Responsible, Result-oriented, Reliable and Resilient people succeed

 

                   Responsible, Result-oriented, Reliable and Resilient people succeed

“Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.” – Francis Bacon

In today’s technology driven and highly competitive global market, every employer wants to retain responsible, reliable, result-oriented, innovative and resilient professionals. As a manager/team leader, you are responsible for discipline, curb rumours , enhance performance and grooming of your team. Responsibility cannot be delegated and you are fully accountable. As a team, your commitment, actions, risk-taking and results should speak not words. A successful manager/leader must be reliable, responsive, cooperative, competent innovative and knowledgeable about organisation’s vision, rules and ethos. You need to think far ahead to plan for growth and not maintain status-quo. Some salient points for consideration are given in following sections

·         Race to Win. In every business/office, there is race to outperform others and win maximum share of the market. To win the race you are to develop good strategy of setting the pace and judiciously deploy available resources/energy. Remember building successful career is like running long marathon and not just a 100 meters sprint.

•         Radical Change. When you join any organization, watch for a while and learn from the past. Do not bring any radical change to show you as “know-all,”, since that may send wrong signals and may cause friction/ disruption. Instead, introduce the change progressively and on need basis. However, once you are in the saddle say for a year, you may brainstorm in your team to pick some new ideas and then introduce the change.

•         Rapport. For your higher productivity and better business deals, you should have good rapport with customers, suppliers, vendors, seniors and other stakeholders.

•         Rational. One must be rational in decision-making as it will impact                        on your job and the team/organization. Base your decision-making on group inputs and deliberate so that your actions are useful for all. Any decision taken in a jiffy has adverse effect on the team.

•         Reach. You must have good reach to your customers, vendors and suppliers. Likewise, you should reach out to good business partners and develop win-win business relationships.

•         Reactive. It is important to deal with a situation well in time with appropriate response. One should act and not react. Instead of reacting after the event has happened, it’s better to be proactive and ready with timely response. They say “prevention is better than cure.”  

•         Reading Habit. In the past it was said “people are known by the friends they keep”. Now we say “people are also known by the books they read”. It is a good habit to read good books/e-books and success stories to get inspired. Therefore read the latest books, articles or white papers related to your job. If you want to be a good author, you need to be a good reader.

•         Readjustments. Initial plan generally requires regular review and adjustment. Your ability to quickly readjust to the emerging situation is the key to success.

•         Reap. To reap good profit you must work very hard to fulfil customer requirement. Remember good old saying “As you sow, so shall you reap”.

•         Rebellious. There may be some people who oppose every instruction and rebel against discipline. You are to blow-hot blow-cold and guide them for cooperative path. A rebellious person can harm discipline of the whole team. Hence he/she should be counselled to change. If the person still continues to misbehave, he/she should be recommended for stern action and that may be showing the door.

•         Reconcile. Do not stand upon ceremony and stick to your point of view. Listen to others and it is good for the team to reconcile and proceed.

•         Redundant. Those who do not regularly upgrade their skills soon become redundant and are asked to go. You need to be innovative, quick on the uptake and contribute significantly to stay  relevant to the organisation

•         Redundancy. While designing a circuit, an assembly, a machine or a process, you must optimize for weight, size, efficiency and the cost. However, design should not be over optimised that it becomes critical.  Instead, after due  optimisation,  one should introduce controlled redundancy to improve reliability ,

•         Reflection. Reflection of your actions provides good feedback to improve your future response. Whatever you do, there must be way to see its reflection. They say mirror does not lie. It shows what is on your face as that is what is going through your mind.

•         Regulations and Rules. Ignorance of rules and regulations or policies is no excuse to take wrong decision. As a manager/team leader you should be fully conversant with government policies and rules and regulation of your organization.

•         Rejuvenate.  It pays a lot to be hardworking and sincere in your job. However, do not get to a stage to burn-out. It is important to strike a balance between office-life and family requirements. Do take leave, go out on holiday and get rejuvenated, One needs to periodically  recharge ones batteries  to stay healthy and productive.

•         Relationship. Your first duty is to establish the right relationships in your organization and  the society. Developing and maintaining good relations among team mates and with other stakeholders will create good will for easy dealing and acceptability of your point of view. Good relationship with customer facilitates easy acceptance of project/product.

•         Reliable. You are to be a reliable person to deal with seniors, customers and vendors.  Your words be your commitment and infuse trust. You should say what you mean and mean what you say. All things being equal, you win a contract/deal because of your reliability.

•         Reliability .  Any product. Project or service you provide should have  good reliability in terms of its operation , efficiency  and fault tolerance.

•         Religious. Religion , culture and customs have a binding force. It takes us toward God and suggests all of us to live in harmony and support the needy. There must not be any discrimination based on religion. All religions propagate love, compassion and faithfulness,

•         Relocate. Be ready to get relocated anywhere inside/ outside the country, as per need of the job and do not hang on to your comfort zone.

•          Reminder. In today’s busy and fast moving world, people are overloaded with inputs. Often some of them forget the time and date of the event. They even forget to look into the diary or calendar. A timely soft reminder is a good gesture so that they do not miss the opportunity/ event.

•         Reprimand. Do not reprimand your team members for small mistakes/issues.  Instead, you should advise them in private. However, you should praise them in public.

•         Requirement and Expectation. All customers define their functional requirements while signing the contract and agree for the duration and cost. However, many of them have higher expectations and expect you to deliver more and at lower cost. A customer and service provider must have mutually agreed on a requirement and work on that. If the customer wants some new features those may be provided for additional cost and time. Product design should not be over optimized but have some cushion to accommodate additional requirement , without much upheaval.

