Future to a Happy Employee
I often see people around me complaining about the kind of people that they are working with. Almost everyone seems to be dissatisfied with the organizational set-up or thinks that he is forced to accept far more inferior people as their superior.
Organisations today are built on the principle of “Ram Rajya”. Set of rules defining the system machinery. Rules being more important than individual ambitions. I have read that Ram studied both the masculine way of leadership (No rules, creative freedom) and feminine way of leadership (Rigid Rules) before deciding on his way of governing an empire. His principles were to form very strong laws. Get very strong leaders to ensure that the law was adhered to. The leader itself being supremely responsible for the failure of the system and also a role model of the system. Therein lied the fallacy of the ram rajya. It could sustain up to the extent of peoples ambition and as long as the belief in honesty and inner peace appealed to people. Once, peoples ambitions couldn’t be contained under the set of rules, the empire collapsed into chaos. Ambitions led to encroaching on another persons territory, get a little more extra for yourself. This lead to discontent and hence started a fierce journey of one-man-up-ship…which plagues civilization in India (at least) till date.
Compare this to an organisations setup. The senior management designs the rules. Their one downs are chosen to implement the rules and the system keeps flowing down. It’s interesting to note how these bunch of people got the authority to shape the rules and design the way of living for an organization. These people are product of the system which had succeeded ram rajya.. a breed which believed in getting little extra for oneself rather than being content in what you have. What do you do to get that little extra? 1. You create more value 2. You get someone else’s share. As far as human psychology is concerned, it goes for the easier option and hence option 2. This is what leads to start of a culture where you are working towards not creating value but encroaching on someone else’s domain. Grab a share of someone else’s effort. Blame someone else for your failures. And we have a perfect wheel invented for “office politics” and discontent and dissatisfaction.
So does it all start like this? Are all organizations like this? I hope not. Most organisations’ are brain child of individuals or group of individuals. People who are driven by creating value proposition by identifying gaps or opportunities. So it all starts in good intent. Then they grow and more people join. Often the no of people who join don’t come with unique value proposition but as an effort towards easing workload of people who started the organization. Hence comes the tier 2 of people. These are people who don’t have stakes in the organization but have accountability towards deliverables. So now X effort is divided amongst 2Y people but value creation is not necessarily twice against expectation of Tier 1 for 3Y value creation. Multiply this as organization grows and more people walk in and you have a very complex problem in hand.
Where do I see hope? Well, I read a lot of reports where CEO of company earns more than the promoter. I read about companies, where every employee is a shareholder. This forces accountability down to the bottom. I see a lot of start ups moving into a domain of employee value creation. A small effort towards moving from option 2 to option 1. Delegation of power. Bottom driven organization. Every employee will have to define its productivity and clearly identify his individual contribution to the organization. Each employee has to grow at the pace of the organization. When every individual is growing at the pace of the organization and they have stakes in the organisations growth, the system has taken care of carving a space for everyone. Hopefully, with time, the desire to encroach on someone else's space would die, because your own space is enough for you. Hopefully, we would hear more of happy people.
Organisations today are built on the principle of “Ram Rajya”. Set of rules defining the system machinery. Rules being more important than individual ambitions. I have read that Ram studied both the masculine way of leadership (No rules, creative freedom) and feminine way of leadership (Rigid Rules) before deciding on his way of governing an empire. His principles were to form very strong laws. Get very strong leaders to ensure that the law was adhered to. The leader itself being supremely responsible for the failure of the system and also a role model of the system. Therein lied the fallacy of the ram rajya. It could sustain up to the extent of peoples ambition and as long as the belief in honesty and inner peace appealed to people. Once, peoples ambitions couldn’t be contained under the set of rules, the empire collapsed into chaos. Ambitions led to encroaching on another persons territory, get a little more extra for yourself. This lead to discontent and hence started a fierce journey of one-man-up-ship…which plagues civilization in India (at least) till date.
Compare this to an organisations setup. The senior management designs the rules. Their one downs are chosen to implement the rules and the system keeps flowing down. It’s interesting to note how these bunch of people got the authority to shape the rules and design the way of living for an organization. These people are product of the system which had succeeded ram rajya.. a breed which believed in getting little extra for oneself rather than being content in what you have. What do you do to get that little extra? 1. You create more value 2. You get someone else’s share. As far as human psychology is concerned, it goes for the easier option and hence option 2. This is what leads to start of a culture where you are working towards not creating value but encroaching on someone else’s domain. Grab a share of someone else’s effort. Blame someone else for your failures. And we have a perfect wheel invented for “office politics” and discontent and dissatisfaction.
So does it all start like this? Are all organizations like this? I hope not. Most organisations’ are brain child of individuals or group of individuals. People who are driven by creating value proposition by identifying gaps or opportunities. So it all starts in good intent. Then they grow and more people join. Often the no of people who join don’t come with unique value proposition but as an effort towards easing workload of people who started the organization. Hence comes the tier 2 of people. These are people who don’t have stakes in the organization but have accountability towards deliverables. So now X effort is divided amongst 2Y people but value creation is not necessarily twice against expectation of Tier 1 for 3Y value creation. Multiply this as organization grows and more people walk in and you have a very complex problem in hand.
Where do I see hope? Well, I read a lot of reports where CEO of company earns more than the promoter. I read about companies, where every employee is a shareholder. This forces accountability down to the bottom. I see a lot of start ups moving into a domain of employee value creation. A small effort towards moving from option 2 to option 1. Delegation of power. Bottom driven organization. Every employee will have to define its productivity and clearly identify his individual contribution to the organization. Each employee has to grow at the pace of the organization. When every individual is growing at the pace of the organization and they have stakes in the organisations growth, the system has taken care of carving a space for everyone. Hopefully, with time, the desire to encroach on someone else's space would die, because your own space is enough for you. Hopefully, we would hear more of happy people.
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