Deal with Ex-peers as a new boss!

Here's our take on how to manage ex-peers as a new boss. 

As featured in The Economic Times , February 2013.

Maintaining Work Life Balance.

7:00 a.m: Alarm rings

7:30 a.m: Breakfast with newspaper

8:00 a.m: Leave from home for work

9:00 a.m: Office starts

8:30 p.m: Leave from office 

10:00 p.m: Reach home

10:30 p.m: Dinner with news

11:00 p.m: Slumber

Remind you of your daily routine? Well, it’s time to stop and think! Just take a look at the routine. When do you have your lunch? When do you spend time with your family? Most importantly, when do you spend time with yourself? Remember that work is a part of life and not the whole of it? 

With evolved lifestyles, working professionals are finding it increasingly difficult to find the right mix between work and life. Life is dominantly about making the right decisions at the right time and maintaining balance between the different roles we perform in our day to day lives. The task to separate the personal and the professional becomes exceedingly tough with better positions and promotions. However tough the job might seem, the need to undertake such a task is undeniable.

Question yourself. Are you really enjoying life? One of the main reasons behind taking up any job is the desire to lead a good enjoyable life. But are you actually fulfilling that desire? You earn the bucks but you do not have the time to spend it, to enjoy life with family and friends. Does that really make sense? Your heart will certainly say ‘No’. Just take the initiative. The rest will gradually fall into place.

How to start? Here’s how!

Once too much pressure builds up, learn to unplug. Disconnect yourself from your mobile phones, emails, letters and chats. Give yourself some time to unwind completely. Spend time with yourself. Do things which you like doing. Take this time to relax.

Choose your profession carefully. Take up something which you want or have always wanted to do. Do not do a job only because you have to. If you choose something that interests you, then you can keep fatigue and stress strikes at bay. Doing something you like does not leave you exhausted. On the contrary, you would feel satisfied.

Plan properly. It helps to make proper use of time and best use of money. Organizing things properly will actually help understand requirements. That will help you allocate time and resources to things that are essential and necessary.

Do not get swayed by the 'herd'. Stay away from fierce and unhealthy competition and mindless rat race. Doing what everyone else is doing is the easiest way out. Our lives have both good and bad moments. No one takes decisions for us. We do it ourselves. So take decisions which you think are correct. This goes a long way to keep the balance between work and life.

Opt for flexibility in timings whenever you get the option. Many organizations offer this as an option to make your life more valuable. Always keep in mind that work is only a part of life, not the whole of it. There are other important things in life and there are people who make our lives complete. Do not let work consume you so much that you forget this elementary point. 

Take some time out every day to exercise and do not keep any other work scheduled for that time. If any work crops up at that time, you can always re-schedule it to some other time.

We all have one life. Spend it wisely we say.  

Corporate India is not up to the mark !

Mumbai: At a time when leisure time physical activity — or LTPA, as it is increasingly being called — is emerging as the global mantra for health, urban India seems clued out. A new survey suggests that one of the reasons that Corporate India is sluggish could be the poor levels of physical activity among its white-collar workforce. About 60% of the 17,000 corporate employees who participated in the pan-India survey admitted to exercising three times a week and that, too, for less than 30 minutes at a stretch. The benefit of a brisk walk or the power of 10,000 steps daily in shaping one’s health is clearly not popular as yet here. 

    

In corporate India, the daily step count rarely crosses 3,000. “The average number of steps that urban Indians take would be between 2,500 and 3,000, especially if they don’t take the public transport that entails walking across bridges and platforms,” said Dr Aashish Contractor, a preventive cardiologist at Asian Heart Institute in Bandra Kurla Complex. LTPA is different from a planned exercise regimen. Instead of pumping iron, the World Health Organisation has said people can be healthy by being active — like walking briskly, skipping and swimming— for up to 30 minutes every day. A study in Lancet recently estimated that inactivity caused 6 to 10% of all deaths from major non-communicable diseases such as coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and breast and colon cancers.

