It appears that you got me wrong. I did not find fault with either getting things done through contract labour or temporary staff as per the needs of the organization or using technology in doing work. What I said is even to get things done through others, one should have sound knowledge of job and the processes which one can acquire only by working hard himself to ensure that the job done by others conforms to desired quality standards, failing which he runs the risk of accepting all that is done by others, however shoddy it is. For example a tailor should know the tailoring job well to ensure that his stitching assistants and buttoning assistants do their job qualitatively, failing which he may face the jibe of his customers. Similarly, a captain of the team in any team based sport shall know the game as much as any member of the team to direct their efforts to win the game and he acquires the knowledge of the game by sweating it on the field for months but not by observing someone playing. This is true of any function or business, raised dons the foundations of team work. There is no denying the fact one should keep himself as well as others happy and help others in an atmosphere of team spirit, which you probably must be doing and it is essential too.
You said that you believe in doing right things. Even here it involves hard work. I cannot resist appreciating the learned member Mr.Dinesh Divekar who so tellingly brought out the distinction between hard work and smart work in his crisp one liners in his post. Thus applying this principle ‘doing’ a right thing is hard work but using discretion and intelligence to identify what is right thing to do is smart work. Many professionals may end up making wrong decisions by not using their faculties smartly. Thus when you said that you do right things, you must be also working hard in doing it without being consciously aware of it and in selecting right things to do, you must also be working smart without being consciously aware of it but probably wrongly crediting the rewards and recognition which you got to the praise and flattery which you lavish on your bosses while they must be actually rewarding you for all the good things you do and for helping others but not fall for the flattery, though everyone wants to hear good things about himself. There may be some HODs who grant these rewards and recognition for flattery and praise as you said but they only can damage the organization in the long run as they cause the talent to leave the organization as you rightly observed. Such success, acquired by any one has only short life as he may wilt under circumstances that challenge his competencies.
What I want impress up on is that smart work means that one needs to work hard intelligently and that hard work cannot be dispensed with altogether in any activity of human life. I therefore regret to share the view that smart work is devising means to find spare time for buttering bosses to gain rewards and recognition.
In the harsh world of market driven and intensely competitive business which survives so long as it’s cash boxes are ringing and which cannot ring without someone sweating out there, the terms right perspective, quality of performance, time lines and customer service will not be rhetoric or only verbose but exist for real and no business can ignore them and if it ignores, it does so at it’s own peril since it cannot ask it’s employees to work by merely giving them cheques with their salaries written on them but which bounce for lack of funds. Cash, money and profits are not rhetoric but real in business and since they cannot grow on trees, they need to be generated by solid performance at ground level.
B.Saikumar
HR & labour law Advisor
navi Mumbai