The awkward time when results are made public, peers, reports come up with uncomfortable questions about the pending promotion and you risk being ridiculed, push to identify quick reasons and circulate. We have this ability to put the blame quickly and swiftly on any available easy situation and we do so to avoid embarrassment.

Apart from external reasons (which can be perfectly valid), there can be internal reasons. For example, being in team lead role and expecting to be project manager in 2 years just by adding years to experience is far-fetched. Was there a time based plan in place and worked upon to stake claim for new role.

Most of us start taking easy once we are settled in current role. The professional life gets into a set rhythm with almost same set of customer and same set of people to deal with. The time flies. This is where ‘Milk the Cow’ syndrome sets in. We don’t make effort to improve productivity, as everything in current situation is yielding required results. There is no noticeable increase in learning or skills as challenges have been constantly avoided and priority always was ‘status quo’.

Eventually, we not ready to take up the rigors of the new role. Companies have good eye for people who are ready. People who take up responsibilities which are beyond their current role and consistently successful in completing them makes it lot easier for management to make decisions.

For people who just have moved into new role or have joined new organization – start planning for the next role. Get details about the demands of that role. Constantly put yourself in challenging situations. Continuously work towards improving the productivity.

One of my mentors always had 100 days plan for new role or for start of a new year. This would contain the targets that he wished to achieve. This kind of plan with targets is real handy and is recommended for everyone. You may not be able to achieve every task in it however it provides the benchmarking and keeps you focused.

Cut to professional environment. We come across many team members and may be one of them who behave like Umesh Yadav. Being stubborn, relying too much on instincts and out of control. Umesh Yadav being fast bowler, seeing the hard, bouncy and green wickets behaved like super happy child who had got 10 ice-creams at once. His raw instincts took over and he just bowled short and fast, sacrificing line n length and hence effectiveness as bowler.

First casualty of being stubborn is that person seizes to be good listener. A particular situation demands to work together in certain way; however stubborn person try to chart his own path, derailing project and team targets. For example, a project requires heavy database interaction; a database expert is aligned in team. Perfect opportunity to showcase skills for database person – instead he/she gets carried away and make the things way too complex than required for the project. The team working on other part has to do extra coding, quality of code goes down. Overall discontentment in team and project suffers.

Few people are inherently bad listener, and few become bad listener due to situations. People moving up the corporate ladder become more prone to this disease as experience starts weighing higher and movement starts towards ‘I know it all’ syndrome.

The implications of this stubbornness and ‘know it all’ approach are not good for one’s career. For people are at start of their career it put brake on performance and shun your growth. Their performance drops and are unable to perform task correctly which they are good at. For example, if Umesh Yadav does not learn quickly in Australia, his international career is going to get short-circuited quickly.

For people in senior roles having plagued with this disease, the Midas touch deserts them, and generating results with same approach and thoughts become difficult. As it has happened in cricket quite often, every player gets ‘sorted out’. The players like Sachin and Rahul Dravid have extended their careers over two decades – because they kept innovating. They listened to situations and worked on their weakness, removed them and came out stronger and better player.

Organizations do try to have processes and tools installed which calculate productivity and try to control the people in hope to get desired results. This approach works for some and counterproductive for others. Expecting that team members would deliver results in way similar to machines does, is impractical expectation. (Many would disagree with this).

Humans by nature are deviant and can come up with unexpected level (either side) of performance depending upon the state of mind. On particular day the performance swings can be due to issues on home front with partner, kids. Investment in stock market vanishing. Or it can be issues with peer within team unrelated to work. These are few of numerous issues that can play on team member’s mind during his stay at office and can lead to performance dip. On the other side of spectrum, good news, happy event in team member’s life can trigger performance upswing. To quantify, if eight hours’ worth of work is done in a day, is almost impossible.

One very important spoke in wheel is team manager. There are two scenarios: in first one, manager believes that his responsibility is to track the tasks, assign work, get update and prepare weekly reports. Any performance dip is followed by questioning team members (why is ..), even going to extent of complaining the management about the unproductive team and even putting few people in team on the block.

