The Power of Empowerment

We operate in a corporate world with very aggressive goals. We want to make huge turnovers and profits, sometimes with short-sightedness. If an organization has such aggressive goals at the management level, it is somehow transmitted amongst all employees. New employees hired somehow have the same attitude, to rise above the competition and to establish themselves.  I have seen finger pointing, blaming and saving one's own asses in such environments.  Is that healthy to an organization?

I am not criticizing those kinds of organization or people , for I myself have been aggressive and thriving on competition.  In these environments, however I found leaders wanting to achieve for themselves and not paying any attention to employees who need empowerment, who need to be able to make decisions. The leader's need to achieve is so high, they don't want to make any mistakes. They don't want to listen to any new ideas or new ways of doing things.

Consider on the other hand, a leader who has achieved all that she can and established herself in an organization. Her goal now is to make sure all her team-mates achieve their fullest potential which in turn would grow the organization.  Her need for growing her employees is much higher than her need to achieve.  She empowers her employees. She says, this is your project and you can run it any way you want. She is there to support and help, but trusts that her employees have the capability. If she sees something could be done better, she points her employees in the direction of the tools she has used in the past.  She is not constantly worried about failure, she promotes creativity and innovation.

After taking the what motivates me test, I have realized that there are two types of leaders - Achievers and Builders. Achievers are needed in an organization, they have a constant need to be successful and achieve. But they are poor leaders, they don't know how to delegate and don't trust anyone to do a better job than themselves. Builders on the other hand empower people, they are more trusting and forgiving. They know that they  never could have  achieved in the past without making mistakes.

I have met many empowering leaders in my life and am forever grateful for those meetings. They found in me what I wasn't able to see in myself.  They accepted me for who I am and empowered me to do my best. I am grateful to have met the bad leaders as well, they taught me many valuable lessons of how not to be. They have made me realize that business is about people. The goal of a business  is to make positive impact on the lives of people and the well being and growth of people much higher than profit margins and aggressive goals.


See the top ten rules of success of my favorite leader - Richard Branson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3fQqUs5WSQ

What Motivates Me?

Daniel Pink's research suggests that the three main motivators of the current generation are 1) Autonomy 2) Mastery and 3) Purpose.  The carrot and stick approach of rewarding for a job well done and punishing for a bad job no longer has relevance among millennial.

I took a test on what motivated me and the results were very close. Excitement topped my list. I always like to do things that are out of my reach, that excites me and motivates me to get up in the morning. Purpose and Variety came second and third. Learning different things with a goal of making on impact on something bigger than myself motivates me.  Excelling, autonomy and problem solving were other motivators.  For me somehow autonomy is related to excellence. While doing something independently and for myself, I have the need to excel.  My final motivator is recognition, a word of praise or any other reward motivates me.

Looking at my list and Daniel Pink's research, it is pretty close. I have all the three motivators he describes. Some of the motivators like excitement are very specific to me, these are the things that make me "Saranya".

Not being able to be autonomous at work was once big de-motivator to me.  One might argue that in the beginning of your career you cannot be very autonomous since you don't know the craft yet. I disagree. A great leader will show the way of how it is typically done, give the tools and make sure they have access to learn new skills and apply them to the job and then trust them to do the job. First time folks might fail, but it is ok. By micro-managing and making people do things the way the leaders want, these leaders kill all creativity and innovation of the next generation.

Now the next generation's biggest need is autonomy.  What type of leader would you rather be?

Do we as humans crave external structure?

I was recently talking to a colleague of mine how our corporate structure was derived from military. Things like hierarchy, sticking to certain time and routines are still important in certain corporations where they treat human beings as plain resources.  My colleague mentioned that people seek out jobs because they don't know what to do with their time, they don't know how to structure it or achieve without having someone else tell them to do it.

Maybe he is right, we as human beings need external structure and hard deadlines to achieve something.  But instead of assuming that all human beings do not have the thinking capability or creativity to carve out their own career, maybe we should train them.

Nobody ever tells you the secret to feeling great satisfaction and to grow in your career is to take tough projects. Do things that no one else will do. Maybe if you seek out a mentor  they might tell you. But these should be taught at the beginning of our career.

We should be taught that we should constantly learn new skills and apply them in our job rather than just learning how it is done in the company.

We should also be taught how to manage our own time, career and structure in our life.  Rather than assume that all human beings need external direction to succeed.

Thoughts?

How often do we get to exhibit courage in the workplace?

If there is one word in my life that rings very true to my soul, it is courage.  Courage is not about exhibiting a strong exterior, but rather showing our real self, our true vulnerabilities despite the consequences.  True happiness, love, deep friendships and connections occur when we are  able to show ourselves without having to change our true nature to adjust to what society expects of us.  Courage over the years has become a need for me, rather than a "good to have". I need to be able to express myself in the truest way possible. And sometimes this need overcomes my need for success.

