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Bell curve which is the most common evaluation methodology used by companies has always been a hot topic for debate for CEO and HR managers. Many CEOs who express their dis-concern of using such methodology for employee evaluation, at the same time MNCs continue to use Bell curve for their evaluation. For readers who are well not aware of bell curve, here is a short para on bell curve. Although internet offers you many articles on bell curve and its pros and cons. Bell curve is " Strategic distribution " of their employees forcing the Managers to categorize and place their employees into each of the categories " Non-performers " , " Average Performers " , " Top Performers ". Example : There are 20 people in a department, the manager / leader of this department MUST categorize these 20 people into each of the categories Non - Performers (10%) : 2 people  Average Performer (70%) : 14 people  Top Performer (20%) : 4 people  Let...

As they say " Change is the only constant thing in life" , so we always come across many new experiences in life. Just recollect your latest experience of coming across something new , it might be travelling to new place, a new job, getting a new friend etc.......  All these new experiences can be handled in three ways. Let's analyse these ways with a below scenario which can be understood better : Scenario : You have moved to a new place and you are asked to go from Point A to Point B which takes around 30mins . Only the address of Point B is known to you and you have to figure out the route to reach point B, with too many confusing routes  Let's look at those options : 1. Adventure  / Explore : You don't ask people and you start exploring the route by yourself. Look at a map find out landmarks and explore route by yourself. You observe during the journey. Advantage : a. Since you explore by yourself you observe much carefully and...

Just completed my first Marathon on 16th Oct and there is no doubt why this sport has gained a lot of attention in the recent years. For a commoner it is only a group of individuals running , but realised that a Marathon has plenty of lessons to teach. 1.  Know your limits : The process of Marathon itself starts with registration to the event. There are many options on the table to choose, 42kms / 21kms / 10kms / 5 kms. Here is where an individual needs to question his/her ability before registering to a particular category. If you tend to register to a category which is beyond the ability, you might only end up straining yourself draining out all energy and also sometimes not completing the race. Start with lowest of your ability and then move up the categories. Aim High but start low.  2.  Prepare for the race : Now that you are aware for which category you would participate, prepare yourself. Time between from day of registration to day ...

World is being a more competitive place and to retain customers and increase the sales / turnover of an organisation, there are many things a company can plan / strategize. But many times the company plans to achieve these strategies by squeezing the existing resources. But since many employees fear saying "NO" to the managers, they take the tasks / additional load which would impact the productivity levels of their existing tasks : Am not saying here that each task an employee receives, must say "NO" to it, but my point is that the employee needs to evaluate it before accepting.  1. What is current occupancy level ?  Nobody in the organisation is working for 100% of their working hours. This is a known fact to all. But the occupancy level differs for each employee. The employee needs to evaluate the occupancy level and based on the same if it is more than 75% then he can explain the same to the manager in a logical way to say "NO" to t...

While at a time the entire nation (including myself) are applauding the step taken by the Govt. Of India with regards to surgical attacks carried out on PoK.   But as our " Father of Nation " Mahatma Gandhi believed and fought for the nation's independence through "non-violence", I wonder what would Mahatma Gandhi do now in certain circumstances ?       Even the British era was full of disturbances and if we made our mind then, how long would it have taken to unite and kick them out of the country. While some didn't believe in the ideology and chose for violent path , here stood Mahatma Gandhi for path of peace and believed in his principles.   Would peace talks and non-violence still work ?   Please share in your thoughts!!

First day to office, get the best shirt you have, get the best trousers, polish the shoes until it shines like a mirror, get the best perfume etc etc..... So it is the best you put on to impress the people you will be meeting in first day of first / new company. Let's look into some of the must do things as an employee joining a new organization : 1. Be who you are : While they say "First Impression is the best impression", be who you are, do not over impress. While many employees take the extra effort to be accepted in new organization, what they miss out is probably that this extra effort would cost them in future. As people build expectations with your initial few interactions and to retain the impression with them new employees continue to deliver the extra effort which would drain out their energy. Therefore, be who you are !! 2. Listen carefully : Open your ears widely to listen every bit of conversation. Restrain as much as you can from partici...

The Karnataka state erupted with rage with the Supreme Court passing verdict on Cauvery river to release 15TMC water to Tamil Nadu. As Tamil Nadu rejoiced this verdict the people of Karnataka erupted with rage and staged a state wide protest on Sept9th, 2016 with mixed response especially from the IT companies, which were later forced to close down. Rather bringing in state owned issues, it's important to look at this issue more holistically and from National perspective. Water is one of the most important element, necessary for the survival of human beings. Therefore priority should always be for " DRINKING / BASIC REQUIREMENTS ", then for other purposes. But at the same time the life of many are dependent on the crops. Therefore, this would be never ending issue if not solved with the interference of a third party in this topic.  From my basic level of understanding and some common sense have proposed the below :  For an instance let's fo...

Communication forms one of the key challenge any organisation faces. The " Three wise monkeys " pictorially depict " see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil ". But in this article, the three wise monkeys are interpreted in a positive way and term them as " The three   Communication monkeys ". 1. OBSERVE The 1st monkey is shows " EYES ", i.e it is important for us to see and observe whats happening around us. (play the below video first before reading further) Credit : Daniel J Simons The monkey business is the most ideal test to check our observation skills, as many who take this test would fail in noticing all the three changes. Changes : a. Gorilla walks in between the passes b. The girls with black shirt walk out c. The change in curtain colors. Therefore, this video to how we observe minute details. It is all happening right in front of us, but since we are held up in some other activity, we tend to ignore / don...

