I mean to say non-cooperate India. In this part of the world, anything goes; deadlines don’t mean anything; and yes could mean yes, or maybe or even no (but everyone will nod as if in agreement).
Not like I’m used to a very sophisticated level of corporate communication or workflow, but boy-oh-boy, some of the private companies in India belong to a different genre. If I had to compare it to something I’ve experienced before, it’s like dealing with a stubborn child in a candy store - who won’t shut-up until you buy him/her the biggest candy available.
The problem is that the CEO and MD want to develop a corporate environment, but my dear colleagues resist change. Who gets hired to do the job – yours truly!
So there are a couple of senior (aka 40 plus gray boring lazy aunties and uncles) employees working here. They cringe that a 20-something with a fancy MBA is trying guide them – and trust me, I’m not an unreasonable person. In fact, my boss thinks I’m way too easy on my team; and that I’m confusing authority with respect and not delegating enough work! Their complacency is something to admire… I admit that I have my days when I procrastinate and accomplish 20% of my target. But I have this one uncle who goes weeks without generating a report. No guilt whatsoever! When I ask him for something, he replies, “koddona koddona” (meaning, I’ll do it sometime in the indefinite future, just chill you crazy boss lady!)
Meetings? What and why? It’s the opposite of the corporate world where all we did was meet. I’m used to attending meetings where we discussed the agenda of the next meeting! Here, people are so averse to sitting in a closed room with you – they associate it to something awful – like getting fired or something. So many times, I’ll just be bored of making sense of numbers, so I’ll call people to the conference room for random chit-chat. But they get so jittery about the whole thing that it is no fun for me.
And they giggle at me when I say “thank you”, “sorry”, and “pardon me” so much. Its not that they think it’s not needed, they are just not used to hearing it as much. So now I’m torn between being a localite and losing my charming polite side!
The cribbing and challenges aside, I don’t mean to make a big deal of all of this. After all most some people are genuine, hard-working and sincere. I’m learning the tricks of the trade. I also nod in acceptance though I know I won’t approve the same later. The up side to this is that I get to delegate all the work and call the shots. It’s a good lesson learnt in the long run… I guess!
Tanmaya this is exactly how I've been feeling the last one year now. In an MNC like mine, it is assumed that these things dont happen, bcos these folks are educated, knowledgeable and will work 24/7 for you. But no that doesn't happen. With a 8.30 hours shift working, if you get them to work (read productive) for 5.30 - 6.00 hours a day, its a great achievement. And at the end of the year when you appraise them, they only know to crib. We have survey sent out and it turns out to be a sounding box. Work finally gets done due to stretch and they crib about that too.
ReplyDeleteYesterday I was speaking to Santosh and he was mentioning on the very same lines about his work.
Final conlusion I had was that irrespective of the skill, knowledge, education, etc.. some people in India are pure lazy. I dont think anything can change them in this janma of theirs.