There is a popular saying - “what gets measured, gets reviewed and what gets reviewed, gets improved and rewarded”. Applied at the workplace, it means that to get rewarded, your work should get measured first and noticed too. At the end of the day we all want recognition of our hard work. Recognition comes when you are able to promote your skills and worth to other co-workers. There is a need to show to your colleagues and seniors about your skills and the reason why you exist in the company - whether it’s a large organization or small. You need to enhance your visibility to get more responsibility and recognition.

There could be many ways to get noticed at workplace. A few ideas are:

1. Take time out to stroll: Do you know who make your cheques? Who advises your boss about your leaves/appraisal and other issues. There are many other departments in your organization apart from your own. It’s good to know people from your department but it’s always useful to gel with other people also. So don’t hesitate in exchanging ‘hellos’ with members of different teams and processes.

2. Spread the word: While I agree that ‘actions speak louder than words’ but nowadays this statement seems less applicable. These days actions and words seem to be speaking with the same force. So spread your words. Participate constructively in meetings. Write regularly in company newsletter. Appreciate colleagues for good work done. Reply with qualitative suggestions/solutions in group emails.

3. Extend a helping hand: There are always a few employees in an organisation, who are always ready to help. This not only sharpens the employee’s skill but also makes him popular among the people. There is usually an impression that this person can be counted upon, whenever required. So interesting things like mentoring new joinees, sharing some business tricks with colleagues/reportees. Helping people preparing presentation or using a new software/tool etc. will surely go a long way.

4. Step up: Its all about taking initiative as people always remember who did the things first; no one remembers the second one. Be the first to raise your hand high when you think that you can work on a particular task. Genuine effort always gets noticed and helps build a positive reputation at the workplace.

I fully agree that there is no replacement to hard work. However if you remember not to shy away from self promoting activity and PR at workplace it will surely help to create a positive image and help  you to get ahead at your workplace.

The photograph is attributed to

In conversation with Dr. Jagdish Sheth and Shereen Bhan

I always find one of my friends grumbling about the amount of work he does. He always keeps on complaining that he has lots of work to do -  work long hours in the office to finish the work; spend lots of time in answering e-mails; handle tonnes of files and papers. And most importantly, in handling these things he always forgets about some important meeting or misses deadlines of projects.

It’s true that some people work well in the stress but most of the people are efficient and productive when they really can control their life. They feel comfortable when they are top of the things.

Here are the few tips that can keep you on top of your work:

Take only as much work as you can do: If you always have lots of work to do it could mean that you may be inefficient or really overworked.

Priority is the key here. Before taking any new assignment, doing a favour to colleague, volunteering any activity or task think about the other priorities you have at the work.

Coping with meetings: Don’t be a ‘meeting-man’. All the meetings all the time are not necessary to attend. You may have to attend several meetings a day but decide which all are really important to attend and which all can be managed by just going through the ‘minutes of meeting’.

Follow your To-Do list: I am sure we all make to do list on the day before or at the start of the day. But the important part is to follow that.

Analyze/update your To-Do list regularly to look it fresh (you sure can include time for gossiping and coffee :-)).

Quality Focus time: You must have noticed a sharp increase in your efficiency during some specific time like just before a project deadline or when you want to leave early for the day (when you look less at twitter or facebook). Use that level of focus and efficiency quite consistently.

Keep a check on E-mail checking frequency: We generally spend much more time in checking e-mail than it requires. Most of the time we don’t need to read and respond those immediately. Instead we can fix some specific time to check e-mails.

Delegate: t has been said that delegation is an art. You can save much of your valuable time by delegating the right kind of work to your colleagues or juniors.

I am sure the above mentioned tips can sure help us to organize the work and time balance, which will increase our  productivity .

Please share your own productivity tips that have helped you in the past and keep your feedback coming!!!

 The pic is attributed to

“Did you hear that the new Team Lead is flirting with the boss? ”; “Oh! he is getting divorced!”; “Her wallet got wacked from her bag!!” .W ho doesn’t like the juicy gossips and if it’s at the work place, the more the merrier! There were few people in my previous office, who were also known as ‘Mr. Know It All’ as they knew everthing about the workplace and people. However, office gossip is always regarded as vicious and hurting for the employees. People believe that it can hamper the productivity and can create physical and mental problems for the victims.

