People Management vs Technical Excellence

Those who think “People Management” and “Technology Management” as two separate streams in an organization, fails to realize that you can’t segregate them. If you are incompetent in technology, you can’t excuse by saying “I am good in people management”.

A pure people management is limited to the scope of work supervision. In an IT company what we require is “Technical Leadership”. The boldness of technical leadership is reflected once you empower Technical Experts to bring innovation. The task of people management goes hand in hand.

Million dollar question,

Well, it is all ok and no complain,

While i discussed and had the frustrating conversation i pretend not to realize that i do not agree with you. Some may say “cowardice” or may be they are true. For me it is difficult fighting with people who do not have a moral or principle to life. They take every possible way to make their point correct, even it be on false grounds. I can’t win on losing my principles. So better get defeated till the time you quit the game.

There are frustrating people around. To them, their security is success. The do not work for quality or system improvements. They work to survive and they are very calculating in this approach. Once they get position with all unfair means they bring frustration to the subordinates. Frustration building exercise is the outcome of inefficient managers.

They call something called “Trust”. The definition of trust to them is “Say Yes to what i like, Say no to what i don’t like”. People who subscribe to this ideology are those who work for people, to get benefited. They do not work for ideas, they do not work for improvements, they do not work for something nobel. They just exist, deaf, dumb and damn obnoxious.

They will pose you the text-book question of management, like “What you did, so i may promote you?”, “What you did out of box?”, “Why you expect so much?”. They are right. The problem is that “they are severely right technically”. These are the natural right questions, and these to be asked to people who over demand. These questions sound good if the asking person has proved himself with leading examples. And if they have set examples they will never ask these things. In the course of genuine work flow people will automatically grow.

Million dollar question: What is in you which inspire others?

Two million dollar question: People respect you, just because you can bring harm to them. Or they respect your for something they like about you?

Three million dollar question: Are you satisfied with the fear driven respect? Do you ever realize it?

Most of them tend to forget their own role and contribution. Why they ask people to do something which they can’t prove to be driven by themselves. In fact they failed in doing most of the things. In a sense they want to secure their position. They can’t see progress of an individual who has quality. They will promote someone who can serve their purpose. And what is the purpose? To keep the obscurity in place, don’t question or suggest something which is beyond their thinking horizon. In a sense be an idol worshipper and hail to their glory.

if we understand the infrastructure of mindsets, people, overall vision, this keeps ourselves not to indulge in getting some of the points right from people who will never understand you. If they care for their stability, you care for yours. Set and achieve your objective till the time you get another better one. Life is too short to complain and too long to enjoy. Growth is subjective and all of us have different opinion to it. Political correctness will make your position secure now, but in long run it fails unless it is grounded on sound policies.

In the end it all depends on your philosophy of success. If you align yourself with them you will grow exponentially, but for me the guilt of materializing success on the basis of bringing inefficiency is more harming. Let’s be free and enjoy the breeze of what you think,

Genuine Expectations vs True Lies

While dealing with people around in business transactions, mostly when people are in service support or engineering management, there come situations which are difficult to be scaled over or measured in terms of what is right and what is wrong.

What brings irritation? Or a sense of disagreement which you would not prefer to discuss, since the space and time is not favourable. Some of the managers think: To push work downstairs, and let the pressure work. Well, if you target the heat of seriousness this can work, but you need to chase and hold people, if you are enough capable.

Or

The better way could be to work sincerely instead of making it serious. Let’s identify the tasks, skills, resources and plan it in a better way. Understanding others by placing yourself there and this do not harm to do a small historical review of people around you. What they did in past, how they perform, what are their capabilities and are they sincere?

Understanding is the key. Knowing not only what we want, however most important is “Am i asking right stuff from right guys?” This is something beyond the definitions of delivery models. And of course there are some interpersonal gels required in order to make it inspiration driven rather than disheartened perspiration exercise. This differentiates the genuine expectations from true lies. Managers often call them offloading techniques and some fancy words.

In the end, good people can’t fight well with bad guys, as they need to sacrifice a bit of goodness in between. For them to get an equal treatment some true lies are spoken, which they can’t reject.

The fishy crossroads,

I quickly burned my hands as usual, realized later, this was late. They were right. If i was in charge, i could have jumped in to save, however the discussion went long and situation were not synchronized with my clock.

