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Sunday, January 31, 2010
A Violin & A Relationship
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Saturday, January 30, 2010
Knowledge & Wisdom
Knowledge has taken away from us the wisdom to express; when it was easier as a child with fewer words in my vocabulary to pronounce how much I liked him, with the reading of many words and learning of many thoughts, I hardly can summon me to say that anymore!
I have the knowledge to write essays, but not the wisdom to put together these words when needed, that is, “thank you” and “I am sorry”, or even “I love you” with the meaning its intended to carry.
Knowledge has taken away from us the wisdom to express!
Shahir
Monday, January 25, 2010
Family That Prays Together...Stays Together
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Sunday, January 24, 2010
Managing Performance in Organizations
If at all Performance Management is something that need to be fixed ‘still’ in many of the organizations, it is only because of the angle in which we look at them. In most cases, the view we have begins from the score-cards and illuminating dashboards flashing green and red on the screen, the various metrics that we use and the various charts and graphics that we post on the corridors and staff canteens. When we walk backward from these metrics and graphics, our focus turns to ‘implement’ the Performance Management rather than ‘manage’ performance.
Implementing Performance Management is something different than ‘managing’ performance.
‘Implementing’ only requires rules and guidelines sent along with memo’s and emails and lectures and seminars and training. “Managing” performance is to live the performance management components, and by that what I mean is to make the competencies – the indicators and contra-indicators – your conversational language in your operation briefings, meetings, and your discussions.
Performance Management can only be successful when our day – to – day activities are bridged with the core competencies of our system. For example, how many of our managers links a team members performance of previous day to one of the competencies and highlight it in their meeting (ex.: David, I understand you worked hard till late night yesterday to fix that problem with the customer and that is indeed remarkable; that’s what “drive for result” is – that being one of the competency of the organization!) Discussions like these and plucking a piece of live examples as these will have no match to those case studies and metaphors you bring through the mouths of consultants who designed your competencies.
Performance Management is a daily thingy. Period. How many of our CEOs and Managing Directors are concerned of Performance Management as concerned they are when the financial performance indicators shows a drop? Performance Management process are more or less a ‘tick-box’ event for many middle managers, or a ‘procedure’ that lead to the tabulation of salary increment etc., whereas this has to come to that level – in par – with the concern the management will demonstrate when the financial performance is down, because the driving force behind that financial performance are the people, and Performance Management is about People Management.
Performance Management need to be brought to its basic levels and intentions; that is, regardless of the size of the organization, it is about a team leader managing his or her ten or odd staff, and similarly many more team leaders managing their ten or odd staff, and therefore the entire organization managing their staff in a uniform format.
Everything else is to me caviar on the bread: a luxury that we can live without.
Shahir
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
My Virtual Letters: Roller Coaster
Isn’t life a rollercoaster for almost everyone around us? Perhaps the only differences I see in that roller coaster ride is in the speed of it, Renee, or at times the length of the track, at times the complexity of the ride – the acute degree of turns and the number of high rises and the steep falls.
Even in that ride, I am glad that you are in relative control, because only then will you be able to apply logic in the many aspects of living and have a calculative approach to problem solving. The mundane things are mundane, aren’t they, and it deserves only that much attention, right? The task in life to achieve, I think, is to get the big things right, and how delighted you must be feeling that you ‘are’ getting them right. The small ones, the mundane ones, are the little grains that will anyway fall in its place and are the ones that may not require much focus. More often than not, I struggle with the application of logic to the undercurrents of life, and recently, the arithmetic of my equations had to be erased and re-written in an attempt of correcting several wrongs.
My dear one, your words reflects your intention; the simplicity in being kind and the greatness of that virtue. I hope you will succeed in spreading that kindness, exposing to the light the disillusioned, bringing to the open ground the ones who are confined to their chambers of dark thoughts chained with their disempowering emotions.
Comprehending the struggles of lives around us is indeed a way to count our blessings; glad it is a cause you have chosen to travel for…with people around you in your neighbor-hood or church or in this virtual world.
Do well, and do them with a smile.
Shahir
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Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Lessons from bicycle race in childhood
When we were small children, we use to hire bicycles – they come in different sizes; quarter, half for boys of our age, three-quarter for boys of my brother and his friends' age, and full size that my uncles ride. Renting it for half n hour was just 30 paise! But that’s not what I wanted to share with you.
We friends then use to have cycle race in the ground that is used to play football in the morning and graze cattles during the day! The race was about who will cross the finishing lane first.
At times, we also had it reversed. The last to reach the finishing line was the winner! Now imagine the struggle to keep the cycle going without you touching your feet on the ground, wrestling with the pedal and the handle, twisting and turning our buttocks on the hard cycle seat balancing it from falling to either side or crashing on to the other!
Who was once a very close friend and my well-wisher asked me yesterday out of the blues “What did you achieve, really?”
There were times I was engaged in the first kind of 'cycle race' in my life. The race was to reach the finishing line first. For years in a row, in every ‘race of life’ that I participated I have achieved just that. Finished either as first or one among the first, in my life in general and in my career in particular.
I am through a time now where the race has changed, for a while. It’s now the slower race, the second kind of cycle race. It’s not about reaching there first. It’s about struggling with the pedals and handle of life’s dynamics to balance without falling and to still reach the finishing line. The paradigm is shifted from being first to being in control and completing the race. To experience the challenges without putting your feet to slow down or quit, or not wishing to race through the lane and 'finish the life off'; to experience the challenges - designed and default - in grace is itself winning, in this kind of race.
The answer to what have I achieved is this:
“I have developed the taste buds to celebrate the sweetness of success, and the ability to understand the darkness of nights as just a turn of a day in the length of ones life which might still turn darker for a while just before the dawn will break.”
Why do we have movies and articles and whitepapers of people who has won the fast race and has had their episodes of slow race too?
Life is bigger than a person. Life is stronger than an event. Life is, in its simplest form, execution of simplest ideas closer to perfection with the noblest of intention.
That understanding is my achievement.
And I am not editing this, nor reviewing to re-write!