I claim to be a good cook. I indulge in this passion occasionally. But when I do, I will also invite few friends so that I can show-off my culinary skills. I select some exquisite dishes from the collection of cookery books that my wife maintains. I will then ask my wife to get all the ingredients and get the maid to do all the cleaning, cutting and chopping. Then later in the afternoon after a nice nap, I will land up in the kitchen to commence my artistic composition of various ingredients to an exquisite rhapsody! At every point I will have my wife and the maid extending various implements to assist my operation like the nursing staff in an operation theatre. After the various concoctions find their way to the microwave, baking oven, refrigerator (as the case may be) I will leave it to the minions to take them at prescribed time period and present them for the consumption of the invited guests. Of course it is the job of the maid to remove all dishes and clean-up. I will almost fill the conversation during the dinner with the art that goes behind each of the dishes. What an excitement for me!
On the other hand I remember my Mom’s cooking. We had no gas supply and no gadgets like microwave, cooking range etc. Five of us were in colleges/ schools. One in medical college, two in Engineering Colleges, another one in regular college and the other in school. From breakfast, to packed lunch to evening snacks and the sumptuous dinner; all fresh from the kitchen, day in and day out, in addition to the teaching the kids, mending cows , and other chores of household.
My cooking is an occasional event, an aberration; primarily for my excitement and glory and not to help anybody’s hunger. Whereas my Mom’s cooking was meant to ensure that none of us went hungry. No ceremony. Just rigorous execution, just-in-time management of inventory, tight planning of cash flows, total customer satisfaction with outstanding social networks.
Unfortunately, it is the heroism that often gets recognised and not persistence and perseverance.
I remember the story narrated by an IAS officer about his tenure as the district collector of an inflammable district which often flared up at times of religious festivities. He used to take enormous efforts to get the occasion go without any incidence. There was a neighbouring district manned by his colleague, which also had similar explosive settings. The major difference used to be that at least once in a year there used to be a conflagration that hit the headlines which the collector had to manage with great difficulty. The credit naturally went to the second officer and very few could see the difference made by first one.
This happens in many private sector organisations too. The guy who solves a problem (which is often created by the same fellow) gets all the credit; but the guy who worked hard to prevent problems day- in and day-out and worked to bring about continuous improvements is seldom noticed. The credits and the bonus to the former, naturally encouraging high-profile project launches and other short-term strategies. We saw the impact of this short-termism in the meltdown of global financial markets.
What we need for sustained progress more is the discipline of my mother’s cooking (for that matter most mothers) than my heroism in cooking. As the proverb goes “success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration”.
Abey John
There is a flip side to this.
Attention = money. If you are able to draw attention to yourself you will make money (fame, recognition, etc). Which is the principle the 2nd guy used opportunistically. The first guy’s failure is his unwillingness to counter that and draw attention to his acheivements albiet without the chest beating. Probably (arm chair wisdom is always wisest) he could have quietly come out with a white paper that show cases the fire record in the regions and point out how his management style is better and make recommendations for his colleagues to follow. That will forever eliminate any hero praise for reactive responses due to a failure in proactive planning. That we expect our actions to be recognized passively is a massive deficit among the “good guys” and stems from one of our basic needs: to be appreciated. We live in a noisy world. Everyone is grabbing for our attention – from Coke to our own ambition. Cutting a swathe through that requires more than the bread knife of good intent.
Attention = money sure. But knowing whats important is the critical differentiator and keeps us grounded in reality. True heroes are always in the trenches. The only thing that rankles is the lack of appreciation. The proactive manager is the real hero. What we need is a method to highlight the real heroes and cut out the bull shit artists.
Abhimanyu
After carefully reading Sanjay’s post, I am a little unclear about the part where the new CC associate who picked up the information that Delhi MRP was higher than the Bombay one. But before that I want to make it clear that there wouldn’t have been any discrepancy in the display price and invoice, otherwise the alarm would have rung on the day of purchase itself. It’s the issue of the MRP rising. And I would never have a problem of getting a package with a higher MRP than whats invoiced. Rather, it’d make me only happy. But in either case, as per Babyoye’s price change policy – the customer gets to pay the lower amount… always. So why did they ask me for more money?
Now I understand if this customer care exec wud call me and tell me that “the MRP has increased, but I still have to pay only the amount I am billed for.” Which, again would be unnecessary but still I can understand that. But what business does he have to call me and tell me that I’ve to pay extra amount??!! How can your training get so diametrically wrong? Your executive’s job is to tell me – that too if I call him – about MRP-billing price mumbo jumbo, and here, he’s giving me a completely new information about how I am supposed to pay some extra amount, apparently because your vendors are acting smart!! Who is he to decide that? Obviously, he must have got orders from somewhere! Rahul’s words were – “if our rep is found guilty, we will taken stringent action against him/her”.. I am yet to hear about the stringent action. You can’t blame it solely on bad training. Sorry, doesn’t cut much ice with me.
Secondly, about the whole time your team was tracking this order – I was aghast to hear BabyOye tweeting me that they CAN’T locate any barbie set being delivered to ‘city mentioned in my blog’ i.e. Gurgaon…Not a single order!!?? Seriously…!? Is your system that heavily dependent on order nos and shipment nos to track something??