WORKOUT JOURNAL 

• Over 60% exercise 3 days a week Over 58% exercise for less than 30 minutes a day 
• Over 77% take less than 10,000 steps a day* 
• Over 43% are sitting for 8 hours or more a day Over 44% rate their sleep as less than restful 94% eat less than 3 pieces of fruit a day 84% eat less than 3 servings of vegetables a day 

*10,000 steps = 6.4 km (approx) 

*17,000 respondents polled across 8 Indian cities 

HEALTH MATTERS Not even 5k steps a day? Sedentary life 

It showed that inactivity caused 5.3% of the 57 million deaths that occurred worldwide in 2008. The idea of underlining the problem was to show that the solution was simple: increase in leisure time physical activity. “Research has shown that leisure time physical activity is beneficial for all,” said Dr Contractor. In fact, the journal of the American College of Sports Medicine has categorized people on the basis of the number of steps they take: people who take less than 5,000 steps a day are sedentary, those who take between 5,000 and 7,500 are low on activity, those taking between 7,500 and 10,000 are somewhat active and the active ones take between 10,000 and 12,000 steps a day. In the 60s, Japanese walking clubs adopted a local pedometer’s nickname for their product —manpo-kei (translated as ten thousand step meter) — as the standard. The Japanese mantra of 10,000 steps a day translates into walking 6.4 km a day. The survey shows as much: 77% of the respondents admitted that they fail to take more than 10,000 steps a day. The reason is not hard to find: around 43% confessed to sitting for eight hours or more a day. Moreover, while doctors say five servings of vegetables and fruits daily can keep heart diseases at bay, the corporate sector is not a follower. Around 94% said they ate less than “3 pieces of fruit” a day and 84% said they ate less than 3 servings of vegetables. 

The Lancet’s special issue on physical activity just ahead of the London Olympics said physical activity is a neglected dimension of prevention and intervention worldwide, especially in low- and middle-income nations. “One problem is that physical activity is often perceived only in the context of controlling obesity.”

Article Credits: Malathy Iyer TNN, Snippets from an article that appeared in the Times of India FP, Mumbai.

New Hats For The Chiefs !

New Hats for the Chiefs

Companies are doing away with time-worn designations and introducing creative concepts in naming key roles. Others are doing away with terms like ‘employees’ and ‘heads’, in an attempt to break down hierarchies and bring in more colour to their jobs 

Job titles that say, ‘agile evangelist’ or ‘chief pusher’ may conjure up images of work involving two extremes — one, a crusader, and the other, connecting to the seamier world of narcotics. But with a bit of lateral thinking, these can also be perfectly operational, senior corporate designations.

Corporate India is tossing out the old, stodgy nomenclature in favour of creative, personalised designations. At Bangalore-based start up Teleradiology Solutions, the CEO is called the ‘chief pusher’, quite simply because he pushes and nudges employees into delivering the goods. The organisation also has a chief listening officer (HR head) and chief enabler (technology head). “It creates an environment where designations do not matter,” says chief dreamer, Sunita Maheshwari.

Instead of being called ‘business development head’,Maheshwari prefers the quirkier title she now has. In most organisations that work on similar lines, executives want their titles to resonate their approach to work instead of seniority. It breaks down hierarchies; Maheshwari, for instance, plans to knock off the ‘chief ’ in her title.

In most cases, though, the choice of designation is reserved for those who have proved themselves. The rest of the employees can stick to well-worn labels. The core content of the ‘glamorised’ role does not change.

