Rajesh Kumar

Rajeshkmr7@gmail.com
Simple Attributes that form

Great Workplaces http://tinyurl.com/rkumar

Prayer

Forty Years, Ten Thousand Four Hundred Days, Eighty Three Thousand Three Hundred Hours… I will
spend so much of my lifetime for no other activity in this life. Neither my parents, nor my spouse or
Children will boast of such a share of my time. I live a major part of my life in my work place.

God, bless me with a great workplace.

Forward
There is much written about the attributes of great workplaces. A simple search
in Google will keep you busy for light years. I do not claim to be very different. I
leave it to the reader to see value in the article that follows:

The Background
The generally agreed upon definition of Organizational culture is “the way things
get done in an organization.” Apart from the three employers I have worked with,
I have spent hundreds of hours listening to my peers and colleagues talk about
their workplaces. I now live with a universal appreciation of the Dilbert
principles. I know now that the pimples of small workplaces are acnes of larger
ones. Most of the time, it’s the same shit that you have to live with, in varying
degrees.

I am, in this article, bringing to one space my random observations of attributes

of a great workplace. Most of it, as you would have guessed by now, is aspirational
in nature. I am sure that not all the attributes that I write about will be available
in any one workplace. The real life great workplaces are made out of bits and
pieces of these attributes.

Before I put this to words, I asked a couple of my friends in various industries

their definition of a great workplace. I was surprised to note a common thread
running through their responses. In almost all cases, great workplaces are known
only in hindsight. You will not really appreciate your current workplace until you
have moved on to a sadder workplace!

There remains much more to be written in this area, however, let me leave you
with this thought…. A cursory look behind the evidently visible doors and windows
of an establishment may give you inkling about things to come. Cleanliness in
places beyond and behind line of sight is a key indicator.

Happy Read…
Executive Summary

Great workplaces are not necessarily full of great people, where people fail they
have world-class processes. I have listed four areas in which great workplaces
will excel over the rest. These are:

1. Customer
2. Culture
3. People
4. Process

For obvious reasons, I have placed Customer first. Organizations exist to cater
to the needs of its customers, else, why occupy so much space (physical or
virtual)?

Culture is defined as the way things get done in an organization. If sleeping with
your supervisor helps you gets two back-to-back promotions, well, you will end up
sleeping with a lot of people and would have discovered an alternate profession
too. And when you become the super boss, you will breed a whole generation of
whores and gigs in your organization. Wonder what will happen to those who
believe that they need to just work hard to become somebody in your
organization!

People Populate. They fill the checkerboards of an organization and each other’s
lives. They are the cause and the effect of all our winnings and losses. In the
movie Matrix, Morpheus told Neo: “The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is
our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around. What do you see?
Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are
trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and
that makes them our enemy. You have to understand; most of these people are
not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly
dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.
A workplace is like the Matrix; its culture is the programming. People, its energy
cells!
Process is the heart that pumps blood through the sinews of an organization.
Where processes fail, the organization gets a seizure.

Lets analyze attributes under the above-mentioned headings one by one.

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11.. Healthy mix between what customer wants and new initiatives
•• Do not sell a Mercedes where a Fire-Tender is required! A great
workplace is connected to what customer wants. Too many start ups
have burnt up like meteors, they were busy pushing their agenda to
customers. Customers have their bums on fire just like anybody
else, instead of a fire-tender; you can’t sell them a Mercedes.
22.. Keeps Things Simple
•• Too much of anything is actually just that… too much! And one thing
that is always too much in Information. Do not make it your
management mantra to zap customers with too many complicated
process diagrams and GUI charts; this will always lead to misery. In
a great workplace, Customers are woed and wowed in the language
they understand.
33.. Markets oneself vigorously
•• I speak to my friends and colleagues in the great consulting firms
of the world. Most of the time, it’s the same shit that they have to
deal with, red tapes and stupid supervisors. But, they would not
exchange their place with a lesser mortal. Reason, Their
organization is all over the TVs and newspapers. Some have Tiger
Woods hitting tsunami bells for them while others claim loudly that
they are increasing the commonsense quotient for the planet. It
does not matter whether my friends believe these greatness
stories or not, they are still proud by association!
44.. World Class Sales Team
•• In the height of recent recession, millions of IT geeks were and
still continue to be on the bench. Indian IT firms have come up
with a novel term to reduce salaries by half and benefits by three
quarters, they call it the “virtual pool.” In this pool you are like a
buffalo (Indians would know a buffalo when they see one!). All you
have to do is wallow in virtual-ity until the company finds a project
to make you billable! Even when three quarters of young IT
workforce lives under this dread of virtual living, there are
companies that are aggressively hiring! They hired through out the
recession and continue to hire today as if there is no tomorrow!
How do they do it? They have world a class Sales Team.
 CCuullttuurree

