn’t jailbreak the phone can expect to be bullied by fellow geeks. This trend was similar to the MAC phenomena wherein technical abilities were judged by the type of laptop one uses.

Scared of social setback, I, too, jail broke my phone. Of course, the reasons were similar to others: I wanted to become millionaire overnight by developing apps, although, predictably, it never happened. Perhaps, once in a while, I may have tried to tether the internet.

Few days back, since my contract was over, I had put the phone on rest for some time after I started using my new phone. And, as a result, I forgot the PIN code to unlock the home screen. After few days, finding no use for the old phone, I decided to sell it. In order to sell, I had to unlock and restore to the factory settings. I tried all the combinations I could have possibly used to unlock, but, unfortunately, none of them worked, and thus I decided to call apple.

Apple representative said the only choice you have now is to restore the phone. Seeing restore fail every time I tried, I further consulted apple representative. He tried various methods but none of them worked, so he finally concluded that your phone was jailbroken. He also said, “Since some of the software used for jailbreaking can spread to the core of the phone, even the original software can’t overridde those areas. Now, the only place I can think for your phone is dust bin.” When I heard this, I felt the earth move under my feet. To me, it was even more shocking, as I had never put jailbreak feature to a good use.

Shaken by the news, I decided to try few more things before I give up. Luckily, when I updated my ITunes, it worked. Then I realized that perhaps I had jailbroken my other IPhone and not this one. Irrespective of whether this phone got recovered or I will be able to recover the other one, my point is that jailbreaking is a risky process and can end the life of your phone. You should try only if you can afford to lose the phone.

An Often Overlooked Element!

Leadership is challenging, but recruiting the right leader is even a bigger challenge. Involved in the recruitment myself, I have noticed that while choosing a leader, recruiter looks for many attributes including assertiveness, confidence, persuasion, and charisma. But are these enough? In spite of all these qualities, when I look at leaders around me I feel that something is always missing. Perhaps the most important element to look in a leader is Negativity.

I am not suggesting that even if a leader is extremely positive, he or she will be enormously successful. Of course, other elements are equally important. But negative attitude does play a very important role in shaping up a leader’s personality and team’s morale. I have worked with several role models in my career and whenever I get a chance, I try to analyze their personality.

One manager in my current company had a habit of not trusting his members. Rather than cheering them, he was often found sarcastically laughing and making comments, such as “I knew that you will not be able to do it”. Even if a leader believes that a resource does not have particular skill, or perhaps she doesn’t have aptitude to learn it, comments such as these are only going to demotivate the resource and hurt the productivity even more. Even supposing that such comments are made in positive light, no one would consider these comments as lesson and try to learn from them. If so, what do these leaders get by making such comments? Frankly, I could not find answer to this question.

While speaking to another colleague who was not happy with her current manager, I realized that how deep the impact negativity may have. Even though she was a good resource, she lost complete confidence in her abilities due to the negative attitude of her manager. In fact, she mentioned that if my current manager thinks that I am not good enough, I must not be good, and that who else can assess me except my manager? I tried to convince her that you are doing extremely well, but when negativity creeps in one’s mind, even genuine efforts may not prove very useful.

Incidents such as these makes you think that even if a leader doesn’t have other important qualities, it doesn’t matter as long as the leader has positive attitude. Positive attitude should be the first founding stone of a good leadership. A good leader backs the team off all the time and keeps the spirit of the team high while continuously tapping on the back as a mother does to her son.

Untrustworthy Trust

Most of the organizations have tendency to doubt new employees. However, once the trust is established, everyone stops questioning trusted employees. In fact, a level of fear spreads at a place where the most knowledgeable subject matter expert is questioned. After all, who dares to question mighty god.

If the environment of questioning is not fostered from the top management, organization is on a sure path to disaster. I was talking to my old colleague about the culture at her company. She mentioned that there are some of the people in her company who are excellent. They have done enough for the company that they can be trusted blindly. As we talked more about the decisions made in her company, she said, “Since it is Mt Best’s solution, it is the best”

However, from my experience, I can clearly tell that those decisions were not made carefully. Although I agree that without trust, it’s hard to retain the best talent in the company, the process of scrutiny should not be stopped, especially for the crucial decisions.

These double standards can also be noticed in other situations. For example, everything else equal, face value does influence the way we think and believe. I remember those comments when I started my career, “he is just out from the college!” Not looking old enough was the only reason for them to not believe me. At times, I contemplated on keeping mustaches and beard to look mature.  I don’t disagree that with time comes maturity. But if I recall correctly, if I had said the same thing 10 years back as I do today, people wouldn’t have believed me. Nothing has been changed since then, except few grey hairs on my head.

Statistically speaking, since past performance is not a true indicator of future returns, a company cannot rely on the trusted resources blindly to yield future returns without thorough analysis. A close scrutiny of new employees is definitely needed, but it wouldn’t hurt to question veterans.

Essays – the lifeline!

With mixed emotions, I started the application process. I had no clues about how to write an essay, or how to express most effectively in 200 odd words. It would have been, perhaps, the toughest experience and probably more challenging than selling a solution for enterprise software.

Even though essay writing may sound boring at first sight, it gets interesting as you get into it. Continuous editing like building a craft for competition makes you think irrespective of whether you win the competition or not, you want to build the best craft.

Coming from India, it was hard for me to imagine why schools would emphasize more on the essays than on the score. I used to think how schools can decide  which candidate is better based on the essays. After all, everyone is either going to copy the essays or hire a consultant to write for them. After going through the process myself and analyzing couple of essays, now I know how easy it would be for Adcom to know whether one has copied the essay or written it genuinely.

In spite of knowing the consequences, I don’t know how many people follow this process seriously, especially people from Indian origin. I had a conversation with a student at McCombs and she mentioned that most of the students simply copies with few changes and that how difficult it becomes for Adcom to be engaged with the story. Also, with the repeating pattern, it’s extremely hard for Adcom to get connected with the story I agree with her that even if one reads four-to- five essays, the pattern can be recognized easily. If the patterns is same, how boring it must be for Adcom to be engaged with the story. And if Adcom cannot stay engaged with the story, the consequences need not be mentioned here.

You may enjoy the essay process If you start loving it, although I agree that it is a pretty hectic process. To all aspiring MBAs I can only say that, this is a life time experience, so you should enjoy as you would the process of your marriage. Have fun with application!