Lean Advantage

  Well Wishers or Not a Well Wisher Learning is the most inevitable part of our lives, we learn from what we do & we also learn from what we choose not to do. We all come across people that in one or another ways impart necessary learnings, so either we can choose to become a listener with patience, an observer with intent & a learner full of gratitude or we follow the most popular way of learning things, the hard way. Along the way up in life, it becomes very important to understand & identify who is actually a well wisher, or more critically when is someone wishing well & when they are not wishing well for us. The realization about who actually wished well & who stood by watching us, mostly comes after either we have entered into a difficult situation or we may have just managed to come out of it anyhow. And all these can be analyzed in time if we are in a mind set to understand & accept that our own perception about any given situation is just one of the ...

  Being Human : Judging & getting Judged In every aspect of life we interact with human beings for personal & professional reasons. Knowingly or unknowingly, we have this in our DNA that we remain careful enough to only let our good side out & make sure that a positive impression is made, during every such interaction. But again these positive impressions may only last as long, no personal or professional interaction can ever remain on the surface, unless they are entirely superficial. The more we interact, the more we keep opening ourselves & also start experiencing their perceptions that were initially not being let out. Like religious & political views, their understanding about socio-economic scenarios & so on. While we learn a lot about them, it may equally make them know about us, unless either of us remain insincere towards each other. It is here, slowly & steadily the judging starts taking place, individuals after having known each...

  Deploying Emotional Intelligence in Interpersonal Relationship: The level of our job satisfaction on daily bases is directly dependent on how our various professional interactions helped us to achieve our objectives. These interactions may be with juniors, with colleagues in the same department or other departments & of course with the Boss. Most of these interactions though might be objectively initiated for whatever profiles that one is managing, the progress of any interaction & its end results may not necessarily follow the expected route,  Why? Because,  1) We are working with our set of experience, intelligence, understanding, expectations & perception. 2) While on the other hand the person we are interacting with may have their own set of these very aspects. 3) In most cases, initiation flows or flies if the concerns are mutually agreeable, while data, details & presentation of the proposals matters, what matters most is h...

  Pay Package/Salary Negotiation :  Mostly underlined as CTC, Cost to Company, but not necessarily implied to the Net pay. CTC, includes many other allowances that any Organization may pay & might not be a part of the net salary, such as telephone/mobile allowances, Mediclaim, subsidized meals & so on.  Net pay is what drops into the account after all necessary deductions. What are the criteria to be considered while getting to a level where the salary part is discussed & negotiated: A) One must understand that CV & the follow through of every interview may always remain a determinant factor in having any say or leverage on the Pay Package negotiation. B) Let us also understand some probable conditions of hiring, Organization is hiring because someone in that position is leaving, any healthy organization will first consider to promote the next person available in the department, if at all they were working on any succession plan, because eve...

  Profile Selection Criteria While Considering a Job Change : As discussed in an earlier post, there are some certain criteria that can help us do a self assessment on our job satisfaction, it is equally important that one may have to also carry out a detailed study on all different criteria for selection of the next job & profile.  Though it is absolutely necessary to have a clear understanding on the reasons for which one is considering changing their job, at the same point in time, those very reasons shouldn't be the only criteria or a base to be considered for selection of a new job. For example someone is experiencing too much work load or pressure from the seniors & hence they are looking for a change, then within an interview time of 30 minutes, it may be very difficult to find out if the new job or the senior will be more accommodating than the present one. Following are few of such criteria that can be considered: A) Do not remain confined to look for the...

  Interview from the Perspectives of an Interviewer :  There is a lot of information available on how a candidate must maintain their Do's & Don'ts during an interview, but to add a cherry on top of the cake, please let us go through how an interviewer may be thinking & proceeding with the interview process. A) Application letter, content of your CV summary & the layout of CV with key words makes the very first as well as a lasting impression. That is because it is well understood that any candidate who can be very impressive in their presentation, is believed to be very particular with whatever profile they are working on. B) So if there are some 10 to 15 applications & you happen to be one of them to be called for an interview, there is a probability that either you are already been considered & that the interview is an formality to ensure that their selection is worth and valid, and if you are not that one, than the second options is that ...

  Changing a Job, What are the criteria to be considered? Mostly we see that people leave their jobs when they arrive at any unforeseen circumstances whereby they are left with no other options than to quit their job.  In modern times, this shouldn't be the case, as it implies to the fact that individuals remain comfortable getting adapted to all those circumstances that actually should have been taken as indicators of what may come & eventually push one off the cliff, leave their jobs, either without having any other suitable job or settling for any available job. Any new professional profile, irrespective of their hierarchy in the system, may take nothing less than 3 to 6 months to settle in & start creating value from the desk. Hence one must take at least 1000 working days as a benchmark for carrying out their own job evaluation. Ask the following questions to yourself after you have completed working for at least 1000 days in that very organization, the...

