A couple of years ago I had written this. It was about hard work vs intelligence. I am still unable to answer this question convincingly enough to myself.
Rephrasing the question this time, what is easier to change - Aptitude or Attitude?
At that time, my thought was driven from peer comparison, from people who were working with me in similar profiles and observing them in two shades - hard working but not so smart and vice versa.
I still face the same question for people in my team. There are those who are smart and intelligent but lack that element of ownership and then there are those who are the most dedicated ones but short on smartness, a factor that could make a big difference to their results. Of course there are those who are somewhere in between too.
I think while hard work and dedication is a lot about attitude; smart, clever and intelligence are qualities driven out of aptitude. Challenge seems to be, which one is easy to imbibe, mentor and infuse into others. The intelligent ones are often not the keener ones, because they are the so called clever ones. On the other hand those who are working hard and trying their best, you can only guide them to act smarter, but picking up the smart things requires you to be smart in the first place.
Thus the basic question remains, what is easier to change in someone - attitude or aptitude? How do we go about doing it?
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Profit sharing
Why don't organizations do profit sharing with employees like they do with share holders in the form of dividends. Aren't employees share holders too of a different form?
May be organizations should take out some portion of profit to be doled out as dividend to employees. Each one would get in proportion of their salaries. Of course this would be apart from the Variable pays and bonus etc. Since that also depends on the roles of each person.
Quarterly, half yearly or yearly could be debated though. This could make people look at the organization as a whole and not just team, unit, function etc.
Yeah, top management could ask - when company makes losses? Well they do cut jobs and reduce salaries or don't give any hikes in such times. So why not, do it the same with profits too.
Imagine, 3% of profits of next quarter distributed among employees. May not be a big sum but still not bad.
May be organizations should take out some portion of profit to be doled out as dividend to employees. Each one would get in proportion of their salaries. Of course this would be apart from the Variable pays and bonus etc. Since that also depends on the roles of each person.
Quarterly, half yearly or yearly could be debated though. This could make people look at the organization as a whole and not just team, unit, function etc.
Yeah, top management could ask - when company makes losses? Well they do cut jobs and reduce salaries or don't give any hikes in such times. So why not, do it the same with profits too.
Imagine, 3% of profits of next quarter distributed among employees. May not be a big sum but still not bad.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Open feedback
Do you think there are some good people in your organization and some so unwanted people. On top of that the unwanted are more prevalent than those better ones. How do you share your feedback for these people on a platform for their supervisor, his/her supervisor and HR to see it all. Obviously, you can't put that up on the intranet notice board.
How about, an open feedback system. Just log-in and search for the fellow colleague and share your feedback. Could be on a certain scale or just plain subjective description. Like may be an over all rating or detailed rating on certain traits expected from their jobs. Well, it could increase the scope of performance review, although it could have it's challenges too.
There could be of course some checks added, to ensure a more sane system, unlike a Face book group where every one bashes every one else.
- You may not be allowed to provide feedback for people 2 levels above you. I guess somehow we always see very little of those people and assume too much in framing our understanding. Hence, barred from putting those assumed understandings on
paper.
- You must have worked with your fellow colleague for minimum X number of days or have had certain valuable amount of interaction to be able to provide the feedback.
- Feedback will be viewable only to supervisor, reviewer and HR.
- It could also be kept anonymous to all except HR. So that it can be revealed only in critical cases.
- This could have certain weight in the over all appraisal scores of an individual.
- And of course a complex algorithm to convert the feedback into scores by identifying keywords from feedback provided with predefined scores for such key words.
Though it may sound so much like a cliche process again, but imagine kicking the butts of those unwanted people, on the system and actually letting the feedback translate into some action(may be).
Till then may be only cribbing helps.
How about, an open feedback system. Just log-in and search for the fellow colleague and share your feedback. Could be on a certain scale or just plain subjective description. Like may be an over all rating or detailed rating on certain traits expected from their jobs. Well, it could increase the scope of performance review, although it could have it's challenges too.
There could be of course some checks added, to ensure a more sane system, unlike a Face book group where every one bashes every one else.
- You may not be allowed to provide feedback for people 2 levels above you. I guess somehow we always see very little of those people and assume too much in framing our understanding. Hence, barred from putting those assumed understandings on
paper.
- You must have worked with your fellow colleague for minimum X number of days or have had certain valuable amount of interaction to be able to provide the feedback.
- Feedback will be viewable only to supervisor, reviewer and HR.
- It could also be kept anonymous to all except HR. So that it can be revealed only in critical cases.
- This could have certain weight in the over all appraisal scores of an individual.
- And of course a complex algorithm to convert the feedback into scores by identifying keywords from feedback provided with predefined scores for such key words.
Though it may sound so much like a cliche process again, but imagine kicking the butts of those unwanted people, on the system and actually letting the feedback translate into some action(may be).
Till then may be only cribbing helps.
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