The Label Says it All 

Chief Listening Officer

THE WAILING wall for all employees. Looks after policies, compensation and career growth. Also known as the human resource head

Chief Pusher

OTHERWISE CALLED the chief executive officer. Now wears the ‘nudging’ badge high

Chief Dreamer

IDEATES TO get more clients and business. In the traditional hierarchy, is called business development head

People Success

A HUMAN resource officer who involves himself or herself closely in career development, and is a success enabler of employees and the organisation

Chief Ethics Officer

KEEPS A check on fraudulent behaviour, and a close watch on every business unit

Agile Evangelist

THE ROLE involves promoting the adoption of Agile software across businesses

Story by Devina Sengupta @ Times : Snippets from ET, 13 April 2012, Page 6. 

Witty @ Work Contest !

With the last working day of this financial year just hours away, what better way than to end the year with a ' Witty @ Work' contest .  Before you think of what we are going to ask you to do, remember, winners take home some awesome goodies as prizes. Here's what you need to do ... 

Log in to our pages on Facebook or Pinterest and share your wittiest comments about life at work below the post keeping these for images in mind (we have numbered them for you ...duh!). Is that all ? Well no... that's one part... lets just make it easy...Step 1. Like us on Facebook or Pinterest Step 2. Post your comment/s keeping these pictures in mind. Step 3. Get your friends to like it. Needless to say, more likes means more points. Deadline ? Midnight of 05 April 2012 

Log on to our pages on Facebook or Pinterest to submit your entries.

Rules (cause we need  a few) @ Post your comments below the picture on the fan pages @ Judges decision will be final. We take care to ensure that only the coolest entries win. @ Prizes will be sent within a week after the contest ends. Please direct all queries and questions to info@willnevergrowup.com I "Never Grow Up" and the "Never Grow Up Brown box" logo are registered trademarks of Never Grow Up Workshops Pvt. Ltd. The design used in the contest creatives have been procured for Never Grow Up WPL. All rights reserved.© 2012. I

Our Story on YourStory

We have waited long for this day to come and it's finally here !  Our Story and journey has been featured on YourStory.in , one of the most comprehensive online platforms for entrepreneurs.  Check out the coverage :)

Do Happier People Work Harder ?

Do Happier People Work Harder?

Research shows that staff perform better when they’re happily engaged at work

Americans (And if we extrapolate this to our country) now feel worse about their jobs – and work environments – than ever before. And there’s no reason to think things will soon improve, according to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which has been polling more than 1,000 adults every day since January 2008. Employee engagement may seem like a frill in a downturn economy. But it can make a big difference in a company’s survival. 

In a 2010 study, James K. Harter and colleagues found that lower job satisfaction foreshadowed poorer bottom-line performance. Gallup estimates the cost of America’s disengagement crisis at a staggering $300 billion in lost productivity annually. When people don’t care about their jobs or their employers, they don’t show up consistently, they produce less or their work quality suffers. 

Over the past decade, the research looked into the micro-level causes behind this macro-level problem. To gain real-time perspective into everyday work lives, nearly 12,000 electronic diary entries from 238 professionals in seven companies were collected. The analysis revealed their inner work lives – the usually hidden perceptions, emotions and motivations that people experience as they react to and make sense of events in their workdays. 

The results were sobering. In one-third of the 12,000 diary entries, the diarist was unhappy, unmotivated or both. In fact, workers often expressed frustration, disdain or disgust. Research shows that inner work life has a profound impact on workers’ creativity, productivity, commitment and collegiality. Employees are far more likely to have new ideas on days when they feel happier. Conventional wisdom suggests that pressure enhances performance; the real-time data, however, shows that workers perform better when they are happily engaged in what they do. 

Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, and Steven Kramer, an independent researcher, are the authors of The Progress Principle:  The New York Times / ET Mumbai , 13 Sept. 2011

Preoccupations : Trust Evidence !

