Article - 38 Week 47
Two way ticket to excellence:
My first day in first job. I stutter & fumble in a corner table, not knowing what to do & where to start from. The HR manager's instructions & directives leaves me even more confused & nervous. The air-conditioner growls so loud in the back ground of non-stop chatter, laughters, & crackling jokes that I desperately seek friends to join in the party to get over the tormenting noise. Nothing much happens till 11AM. Then there is sudden silence. The silence is punctuated with hushed voices sharing top secrets. I try to listen in to decipher. "The director has parked his car.", "He is in the lift", "There he comes." & so on. Then I see all stand up & almost shout in disjoined chorus - "Good Morning Sir." The director looks up at the ceiling with a stony face, glancing sideways a few times & murmuring something barely audible to the pretty looking secretary, on his leisured stride to his opulent room.
Every thing has changed in the room. All chatters come to a grinding halt. The faces of the people I share my space with tighten up to seriousness, which I never imagined was possible a few minutes back. I was told in no uncertain terms by the HR manager that I must look myself busy when the director passes by. I was clueless as to how to keep myself busy. I earnestly asked the manager to tell me my job, but to no avail. All that he could explain with any semblance of clarity was that the director would tell me the details, when the time is right. All day I wait for the director to call me or pass by. I was not supposed to try to meet him, as per the present office protocol. Then the director leaves at 0330 PM, much to the relief of the rest of the people and leaving me more confused & unwanted than in the morning. This was the routine for a week, before I had the good fortune of meeting the director face to face. He never looked up from the pile of files he was working on while telling me what was expected of me. I was already told about this by his secretary. I was impressed with his control & authority over the people and wondered how he managed to get things done without listening to his people!
Many of us might have come across similar daunting encounters in our lives. What is important here is - the boss is bossy and gets things executed. He communicates from top to down and accepts no communication from bottom up. He is a disciplinarian and sets the goals, sets the rules, and punishes severely those who dare to step out. Some of us are used to this in our joint family structures, where the eldest is venerated in front and ridiculed on the back for such acts. The interesting part is that, it works. But in what ways?
First of all a rigid compliance culture, turns people into acting mechanically just to satisfy the minimum basic criteria laid down. Since productivity or quality is ignored & compliance is glorified, people stop being productive, creative or quality conscious. They stop thinking how to get more things done with lesser time & effort, rather focus on being there physically for the slotted times and abiding by the rules. Have you ever noticed the ubiquitous Indian carpenter, who almost moves in slow-movie-motion in a dream sequence during work and takes times off for tea, cigarettes, or food that stretches elastically as the days pass? You wonder, what a sloth, the guy is! However, when you get inside his head, you notice that he does not get paid for his productivity or quality of his production but for his time by the contractor he works for. He is reprimanded for not being on time or not listening to the specific instructions by the contractor. The filth & shod around him or his work is no concern, as long as he has not been told about it beforehand. He does, what is told to him. Period. He gets paid for that, as others are paid in the same manner.
This is where, creativity dies its natural death. Communication from only top to down surely gets things done in a somewhat mechanical & forced way, but fails in making people think creatively. However, top to down communication is invariably accompanied by an autocratic mode of management that helps blunt the thinking as well. When communication also bubbles from down to top, corrections invariably take place. If the information flows through a chain of hierarchies to the top, it gets distorted beyond sanity, as in most government departments. The channel from bottom needs to be carefully laid & kept unclogged. That is not easy. Gossip or corridor's spicy talks find their flirtatious way up creating mayhem in team work, leading to polarised groups & sub-groups. Such polarisation can result in attrition, conflicts, lower productivity, and many other unwanted consequences.
Fortune is at the bottom of the pyramid & can only be fished effectively if there is a two-way highway of unfettered freedom - the freedom for the information to flow up & down in the organisation.
Brgds
Capt Rath
Econship Marine
704:5:6 Maithili's Signets 7th Floor,
Sector 30A Vashi Navi Mumbai 400 703.
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MSN : psrath@hotmail.com Skype : psrath
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