11.. Thrives on Great Stories

•• “That hillock is where Wesley Sahib fell from his Horse and
broke his hands; it will do well for the new Assistant Manager
to wear helmets all time when riding Royal Enfield (India’s
Harley D). This is just one of the hundreds of folklores that
define the way executives, staff members, workers and trade
union members live and survive on Indian plantations. They
have brilliant, insightful stories of successes and courage,
caution and laughter, challenges and hardships that they
share with every new comer, and every new generation that is
born.
22.. Clear Ethics, No Grey Areas
•• Some years ago one of the highflying team colleagues working
with me was called into Chairman’s office one afternoon. No
one ever saw her in the organization from that point onwards!
Later, we were intimated that the lady was asked to leave as
during her joining, she had kept mum of certain aspects of
her spouse’s occupation, which was in direct conflict with our
firm’s area of business.
 •• The organization in which this happened was not the best of
the places to work. It had major issues in performance
management! But its attitude towards what was ethical and
non-ethical was black and white, and our clients admired us
for the same.
33.. Creates Traditions
•• On my first day at my first job, a senior colleague drove me
around the property (it was a rubber plantation) and
introduced me to my would-be reportees. He gave me lunch at
his bungalow and sent out his driver that evening for me to
visit the local town store for provisions. I barely knew this
guy!
•• Over the years, I went on to do the same for at least a dozen
new hires who joined during my tenure with this organization.
Looking back, my senior colleague would have done it whether
he liked it or not, it was the company tradition! But as a new
hire, young and fresh out of college, it gave me loads of
confidence being around people who could seemingly go so out
of the way to make me feel at home on the first day.
Traditions do that.
44.. Decisions derived from Information
•• “I am in the business of paying salaries!” said the Chairman of
one of the organizations I worked for. He was right! Some
organizations exist merely to keeps its promoters engaged. In
such an organization, decisions are based on impromptu “gut
feelings.” Such organizations are in a constant flux and boast
of being an evolving organization from the day they were born
to twenty years later! Nothing remains permanent for long,
policies processes clients business segments; everything
keeps shifting. Confounded employees live in a constant
 stupor in these organizations and quit confused. It takes time
to recover from such roller coaster rides!
55.. Demands and insists Managers to be more than OLD (One Level
Deep)
•• Q: What is your name? A: Rajesh Kumar. Q: What does
Rajesh mean? A:…. I will get back to you on this..!!!
•• Q: How is the Server scenario? A: Good! Q: What was our
last month’s downtime? A: ….err. I will get back to you!!!
•• There are organizations in which the OLD syndrome plays
around each day at conferences, review meetings, and
business presentations. Such workplaces would screw the
happiness out of employees who seek greater information
before arriving at decisions. The OLD syndrome causes
Enrons and Satyams of this world.
66.. On Top of Trends
•• Does it matter if it were Sony Corps or Apple that created
portable music?
•• GE, 3M(MMM), Nokia Corp, is all examples of companies who
are bigger than nations but continue to persistently be on top
of trends.
•• Working with an organization who aspires to be on top of
trends is a challenging and enriching experience. Very few of
us ever get to live that life.
77.. Premium on Action, Penalty on Inaction
•• Out on a hunting trip one night, our Remington headlights
caught a rabbit trawling in the night! The moment the beam
of light caught the rabbit, it went into a deep freeze, and did
not move an inch. And that inch would have decided whether
 it landed on our plates that night or survived for another
fight. We took the dead rabbit home that night!
•• Organizations who do not penalize inactions will be like dead
rabbits.
88.. Promises backed by Potential not Intention
•• I had a boss once who would promise the moon to every client
he met and signed on. This way, the sales force of the
organization had a tough time finding new clients. Existing
clients would never work with us more than once!
•• Not all promises are meant to be con jobs. Often, in
organizations, we readily dilute the subtle difference
between potential and passionate intention. This mostly
happens when the going is not all that great and you are
looking forward eagerly for any business that would enable
you to play this months salaries!
•• The same trend becomes acceptable within the organization,
in team transactions, briefing sessions and sundry. This is a
one-way street. It eats away into your credibility like a
cancer. No chemo is available.
99.. A Spade is A Spade
•• During the induction of new recruits to organizations that I
have worked with, I share with them the “Raja nanga hai”
(Vernacular for Hans Andersen’s famous parable “The
Emperor’s New Clothes).” http://hca.gilead.org.il/emperor.html
•• There is another story that I share with young recruiter, the
story of how a modest King who did not want to be rude to his
queen and princess ended up with a kingdom full of nude
women (wow!). http://tinyurl.com/n3eteo
 •• Organizations where everybody is busy buttering each
other’s bottoms, those with “no butter required bottoms” do
not have a place!
1100.. Transparency In Action
•• It took 60 years for Right To Information to become the law
of the land in my country, but in most organizations, it would
never happen! Most organizations I work for practices what is
called “Convenient Transparency.”
•• This means that things are transparent up to a level where it
does not put the spotlight on the ruling-class. The degree of
transparency differs from department to department,
designation to designation, activity to activity.
•• Next to zero transparency exists in the finance and accounts
functions of the organization, not because they have
something big and secretive to hide (after all, you will read it
in the Annual Balance Sheet!). Most of the time, the poor
buggers are hiding themselves! When you do not know the
answers to most of the questions you might have to face,
what is it that you do? You build a wall of secrecy around you.
•• Such workplaces suck in relative degrees!
 PPeeooppllee
11.. Individuals Matter

