Performance Management - For An Appraisee

In any performance review discussion with my sub-ordinates, I ask these two questions     
   1. What do you think how you are doing? The answer is definite and mostly it is good/excellent.
   2. What do you think, what your manager thinks of how you are doing? In most cases I get a blank look.

It is of then no surprise that many of us feel disappointed after the review. We discover(or rather construct) a set of reasons (inept manager, politics, favoritism, unable to show-off etc.)  for our dismal ranking. While I don't deny the existence of any or all of these reasons, their contribution for a dismal ranking is arguable.

During our transition from education to professional life, we often don't realize two important changes
    #1. In student life, you study more, you score better..simple! In professional life, in addition to what you have done, it is also important how your performance is perceived by your superiors, peers, organization.
    #2. In professional life, how good/bad you are is less important. More important is where you stand against your peers. Therefore your self judgement should always take into consideration these wider aspects as well.

Someone once told me, that the best performance appraisal is the one where there is mutual agreement both ways & the discussion is short & crisp. The reason being, if both the appraisee & appraiser were always in sync, frequently discussed the positives, the improvement needs, the discussion becomes just a mere formality. There is hardly any surprise. And that's exactly it should be. Performance review is not a 30-60 minutes discussion, it is a continuous process throughout the year & therefore requires thoughtful planning, execution & follow-up.

At the beginning of the year, we should plan how much effort we are ready to put in that year & what we want to achieve. Depending on personal life, health or because of any alternate priorities(planning for higher studies, preparing for a job in a better organization) we might not want to stretch every year. That is perfectly fine, only it should be communicated & mutually agreed to your supervisor & you should also be ready to accept a proper rating according to your contribution. The comes the follow-up, which most of us miss. Nothing stops us to touch base with your supervisor once in 2/3 months, or just casually asking how you are doing. This gives you chance to introspect & improve (if required) in stead of hearing the same feedback at the year end, when you can't do anything. And then the continuous evolution, act on the feedback.

I should also admit that in spite of you doing everything right, you could still get a bad rating. There could be reasons beyond your control & that I am intentionally keeping outside the scope here. But if a systematic approach is followed, there are more probability of being rightly recognized.

Please note that, due to self imposed limit on the article length, I am only discussing an appraiser's point of view. The appraiser's aspect will be discussed in the next post.

Identity or Rather The Lack of It

They are three siblings. The eldest daughter is studying medical, probably in her 3rd/4th year. Next is a son, 2-3 years younger than her, just entered into college. And, there is one more daughter, 1 years younger than him, still in school. The father works abroad, come home 2-3 times a year. The mother along with her three children stay in India.

The daughters go to school in car pool and so is the son. In addition, whenever the daughters need to step out of the house, the son accompanies them. He similarly accompanies her mother, too. I have never seen the mother/daughters going anywhere alone. They have their own car, but only the son drives it. He is a free bird,

he chit chats with friends till midnight on the roads in front of their house, goes to college with goggles on and what not. Few months back, they had bought a bigger car. Next day was the counseling day in son's college. He drove the new car, with dad sitting beside him. I have never seen the eldest daughter in the driver's seat in either of the cars, didn't she ever wish to drive, openly or secretly in her mind? Few days back, we got a card, a marriage invitation card for her. We had to attend the marriage, found that she is married off to a richer family, the dream many of the girls' parent have since a daughter is born. I don't know if she had finished her education. I don't know if she wanted to continue her study or was happy being married off. But I know for sure what thought process the son must have, that he is the guardian of the house in absence of his father, that his mother & sisters are dependent on him, that what you are as a human being is not important, what is important is being a "son". Will he learn respecting woman? Would he ever want a daughter as one of his children? and even if he has a daughter, what teaching he would provide to his offspring? I wonder if ever, the mother or the daughter experienced what true freedom is, at least for once. The story repeats, across families, across generations…

Are 'We' better than 'Them'

This post was selected by BlogAdda for Saturday Pick. This was originally posted in Another blog of mine. I am moving it here to consolidate all my blog posts on this blog only from henceforth..