Most of the times, i sound offensive. I write emails which is not understood to many and they say “he is dandy,”. In the pursuit of understanding and perfection, i make many things, which they say “is a waste of time,”. But i love to waste time. Waste time in my way.

I tried again talking to dead zombies. Since i knew they will not be alive, so i kept their Gods in copy. They responded quickly. It works. The dead shits when interrogated gives horrible smells. They don’t have even a trace of enthusiasm, passion to their work, interest. They do meditation. In front of their computers, they do look very busy. To them is their productivity. Infinite to them, zero to me. But who am i?

If you can’t bring result, its OK, try again, don’t loose passion. If you don’t want to bring results, You are horrible, how come you exist?

This is not a good idea to exist in a system, which is incompetent to nurture fresh idea. The whole struggle is “how to exist”, “how not to work”, “how to keep the boss happy” and “how to escape”. If a team is passionate about their work, result follows, otherwise they follow raw, unstructured spreadsheets. The copies of un-formatted excels, documents and of course they call it the work. Is it really?

I loved drawings, playing with colors, crayons, canvas and beauty. And still love to flaunt my passion in work. I am not a very hi-fi techie who understand well, however i love to make things simple with smart illustrations, paintings and feel great if it produce result. If something is working and i am a part of it. If something is solved and the engineering excites. It may be crazy, weird or foolishness to many. You work for someone, how do you feel great? Well, i have not achieved the corporate salvation of totipotency, and feel happy with these tiny acts, or some power point presentations. That’s me and my happiness, let me be fool.

So you are a great manager. Deaf, dumb and blind. Your management is selfishness, where you think of your personal growth, personal comfort and do not care where team is going. Where are people going? Where is the spark of inspiration, which make learning warm and capable to germinate the hidden potentials of people on ground. They don’t feel great about work, and that’s the litmus test to your effectiveness. However a person should not expect any thing good from someone who can not think beyond his comfort shell. This is average Indian mindset and we all are part of it.

There is a crossroad and choices, and the gravity of time is money. So let’s stick to it. Let them behave as they are. Focus on your objective, no matter, if you also smell like them, sometimes it’s OK.

Insanity and IT,

I was thinking a lot over the times about the insanity. IT is dead without fresh thinking and innovation and these people are smiling zombies. They don’t want things to happen and there are serious reasons to that,

1. They are insecure: Old people and experience in terms of time only. They do not understand the technology and boast themselves of being the superman of past. If they are willing to bring perfection and have passion to technology they can make a difference. However most of them are making spaces for their own habitat. Interested in securing their position. How to exist with their own incompetency. They fear change. They are freaking coward. Every event to them is a political game. Every change is a nuclear attack to their position. They will not listen, never appreciate and will resist any fresh idea. They talk people and events. Very quick in declaring their innocence, passing the ball next moment. They say this is how the support function works. For me, this is a shit approach to the game. They are still, static, dead, smelling horrible.

2. Mindset: If i am not wrong they are thief, crook. They do not believe in law, rules and regulations. The moment they will see a thing unattended orphan, they will steal it. That’s how India is. Bloody corrupt politicians. And then they say, it’s not my fault, it’s the system, as though they are the lords outside the rings, up in the heaven, totally innocent. This makes their mind not to think of any structured approach to crack a problem. They want to hijack credit, play safe and yes, they want to steal. Their salary is what they steal from customers. Making all possible ways to get the benefit of doubt and making their point politically correct. They lack experience to appreciate good and forbid bad. Their mindset is to accumulate more and more and let’s not think of others. They will take office stationary to home, and will not use them. As though this is officially OK. They will eat and keep their shits in the sink, and will not wash it. They do not have time. If God has not given the painful sensation for morning call of nature, they could have died out of constipation.

3. Approach: IT is all about communication. Communication is the essence. It facilitates business and in the end satisfaction to self and stock market stability to company. Paving path to communication is not a big deal. The big question is control. Control not at the cost of performance but to make system predictable. Defining processes that are build around the concept of well defined control. This is not a policy document or file sitting idle remotely on a file server, however this should be the living practice and religious ethos of IT culture. The very first and foremost thing for any company and specially Telcos in particular should be to define their IT communication Data Flow and enforce it. Otherwise, MSPs and Vendors with their creative stunts may make something fabulous but the company’s business can never be assured.

4. Readiness: I am ready, are you? This do not work straightforward. Any way this is how the jobs are created and people are benefited. Great changes do not come in quantized work packages. One must think end to end and an effort which can integrated solutions to give a big blow. Are the people ready? Is the system ready? Is their enough room to think and bring changes. Changes which shapes things better, bring smart people together and let all feel great.

