The reality in a working place

The act of managing something is called management. Everyone in this world end up in working for a management (employee) or running a management (employer). When a business is started we can’t do all the work by ourself. We need someone to represent. So employees are appointed.

Think about a small shop where 2 guys work. If the owner of the shop is watching the guys working, he will correct them to work as per his wish (it can be right or wrong). So here the owner becomes the management. How the ability to work is measured? Tasks assigned competition and the reliability. How do they do their work? Will the tasks assigned to 2 persons be equal? Will their ability be equal? NO. The person who is good at completing the work becomes the favorite employee and gets better monetary benefits. Differentiation between Hard working employee and a non working employee is easy.

Now, think of a bigger organization where around 100 guys work. Does everyone really do what they need to do? Here starts the hierarchy in management when more employees are involved. Owner appoints few managers and employees are managed by the managers. Here Owner give a high level task to the manager, and the manager splits the tasks and gives it to the working employees. Let us assume 4 managers and each one got 25 employees. Will the tasks assigned to 25 persons be equal? Will their ability be equal? NO. The person who is capable of completing the tasks gets more visibility and monetary benefits. Differentiation between Hard working employee and a non working employee is somewhat better. But it is hard to identify all the right ones.

And now, think of a bigger organization where more than 10,000 employees work. There will be several categories of designations. CEO, Vice president, Director, Manager, Team Lead and employee. The tasks are more and hierarchy is more. Does the employees with the same designation do the same kind of work? Will the tasks assigned to all persons (designation wise) be equal? Will their ability be equal? NO. When there is a team work involved there must be more employees involved as a team. But not all the humans are same. They don’t have the same capabilities. The person who works more get more tasks and the person with fewer capabilities get less tasks. Whatever tasks given to the hard working employee becomes his responsibility. Example: 2 tasks are assigned to you, you take over 2 more task as someone is on leave for a month. And now you have 4 tasks and it will not be taken back. You keep helping your colleagues in issues. And now whenever there is an issue, only you will be contacted for help (even though there might be some specialized members for that in same office). Out of 100 employees only 20% of them really work. Other 80% just piggy back on them. Only the person who works will (may) make mistakes. Only they will be questioned. The working person keeps working and the playing person keeps playing. All five fingers are not equal. I agree. But the difference cannot be very huge. One more thing we can see here is there are lots of people to say what needs to be done. There are lots involved in what needs to be done. But only very few end up doing that. The problem in the bigger organization is that the visibility and the benefits will be lesser as there is more hierarchy involved. One more thing here when we work as a team. When everything goes right, everyone is part of your team. But when something goes only the person who made the mistake is blamed. “When we win we will win as a team. When we lose we will lose as a team blame the working person who did that mistake”. Think about it. Why do some employees work so hard? Some do it out of interest and they are passionate about their work. Some do it to get recognized and move ahead in career. Some take up more task to avoid complication done by others. And some end up in taking (given) more work because only they are the ones who do good work in their team and are forced to do it. How can we avoid this wavy working trend. Try to define your responsibilities in day to day activity and try to follow it at your best. Never try to escape from your responsibilities. you can't do that for ever. See whether you are on the 80% or on 20%. Try to increase the 20% to go higher. We can make our work place a better place.

I want to end with a small story . You decide what you understand out of this.

A man used to cross a beggar daily. He will drop 1 buck daily. After some day his financial situation went little tight and decided not to give the 1 buck for the beggar. The beggar understood that the guy will not be giving him anymore. As soon as he stopped giving, the beggar cursed him and blessed the new ones who gave money for the day. Moral: what you do, becomes your duty. No matter whether it is your duty.

Akalaivan (aka Ganesh Chandrasekaran)