We live such a bright,colorful and dynamic life with varieties spread across horizons that we even feel suffocated to think how they lived their boring, monotonous, black and white life.
We have color TV, 24*7 new channels, umpteen nos of other entertainment medium. They had a b/w TV, news once/twice a day, two movies per week one on Saturday and another one on Sunday. Still we feel not being sufficiently entertained that filler has come in the avatar of reality shows.
We have mobile phone, email, fax, Internet and social network sites. They only had hand written letters which might take weeks to reach the destination and some times would not reach at all, and for some privileged one, a land line phone. Still they were more 'connected' than we seem to be.

We not only change jobs across companies but across domains, too and by the time we retire, most of us will not remember how many jobs we have changed. They, in most cases started their career and retired from the same place. Still I guess they were more satisfied, because the term 'job satisfaction' was not used and heard that frequently then.

We get lost selecting what brand of clothing to wear, where to have tonight's dinner, which car conveys our social status (read bank balance) the best and even for some, picking which BF/GF is the most profitable for us. They were mostly content with the limited options available to them.

We have freedom almost in everything, studying what we want, marrying the person we like, leading a lifestyle we choose, wearing the clothes we find stylish and also the freedom to even ask our parents to shut up, when we found they are not in 'sync' with us. They studied what their father wanted, married the person family chose for them, at times they argued with their parents but with due respect and not crossing the limit of decency.

So to put it simple, we have so many choices and they hardly had any. We consider ourselves living a much better life than they had. We also take stride acknowledging we are far more knowledgeable than them. We are certainly smarter, more matured than they were and we grow at a much faster pace, so much so that we sometimes feel our parents are failing to catch up. I was shocked but not surprised, when I saw one fellow blogger shouting in one of the recent post I visited that why can't the parents grow up (I could not put it within quote as I forgot exactly what he/she said), whatever be the topic it was. Anyway, personal choices apart. But the question of the hour is "Are we happier than them"?

'A happy and peaceful life', I guess that is what most of us aspire for. If everything is better now than before, then my confused mind fails to answer why the suicide rates are much higher today? Why are we so much frustrated in our work life in spite of drawing a salary that they could never think of? In spite of being intelligent, why are we so much confused today? Why marriages are so fragile today than it was ever before? We have everything, but still why do we feel 'something' is missing!!

Are we then a bit quicker than required concluding everything they had is bad, irrational and obsolete. Majority of us believe that most of the values and practices of yesteryear's don't have much relevance today, but is that the ultimate truth, are everything we preach and practice today 'the perfect'? They had already lived their life, most of them are standing at the faded end of their journey waiting for the final call from Him. Where as, we are just living our life, we are yet to reach the destination to be in a position to look back and judge whether the life we had lived is indeed a better one or not. Till then, we need to be little considerate in our thoughts, flexible in our actions, give due respect to those age old 'obsolete' values (we do not agree does not mean we should disrespect it) and also remember nothing is permanent, so what we think righteous today will become irrelevant tomorrow and the way we are treating 'them' who brought us here, we will be treated the same by 'them' whom we will bring here.

I love that movie "Kal Aaj Aur Kal", everyone must watch it, if not already...

Please note:
#1. If you find the post disoriented,conflicting or confusing with the message being conveyed, please ask for clarification. I just poured my thoughts onto paper without thinking anything else much...
#2. The 'We' and 'Them' is what I generally perceive and I am very well aware of the exceptions. So, those who do not fall in either of the category, must not feel offended. In case you feel, my sincere apology.

Customer is GOD

If there is one mantra driving business all over the world, then it had to be "Customer is GOD". Since the day we turn into a professional till we retire, so many times in so many situations we are bombarded with this single line phrase, that the real GOD sitting above takes a back seat.And because GOD is the super power, he can't ever go wrong, he even can't afford to and so are His so many avatars on the mother earth.'They' are always correct.

Whether we like it or not, this business model will continue until and unless someone comes up with a better idea/better slogan to run the businesses with a bigger profit margin.And this model works OK as long as we are inside the four walls of our neat and clean AC offices, some time we curse the customer, some time we make fun of them to flush out our frustration but we accept that he is the GOD and we move on.But the ugly teeth of the problem comes out even bitterly when we are out of the office, the role is reversed and now we are 'the Customer'.We start behaving as if the rest of the world is at our service, be it the restaurant we go to, the airlines we fly in and even the mere grocery shop we go to.

