The Need to Please

One of the things that I absolutely abhor at the workplace is the "need to please" or "need to market" syndrome. It may not be relevant just to the place where one works but extends beyond to our personal lives too as far as I am concerned. But for the sake of this post I will stick to the workplace.

While my dislike for people who do everything in their power to please the boss, stems from the fact that I do not consider myself as an ambitious individual, I still am unable to fathom as to why being a "yes man" to your boss is such a "in demand" skill these days to grow in ones career. I have lost count of the number of instances where promotions are given to people who are sometimes unfit for a certain job but are nevertheless given priority because of their ability to please the boss. It is often spun as the individual having shown "leadership" qualities (another corporate word I absolutely detest).

The fault also to a certain extent lies in the folks who are in roles of a "boss". Everyone has his or her own "inner circle" or "coterie" and I guess they get a sense of I don't know what "superiority" maybe when they see a band of willing to please yes men who would do anything they want them to do? I don't know and I guess I never will.

The random thought highway..

January is usually the time of the year for doing performance appraisals if you are a manager and after having been an individual contributor for much of my career (I did manage people in most of my projects but never actually had to do their appraisals), I find myself having to go through the whole process of assessing my teams performance. I actually did not have to do much as I took over the team only in October so the previous manager provided the feedback and we generally agreed on the final ratings and I was done with all of this in a day. 

But I find myself always questioning the way we do the appraisals in the company I work for. It's not that the process by itself in bad but there seems to be no quantitative input into the rating system at all. People across the company, especially for folks in a delivery role as always assessed purely on subjective/qualitative parameters which I find alarming as there almost always tends to be bias in the ratings. 

I agree that it is sometimes difficult to come up with quantitative parameters to judge the performance of those in delivery but I am deeply concerned that no attempt is being made by anyone to actually try and do something about it. I am planning to look through the Internet and see if I can get some insight and apply this for the team I manage this year. We'll see how that goes.

In other matters that seem to be occupying my mind space, the current car I have is into its sixth year and with the family growing I am looking at finally making a jump and buy a sedan but the mind is caught between whether to go for a diesel or a petrol engine and being spoilt for choice as we are, it looks like its going to either be the new Honda City or the VW Vento. The exchange bonus and what the dealer offers for my existing Swift is going to be the clincher and I suspect I can expect nothing from Honda given that the new City has just launched and is seeing huge booking numbers. So I may just end up getting a VW Vento but either way there is going to be a big hole in the pocket.

Funny how we just keep wanting more and more from life when we keep getting financially better off! My list of things that I really cringe for and want include a complete set of lenses and the all new Canon EOS 70D SLR camera, a Macbook, Bose sound system, one of the new fitness tracker gadgets, a new iPad and I calculated that all of this costs almost 3 lakhs....Talk about never being satiated by what we already have!

All the things we read about in the books on being content in life etc etc always seem to be just that...printed material in a book. Maybe I am just no mentally mature to find a point where I look at life and say "Thank you life for giving me everything. I am content!"..How many more countless books and readings is it going to take me to realize I wonder..

Watching Aadrika grow is the best thing in my life right now. Such a pleasure to see your own flesh and blood slowly start talking, make sense out of things. Just an absolute delight.

My 2014 financial plan has some money being allocated for wild life trips and hopefully I will have some money in the bank to make a few trips this year.

My exercise spree to date has lasted just 2 days and a grand total of 60 mins and my plans of  doing Sandhi daily were actually executed for about 4 days. Moral of the story? Resolutions always come back to bite me in the ass! I am hopeless at it. Gotta figure out some other way to keep doing some things in life in a consistent manner other than procrastination!

Weekend Thoughts

A nice a relaxing Sunday morning and I find myself happy and content, watching my favorite tennis player Rafa Nadal on TV sipping a nice hot cup of filter kaapi. The missus is buys cooking lunch, the music blaring from her tiny mobile phone. Life's little pleasures mean so much to our species!

I was a tad disappointed with Ferrari's qualifying performance and somehow they don't seem to have the pace of the Red Bulls. Having said that I think Vettel is clearly on the top of his game and I'd be happy to see him crowned as World Champion this year although my heart secretly years for Alonso and Ferrari to win. 

Met Shibu, an old friend from Lovedale yesterday and had lunch. Was visiting Indranagar after a long time and the metro works seems to be on in full swing although it has all but destroyed CMH Road.

A Formula 1 race and back to back IPL matches will be the main source of entertainment today and I will have to take the missus shopping and I may just sneak in a few buys for myself :).

My share buying spree continues and I have invested in CUB, Petronet and Punj Llyod. Have a good feeling about all the three stocks. There is a sudden desire to own an apartment in Bangalore and I have a gut feeling that this is perhaps the last best opportunity to buy one before the rates go beyond reach of middle class folks. 

Off to Coimbatore tomorrow morning to offer condolences to my brother-in-law and his family. The summer seems to be getting more severe and I sometimes shudder at the thought of how things are going to be 15 or 20 years down the road. The scarcity of water and electricity is already acute and sometimes I just don't see any signs of hope for this generation and the next. 

Image Courtesy: http://www.vatanappally.com/images/yp_drought2.jpg