Now in a corporate setting, we are all expected to be a "certain way". How people perceive us plays a big role in our promotions, pay rise etc. But how can we all be the same way? For God created us differently. We are all expected to stay in office longer hours just to show our bosses and peers we are really working hard. But working hard has more to do with breaking the shackles in our brain, overcoming our fear of  doing new things. This requires new way of thinking which requires sometimes to be in new environments to encourage innovation.

Sometimes our true voice is buried deep under a lot of expectations, expectations of our parents that is sometimes buried so deep into our subconscious mind, expectations of our colleagues and just general societal expectations. It  requires a lot of thinking and alone time to let go of this noise and truly unravel our real needs.

How many of us feel bored, monotonous at work? All we need is a big challenge, a way to truly reveal ourselves to the world , to rise above our fear and to do really dangerous things. That is probably the only way to be human and happy.

Please comment if you have different thoughts. 

8*40 days, still relevant?

I think I read in the book "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand where the protagonist goes about searching why do we have the  specific distance between the two rails in a railroad track?I don't remember the exact width, but the protagonist cannot understand why it was decided because there did not seem to be any engineering reason behind it. A lot of research indicated that it was based on a horse's ass randomly and people have just followed it. The risk of "We have always done it that way".

Th 8 hours weekday and 40 hour workweek was invented in the late 18th century by Robert Owen with a slogan "Eight hours labor, eight hours recreation and eight hours rest." which was first adopted by Henry Ford. This resulted in productivity increase drastically and increased the profit margins as well.

In 2015, I think it's time to reduce the workday to 6 hours. Imagine a work day from 10 to 4, it cuts back on all the unessential tasks that we typically do to force ourselves to work 8 hours. Instead if we spend 6 hours in a totally productive way, it might increase our happiness in all other aspects of our lives and also improve the business.

Spending all our waking lives at work or commuting to work doesn't even give us any time to think. And by the weekend we are so exhausted that we spend all our time drooling in front of the TV not letting ourselves pursue any other creative venture. At one point it feels like life is just passing you by.

A better option than a 6 hour work day would be no stipulated hours. If we are just paid for the results we bring in and share the profits, how many of us would be up for it? I know I would be.....


Used the following sources - http://www.truthorfiction.com/railwidth/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-8-hour-workday-doesnt-work-you-what-do-instead-jeff-haden?trk=prof-post

Women in Management - The real challenge in Diversity

Our workforce is getting increasingly diverse these days.  We have a lot of women population, people of different ethnicity and background.  Companies are trying to hire more female employees to have a more diverse workforce. While it may be easy to hire entry level, even mid-level women employees, the challenge lies in hiring or promoting existing women workforce to higher level management positions.

The company I work for has a deeply vested interest in growing their female employees. The existing women in high level positions have a committee to discuss how to get more female employees in higher ranks. One of them is my mentor. She told me a story that really inspired me and showed me how we as women have a lot of false misconceptions.

My mentor was eyeing for a VP role within the company, but told her boss the CEO that she wanted the role but was afraid of the travel it entails.  The CEO told her that he really wanted her to have the position, but asked her to figure out a way to deal with the travel by coming up with a solution. And she did, she hired regional VPs to take care of the travel in that area by increasing ownership and restricted her travel to not more than 2 days a week.

How many of us have bosses who tell us that there is a different way to do things? Having had a lot of really bad bosses in the past, I believe success of an employee depends for a large part on having an empowering leader or mentor who shows the right way, who isn't stuck with traditional ways of doing things. 

I have noticed women give up even before trying. I doubt if someone would have even voiced her interest in the position.  One of my friends was telling me recently it is impossible to succeed in career without sacrificing personal life. He quoted Indra Nooyi who herself had said it is impossible to succeed in both. When we have a mindset like that, it is almost impossible to think of creative ways to have both. We will need to make some compromises but we don't need to constantly feel that we are giving up something big.

And its not just women who have children give up. Definitely a woman who has to pick her children from day care doesn't want to stay longer in the evenings and thinks she shouldnt pick up more responsibilities.  Even unmarried women give up due to a variety of reasons. Studies show that women aren't interested in growing in management.  But I don't agree with the research looking at my female friends. I have noticed women who are more ambitious give up just because their talent isn't noticed or appreciated and they are not given more opportunities.

Women are wired a lot differently than men I have noticed.  In order to have more women in management, I think women need to be nurtured by good role models, appreciated for good work done and provided with more opportunities to grow. It isn't good to be easy, but the one good solution is to produce great leaders who will inspire , empower and motivate the women of tomorrow to rise upto higher ranks.