A Management Talk...

"I cannot do this job. These guys, you know, never obeys what I say. And at the end of shift, our boss call me and fire like anything for not getting production as per target. I feel like running away from here." K was disparate. (No, he is not Joseph K and I am not a Kafka wannabe. His name starts with K and as I respect his privacy, I am reluctant to reveal the full name. Which is again absurd because any of my company employee reading this Blog will id him and others, I am sure won't care a hoot).

This guy used to work under me and as his performance was quite good, he was promoted to another department, handled by my boss, as a foreman when there was a vacancy. He was finding it difficult to cope with additional responsibilities and was ready to come back to the former position. But our boss was not agreeing.

The time was evening, and our cab was about to move out. If I am going to miss it, I will have to hitch a ride with any of the big shots in their comfortable air conditioned cars, which sounds a pretty good proposition, but is not the case, as my previous experiences had taught me. Lending ear to more office talk or gossip, as these talks eventually turn into, is harrowing. But as is my inherent style, I decided to hand him some pearls of wisdom quickly so that I won't miss my cab. (The best things about giving advise according to me, is that it does not cost you anything and can generate enormous goodwill. So I never misses a chance.)

I will not check your patience by giving all the personal things that we discussed. In short, I gave him some tips on dealing with workers and our boss from my experience, as my relation with both parties had been quite stable till now. I concluded by telling him a story that I read in an article sometime back, which I feel may be of interest to my readers.

Once a manager approached his mentor who is in the top management of another firm. He was totally let down by his team and was blamed on a daily basis by top management for the failures. He was frustrated of dealing with his subordinates, who hated him, and with his superiors who simply blamed him for any and every trivial matters.

His mentor asked him, "How much salary you draw every month?"

"Rs 60000."

"Ok. Just think that for the actual work that you do in office, you are paid Rs 20000. Rest of the payment is for getting hated and blamed. You don't have any physical work like an operator or your juniors. Your actual job is getting hated and blamed. Now if you have this attitude and you work for reducing the hate and blame targeted at you, you will be in profit. Always remember, for the actual work that you do, you get only 40% of your salary. 60% of salary is for getting blamed and hated by others and for absorbing the pressure."