In second approach, manager takes more responsibility. Apart from points mentioned above, person is deeply involved with team. He has equation going on with each team member. He is aware of strengths and weakness of team members, and is aware of minute changes happening around in his team. This is hard work and does require lot of thinking about others than about oneself.

Empathy is the virtue which makes the task of manager easier. Being available for team members, does help productivity. Being people manager does not mean that you succumb to any demand made by team members. It is about following the right path and showing team the reason as to why the path chosen is correct one. It is also about snubbing the sulking team member when required and bring him out of haze and show that work needs to be done.

Once team starts feeling connected – productivity sure moves north.

Individual contributors as well as people in leadership role are equally infected by blame game virus. In fact the level of person in the hierarchy has no impact on the nature of person when it comes to take ownership. Looking at higher level does not warrant that you would find people who implicitly take ownership. Actually this is one of the traits (of taking ownership or conversely blaming on others) which form at very early stage of our development, and our upbringing, schooling and parenting plays very important role.

In workplace scenarios – the impact can be in meetings where status is being discussed. For example, People tend to put across the blame of not being able to complete the assigned task on peer – invoking dependencies, on servers not working to extent AC not functional, using any kind of excuse to escape responsibility. Manager role becomes quite important. In case this is not dealt with sternly – it immediately prompts other team members to follow same process. Productivity is casualty and in no time manger loses control on situation and team, entering downward spiral.

Blaming peer (for no fault of his/her) has further negative impact. It starts a tit for tat game. Loose talks become norms during coffee break. Manager has lot to lose as well. People expect leader to take ownership and set things straight. He is expected to come out as neutral and just, however if manager is unable to act – he is bound to get embroiled in negative talks and not able to generate desired results.

Blame game pushes the real issues on lower priority. Energies are focused on either blaming others or fending of the blame (if at receiving end). This leads to loss of precious time which could have been used to fix the issue. Conventionally the issues have snow ball into major crisis when not addressed, bringing in much more trouble than it would have taken fix issue in first place.

Learning is scuttled, leaving scope of repeating of same mistakes.

Team environment is not conducive for productivity and at best team performance comes out as average.

The much hyped process which is documented by management gurus – is mentioned as first line of requirement in job posting – Having ‘Objective’ thought process. Objective thinking is not an easy process to attain. This is required to let go lots of our assumptions of the situation, and as mentioned by cricket commenters – ‘Treat each ball on its merit while playing it, as it requires only one ball to bring the downfall of the batsman’.

There are numerous benefits of being objective. It frees you from legacy and prejudice. For example, as a person you have failed in certain task – the approach to the similar task can evoke either of two responses.

1. Having failed once – you believe that you would fail again, and hence the effort is halfhearted and eventually fail. This attempt adds to the previous experience and further attempts are further lame. For person caught in this vicious cycle, breaking the mold become tougher with each attempt.

2. The other approach requires taking the next attempt as a fresh beginning. Mind conditions itself that the probability of success is at same level or may be higher from pervious failed attempt. Higher- because there has to be learning from pervious failed attempts. Chances of success are high. Objectivity in approach helps is tide over failure faster.

With objectivity explained in nutshell – let’s rush back to discuss process of decision making. For example one of your team members has shown weakness in writing database queries. Now if as manager we assume that person is no good in database and each effort at latter stage by that person is viewed with indifference – this is prejudiced approach and this approach is based upon logic that nothing can be improved upon. It is similar to “Once an average performer – always average performer” – which is essentially wrong.

Being objective allows scope of improvement and each event is viewed in isolation. It frees our mind from lots of clutter and unnecessary information. It allows us with options which we thought never existed.it allows change to take place. It allows person and group to achieve next level and maturity – leading to overall improvement in productivity.

It does not mean that below par performance has to be ignored in name of objectivity. It’s just that performance evaluation needs to be done in right forum and not to review every action and behavior of the person in question.

Previous article on favoritism details out negative impact of it on team fabric, productivity. So what does manager do to manage the team perception? Moreover chance of losing the exceptional team member due to inaction to meet his/her aspiration is very real. This is tricky situation and can push manager into shell and inaction, which can further loosen grip on situation. (For managers who are already neck deep in favoritism, kind mentioned in previous article, this does not apply).

