The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker Some months back, my son was lying down and reading in his room with his light source behind him. As usual, I started to shout at him and said the light should always shine from your left. Then he looked sharply at my face and asked "Why?". I responded to him "Look, you have a long time to go and your eyesight should be good." He returned to his book "Appa, my eyes are fine. What are you worrying about?" I said "Sustainability. Can your eyes take this sort of abuse" He immediately dropped the book "What do you mean by Sustainability?" I wanted it to be simple, so I gave this explanation. Sustainability consists of fulfilling the need of current without compromising future requirements. "Yeah yeah, I know that" my son replied nonchalantly. "Why this cynicism?" "Look here" he showed the book to me. It was Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. "This book says that the move to become an agrarian community is not a good move" I started to nod while he continued "I know you will negate me". He paused for a while "But is there something about this issue in our ancient scriptures?"
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Do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do -- Oprah Winfrey (America TV Personality) Attrition is a silent killer with a very adverse effect on any organization. It has the potential to bring down any corporation down on its knees in a quick time frame. All IT firms face this problem and it has existed since long time. Many firms have made innovative solutions, and yet the problem lingers. Even if you had the best of all, there is someone who is contemplating of leaving the organization. The best compensation, healthy work culture or even smashing benefits is not enough. So are you telling me to leave this problem hanging? No. Every company puts in a lot of efforts and investments in recruitment and hiring process. Yet they have not looked deep into why people leave you. There is a general perception that compensation is the main reason for attrition. When we look into the data analysis - it does not feature in the top 10 reasons at all. Then what are the reasons? Before we go there, let us look at the problem first. Organizations need to put efforts into understanding the motivations behind employee attrition. Then they need to address the causes rather than the symptoms. Else they will only have a chance for damage control. The most logical step is to know your employees well. In the current fast-paced environment, there is no time. With Agile adopted worldwide - is there time for us to pause and look at the people? Well, one of the main KPI for a people manager is to know his people, so they cannot hide behind time constraints. With many tools and methods at his disposal, one needs to figure this data fast. If you are looking for a sustainable solution. OK, enough of the Gyan - let me have the top reasons please. The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be. -- Marcel Pagnol (French Dramatist) I'm sure that everyone in their recent past would have listened once to their father's story about his childhood and how they struggled but still was far better enjoyable than it is now. I for one never cared about those stories and it was a repeated storyline for me. Cut to the present day and I am almost doing the same to my kids. I have started telling them stories of how I used to play till 8PM on the streets and not watch TV. It was great with only the Black & White DD channel for TV. The wait for seeing cartoons on Sunday, Malgudi days or ஒலியும் ஒளியும் (Oliyum Oliyum) and how friends used to talk for hours face-to-face. I still feel that how TV and entertainment were destroyed by the 24/7 satellite channels, Now I see my kids doing what I did to my father's story. I can see now where the dissent and disinterest come to them. There is no connection for them to what I am saying or experiencing. It's nostalgic for me but for those who have not even seen it how can I expect them to feel it? What's that got to do with the topic - Just hang on for a short while. Being bored, I decided to open up FB after a long time and I saw countless posts on the dangers of social media and why we should go back to times before WWW was found. I find a strange contradiction that those people who are shouting against it or in fact using the same channel to propagate it. Much like the advisory warning on the cigarette packet. This made me think for some time if it is really true that as one goes old, they seem to feel that their childhood times look far better than the present? A likely answer to it would be that during childhood there is no responsibility and hence the time looked great. Come beyond childhood to job, managers, marriage, housing loans, EMI, etc then the same period looks crazy. This is what I think maybe a plausible reason. A couple of days back, when flipping on channels on the TV I stumbled upon an old movie of Woody Allen named "The midnight in Paris". This movie is the one which is credited for coining the concept called "Golden Age Syndrome" So what is it? The greatest wealth is to live content with little. -- Plato Every one who has passed 40 would be able to tell you that all of them have only one aim in life from now on - to have a simple and happy life. All of them would be frustrated with this current dog raced complex and fast paced world. There are many blogs that tell us how to be happy but not many are there when it comes to simplifying your life. First let us see why do we need to simplify our life? Just for a moment, try and think what would be the most happiest place for you to be and it would never turn out to be our metros or cities. It is always a far away hill station, a clam and quiet remote place or your ancestral village home. What do these place have that the ultra modern cities do not have? Simplicity. The modern day life has turned itself into a complex machine where each day there is an ounce of complexity being added into it and we only try to adjust with that. We have never resorted to see how to reduce this complexity and make things simpler. Making things simpler is not a simple task - but certainly we should start somewhere. Extravagance is often a picture of an unsatisfied life. It is often in the most simple things that we actually find true happiness. As a young boy (back in the 80s) it would have just been that small cricket bat or the colorful top - பம்பரம் or the free flying kite which we used to chase and get hold of it. When we look back at it, we find that it bought more happiness than the crazy 128GB iPADs and Bose stereo headphones. Why? The answer is still the same - it was uncomplicated and simple then than now. If we already knew the answer then where is the toughness in it? It takes courage to admit there is the need to simplify our lives. It cannot be achieved by all and very easily. There are efforts which needs to be put to get it but let me assure you that once you get there, you will never want to return back to the current complexities. |
AuthorVasudevan is a Leadership Mentor and an Executive coach. I run an online website geared towards helping creative entrepreneurs and future managers to build their dreams. Archives
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