5. Religion: They believe weird. However each believe is weird. They actually believe in customs and traditions, not religion. Religion needs devotion, study, introspection and understanding. It makes person humble, soft, caring and great. Do we observe any of these virtues? They worship and ask: How to be onsite for next six months? And they think that God is concerned about their onsite assignments. I say, H**y S**t !!!

Randomness

Background plays a big role, in setting perspective to the thoughts. Ordinary people, when they fail to realize a concept hangs on discussing related events. Some slips much down and they do not understand events as well, so they discuss people. Politics is at all levels from concepts to events to people. But the worst of them is people politics. People at this layer can never create something. They are dead.

Most of them, if they are kind to you, it means a direct or indirect symbiosis. They want to gain something out of you. Human relations are complex and they live in doubt. Take benefit of doubt and make you feel that they have done a lot favor to you.

I used to think that freezing out your arrogance is dangerous. Arrogance, Yes this is toxic and addictive, however you can not wash it away. Arrogance is necessary sometimes and if you want to be away from it, be arrogant sometimes. Else what is that you have, for which you take the stand on issues. The better option is to be patient and work out constructively keeping in mind the holy commandments.

The reason for them not so flexible is that they don’t have quality,
Neither they themselves nor to the system …
To every change they doubt their survival,
cunning, wicked, they are dead, they don’t know themselves…

As i learned years back about forces, that they are in pairs always. No force is single. Their inefficiency and dependency to hide the faults creates a uniting force where they share. They share their vulnerabilities and make others to believe they are one. However inside them is always an emptiness where they hide in fear.

The End of Middle Managers (And Why They’ll Never Be Missed)

In my opinion, a company needs leaders—not managers. From the top down, every employee has the opportunity to lead, starting with the organization of one within the larger organization that we call “Me, Inc.” Every individual is responsible for shaping and creating their own future (with collaboration and a little assistance, of course.)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkwilliams/2012/07/10/the-end-of-middle-managers-and-why-theyll-never-be-missed/

The Wrong With This Team,

The expectation was to work in such a way, so as to lead … however most of them are still dealing with the leads… Too many leads and no leader. No way but only the high performance culture can make this an A-Team.

This is not the fault of one person or one team. The Big challenge to the management is “How can we translate the Vision into individual actions?”. Serious. This is a serious challenge.

IT Operations, and in general any operations in service delivery need standards. Standards, processed and defined. The common language of ITIL and smart people who understand business, technology and processes. People who are charged with innovation and are always ready for new ideas. This is how the milk of creativity boils and innovation surfaces at the floating layers. But if there is no fire, milk is still cold calm, no matter how long it is out and around.

There is gravity and we must understand. Vision is like a collective mass. If Vision is defined and well understood, the gravity of Vision hold people with common terms. Sometimes the defined Vision is not well translated by the leaders, and in that case selfish people are seen. They push their juniors to come in front to show the act of red-tappism. We call it “Laal-Feeta-Shahi” in Indian terms.

They are cunning, stupid minded and shit. You can easily smell them out. They talk and talk. They expect bureaucratic loyalty. The hindi “Jee-Hazoori“. They demand respect all the times. You must prefix with a “Sir” or suffix with “Sahab“. This is how the culture is and the malnutrition of mind have made them so. They have never experienced the open free air. A long time slavery still has the effect. A healthy and free mind can attract ideas and deliver quality; parasites of deep shit can not appreciate the healthy breeze,

A second level managers band should never work on people affairs and work supervision. This is the task of immediate managers. To my understanding work supervision is not the job of any manager. If you supervise the work of your employees, you have failed your manager job. How can you ensure that you supervise excellence and let employee manage their work? This may be Greek, but if you talk being manager, you must posses something harry potter with you. No no no. You see i control people, i can approve, reject the leaves, i can decide the ratings and band, so i am a manager. So, you better grow, have healthy mental diets and wait till time proves you wrong.

The cancer of “babu-giri” and judging people based on their designation will never allow freshness in the team. So the delivered recipe will never be that tasty and healthy. For that if you need a soup that sets the mood of dinner, you must look upon the harvesting process as well.