For managers who believe in taking ownership and want to build teams which are known for delivering toughest of projects should nurture exceptional talent whenever they find it and ensure that talent sticks for as long as possible with you. There is definitely no embarrassment or guilt involved in giving due credits. However in doing so, take care of points mentioned below and should be good:

1. While acknowledging and appreciating. Don’t over-do it. It has to be very objective in nature, with focus on tasks or module or technical skills which brought laurels. Don’t make it person driven. For e.g. “X has handled the customer escalation well and ensure that it didn’t get out of control. Good Job” is far better that “As usual X has managed customer escalation well. X you are good and asset”. The second statement is prejudicial. This has far negative impact on the other members of the team by demotivating them as they think that only X is hero.

2. I am sure all managers agree – having all-star team is never works out. You need balanced team with each team member’s strength complementing each other. As much you need smart worker, you need people who do bulk task and ensure task / project completes as required. Do acknowledge them and their contribution. One thing is uniform in team –all of them need to be optimally motivated. Your acknowledgement would ensure that team feels motivated and respected.

3. Is the super star of team using the appreciation and closeness to you in bossing around with his peers? This is damaging and detrimental for the team. Requires correction and if it does not bring in change in behavior, ask the person to move on. Losing a super star is far better than losing the faith of entire team. It is courageous call, but needs to be taken.

4. Your language, timing and nature of appreciation by words and by your actions should be objective giving due credit to all involved people. Should motivate others to perform to next level and most importantly – it should invoke respect for you as a manager.

5. Regular evaluation. Once a super star is not always a super star. Is he performing to his expected level of super star over a period of time or is it only one time spike of performance. Ensure that all the mistakes and below par performance is handled the same way as it done for other team members.

The idea is that you should come across as fair person who breeds favorites based on performance and motivates average performer to believe that he can too be super star in your team. This raises overall level of performance in your team. Have ‘favoritism’ for performance.

This series was debut series for R. Ashwin (read Fresher) and what wonderful debut he had. His performance has been so good that he won 2 Man of the Match awards and with it Man of the Series. This is perfect start for him and he has cemented his place in team (although BCCI is known for shooting in it feet). In Indian context probably Azhar left the same feeling with his debut with 3 consecutive centuries.

From MSD (read Manager) context this is so good situation to be in before start of Australia tour (read New Engagement) that I am sure he would be much more happier than Ashwin himself, because as a Manager of Men he leads, to have such unexpected surprise performance makes its really easy to handle the upcoming challenging tasks.

Let us dig little deep. What was expected from Ashwin before the start of series? That, he would be second spinner (who being new to Test cricket), would try to bowl in right areas and get few wickets. He would be made to feel part of the team by seasoned campaigners who would encourage him to soak the initial days in the International Cricket.

What does he do – he beats everyone’s expectation in team and come out with brilliant performance one after the other and become darling of the team and cricket fans.

When fresher joins the organization – they are in similar position as that of Ashwin. Expectations are quite moderate. There are people to guide them, in fact you are at level when you are told what to do. You are not part of meeting where decisions are made and in most cases you are isolated or kept isolated from pressures. The expectation is that you keep yourself within the defined boundaries and keep daily chores.

As all debutant cricketers, all Fresher are aware of the expectation that team and manager have and have to fulfill those. It is at max meeting expectations. Since your performance is based on the expectations of others the results are moderate as well. The climb is slow and though you may have ‘potential’ – you are average performer. This becomes source of frustration as you are not living up to your potential and rewards are not there – just cause you were performing at level which is set by someone else expectation.

Now the Ashwin’s case. He believed in himself. He assured himself that though he may be fresher in a team of seasoned cricketer, however he has the belief so strong that it propels him to performance that we witnessed over last one month. He acted mature beyond his age and didn’t show any sign of nervousness or tried to shy away from responsibility in lieu of his being debutant. He took ownership of situation and managed it. He lead from the front and took the game away from visitors. Might be too early to say, he might be a good successor to Dhoni when time comes.

This kind of team members are any manager’s delight. They not only set their career path on fast track, they also set their manager path on fast track. People who take ownership, fight the situation till the end and always mature beyond the expected level. Contribution to team cause is implicit.

