Management

I had the opportunity to be part of an event recently that got me thinking in multiple dimensions. One of the most interesting of these dimensions was one about self management. There are volumes written about how leaders should be, could be and are. There are books on managing projects and leading teams. I’m not sure how many of these place enough importance on self management. In a public setting, when meeting with a whole bunch of strangers for the first time and working together as a team, who you are as a person stands out. The difference between the work environment and the new public setting could not be starker because the reputation or title that precedes you at the work place is missing in the public forum. In such situations, the way that one carries oneself becomes a true reflection of who you are as a person and in many ways, is representative of your position in society.

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Recently, I had the opportunity to reflect on a question on career investment. Do Managers do enough in terms of investing in the careers of their team members? Often, employees are unclear on what they are looking to achieve in their careers. While this may simply be put down as a lack of ambition, it is undeniably important for the leader to inculcate a sense of self worth where it is lacking and encourage his team to think about themselves. Now, each person is different and the classic mistake that one can easily make is to apply the same paint to every idol, so to speak. With career planning, it is simply not “one size fits all”. Very often, in India especially, we have kids in middle class families choosing between only Engineering or Medical streams of education in college. The main reason that this happens is because the previous generation (parents) have seen that these two fields are the

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Gamification, as explained in some detail here (https://class.coursera.org/gamification-002/class/index), is about applying game elements to business contexts. There are numerous game-like elements that have been applied to various websites and business models that have been widely successful. One popular example is FourSqaure.com, as quoted by the professor in the course mentioned above. FourSquare gives away all kinds of badges to the users of the website for achievements as varied as checking into a restaurant or location some X number of times, for logging in Y number of times, etc. That is an example of Badges, which is a game element, being employed for the specific purpose of engaging people and making it a habit for the users to log in to foursquare and report their specific location. Now that is an example of gamification as deployed in a very commercial sense. Although I am not immediately aware of the business model for FourSquare, vis-a-vis their revenue generation model per se, but

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During a course on Gamification that I have been attending recently, the professor talks about different kinds of motivation – extrinsic and intrinsic. I found the classification of the motivation to be very insightful and structured. Extrinsic motivation is when we are motivated by external factors, such as rewards, a feeling of social obligation, if you will or even when you are forced to do something although you don’t quite believe in the task. Intrinsic motivation is when one feels good doing a task by himself/ herself only because he/ she likes it. Of course, the best kind of motivation is intrinsic. If we were to have a team that is full of folks like Anil Kumble in cricket or Lebron James in basketball, then it is safe to assume that that team would be the most efficient and excellent team in whatever task they do. Both the stars in their respective sports are known to be very hard working

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There are many facets to good public speaking that are applicable to a good Manager’s abilities. One of the basic tenets of public speaking is that no matter how much you read about it, the only way to make it work is to get your hands dirty by actually indulging in the activity. We often hear the reasoning – no good in reading about swimming unless one actually gets into the water! The same theory would apply to Management. No matter how much we read about it, plan for the way that one would want to implement their strategy and read numerous books on it, it is only when one is thrown into the pool of Management does one learn how to ride the tide! Public speaking calls for the speaker to focus on what he/ she is talking about and not bother too much about the impression that looks or the surroundings are having on the listeners’ mind. Stage

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