About people, work & organizations

[mekin]

As promised here:
My observations on people & organizations

They might be skewed towards ideas for creating a good business & a good organization - something I want to achieve sometime soon.
Also, I am in the middle of Maverick - a book that talks of a very different approach to build an organization - a democratic way.. which I am loving

Comments

[anonymous]

Maverick/Ricardo Semler does have some good points, a full fledged case-study (maybe course, correct me here) at Harvard. But then how ready are we in India to accept it? For ex. the employee decides the pay he takes home and and 6 months later he is appraised by his team if he really deserves it. Sounds good on paper but two things to it.
1. The entire team works like a cartel promoting each other
2. They pull everyone down
Either way a lose-lose situation for the company. May work for a company of Semco's size but will it work everywhere?? Your guess is as good as mine.

Kanishka

[mekin]

For ex. the employee decides the pay he takes home and and 6 months later he is appraised by his team if he really deserves it. Sounds good on paper but two things to it.
1. The entire team works like a cartel promoting each other
2. They pull everyone down

Neither of these happen at Semco because a large portion of everyone's pay comes from company's profits ... (the exact share is again voted for)
Its in the interest of everyone to put company's interests first.

Democracies, probably dont work very efficiently when the population is too large (India is an example), yet I'd rather live freely in a democracy with its problems vs living in a place where a few people decide how I should be living.

Btw Semco is no small company - it had 1500 employees in 2001, and 3000 employees in 2003.

[vinay_ks]

I loved Maverick - even gave it to my boss and asked him to read it. He read a bit and said "are'nt we already doing this in our company" :-) . I spoke to my Onsite boss about this too - he was more forthright , said that while it was probably the ideal way to be, he said he doubted if it would work in a indian company.

I think this would work in Indian companies too - if this sort of culture is introduced early on or if the company is small. But if you were to introduce it in say a company which already has 10000 people, I doubt if it would work.

[fus]

so what did they decide to do ? about spain, i mean

[mekin]

I agree ...
I think this will work well anywhere ..

Its based on basic human principles.

[umang]

1. Trust? Policies aren't there to make sure people follow them. Policies are there to tell people whether the company can afford to let everyone every business class or not.

"If you dont trust a person to decide which class the person travelling on business should fly, how can you trust him with the business he is going to do for your company":
Over-dramatization to evoke amongst readers

[mekin]

Policies can't be ritualized. THAT is wrong.

How often do you hear of someone questioning a policy's legitimacy in the current world & the policy changing because of that.
How often do you not see policies being ritualized ?

Times change but policies dont, and by definition again, its a small set of people deciding how the entire organization needs to behave. That itself seems wrong to me.

An old salesman with a back problem might need the business class travel more than a fit & young vice-president, because else the old guy will have to spend weeks in bed after the trip. But where do you see that happening. Every situation is different & one cant hope to live by a rule-book which tells you exactly what needs to be done.

Intent - thats the only thing that needs to be ascertained, and once thats done, trust comes easy.

A mentor is something that one finds in life, and not at work. I'll agree in principle with he 1st part, but most people dont have a life (at least a professional one) outside of their work

[umang]

The fact that policies get ritualized doesn't support the removal of policies. You need to eliminate the disease, not the patient

[code_martial]

I'm afraid these idealistic books that aim to tell you the secret of everything in two hundred pages irk me no end.

Heh, ditto here.

[priyatam]

I take on Umang's voice here.

1)For whatever time we work, I think the biggest driving factor is the amount of trust the company gives us. I rem in my previous company where the SVP of India operations came down for a floor meeting with an announcement to disable internet access throughout the company (huh?) and after a 10 min long justification, he rolls down a nice little preach
"We trust you guys, you are our strength"

Now, talk about hypocrisy.

Policies, HR exist only for the benefit of the employer and not the employee

[code_martial]

I can't comment in great detail on these things because my opinion on these matters is still in formative phase - even after having worked for over five years. Here's my take on the matter:

1. Trust: Somewhat disagree. Non-trusting corporate policies are often incorporated because of a reaction to cases wherein some employees misuse the trust put in them. As long as policies aren't ritualised, it makes sense to have a certain level of 'mistrust' that doesn't interfere much with the general populace of the company but is enough to guard against damage from outliers.

2. Managers: Mostly agree. However, it's nearly impossible to find good managers everywhere so it's on the individual to know how to tackle hostile or counter-productive managers, either by fighting or fleeing.

3. People Commoditisation: Totally agree. It's not the large org-level numbers that scare me, though. These numbers come from adding requirements all the way down from the team level. What really puts me off is commoditisation at team or project level.

4. People