Now for all those people who are having few years of experience and performance mediocre – there is no one stopping to make a fresh start – and be a ‘Fresher’ again. Realize your expectations (read Potential) rather than your manager’s. It’s never late to start.

It is tough time for such people and pressure is tremendous, more as the decision for joining the engineering course 4 years earlier was their own. Parents do stand by for them but the pressure is palpable. However, one should not succumb to the peer pressure, tension and make decisions in hurry and follow the peer group to some option without proper evaluation.

M.Tech is one attractive option for people who have passion for technical side of life. This is not a popular option (even though the competition for available seat is high) amongst the pass outs as the lure of fields like Information Technology is quite high, with target set on getting a job and start making money [that is if you get one].

This is one option which ensures that technical juices keep flowing for you and keep options available in the field of choice after completion of course. There are several other benefits like getting to know the technology in much detail.

Do make efforts to get into college known for its facilities and faculty. Do visit the prospective colleges and check out the classrooms and labs.

Ensure that you are very much aware of what you are getting into and do not join the course because you wanted to buy time. Join because you have flair for technology.

The intent: The intent with which one approach this option, decides lots on the outcome. You need to think on following points:

1. If you chose to pursue MBA, the vision and foresight you had at the time of joining the engineering course – it’s flushed through the drains and no longer valid. This is very painful for those who have invested enough in the dream before opting for engineering, however for those who followed standard template of engineering/doctor after 12^th or have tailed friends to engineering – this is not much of a pain.

2. People who had already made decision of pursuing the MBA – in all probability would have appeared for MBA exams in Nov/Dec 2010 and already joined the MBA College of their choice. The point is – appearing for exams in year 2011, for which sessions starts in 2012, you already have lost one year. It’s not a bad deal, just that you have to condition yourself for this thought and have to be relevant answer ready for this Gap in interviews to come in your career.

3. As an escape option – this can be really tough. People joining MBA course to appear occupied are bound to find it tough during the course. Though in many cases, people do discover their hidden talent and may excel in course. However for most of them it is just delaying the inevitable. Word of Advice – work hard and ensure that you are part of group which gets selected through campus placement.

Considering that MBA is expensive course, you need to have very clear vision of what is expected and what can be probable results of doing an MBA. I am sure the maturity levels would be quite raised after engineering as compared to time after 12^th.

As for MCA graduates, this is not a popular option as they already have Master’s degree and doing a double Master’s is still not prevalent in India as of now. However there are people who feel passionate about taking up MBA and have been successful as well. As the saying goes – No education is futile.

There are various reasons for people joining en-mass:

1. Peer pressure. Friends and peers who already in job do come with tales about their work and new company. Belittling is rampant and with all connected these days through social media – the pressure is on the person for find something.

2. Enrolling for course buys out time – which stops nagging from parents, relatives. People get to have extended college life – and most end up having good fun, enjoying with friends with the objective of studies taking backseat.

3. Group movement – people following sheep mentality, follow one person who would have done some study about the course and almost his entire group is part of the batch.

The expectations of students and their parents from these courses are sky high – which is unfortunately not in line with what can be achieved. At the end of the course – there is lots of disappointment. All the skills that were guaranteed are not there – just that, you come out as having mediocre knowledge of the subject and not industry ready. The claims about job placement and 100% guarantee vanish in thin air as all were ‘conditions apply’.

Fact remains, any course by just doing it would not get you job. You need to follow certain things very strictly, and are listed below:

1. Join the course – in which you really have interest, aptitude and passion. For example joining a database course is futile in case you are not good with numbers. It would be in best interest if you can get services of career counselor and get the careers options identified in preferential order. You may be having potential to be good and successful painter, but then may lose the option in peer pressure and following your friend to Java course.

2. Course alone could do nothing. It is not substitute for hard work. Once you join a course, work very hard to get the jest of it and excel. Having right attitude towards the task at hand matters. Having fun and good time at expense of studies – does not yield results, as it never does while doing engineering or MCA courses. Work Hard.

3. Read as much as you can about the companies involved around the world in the technology. Being isolated does not help.

4. Sharpen your skills – day in, day out. Work on your communication skills, dressing skills. Work towards to being professional.