On the other hand we feel there definitely is a brighter side to office gossip.  Gossip can be a great source of information (apart from fun and humour!). You can get useful pieces of information from gossip about hints of lay-offs, impending policy changes, who is doing what, strategies for the customers, growth prospects, promotions in the team, news about clients and business etc. So don’t be uncomfortable with the idea of gossip, in fact consider it as a positive, informal communication system.

Workplace gossip can be healthy and beneficial for your career. Just remember to follow a few simple rules, listed below:

1. Filter: Being the silent listener helps. Extract the useful information and filter out the rest. You may not be interested in knowing about personal history of a colleague, but who is preparing the promotion list and on what basis, can be useful information for you.

2. Utilize: You can use the information in many useful ways. Like if you got to know that your boss likes doing social work a lot then you also can discuss your ideas and experience on the same. So that you could be in the good books of your boss.

3. Promote: At informal team meetings, smoke breaks with the boss, or at other conventional gossip places you can make people aware about your achievement or your efficiency at work that might have gone unnoticed otherwise.

4. Trust: In a professional work environment, you may not get the chance to know and understand your colleagues. By spending some informal time with them, you can mingle with your peers, understand them and build a constructive relationship.

5. Unwind: In a competitive and stress inducing work environment if you can enjoy a light moment with your peers, it will refresh you.

I feel, nothing is really bad or harmful; it depends on how we act upon it. We need to see from a positive viewpoint. We should know that even useless junk can be useful in building a castle!

The picture is attributed to

Got this gem from the web worth sharing

———————-
A well known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $20 bill. In the room of 200, he asked, “Who would like this $20 bill?”

Hands started going up.

He said, “I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this.” He proceeded to crumple the dollar bill up.

He then asked, “Who still wants it?”

Still the hands were up in the air.

“Well,” he replied, “What if I do this?” And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe.

He picked it up, now all crumpled and dirty. “Now who still wants it?” Still the hands went into the air.

“My friends, you have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $20.

Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way.

We feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value. You are special - Don’t ever forget it!

In these times of slow economic recovery, many of us are finding it difficult to hold on to our respective jobs. Work pressures, stretched working hours, stringent quality checks and - clubbed with all this - workplace politics. Ethically speaking, just how desperate are we to save our job?

You need to be aware when someone is gunning after you. After all you don’t want to loose your credibility, a promotion or your job. You need to identify and fight back the people who indulge in workplace politics. A few signs that you should keep a lookout for, are:

1. Your mistakes and weaknesses are exaggerated in front of others.
2. You find yourself caught in the playing the blame game.
3. Meetings are conducted without you being invited or informed.
4. You don’t get the information which you should be normally be getting directly.
5. Your private information becomes public knowledge.

If 3 out of the 5 mentioned situations seem familiar to you, you may be getting dragged in politics at workplace. So how does one survive? Below are a few things that one should keep in mind:

1. Keep your cool. Being too emotional works against you.
2. List all situations. Prepare a note of all such incidents where you think your colleague is playing mischief.
3. Introspect. Review each of the incidents objectively. Do you see any logic? If you are confused, it is always advisable to speak to your confidante at work or a senior (a person who is removed from the situation and would be able to guide you). This helps you in seeing the correct picture.
4. Discuss with your boss. You have your list of incidents, viewpoints and patience with you. Share your fears with your boss. The boss may call in for a dialogue with you and your colleague. Be prepared.
5. Face your adversary. Prepare yourself, choose the right assertive attitude and share your observations and ask for an explanation.

It is most likely that the person will back off and will be careful about their behaviour after the meeting. And trust me, your boss/ colleagues will respect you for that.

It has been observed that  when we stop, think and act on a situation we are likely to win. So go ahead, face and resolve workplace politics and make the workplace a reason to look forward to and not sulk. Growl

image courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonyong/

A brilliant story, recently forwarded by my friend on my email. I am presenting it as is for our valued readers. Some of you may have read this before but worth reading again.

The take away from the story is, about how to keep your goal in mind till you achieve it. You will never realize how far or near you are in achieving your goal, till you are there. So keep your spirits high and aim for your goal.

———

The Catalina  Island is twenty-one miles away from the coast of California, and many people have taken the challenge to  swim across it.

On July 4th 1952, Florence Chadwick stepped into the water off Catalina  Island  to swim across to the California  coast. She started well and on course, but later fatigue set in, and the weather  became cold.

She persisted, but fifteen hours later, numb and cold, she  asked to be taken out of the water.

After she recovered, she was told  that she had been pulled out only half a mile away from the coast. She commented  that she could have made it, if the fog had not affected her vision and she  would have just seen the land.