•         Resentment. Always maintain good relationship at the workplace with seniors as well as junior, with friend and at home. You may have point of difference but there   should be no resentment.  Keep happy work environment to maximise productivity.

•         Resilient.  As a leader you must be resilient enough to withstand pressure of work and other ups and downs. There can be bad patches or difficult times, You must show your endurance so that team stay inspired and show carries on.

•         Respectful. Being respectful is maturity and you earn praise from seniors and loyalty from team-mates. Similarly, being respectful to family members, relatives. friends and elders  you draw love and praise from all.

•         Responsive. Remember life is 10% what really happens and 90% is how you respond/react. We are free to choose our response to a given situation but not free to choose the consequences of those actions. Therefore your response should be timely and  a well thought of action.

•         Responsible. Be responsible for whatever you decide or do and must not pass the buck by finding scapegoat. Your team members are intelligent people to see through your actions and reactions. Remember authority can be shared but not responsibility. Everybody’s responsibility is nobody’s responsibility as accountability cannot be fixed. You must stay responsible for your decision and should also hold team members responsible for their actions.

•         Recruitment. When you recruit people, be very selective and show no bias on any account. You must go through all written tests and face-to- face interview, at the required level. You should check for IQ/EQ/AQ test and pick up the best and leave the rest. Post recruitment. it is your /HRD  responsibility  is conduct formal training  or on-the-job training and make then billable.

•         Retrain. Select your employees very carefully , train  them hard  and retain for longer period. Do not hire and fire them .like casual labour. Instead, invest time, funds and required resources for their training and building required skills. To get good return on investment, good employees should be retained for longer period. They will become more loyal and committed.to you and the organisation.

•         Result-Oriented. It is well established that “Nothing succeeds like success.” Therefore your all plans and actions should be result-oriented to deliver quality product/service on-time and within budget.

•         Retention.  Some company follow hire and fire policy where they  keep employees as long as the project is in hand. Better HR   policy  should be to recruit carefully, train vigorously, deploy judiciously and retain for longer time. As an employer, you must pick the best and leave the rest. Once you got the right talent they would require fresh training to match up with required competency and be fully productive. It is  many times better to retrain loyal and committed  existing employees and retrain them as needed than to pick up fresh candidates. They may cost lesser but they will longer to be fully billable. Your trained/ experienced personnel are your intellectual capital. Retain them for longer time to get best return on investment.

•         Ride the wave. Do not keep thinking and hesitate to grab the opportunity.  Some people suffer from – “Pyrolysis through Analysis” and miss the opportunity. Instead, keep an eye on emerging job environment and learn new skills to ride the technology wave.

•         Rights and Responsibility. Most people demand their rights, entitlements and privileges but they often forget their responsibility towards the organisation.. Remember good old saying by USA president, late John F Kennedy.- “ Do not ask what country can do for you. Instead, ask what can  you do for the country.

•         Rigid. You must show flexibility to accommodate others point of view/ideas. Collective wisdom leads to assured cooperation and success

•         Righteous. You must follow the righteous path and be a good example of moral values. Your teammates will emulate you and maintain good work culture.

•         Rise to the Occasion. Always be the first to rise to an occasion and take on additional responsibility. This will make you a popular team member.

•         Risk-Taking. All innovation and new ventures will have risk. Your risk-taking profile should be high so that you could convert risk into opportunity.

•         Roadblocks. There will be roadblocks in your journey of career and you got to learn how to take a detour and get past the roadblock.

•         Roadmap. After say 2-3 years of initial grounding in your first job, you must prepare a roadmap for your career. Set milestones along the career path. Visualise and plan as where you should be in next 3 years, 5 years ,7 years and 10 years.  Let this roadmap be your companion.

•         Robust. Your plan must be robust to overcome any unexpected interruption and scheduled activities must continue. You need to cater for contingencies and build-in safety measures.

•         Role. Most of the younger professionals look for a role-model to emulate. Role of a good manager /leader is to set personal example by demonstrative performance. Your team members will stay inspired and carry out their role more vigorously.

•         Roots. While you may move inside or outside the country in pursing good career, you should maintain links with your roots (back home country and family). It helps you to be compassionate, stable and kind.

•         Rules and Regulation. Ignorance of rules and regulations is no excuse for poor/wrong decision making. Rules and regulations could be laid down by the organisation or by the Governing body or by the Government The senior management in most organisation seeks inputs from others and give due consideration while formulating rules and regulations.  Rules  must be easily accessible on-line or in department library. Simple rules are easy to follow by all. Once, the rules are made by the senior management, those must be followed by all. You must set an example to follow rules religiously.

•         Rude. Be calm and composed during any conversation. Being rude is a sign of immaturity and no one likes such behaviour. Being kind will strengthen relationship while being rude, you may lose friends and customers, vendors and suppliers. While being kind and respectful shows maturity and good character. A kind person is a winner all the way.

•         Rumours. With social media becoming very potent networking tool, some irresponsible elements, inside and outside the organisation tend to spread rumours Do not allow rumours to spread in your team/ organisation. Always find facts and reliable information for decision-making and do not believe in hear-say/ rumours.

•          Rush. You should plan meticulously and execute resolutely. Do not rush to take shortcut for easy solution. . Take your time, plan well and seek inputs for making a good decision.

To read more you may refer to my books/ebooks  “ A2Z- 26 steps for Assured Success”. and   “Career Challenges during Global Uncertainty”,  available  on   www.amazon.com    or www. amazon.in

Brig ( Retd) Dr. Sarbjit Singh, Former Exec Director,  Apeejay College of Engineering and Hony Advisor  School of Engineering and Technology, Apeejay Stya University, Sohna , Gurgaon, Haryana, India 122103.

  Contact:  drsarbjit@gmail.com