  Business Excellence As the term suggests, it is the principle upon which any business can be placed on a paradigm shift towards, optimized utilization of all available resources to deliver excellent results for the stakeholders. And as the study & analysis of every aspect of the business is carried out, the quality of services driven by the refined systems in practice may lay a very strong foundation for the business to not only remain profitable but to grow & get better in competition. Fundamentals of every business are always glaringly conveying the need of the hour. Today there are hardly few business that are having any monopoly, yet we see & experience the some businesses are still able to enjoy & maintain status like monopoly, that is lead the market share by large.  And we may need to ask ourselves why & how? Here we have option to study & understand what are all the right things being done by rest of the competitors in the market & we...

  Autonomous Maintenance : As much as the word appears to be self explanatory, in one or another way everyone in their daily lives may have been practicing the same. We try our level best to make sure that all of our gadgets & equipment that we use in our daily life are clean & maintained well to keep serving their purpose, that includes some basic cleaning & up keeping to maybe even some complex preventive & corrective maintenance. Autonomous Maintenance is all about instilling the ownership of the equipment or machine to its user/operator & that cuts across a very profound psychological aspect of human beings. With Ownership of any equipment/machine that is also helping an individual to not only earn their bread, but is also providing them self satisfaction, they will do all that is necessary to make sure that the equipment/machine remains performing optimally, while with slightest of deviations they may take note of the same & do ...

  Bottleneck Vs Discipline: Though a technical terminology used to define the process flow constraints, it can still be related to every other system when the efficiency evaluation is carried out. In any process industry, there are various stages of operations & functions & each of these functions has their standard processing time, that when combined with every process & operation from input to be converted into finished goods may help determine the overall cycle time of the entire process.  So for example there are A, B, C, D & E processes defined to get a desired Finished Product, process A takes 10 minutes to complete, B takes 12 minutes, while C & D may take 10 minutes & E again takes 11 minutes, here process B with highest time consuming process is the bottleneck, hence all necessary constraints may have to be studied & reviewed to either reduce the process time of B to 10 minutes or if possible then it should be even reduc...

  Some practical aspects of Operations Management in a Business: Any full scale operations of a business will have many departments that help focus and function on their given objectives. Accounts & Finance, Production & Process, Stores, Sales & Marketing, Admin & HR, Logistics & Warehousing, may be many more to add. For any efficient Operations Management, professionals with relevant field experiences are hired or in some cases, freshers are also trained in some specific departments & related activities. Though any given Operations if well defined with SOPs & systems can remain preforming at its excellence, the key still lies in identifying skills & limitations of the work force. As much as every department HOD may have to run a valid skill metrics for every individual in their team, the highest & lowest deliverable that can be achieved by either of the team members should be realized & reasserted. For example, if an account officer is able ...

  Empathetic Leadership : Empathy means being able to understand the perspective, reasoning & reactions of other people around, more importantly as is, without allowing it to run through our expectations or stand points. In layman's language to be in their shoes & feel exactly the same. Since the time of Industrial Revolution, the work force required to keep up with the demand on jobs has been told and taught to remain brutally professional, but yet with the IT revolution, abundance of information & knowledge are at the disposal of these workforce & hence their needs & intellectual levels have changed. And that makes today's workforce smarter, more intelligent & practical, & hence they need more emotional support & bonding than ever before. What is most difficult in the empathetic approach is to maintain the boundary, as much as possible the Leader may try to remain connected without being attached to the concerns & problems of the teammate t...

  Sales Pitching : Products & Services are expected to do well in their respective markets & segments, as long as they meet the most basic requirements of the customer or end user. Brands that have remained focused on sales promotions, incentives, free bees, & so on may eventually establish themselves at a very preferred brand, to an extent that any given product may end up being called with that very brand name. The sales representatives of these brands that have already established themselves may only have to do a regular follow up & then may a special pitching might be required when any new product is launched, but then since the brand name is already popular the pitching might be just a formality, unless it is a different segment product altogether. While in the case of any upcoming brand, the sales representative may have to educate themselves to the level of R & D Engineers who may have worked for years in developing or refining the given product...

  Business Efficiency : Every Business no matter whatever product or services they are offering is by large objectively working towards its profitability, while philanthropy may evolve through any business along the line when it is sustained over a period of time. Growth, expansion & diversification of every business is directly proportional to the strategies on risk that an investor is willing to practice & perfect. Whereas the process of making any on going business more efficient every other day is directly proportional to the commitments, motivation & dedication of the team involved at every level. Commitment is a very basic trait that is expected from every professional. For the given 7 to 8 hours of work in a day, focusing on deliverables, self monitored and organized utilization of time & resources is expected without being reminded & follow ups. But yet subject to many internal and external circumstances, there may remain various deviations that might or...