Mental Obesity

If i ask you to recall the happiness of running fast as kids, heavy rush in pulses, and breathing fast, jumping over the walls and injuries i don’t care, rugged dress, dusty shoes, smile and laugh, so fast … this is a typical childhood. Free from all obesity, physical and mental.

People think me being so obsessed with criticism and sometimes i feel so. May be in coming days i will contradict my ideas, so is happening so far. But this is fun crystallizing your thoughts in words.

This assignment is of a new kind. I am asked sometimes for my opinion over people, in the team where i work. How and what and the asking authorities tries to peep in my head, just to decide their next moves to control people, since controlling people is attributed as an act of managerial skill. I have a basic question, “How can you control something which is not in your control now”? And most of them do not understand the control system. This is equally applicable to machines and humans. This is where i think engineering as a discipline and the importance of having a good academic background. And a second question, just since i have liberty over blogs to ask, “What positive qualities do you have, which inspire people to change”?

Obesity is a characteristic of inefficient control system. Input translates to output and some residual. If the system design do not have a proper proportion of control machinery to adjust the input output ratio, the harmony of input, output and residual brings bizarre results. Obesity is one of the abnormalities.

This is same like eating habit. The desire to taste and satisfy hunger, when fueled by the food business, gives rise to the delicious pizzas, burgers and it attracts. The profit oriented industry continuously exploits the weak human vulnerability to eat more delicious, more and more. Work culture now a days do not make the input getting processed so well and results in the disfigured abnormal shapes. We call obesity. This is not only linked with the tangible, discrete items we take, however intangible desires as well.

Similarly the mental obesity starts with our growing experience in system, people and processes. We adjust ourselves and design a secure shell around, which we do not want to break. Keeping most of the times our mind discussing only people and events. The idea shower deprived field of mind develops weeds, unnecessary herbs and shrubs. This is default system behavior. Your mind is like an open field, if you will not plant flowers, weeds will grow.

These weeds are stubborn, and made strong over the times. The fencing of pride, anger and prejudice never allows external agents to cut it through and make space for healthy ideas. I see this as an obesity and is worst of its kind.

Shore vs Site

Problems and solutions are the two faces of an opportunity. If we realize this we call it opportunity, else we keep discussing problems. Problems. We say problems are due to people, system and related association with other things. However this is not the case.

Management, when fails to put the process in place, associate the lack of process with people’s ability. Often they say “why this is not happening?”, “why our guys are not doing this?”, “when these people will understand?”. Whenever we associate problems with people, we do not think of solutions, we just wanted to escape or get a feeling of making ourselves not the part of same junk. If we really want to have solution, we must think of concepts, ideas and crystallizing a process. Of course a charismatic leadership, which can make things happen.

This war is not new. Indians have never been united. Since long we are enjoying the hatred. We develop questions in our mind based on people and events. We generate answers ourselves. In our thoughts only we germinated the seeds for differences, animosity, hatred, prejudice and bias. We say those are Punjabi, Marathi and so and so. They are like this and they do like that. This is why the problem is.

The gravity of impotence never allow incompetent people to think beyond people and event. They will never discuss ideas.

Also, we compare. Look to those, how they are united? If we think negative, no one can help. Negative thinking will never appreciate good qualities to others. It always hide its own inefficiency by coining superficial allegations to others. This have no base. Out of the junk mind box, we take some garbage out, play with it and think we are smart, really?

All this gives birth to politics. People politics. I call it the prostitution hub for incompetent people. These guys think, do and act to people and events. They do work and are afraid of their own existence. First they will think of their own self, and if it suits they will custom tailor anything. This is how India is, and the Indians. Can you sense the creativity? The heat of hatred and insecurity have done the thermodynamic job, and they are just the copy cats, sometimes copying Hollywood shits, phrases and interested in Hindi abusive languages.

At shore it looks good, we enjoy the beautiful sea and walk enjoying breeze. At site they are the same people. Now they get more opportunity to discuss. The time space factor has just increased the factor of their qualities. Same people both side discussing same thing, however vectors points to each other. Who can break? Still the darkness need a torch-bearer to enlighten. Otherwise i wish if somehow these guys didn’t existed at first place.

I think may be i am going way beyond in assessing the situation, and why should i be so indulged in thinking. Anyway if i am also not doing a step to bring an impact, i am the same. But i know they will not buy the idea.

So, if you want to demolish china wall, you need big bulldozers. Cursing Chinese, appreciating wall and ordering thousands of people to push the wall will never help. Are you ready for bulldozers?