The Lehman Saga …

It’s been a year when the biggest event of last year occurred, 15^th of September 08 is not someday one can forget too easily. I still remember that everyone was so concerned in the college. The placements were nearing and after the last year windfall, people were expecting great rewards for the 2 years of the Degree course. Ultimately it affected us all and so many of us are still struggling due to something for which they were not responsible.

The reporters from different news channel surrounded the Lehman head Office on the death anniversary and my friend managed to get few clicks holding the CNBC mike in front of the Lehman Brother's Head Office in NY.

Weak Infrastructure , An Opportunity ..

We often feel that India is struggling and China has moved ahead of India due to our weak infrastructure . The roads , bridges , flyovers , basic amenities are simply missing here . We are wasting so much time and energy working in these conditions . Life is so good outside , every things happens on Internet, you don't have to struggle to reach your office everyday.

I agree with most of it but two days back when I had my first Delhi Metro ride , I found something interesting. I think we have a great opportunity now to make a mark provided our politicians start working on it.

The Delhi metro is just amazing , the ride is smooth , metro stations are amazing and infact I found the experience better than what I had in New York metro and here lies the opportunity.

Most of the existing infrastructure in western world is atleast two decades old and India can easily adopt the inexpensive yet better new technologies and leap frog in the new era. We are not required to do the experiments which other countries did and simply pick the best of the world technologies which fits into our country. This will not only develop the new infrastructure but it might even give us a competitive edge.

The toughest part here is the political will and issues of corruption which eats into most of the resources. If we are able to cross these hurdles we can have the best basic infrastructure in the world.

Ignoring Human Resource ..

Most of us while studying in B schools dint spent much time in studying the intricacies of human behavior and Human resource Management as a subject. Today when I work with daily issues in the company I think it is the toughest and most important element of the business .

You can have very fancy strategies, full involvement of the top management but communicating the message to all the people in the organization and motivating them to implement a particular strategy is not easy . Every man wants importance and good roles, how will you satisfy every one and yet bring them to accept a change. At times even automation which eases jobs of the people brings lot of dissatisfaction amongst the employees as they are left to do very mundane tasks which even a ordinary person can do. After every few years the best people will leave the organization and the others will be left who are not even half as good. How to cope with this issue . Providing them good incentives to stay ?

Incentive structures to motivate the people can back fire. Against the popular perception, money is the least important thing for most of us. In blue collor jobs where the salary are the lowest, people are not concerned about it , they are happy in there 2 meal a day. If you provide them high incentive to improve their productivity, they might work for only 5 days and enjoy the rest 2 days. There monitary needs gets fulfilled in working just 5 days, this leads to mass absenteeism which is not good in any setup.

The great Lehman Brothers gave amazing bonuses to their top management which induced them to take more risks. The ultimate result is known to everyone . So is this fixed salary and a incentive scheme actually works ?

I am still struggling to find a answer to it ...