Basic dignity and respect towards a fellow human being is vaporized. We are all out with our 'the Customer' tag, a slight mistake on the other side make us furious (only we forget the lesson "To err is human") and we don't mind asking for his head, after all how could he make the customer unhappy.We easily forget we were nothing more of a kitten a few hours back inside that four walls, not even daring to speak. In a country where the demi Gods (read the cricketers) are often treated better than the real GOD & where money talks more than anything else, this is of no surprise at all.Incidents of human being harassing another human being in the name of not adhering to 'Customer Satisfaction' is so common that we have lost the sensitivity to even notice it.

Once I was traveling from Mumbai to Kolkata on a flight and because of traffic or whatever reason, the airplane was waiting for long on the side ways before taking off.I was feeling very hot and asked the air hostess whether the temperature inside the flight is Ok.In the same situation another discussion goes between the person sitting beside me and the air hostess as follows:
P(Passenger): Is not the AC running?

H(Air hostess): Yes sir, it is running perfectly.

P: Then am i lying? Are not you able to see the I am sweating? (How on earth an air hostess would know whether a person is sweating?Is that part of her job responsibility)

H: Sir, I am sorry, but as soon as it would be air born, the temperature would be just fine.

P: Why is it taking so long to take off? Why don't you ask the pilots?

H: Sir, I don't have any idea and because this is take off time, we are not allowed to go inside the cockpit.

P: So, then what do we do now? Wait here for eternity and sweat like pig? (This was not some dehati flying for the first time, but a suited booted executive)

H: Sir i am really sorry, we will try our best to adjust the temperature.Sorry for the inconveniences.
And as soon as the air hostess is gone, that guy starts talking to me to gain support in favor of him and as always I feel disgusted talking to such people, so just after nodding my head once I looked other way.

We copy so many things from the west and we don't forget to refer to the west when cribbing about our country but more often than not, we forget to imbibe the good qualities from them and one of them is "No job is detestable".There are better jobs and there are not so good one, there are highly paid ones and there are of low wages, too but nothing of them gives any one the right to disrespect the other fellow human being.Why are we so much self possessed about our social status that we don't waste a single opportunity to show it off?Why don't we be a little considerate in our demand (I agree that we should get the service if we are paying)?And above all, why do we forget what mental trauma we go through when humiliated by our supervisor/customer? When we are serving the customer, we wish if the customer was understanding, flexible and shows respect to us and unfortunately we forget everything when we are sitting at the other side of the table.I don't think I have ever seen a worse example of double standards...

Women Education: How much it can do alone?

I know this post is bit long, but I could not cut it short in spite of my best effort as I felt the message could not have been conveyed in a better way as two stories are involved here. So, if you have patience, please go ahead and share your opinion.
I was shocked from head to toe when I heard one of my relative got married to a girl (let's call her A)15 years younger to him.The boy was around 33 and the girl was hardly 18. Even though I was utterly ashamed, I did not say a word against this bizarre incident(bizarre to you and me but not across rural pan India) as they are my relatives but not close enough that it matters to me, so I just moved on.

Few days back,I read a post at Chai Garam and opined that we should raise our voice against such incidents (though she was talking about a complete different incident). Since then, my conscience is being haunted day and night asking me whether I am guilty of not protesting, because these are the incidents where we, the educated and cultured ones are supposed to stand up and raise our voice.

Before you and me reach a quick conclusion here, hold that thoughts just for a second before I give little background about both the family involved here. The incident happened in a village in West Bengal. A was studying at 10th std, her father has a small scale business. The boy is a graduate, runs his own medicine shop (financially independent), has a very small family (which today people find worth considering before even considering the groom's educational/financial status), any sort of abuse on DIL is a distant dream, no question of being thrown away for giving birth to a daughter , so in a nutshell, in that environment he is considered to be a good eligible bachelor.

