East and West - Mythology explains business behavior

I watched this small video on TED , which draws parallels in eastern and western mythology with respective thinking and behavioral patterns. Video is really insightful and fascinating , a kind of must watch. It is inspiring to look at behavioral patterns from this perspective.

It really tells us why the best practices invented in Japanese and American thinking will not work in India . How the culture differs and how it impacts the behavior of individuals and organization.

It surely instigates Indian mind to critic management thinking from different perspective.

Spirituality and Job Satisfaction - 1

In general IT (Information Technology) industry in India is considered lucrative and IT professionals are said to earn comparatively higher salaries .Still attrition rates are very high in IT industry. As attrition (Or employee turnover) is negatively related to the job satisfaction , there are various attempts to increase Job Satisfaction to address the issue.

Spirituality at workplace is being explored and researched as one of the means to boost performance,change attitude towards work and increase job-Satisfaction .This Survey is intended to study spirituality and job satisfaction among Indian IT professionals. Some of the questions that we are probing in this survey -

• Is spiritual belief prevalent among Indian IT professionals ?
• Whether Job-Satisfaction and spirituality are related in anyway ?
  
• Is onsite/Abroad opportunities/postings impacts the above relationship ?
• In general whether spiritual belief & Values guide & shape behavior of IT professionals ?

Please revisit the blog for further updates on the survey.

Indian Bureacracy - HR perspective .

Today I read the news about worst south Asian bureaucracy - India.

Those who area aware of Indian bureaucracy should know that majority of them come through the most grueling and difficult selection process of UPSC. Many bright and brilliant student spend years studying as this brings prestige ,salary ,power and unparalleled benefits. Many view it as kind of dream service with life-time employment and almost negligible performance accountability.

Moreover constitution of India protects these bureaucrats from fear of persecution ( mainly from politicians ) and financial insecurity. ( Details here. )

Prima facie bright employees and excellent career opportunities should result into high performing change agents , but Indian case is proving it wrong.

One of major reason may be the environment in which they work ,reminding me of article titiled " why good people do bad things ? " making a case for impact of system on individual behavior.

Though it is true that system in which these people work is practically difficult to change - but from HR perspective how about providing means ,practices and expert advice about how to cope with this system and remain efficient and high performing individuals ?

Any thoughts ?

Future Success and Delayed Gratification

Here is interesting experiment ,( And funny too ) - which evaluates delayed gratification and links it with future success. I find it interesting . I wonder whether the traditional Indian wisdom of asking children to wait for everything has links with success ?

More-over - it does mean that self-discipline is really important in all walks of life .

Still experiment raises one question in mind - whether ( in general ) 1/3rd population has more potential for success ?