20 April, 2008

"The Next level thing"

Mr. XYZ you could have won 25 lakh if you had answered this question correctly. This is what Amitabh Bachchan used to say when he was the anchor of the show "Kaun Banega Crorepati". And the person on the "hot seat" would start feeling miserable. Instead of feeling that he will take home some amount, Mr. XYZ will go with a feeling that he missed a chance of having 25 lakh.

It is very natural of human nature that its needs are ever increasing. It wants more and more [not Aditya Birla's Retail store ;) ]. In this process Man's level of happiness is decreasing. Be it his career or salary or any other material possession, he wants the "next level thing". Well this is good when it is in terms of gaining knowledge or progress in career. This is his intellectual or calibre thirst which will make her/his personality more and more refined each time it is quenched. But when it comes to material possessions such thirst will lead to nothing but unhappiness.

Perfection is a very subjective term. According to me, it can never be attained. One can only strive to attain it throughout her/his life. But satisfaction can be attained and enjoyed. And dont confuse satisfaction with complacency. To be complacent is to be satisfied with one's faults. The satisfaction that I am referring to here means contentment you gain when you feel you have done something right. This leads to happy state of mind and that makes mind free to mingle with the world that is very typical of you.

Rampent competition in all the walks of life is giving a feeling of being "incompetent" to a person who dosent achieve the standards set by society. And he/she feels satisfied when he/she attains those. But do they think why are they strieving so hard to attain those or how will he/she meet her/his personal goals by meeting those standards set by society? ( well ..how many of us have personal goals here).

So the bottom line is, satisfaction be it materail or spiritual, can bring true happiness to you and its better if one sets his/her standards to attain it. ( It is assumed that standards here mean something that one considers to be ideal).

11 April, 2008

Head Hunting

There is an immediate requirement. This position needs to be filled or else there will be role erosion of other employee. How to go about it? The main selector is so much held up with her own job that she doesn’t have time to hunt for the candidate, conduct interview, set terms and conditions and appoint. A facilitator has come for the time being and wants to help main selector to come out of this crisis situation.

She decides to go for searching the candidate right away. She directly goes into labour market and finds two candidates who were on their way to existing jobs. Facilitator establishes a quick conversation with both of them on one-to-one basis. She assesses the likelihood of both the candidates to perform the job and finally requests both the candidates to come to company and perform job.

Of the two candidates only one turns up and gets the word of appointment.

The candidates in the description above are none other than maid servants for washing clothes. Main selector is none other than my mom and facilitator is myself. This is "Kahaani Ghar Ghar ki " these days.

With mall culture entering India, westernization happening in the retail sector is affecting the supply of all the labour intensive sectors. They are attracting the labour force. All the maids that used to work for you a year back are all joining mega stores and hypermarkets to make quick and big money. So be prepared to be self reliant for all household chores. (Especially working people, this is like ringing of death knell for you).