a. Some of the greatest feats of engineering that we see

around us dwarf in presence of its yesteryear cousins.
Imagine the Petronas Tower… and now imagine the Great
Wall. Imagine the Statue of Liberty…now imagine the atrium.
As a race we may believe that we are capable of greatness,
but as individuals we fail to see this in our everyday lives.
b. Great workplaces are built upon the sweat and toil of its
population. And when I say sweat and toil, I do not refer it in
the RED sense. An organization has to burn some fat and
mould some muscle to reach anywhere in the world’s
organizational history.
c. In doing so, the only variable that would propel it or pull it
down is its people. Great workplaces treasure the individual
unit. They are prodded, guided, or discarded towards one
common goal.
22.. Leaders create Leaders

a. Some of the best-run organizations could not sustain and

survive one exit. Leaders in such organizations did not believe
in the age old adage… leaders create leaders.
 b. Great workplaces are those where there is a sustained
pressure on supervisors to find their replacements, else face
exits.
c. This keeps the organization is a constant state of hunt.
Talent becomes a treasure and the talented know that
someday they too will be part of this beautiful hunt.
d. These workplaces also send jitters down the spine of the
insecure and the greedy. They know that their love for their
seats will probably get them a hasty exit, sometime with the
chair as a parting gift.
33.. Manage behavior

a. People are passionate and passion is good. Dynamic workplaces

have people falling in love, people fighting, people grumbling
and people laughing all the time. This is the sound of an great
workplaces, its like sparrows and robins making merry.
b. But when Sparrows and Robins make merry, there is also a lot
of shit that gets strewn around. Somebody needs to control
this before it becomes a Navassa (the island of poop!).
c. One of the lawyers who joined the BPO unit of an Indian
Software giant spent an easy 18 months with it before being
transferred to its IT unit. Three months into the IT unit, he
was looking for another job! One day, during his third month
with this unit, he was called by site HR and asked to sign his
own resignation letter, already typed and kept ready for him!
Reason… he had lied in his resume about a job he had allegedly
done 8 years ago.
d. Workplaces with pro-active (not preventive) HR action
against obviously disruptive behavior to business should keep
professional engagement with the organizations at high
degrees.
44.. Pain in the Ass Employee Workforce:

a. There are employees and then there are militant employees.

Militant employees are those who are completely unperturbed
by your caste creed religion, cabin size, length of your
designation or the number of zeroes in your paycheck.
b. Militant employees believe that supervisors exist to make
them happier at work.
c. Workplaces with such a workforce keeps bureaucracy at bay
and lays extreme premium on performance.
d. Red Tape bleeds and work get done.
55.. Retain Proactively

a. Organizations small and large have loads of orphan employees.

I define orphan employees as those whom every supervisor
wants to get work done out of, but no supervisor owns.
b. In this ongoing war of skills, the employee sometimes
becomes a tool for the advancement of disinterested
supervisors.
c. Great Workplaces have people centric policies. One such
organization that I know has a policy that puts the power to
move across verticals in the hands of the employee. He or
She may apply for a different vertical and boss every 18
months!
d. Another organization I know has “Grapevine Meetings,”
meetings where senior management clinically analyzes gossip
for symptoms of generic dissent, and take pro-active steps to
address issues long before it moves into quadrant 1.
e. Retain pro-actively does not imply that every time someone
quits over pay, you go and give him a raise, what I mean here
 has more to do with creating the right atmosphere for people
to stay.
f. Retention as I see it, never works in hindsight.
66.. Weeds out Double Speak

a. Agreed that there is no democracy in life, and hence, none in

organizations too. However, great workplaces try to walk
their talk as closely as possible… all the time.
b. One such organization called in one of its senior executives,
an AVP, handling a million dollar project, into the CEO’s room.
The CEO’s room had a private elevator. Nobody ever saw this
AVP again. After 36 months of employment with this
organization, it was realized, over a casual conversation that
the AVP had fudged his experience, 11 years ago, to show
extended employment in a company by an additional 4 months.
c. He was asked to go, and so was the office boy who had forged
his matriculation certificate, and the programmer who
presented a fake Cognos certification!
d. Great Workplaces are willing to go all the way to ensure that
all under the sun are treated the same.

Work In Progress, will update this file once done.

Rajesh Kumar
November 19, 2009
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