Wednesday, February 6, 2013

ASSIGNment mindset - a problem?

I am writing this post just after I came out of a lecture on "Corporate Organizations and Leadership", after I heard the experiences of a Finnish manager in managing an Indian team, after I heard him say "Manager presence and interruptions are surprisingly increasing productivity in India!" This is not a NEWS to me, as I personally kinda think the same. This post is my own reflections on how I was brought up, grew and how the environment around me was!
 Briefly about the experience Finnish manager shared was that,
  •  My expectations of self leading team did not happen and most team members were expecting me to "Assign" tasks to them
  •  My personal presence and inquiry about progress of the tasks increased productivity (or fast response from employee)
What does this mean? Employees are not voluntary in coming up with tasks and not self-motivated by themselves! When this thought trickled in my mind, the first question I asked was, "Does it apply to me?" and the answer was "Yes, till few years back".
  • Yes, I was looking up for some tasks to be assigned to me and I am best in completing them on  time, successfully!
  • Yes, occasionally I do rise up and propose some new tasks! (Ah, wondered how many times, despite high pressure in completing the assigned tasks.)
So once I accept my state then, I was interested to identify why I felt it that way. Perhaps it could be because,
  •  At universities, we were often given lab exercises, short assignments, and jobs to accomplish! I had not done a single learning diary exercises to reflect on what I learned from the course.
  • At schools, it’s even more competitive as the marks decided the path we will be taking in our future. So most of the time was spent just to attend classes, tuitions (if any) and study, study, study.. Hmm, any learning? Yes, perhaps I should not shun away all those precious learning’s of mine from my school days. But was there any learning of how to mould ourselves? How to identify our strengths, weakness? How to survive difficult situations? Unfortunately NO. Not only was there any curriculum or activity for developing such skills, but also there was no conducive environment to develop them. It was all about to get good marks and percentage! 
  • At kindergarten, it was still listening to teachers who teach ABCs and sing rhymes together. When I hear from parents these days about kindergarten interviews to kids, I feel how blessed I was those days. Nevertheless I really feel pity about those kids and schools.
  •  At home, we the parents "teach" kids in a traditional and boring way to repeat alphabets, numbers and prepare them for their prospective future!
So what's going wrong in all these? Isn't there lack of giving space for self-understanding, being curious, being responsible not only to gain something, but for the sake of it! From the day being a child, student, adult and in a family, we are ASKED or ASSIGNED to do something. Our actions alter when there are some personal interests behind it. I have a vivid anecdote from my experience.

My beloved granny Paruvatham patti used to assign me some tasks and I remember how I performed it on her presence and absence. She used to utter, "Parthal oru karyam, parkalena oru karyam pannakoodathu" means, "There should not be two forms of doing an activity like while watching and not watching. The work should be done the best always, for the sake of it."

As it is with all teenagers, I looked at it as a cynical advice. But now, I realize how important it is to get that attitude. Especially when they are expected from employees! Ah, yes unless you get that attitude from childhood, it’s not easy to build it.

Another interesting anecdote from my granny again is about self-lead team. When she was at work and I escape from being ASSIGNED any tasks, she used to say "Kannu parkanum, Kai seiyanum" means "Watch out and do it". She placed emphasis on how to take part in a group activity say cleaning the house, by contributing of what you can do for that without being told. As simple as that. Yet again, being a teenager I shunned away those words as boring advices.

While I reflect these thoughts from my childhood, I could clearly understand that the way we are brought could be a mix of right and wrong things. But what is important is to provide space and environment for SELF-LEARNING AND SELF-MOTIVATION. As a crux I could sum up as,

TEACHing -> easy learning, productive but lacks cultivating motivation or understanding self.
LEARN by self -> takes time, productivity could be seen later (like bamboo tree growth), inculcates self-confidence and self-understanding, natural learning of leadership qualities and management skills.


So it all starts from HOME, which mould us as how we are and our attitude. Having said that, I should not do the same things even after knowing the shortcomings. Me being a mother of a small son, how do I provide a conducive environment for my son to be more curious, more creative, learn by self and self-motivating – most importantly all of them should seen as FUN by my son.
This is the experiment I am doing these days through my Kids play activities!
Okie, enough of my talking, would love to hear from you, your thoughts about this post and your ideas as well!

 




2 comments:

  1. Hi Vidhya,

    Nice to read a post on this topic. This is has been one of the most debated topic in our home. Yes we debate for fun :) I strongly feel Indian education prepares you to handle any kind of stressful situation that might occur at work but it clearly lacks in developing proactive individuals. Somewhere during all those hours of cramming for exams and tuitions, we forget the importance of being proactive and developing an original opinion about things around us. Curiosity is the first casualty usually.

    I have had the same experiences too ofcourse. My paati or amma have tried to teach me from their experience, ofcourse being young somehow co-relates to being foolish and I have mostly ignored all that was said to me. Now I find it amusing that I pretty much follow the same rules that have been taught to me by both of them. Same at my work place back in India. I was given a task and I was expected to finish it and that's all that mattered. Hence I completely agree with the view point shared by the Finnish manager's experiences.

    But adults can learn too. Thats been my learning. Being in a different country, being exposed to many cultures, working in a multi-cultural environment really helps in picking up good traits such as being proactive, cultivating opinions, questioning, being curious and of-course tolerance in all forms. I am yet to read your Kids play activities page but it sounds like a great way to engage Barathraam much more into his learning process and even make it fun :)

    I am looking forward to learning more from you.

    Anusha

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  2. Hi Anusha,

    Thanks for taking time to comment on my outburst.
    Yes, as you mentioned though we eschewed our grandma advices, somehow they got inculcated and we are now behaving the ways they want us to be.
    And I second your words on learning from being in a different country. Atleast, I wish exchange studies happen across different states inside India soon. Thats a good way to learn from others, isn't it?

    I hope my Kids play activities posts would be useful to you in the coming days! :-)

    And, finally its learning from each other! So I owe a lot to others during my learning process and thats why I thought of sharing my learnings through this blog.

    Regards,
    Vidhya

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