R W Emerson said, "What you do is so loud in my ears that I can't hear what you say." This is an excellent adage to follow when dealing with senior leadership within your organization. This is a reality most people have to face in their organization.
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Workplace Reality #8: There are lots of star performers who are jerks, or vice-versa
Many organizations end up creating and fostering employees who perform well but have bad attitude. It is good to understand why these employees survive and thrive, and what you can do about it.
Workplace Reality #7: Organizations are full of leaders and managers who are incompetent and painful
More often than not, you deal with incompetent leaders in your organization who get in your way rather than help you. It is important to understand this reality and work around it. And when you do find a good leader, you stay around them as much as you can because they are a rare breed.
Workplace Reality #6: The new hire can replace you any day if your only strength is technology
It is important to distinguish between skill-based and experience-based competencies when deciding what to build your expertise in, otherwise you will quickly lose advantage at workplace.
Workplace Reality #5: There is always a stack ranking and a bell curve of performance rating
Stack ranking keeps the 'valuable employees' in focus, Bell Curve forces managers to be realistic in rating performance. These are good tools but are too hard to use, and their use ends up creating more harm than good. So how do you deal with them?
Workplace Reality #4: Promotions and Bonuses reflect market conditions, not capabilities, mostly
Compensation Planning in most organizations are dependent on market and business conditions, and so it is important to understand those dynamics and not confuse it as a measure of your capabilities or performance.
Workplace Reality #3: Most performance review systems are broken and useless
Performance appraisal systems were designed using assumptions that don't hold true in modern workplaces. No wonder appraisals yield upsetting results!
Workplace Reality #2: “Organization deliberately sets up conflicting goals for people”
This post is part of the series on 9 Realities of Modern Workplace.
In this post, we talk about Reality #2: "Organization deliberately sets up goals for people and departments that conflict with each other".
There are 2 reasons why organizations end up creating conflicting goals:
- Organizations need a healthy checks-and-balances system. They need one set of people to keep a tab on what another set is doing and hold them accountable. For example, finance team is there to make sure money is not being spent unwisely by other groups (of course, they have other goals too!).
Workplace Reality #1: Organizations care for value, not you
This post is part of the series on 9 Realities of Modern Workplace.
In this post, we talk about Reality #1: "Organization doesn't care about you, it only cares about the value you create".
A job is a financial arrangement: you offer to provide value, and the organization pays you for it. Like any other business transaction, the organization expects to make more money off of the value you create.
9 Realities of Modern Workplace
While talking to a project manager in a services company recently, I was reminded of how little people (even those with 8-10 years of experience) understand modern workplace. We were talking about promotions and bonuses and she was lamenting the fact that promotions very rarely happen in the mid-year review. When I asked her why … Continue reading 9 Realities of Modern Workplace
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