Preoccupations : Trust Evidence for Effective Management

Failure to consider sound evidence repeatedly inflicts unnecessary damage on employee well-being & group performance

Consider this hypothetical situation: You have a serious illness. Your doctor prescribes an intrusive, painful and costly treatment. What she doesn’t say — because she hasn't consulted the research — is that most studies find the treatment ineffective and fraught with negative side effects. You go through the procedure, which doesn’t work. You later find the research your doctor failed to consult. When you ask why, she answers: “Who pays attention to studies? I have years of clinical experience. Besides, the protocol seemed as if it ought to work.” Does that sound like malpractice? It does to us. Fortunately, pressures to practice evidence-based medicine are reducing preventable errors. That isn’t the case, however, in most workplaces, where failure to consider sound evidence repeatedly inflicts unnecessary damage on employee well- being and group performance. It doesn’t have to be that way. Consider the issue of incentive pay. Many people believe that paying for performance will work in virtually any organization, so it is used again and again to solve problems — even where evidence shows it is ineffective. As The New York Times reported in July, a study found that the effort to link incentive pay to student performance “had no positive effect on either student performance or teachers’ attitudes.” But that bad news could have been predicted long before spending all that time and money. After all, the failure of similar efforts to improve school performance has been documented for decades. 

Here is another example: Research has shown that stable membership is a hallmark of effective work teams. People with more experience, working together, typically communicate and coordinate more effectively. Although this effect is seen in studies of everything from product development teams to airplane cockpit crews, managers often can’t resist the temptation to rotate people in and out to minimize costs and make scheduling easier. 

Another workplace danger is excessive self-confidence, which can help people rise to positions of power but can also render them less effective leaders. Overconfident decision-makers use a practice that is ineffective for most others — but they believe they are so talented that the usual findings don’t apply to them. In medicine, the evidence-based movement arose in response to thousands of deaths and billions of wasted dollars that could have been averted by applying proven practices. Similarly, in other fields, the growing pile of studies on the human and financial costs of employee disengagement, management distrust, poor group dynamics, faulty incentive schemes and other preventable damage suggests a need for an evidence-based management movement. Some organizations are leading the way. It’s time for many more to follow suit. 

Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton are professors at Stanford : The New York Times / Condensed from the ET Mumbai 13 Sept.

Pay Not the First Priority Anymore?

Would you nix a high-paying job offer if it fails to assure career growth opportunities? According to a recent survey, the modern-day job-seeker is doing just that...

India Inc today is a fragment of an ever-changing corporate scenario and as its dynamics evolve, employees and job-seekers find their aspirations and incentives shifting. Mercer’s ‘What’s Working’ survey validates that out of 13 possible reward elements, Indian respondents say that career advancement is their most important reward element. Base pay is the second-most important followed by training opportunities. “Reward points in today’s scenario get far more complicated than the good old days, where you would have a son coming home to his parents with a box of sweets, proclaiming his salary hike, followed by the entire family breaking into a song and dance of how their lives have changed for good. Today’s youth demands are more focussed, planned and diverse. A macro point of view for reward schemes seems quite simple and can be generalised, but as you look closer, rewards need to be personalised and customised to suit needs and desires.”

So, what is it that makes career advancement the most sought-after reward element? 

“In a hyper-growth environment, ‘growth’ is the mantra for business success. For an employee, their organisation or manager working with them on a career development plan is imperative to their personal and professional growth. From an organisation’s perspective, career advancement is important for retention as also for attracting talented employees to the workplace. It increases employee engagement levels as well.” 

    

“Career advancement is one way in which employees believe that they can stay relevant. It ensures that employees can keep up with the changes. The age at which one becomes obsolete and redundant is decreasing. Hence, rather than chasing basic pay, employees understand the need to be relevant and have a ‘career’.” After career advancement and base pay, the third most sought-after career incentive was training opportunities, thus revealing that India Inc employees don’t just aspire to accomplish a good career, but also want to get better at what they do. 

Consequently, whether the bait for climbing up the corporate ladder is training opportunities, career advancement incentives or basic pay, one cannot refute the fact that India Inc today is more motivated than ever to be on top of their game. 

Condensed from the Times Ascent 07 September 2011