And the environment I am talking about, "outside knowledge" is very much limited to their four walls, financial independence of a girl they have heard I guess but not realized certainly, importance of a girl's education they know but caught in the dilemma that over educating their child might jeopardize her chance of getting married because not too many educated groom they can find in their circle (And i know "the boy MUST be more educated and earn more than the girl" is a precondition prevailed across all societies over India ) and most importantly marrying off their girl to a family ensuring "roti, kapra aur makan" & "sukhi sansar" is their up most task in life. And regarding the compatibility factor you and me think about, the girl is brought up in an environment to have limited expectation, she is not probably familiar with the concept of personal space and therefore will not realize the absence of it, if any and physically age difference will not be much of a hindrance unless the boy is of Mike Tyson category in bed or has some hidden disease which even I am not aware of.


On the other side of the horizon, there is another story quite radically opposite to this one. The girl (let's call her B) had a Master's degree (now keep in mind that obtaining master's degree may be a cake walk for most of us, but it was not so for her, when her nearest school was 5 km away, the college she went was 20kms away and she had to walk a few kms, then on rickshaws, then on boats to cross a river and then finally catch a bus to her college, no private tuition to avail and this incident I am talking is more than a decade old) and not to forget B was reasonably good looking. But as destiny had it, she was married to a boy of 10th pass, in a village which is remotely located beyond our imagination. The reason? according to the matchmakers, there was no highly educated suitable boy for her in the nearby vicinity, her father being poor, couldn't afford dowry and to make matter worse, the girl was taller than average girl's height (she was 5'6"-5'7"). The parents were least interested to agree to the proposal, but had to give in, they had no other choice. I have heard from my mother that the girl's mother repented "Wish I had educated my daughter little less..." Whom do we blame here? What do we teach and to whom? The girl is happy with her family, no usual hassles in her family (consolation prize for her parents), but does she wish something else would have..? I never dared to ask her.

Keeping all these in the background, it is now time for me and you to think whether I did any wrong by not protesting against A's marriage. I am sure that she is married to a good family, even though she could not educate herself much. I am sure probabilistically she might not get too many better families as her in-laws. I know any time at any condition, living her life independently is not a choice for her , if required (bad marriage??). Even if the education could give her the courage, she might not accommodate the pain of being tabooed in the society (even if she has her parents on her side) and more importantly educating her more does increase the probability little of getting married to a better groom (as happened to B) , because as we all know family status matters. Would any of my educated modern bachelor friend (I am asking to all the single male blogger friends too,) marry to a girl of this category where she is educated enough, but lives in a village, social status is categorized to be lower middle class or so, her parents may not be educated at all and if I exclude all the educated bachelors for the sake of simplicity, a boy having the same parameters as this relative of mine but staying in urban Kolkata would want his sasural to be in a distant remote village!! And if I ask what B has got in life after putting so much of hard work, exhausting herself to the last drop of life she had inside? Her fate would have been anyway the same without the education. I am not authorized to judge both these marriages, but just for the sake of perspective, I personally feel that this 18 yr old 10th std girl is luckier than the lady holding a prestigious master's degree.

I am disturbed because I am confused and don't have a blatant answer to the question thrown by my conscience that what good has education done to B. How do we bring a complete mind set change of the overall society? It is a Herculean task and we, the intelligentsia have to take a collective responsibility to lead the way for the rest.

Buttt.....but, it is easier said than done. The other side of the spectrum, the people needing education has to come forward and how do we even do that first, forget about teaching something!! Think about this, every one of us a got a single life to live, naturally the mantra for them would be to live happily and not think much. So, the parents of A are happy to marry off their daughter to such a family. Now, why should they listen to you and me about importance of girl's education? And as I said before, in the current context (situation,society, their social status) educating their child more does not guarantee them a better and happier life, so why should they then take the risk (and they will always have examples of so many B's which they will throw at you and you don't have an answer). It is a choice for them between a secured present vs uncertain risky future, even if that might be better. Even people like you and me also sometime settle for secured establishment rather than taking risk wanting for betterment and when we take risk, we take calculated risk. These people does not even have the wisdom to calculate that risk factor.

And here comes the biggest challenge. No amount of public awareness through electronic/print media can do that. It is only through personal guidance & mentoring, we can achieve this. How can we living in urban city life can enlighten this large backward society scattered throughout India?

How do you suggest practical solution for this and what would have you done if you were the parent of either of these women ?