Thursday, May 31, 2007

Motivating People

"Oh! It's not easy to retain people these days. Market is hot and people are moving all over."

- This is a common talk among the managers of today. So for attrition, what is the cause and how to control it?

  1. Common Good: It is to be understood that an Employee and an Employer they both serve one-other.
  2. Attrition control is a joint responsibility of Leadership, Sr. Management, the middle management and HR . Middle management and particularly the Project Managers hands are very much tied by the company ways and policies on motivation, compensation, appraisal and information dispersal.
  3. Branding: Unable to attract a better talent induces inferiority among an existing talent pool and they are forced to look outside. Companies must focus on building brand image.
  4. People are Assets: Plan for the long term. Invest in people, as people are assets, which shall motivate them to stay for long or forever.
  5. Leadership with a face i.e. to say a direct and face-to-face interaction in person, video conferencing, tele-con, up-to-date communication over web or via email.
  6. Listening: Continuous mechanism to gather feedback from teams and proactive correctional steps.
  7. Opportunity: Identifying correct fitments and providing the right opportunity at the right time.
  8. Present is what matters: Judging people by the value they bring to an organization for their abilities today and not for what they were in the past.
  9. Interaction: People to people interaction at all levels.
  10. Information availability and transparency.
  11. Service: It's found that in any company only people who are expected to be customer oriented are the Project Teams and it's members. An attitude towards customer orientation should be taught to all including HR, Admin, IT and Support Services because it is the Project Teams who are their customers.
  12. Communication: The background from where we come plays a pivotal role in shaping a person. Many in technology are competent but not a people person. And researches have shown that its 70% of the time that communication plays an important role for success of an individual.
  13. Future Leaders: Building right aspirations among the team members and training them to be a future leaders.
  14. Environment: Safe, hygienic and conducive work environment.
  15. Attitude: Show a very positive attitude towards the team and vice versa shall be returned.
  16. Community Service: It’s always a matter of pride to work for a company that gives back to the community, which has provided for its resources and manpower. This helps branding

Human Energy

Our knowledge of this known universe suggests that all matters are composed of atoms. And when the nucleus of tiniest atom is split, a tremendous amount of energy is released. We humans are also composed of the same matter and hence the very same atoms. We have this latent energy simply waiting to be unleashed. All it requires is a healthy body to house this reactor, gentle soul with a disciplined mind to act as moderator and determined actions which are nothing but the neutrons bombarding the enriched uranium like mind to unleash our immense creativity to this world.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

One of the key challenges of managing is keeping control on communication.

i.e to say

1. Identifying relevant communication i.e. for both verbal and non-verbal.
2. Capturing this relevant communication to a centralized repository as data.
3. Efficient extraction of this stored information using state of the art data filtering techniques.
4. Distribution of data to all relevant entities.
5. Ensuring that data is received.
6. Also, ensuring correct interpretation of data.

Corporate intranet driven by SOA for all apps is a great medium towards achieving such an objective.