Thursday, August 26, 2010

Happy Merger Day!!

Forth Speech at toastmasters was part of a humorous speech competition..

From ABCDE News headquarters this is world news with Julia Roberts …

Happy Merger Day!! Today we celebrate the first anniversary of India becoming the 51st State of the United States of America!!

What a journey it has been so far…

There have been no talks of super power and world supremacy since the slot was taken for good …a year ago

The cultures of India and US have both changed significantly.. even the number of alphabets in our channel name has noticed growth

In my last visit to US before this merger I used to go for regular morning walks in the neighborhood parks, now this three feet space is all the available for my exercise

Just kidding…actually inclusion of such a large population has been a blessing …

The Economy is flourishing like never before. With so many hands to work and mouths to feed ….markets are soaring….Adoption of Dollar as the merged country’s currency has helped Indian women a lot ... its always easier to tell your husband that you shopped for $50 instead of 2500 rupees.

Not only economy .. life style has changed too …there is a new found the harmonious fusion. like dishes like chicken tikka pizza, sandwiches in naan bread or curried steak are part of American cuisines …In fact kitchens all across America smell of garam masala or the hot curry powder ….clubs play bhangra music and designers create new fusion designs …

Reel is also changing with the real, Hollywood never had so many musicals with such synchronized and spontaneous dancing…

US is now a outsourcing destination and unrivaled hub of call centers for the world. Yesterday the European Union issued a statement sighting their concerns about outsourcing to jobs this more united UNITED STATES…Some sources say that they are planning drastic actions like hiking Visa fees to curb outsourcing..

In US itself the concept of call centers have evolved into knock centers… Now instead of calling you to buy things you do not need call center employees go door to door convincing people to buy …
Prominent Senators who have in past strongly condemned call centers … in a surprise move called the knock centers an essential tool of capitalism

Now moving on to the weather…
Most of you are aware of the concept of summer and winter houses ……new concept monsoon houses have been introduced... Americans, specially from the state of Arizona are buying houses in India to experiences rains first hand …Most insurance companies are now providing attractive discounts on flood insurance for these houses

Indians have also embraced the change ….like the adoption of American names …remember earlier this news telecast was called world news with priti sankhla …..My husband just completed paperwork over the weekend to be now known as Robert Pattison AAAhhhh now his email ID is more attractive them him …
The famous red dot on the fore head has now evolved into a red star and India has adopted right hand driving….

Though our sources across the globe say in practice its still the old “forget left hand , forget right hand…till I donn run over someone I am driving” driving

Defense expenditure for both united states and India has gone down drastically… who wants to attack a country that can retaliate from both sides?

United States is no longer under radar… No one can harm a significant number of people from a total of 1.5 billion population… so they have stopped trying…

The times are so good that a leading US newspaper called this the honeymoon period… sociological Experts are however worried that population of the state of India may further rise due to public use of this term…

As a patriot I hope to have many happy returns of this day…

That is all from the newsroom this special night … once again Happy Merger Day America!!

Thursday, August 05, 2010

Imprudently Intolerant

My third speech at Toastmaster's

Think of a coworker you do not respect and you will not work with him or her, given a choice..

Now I want you to think of how long you have known him or her, why you dislike this person and their one good quality that stands out

I believe that we are becoming increasingly intolerant at work place.

There are some obvious signs of this in our work environment. The teams and workload of the team members are becoming more and more unbalanced. There is a very high stress related to team dynamics, much more then the stress associated with the “actual work”.

The seriousness of people issues dominate conversations, effect productivity and is the one main reason for people to move on

There are no victims or villains here.

In fact there are many valid reasons for it. Most of the time we have fixed timelines and we do not really get to choose the people we work with. Another very stressful feature of our work is that we need to take bottom-line responsibility of the performance for our team members on whom at times we have little or no authority. People with various cultures, skills and aspirations are brought together not always based on talent but many a times by the various compulsive factors like vendor partners associated with a project, availability at a particular location.

The concept of considering people as 100% replaceable and replicable is not perfect. Personalities and attitudes attribute a lot to performance.

Probably because of this we try to categorize the attributes based on our experiences. we brand people to reduce the uncertainty of their behavior which impact our day to day work life… simplifying people and expectation from them by saying women are more sincere hen men, Indians are more aggressive, Americans are more appreciative, contractors are more flexible … helps us predict the unpredictable.

But this categorization is definitely not accurate. We classify at a very early stage of interaction. Plus we do not always recalibrate people. Once we make an opinion of a co-worker, specially a bad one, we rarely give them a second chance.

For management team member are like their children …when it comes to comparing them with each other

So when an extraordinary performer in team met some unrealistic expectations like taking no time for ramping-up to new responsibilities or putting aside our priorities outside work not only when there are issues, but for regular activities like production releases re met…

They become the new benchmark…expectations hit the roof and fault tolerance drops

This is something we do and are subjected to…

So what can we do to improve work environment?

When we interact with family members and friends we accept them with their strengths with deficiencies. We need to exercise the same patience and discretion, only because intolerance is a double edged sword and in an intolerance environment there are no villains or victims but just negativity and stress

We can start by recalibrating people. When we think strongly against them , we need to repeat the exercise we did at the start of this speech ....that is to think of how long we have known them and why we dislike but along with some of their good qualities ...this is to ensure that we judge people as they are ....without the glasses of intolerance