Visiting Card, an important asset to be carried along everywhere we travel, as it is the starting point of conversation. Recently, when we were chatting on the same topic and we debated if job title or designation to be on the visiting card.  " My Thoughts " is a job title can help contacts understand your role & responsibility within a company, quickly determine the decision making power the position holds. It has it's uses and can be extremely helpful. Also, visiting cards are given to customers, vendors and mostly people outside the organization and therefore, the hierarchical designation doesn't really concern the person outside the organization... Therefore, a job title must be on visiting card.     Example: A Country Manager for a particular channel is at hierarchy of Deputy Manager within the organization... Which do you think is the right way of having the business card ?   ...

A great learning out of a small experience. On  route from office there is this one stretch which is always jam packed and to avoid this stretch I had to explore inner roads. With my two wheeler I figured out an inner road, which had pickup trucks, cars and two wheeler all travelling through this road, probably these were ones who were also fed up of the stretch and had explored this new route. As I entered the inner road and was traveling, people coming from the other side were signalling that a traffic police was at the corner and not to travel any further. This sign of the oncomers raised doubt if we were violating the traffic rule and had explored a one way route by accident. However, since I wasn't completely sure, I took a U-Turn and I came back at the traffic signal. I came back to the traffic signal and straight went to the traffic policemen and asked him if the route was not a one way and there was no violation of traffic rule.  Now let's wear our man...

With evolution of Internet, everything around is turning out to be 'Smart' devices. The first of its device which became popular is a 'Smartphone'.  Smartphone is a good analogy to understand how can organisation must be led. Sounds weird right ? Here are my thoughts on how Smartphones are great analogy :   Let's dive into individual topics and compare them to the smartphone :  Efficiency :  Yes, organization are like smartphones, and people in organization are like Apps. The organization efficiency is dependent on the processor of the smartphone, when more apps are installed on phone, more space of RAM is utilized and thus slowing down the phone. Therefore, it is important for organization to first know it's RAM capacity and accordingly install the apps.  Training :  Any app on our smartphone needs an update to fix a bug or improve the efficiency of the App, so are employees. Nobody is perfect and we all too h...

      CRITICAL /CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK Critical feedback are very dangerous as it basically depends not only on how it is given, but also on the way how it is received!  It differs from each person but the most safest approach is from "Hot drink" model. Let me try to describe it in short words : RECEIVING CRITICAL FEEDBACK   Let's imagine I give u something hot to drink. The common behavior of drinking something hot is that we try to sip it slowly sucking the liquid around our tongue, imagine this as feedback which is a critical one. Especially in India, when a critical feedback is given, it burns tongue, therefore the person receiving it must always be sucked slowly with a coating around the tongue, i.e take it slowly and with coating of the positivism of the feedback. If not coated would directly hurt the person receiving it. PROVIDING CRITICAL FEEDBACK Also, for person providing critical feedback, should be compared to sandwich model, i....

Most of the time it is not about time management, it is about energy management and how we utilize the energy towards achievement of the tasks towards the organizational goals. There are strategic and operational topics in our routine and the effective utilisation of energy is the key for smart achievement of these goals. According to "My Thoughts" i would equate energy with enthusiasm of an associate. And categorizing these two into 4 different boxes we could term associates into each of these categories : LOW Enthusiasm and LOW Energy: These are those associates who are nothing but 'SEAT WARMERS' of the organization (apologies on the word used, but that's a fact). They have absolutely no energy and no enthusiasm and therefore, are only seat warmers and are dangerous for the organization with respect to overheads and spreading of negativity in the organization. These associates are easily identifiable in terms o...

"My thoughts" on personal branding which is so evident in an organization. Most of the times after a few interactions, the person gets branded into one of the categories (aggressive, adamant, soft natured, hard working, intelligent /smart, lazy etc...... and many more such categories). But as they say "Change is only constant", therefore a person who is keen to change and improve in their area of weakness always works on his/her weakness. But with such branding concept predominantly available in an organization, how does one change the "perception" / "brand" ?  Dwelling deeper into this topic, "My Thoughts" started questioning how to change this perception and during one of interaction with my colleague, he mentioned about re-launching like a product. But lets look at this from our personal experience , You used a toothpaste and you found the taste of the toothpaste not appealing. Although the purpose of to...

Cricket being most spoken sport in India, I thought of taking cricket as an example for explaining the above subject. Anyway language of cricket is easily understood by all...   From "My thoughts" i categorized a normal pitch into different parameters which we encounter in our day-day business...  Have a look at the below picture... Here, Ball is issue which needs to be tackled.. If the ball misses batsman and hits the wicket then the ground rules commands batsman to leave the ground...  The distance of 22 yards is constant, however depending on the pace of ball, the time is decided to tackle the issue.... Therefore, the time is defined to tackle the issue... By the time the ball arrives, the batsman needs to be ready with the strategy (shot) to tackle the issue.. Thought process of batsman will calculate desired result of shot,  time available to play the ball and placement of shot to reduce competitors (fielders).... This...

Put a frog into a vessel fill with water and start heating the water. As the temperature of the water begins to rise, the frog adjust its body temperature accordingly. The frog keeps adjusting its body temperature with the increasing temperature of the water. Just when the water is about to reach boiling point, the frog cannot adjust anymore. At this point the frog decides to jump out. The frog tries to jump but it is unable to do so because it has lost all its strength in adjusting with the rising water temperature. Very soon the frog dies. What killed the frog? Think about it! I know many of us will say the boiling water. But the truth about what killed the frog was its own inability to decide when to jump out. We all need to adjust with people & situations, but we need to be sure when we need to adjust & when we need to move on. There are times when we need to face the situation and take appropriate actions. If we allow people to exploit us physically, emotionally,...