She promised that this would be the only time  that she would ever quit.

She went back to her rigorous training. And two  months later she swam that same channel. The same thing happened. The fatigue  set in, and the fog obscured her view, but this time she swam with faith and vision of the land in her mind. She knew that somewhere behind the fog was land.

She succeeded and became the first woman to swim the Catalina  Channel. She  even broke the men’s record by two hours.

SUCCESS  PRINCIPLES

When you set your goal, keep pressing on even when you are  tired, physically and mentally, and even though there are many challenges ahead.

Keep the vision of your goal crystal clear before you and never, never, never…  give up!

See the reaching, commit to it, and you will surely see your goal  realized.

It depresses me when I meet some smart talented youth, without a job. Scratch their surface and I am surprised with the findings. The observation is that many of them really do not even know what is the kind of job they are looking for!!! I have come across many a candidate who have not yet decided on a goal/area of interest. They have no idea as to which field/industry they want to work in, or which profile they think is suitable. For them the idea is just to get a “job”.

I reproduce below the lines from my childhood storybook “Alice in wonderland” , as I write todays post:

“Would you tell me which way I ought to go from here?” asked Alice.
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get,” said the Cat.
“I really don’t care where” replied Alice.
“Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

Job search is exactly that. My advice to everyone is to form a plan of action. Decide what profile/industry excites you and then research on your field/industry. Look for the opportunities available.

Once done with identifying the targeted profile/industry the rest falls in place. Research is a key element here. Research, research and research some more. Know more about the industry, the prospective employer, the desired skill sets etc. Examine your own skill set and see if you fit in the role. Identify the gaps between the desired skills and the skills that you possess. It would be ideal if there is a perfect match, but in cases where there is not, then don’t loose heart. You can always bridge these gaps through:

• Researching on the net
• Doing short/mid term courses
• Reading books
• Interactions with experts
• Volunteer for projects in the desired area on an apprenticeship basis. Being an apprentice has its other merits too.  You might meet people who will be giving you your next job

The difficult tasks out of the way namely identifying the plan of action and addressing the desired skill issue, the rest is fairly easy. All you have to do is to update your resume (keep in mind the top ten resume mistakes) and (re)apply with confidence and a smile.

Goodluck with your interview.

This posting is my continuation of my earlier posting ‘Tips to make a good impression in an interview’.

I asked, ‘what’s the best way you consider for background check of a prospective employee?’, to a friend who is a recruiter in a company. I was surprised with his answer when he replied ‘google search’ as his favourite tool for background check.

I realised most of us use internet extensively and based on our surfing/ interest/ postings/ comments an image is portrayed which can affect our professional and personal life. I found the concept very interesting and hence this post on the importance of ‘online image’.

Adding on, I recently read somewhere that an employee took leave because of sickness and her colleagues found her active on twitter and facebook updating her day activity including where she went for shopping, lunch and night out. You can imagine that why she was not happy when she went to the office next day.

Furthermore you need to keep your online image simple and clean. As I mentioned earlier that a quick search on google, facebook or yahoo can give a summary impression of a person. Its good to have parties and share photos, info etc. with your friends online but you need to be very careful when you present yourself in front of world. It would not be a good impression if prospective employer/client finds you on facebook with bottles of beer. So search google with your name, email ids or phone no. Do you like the result? Analyze what image of your will it create on employer’s mind.

Agreed that we use these social sites to connect with our personal friends and share some personal activity but there is a professional aspect also attached to it as these sites are like open book.  You never know, how people can use these sites to know about their prospective/current employee or client. So getting a new job or sustaining in the existing one can be decided by your online activity.

Here are the few ways to gauge your online image:

Be careful while posting online

If you are found on web suggesting ’10 ways to ditch your girlfriend’, or ‘how to fool your boss’ it wont be a good impression. I still remember few years back when I searched google with the e-mail id of one our then senior colleague, I (in fact all of us) got to know that he is looking for partner. The said person became a topic of many a joke in the office, which is certainly not desirable.

I have an account on linkedin, facebook, twitter,  some communities, maintain a blog and a website. I always take extreme care while writing anything over the web. Content travels faster on the web. Some discourteous words or drunken, sexual, violent images or a wrong communal or social remark is enough to spoil your image over the internet.

In fact I would suggest that join some forum/community related to your domain knowledge and participate in discussion, knowledge sharing.

Use decent ids for mail

I can assure you that ids like sexychamp@…, harrypotter007@., …hunkydude@…,  hottysweety@…, will turn your prospective employer off.

