A tale of two friends

In order to make the purpose of this blog a little easier to understand, let’s consider two people Foo and Bar (pardon the names here, this is the best I could come up with. As the saying goes, there are two difficult problems in computer science. 1. Variable Naming 2. Cache Invalidation).

Foo works for a company called WhiteBox and Bar works for a company called BlackBox. An organization will always have bosses to whom each employee report to(unless you are the CEO), assume that Foo reports to a person called FooManager and Bar reports to a person called BarManager(I know that the question of their roles might be creeping in your mind, but that’s not important here).

Both of these folks, are happily working for their respective organisations until one fine day both of them turn unlucky and commit a mistake which results in some issues at the work they are responsible for. What led to these mistakes is something which isn’t important here(as the saying goes, To err is human.), what’s important is how the organisations and the managers react to the situation.

At WhiteBox

1. FooManager and Foo identify the mistake together and fix it.
2. They work on the cause document for the same, which outlines what exactly went wrong and how the issue was fixed and what are the measures taken to avoid such things from happening again.
3. They create tasks to work on the long term goal and the short term goal as part of the fix for the situation at hand.
4. FooManager also appreciates Foo for the quick turn around when handling the situation.

At BlackBox

1. BarManager and Bar identify the mistake and fix it as well.
2. BarManager asks Bar to work on the cause document, and begins judging Bar for his work
3. Bar comes up with the cause document and measures are implemented to ensure the same thing never happens in the future

After effects

• Bar loses his enthusiasm at work

  

• Both Foo and Bar become more cautious at work.

In addition to these things, FooManager conducts regular 1 on 1 meetings once in a while with Foo to give constructive feedback. He also defines the roles and responsibilities for Foo to work on in order to progress in his career and uses the 1 on 1 meetings to keep a check on these roles and responsibilities. Whenever he notices that Foo outperforms his roles and responsibilities for the month, Foo gets a token of appreciation in front of the entire org. This increases Foo’s enthusiasm.

A year passes by and Foo gets promoted to the next higher role and is ready to take new responsibilities. Can you guess what happened to Bar? Well, he becomes an introvert who’s not aware of what he is supposed to do in order to progress in his career, he is just another employee who is working and draws salary for his work.

Key takeaways

• Constructive feedback is very important, without feedback things become mundane and monotonous

• Focussing on extrinsic motivation(can be in the form of appreciation, rewards etc) is also equally important

  • Let’s assume you get a pet puppy and wish to teach it new habits and behaviours
  • In order to do this you teach it the habit, and after it performs actions which is in line with the habit, you reward it with something
  • This reward is an important piece here, without it the puppy will never recollect what you taught it.
  • Similarly, in order to improve enthusiasm and make the employees work at their full potential the organisation has to make them fall into the following routine
  • Cue - can be something like best performers of the month, which reminds people that they can also be one among those in this list
  • Reward - can be something like a token appreciation in the town hall
  • Routine - With the above two things in place, employees will focus on delivering their best at work
• Clearly defining the roles and responsibilities, without this there’s no measurable goal which the employees work for.