Avoid using complicated e-mail, with irrelevant names, some slang or some inappropriate intensions. Always use your name as an email id. Your name may be common so you can also add some number at the end to make it unique with you name. Like sanjaykumar3@… or other variations

Be careful while posting resume on job sites

During the beginning of my career one day my HR Manager came to me and asked why are you looking for job change? Are you not satisfied here? I wondered how he got to know that I am looking for change. The reason was, she had found my resume on a popular job site.

Your name and your current employer name can appear on the search of jobsites like naukri, monster etc. So make sure to keep your few details confidential.

To sumarise, I will emphasise that revolution in technology has provided us with the numerous ways to be connected with the people. People are part of different communities  like facebook, twitter, orkut, myspace etc. to connect with friends and share personal life. But you should be careful enough while sharing your personal incidents over the internet as it is directly related to your professional online image.

Last month I had a meeting with one of my old friends, who is now VP–HR in a fairly large IT setup. He informed me that he is planning to lay off a couple of hundred people in his company, in a phased manner. What surprised me was that he mentioned that out of them around 80% are ‘difficult employees’.  I wondered aloud what was his definition of a ‘difficult employee’. What he told me was interesting and forms the basis of this post.

“In every department/organization there are few people who are arrogant, demeaning (to others), insubordinate, not trustworthy, (always) cribbing and unproductive. And these employees are a huge drain for an organization in terms of wasted time, reduced productivity, inefficiency, and ultimately resulting in customer loss.” I again asked him as to why did the team, then not take precautions while hiring? He said these are traits and sometimes it is difficult to observe them during an interview. You get to know about them only from observing them in terms of their approach, attitude, performance, productivity and feedback from co-workers and managers etc.

It sure means that ‘difficult employees’ are at the first place in the queue when it comes to being shown the door.

Based on his observation and my research, I am listing a few traits/signs that can label you as a ‘difficult employee’. They are:

Work is your foe/ additional responsibility:

I, like many people, don’t like to work long hours or during weekends. But in a down economy & competitive environment your approach towards this additional work plays a huge role in whether you are a valuable employee of the organization or not. Organizations generally perceive an employee’s worth by evaluating his/her work ethics.

Your personal problems are public knowledge:

If most of your colleagues are aware of all your personal problems, from hole in the shoe, missed breakfast, argument with friend, mismatched nailpolish, then this point is for you. No one is really interested in these kind of regular updates. This can create a sort of distraction among the other employees who already are overworked and busy in meeting deadline. You will suddenly see co-workers distancing from you. So keep your personal problem very personal.

You & your company are not on the same page:

You don’t have to be alcoholic if you work for Kingfisher beverages. But you need to understand the vision and approach of your company and work towards it. If you are heard making fun of the company or its products/services it can hamper the office environment, spirit of teamwork, your relation with co-workers and the management. The company is better off without you for the the fact that, you don’t understand and respect your work.

You don’t appreciate feedback from others:

“True feedback can put you on the elevator of learning”, says Vinayak Joshi, CEO, Learning Concepts, an e- learning solutions provider. If you don’t take feedback positively it means you are limiting your learning and your knowledge and you have very little chance to improve your weaknesses. This will affect your work efficiency for sure. So lest you end up getting the pink slip, learn to take in what people are saying.

You are always complaining:

“My computer is slow, co-workers are not supportive, my boss is very strict, there is no AC in cabs, the food in cafeteria sucks”. Does this sound familiar?

Problems are with everyone, we need to work towards the solutions instead of revolving around the problem. No one likes complaining and that too about co-worker/boss/company/HR. If you face any problem, try to appreciate it from the other person’s perspective. Even then, if you feel problems are grave, then escalate it to the right person instead of being a cry baby. Your attitude of always cribbing/making noise can push you under the ‘firing’ range.

You hate accountability:

I have seen many people who are active enough when it comes to taking credit for some work but who retreat twenty steps backwards, in case of owning up responsibility. At any given point of time, you should be able to hold yourself accountable for the work done by you - good or bad - instead of playing the blame game. This will express your quality of initiation and leadership.

Even if you have any one of the traits mentioned above, I would suggest that you pull up your socks. By addressing the above points you can show to the organization your value of employment. So always welcome responsibility/ challenges with full enthusiasm. Who knows it could be a chance to establish yourself.

No one likes ‘difficult employees’ in their team, organization. Every organization wants an employee who can add value. So watch your approach in office, who knows someone is preparing list to lay off!