Thursday, September 6, 2012

UNDERSTANDING THE WORKING PATTERN OF AN INDIVIDUAL


If we look into the corporate world today, then we experience that the biggest challenge is to place the right person at the right place at the right time. If you see the information technology world, it is visible that the manpower turnover rate is killing. It is the greatest challenge to the manager to understand and manage the people at work. It is very challenging to train them in uni-direction.

Once, I was conducting my firewalk seminar. In that the director of the company, Sanjay Bhatia, narrated a motivational story. He explained that a company is like a boat and all of them are sailing in it. Now the boat will go ahead only when everybody rows in the same direction and everybody puts the energy that they have instead of watching who is putting what kind of energy and in what ratio.This story was highly motivational, but do you think everybody took it in the same spirit? No. There were many corporate executives from all parts of the country. 
Everybody would have taken this story according to their own paradigm. If you refer to Pareto’s analysis, who is an Italian Economist, you will find that 20% of the employees contribute to 80% of complaints and dissatisfactionIf we focus on 20% of the employees, 80% of the problems will be solved. Employee related problems can be tackled and eliminated if we understand the pattern of working of every individual. If any individual is posted at the right place or the place of his own interest, there will be job enrichment and enhancement in efficiency. We must know that the most important step is to identify an individual. Even the father of scientific management F. W. Taylor clearly says that we must identify the efficient workers and inefficient workers. Identification of employees leads to identification of human behaviour. Therefore, it is our primary duty to identify the workers and subsequently provide the work. Even parents must understand what their children deserve. Sometimes parents become unreasonable with their children.


Every individual has different patterns of life. Even in my seminars, when I crack jokes, some people laugh like anything, while some don’t. Earlier, I used to be a visiting professor at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. There also if I used to explain any concept, then some people would be very happy while some would not. Several times I used to think why there was a differentresponse for the same action. It is because every individual has different patterns of life.

Let us understand the different behaviours of an individual.

1. Process-oriented

Some people are process-oriented. They go step by step. They believe in systems. They believe in mechanisms. They believe in orientation. I am not saying if this is good or bad. I am trying to make you focus on the nature of the person. Accounts people are process oriented. Sales people are goal oriented. Law firms believe that no work is complete unless the paper work is done. Human behaviour varies from individual to individual. Let me tell you about one person who believed in process and function and he gave the world a complete new mode of transportation.

A twelve-year-old boy was going along with his farmer father. He saw a train. He was so inquisitive that he went to the driver of the train and enquired how the train worked. His process based mind thought that if a train could work on a track, then why could not a chariot move on a plain road with a machine and not by horses. This process was settled in his brain. When his father used to think about seeds, soil, fertilisers, his mind used to work on the instrument which could be used in ploughing the fields. He worked in Detroit to repair various machines but there too he used to visualise the process of making a machine cart. At the age of 25 he got married on the condition that his first love would be the process of making a car only and nothing else. Later on, this person used towork in Edison Illuminating Company. He used to work day and night on the process of car manufacturing. On 4 June, 1896 this process based man brought the first car on the road and he was none other than Henry Ford. And today the whole world respects and admires the incredible mechanism produced by Henry Ford’s brain. These kind of people

must be put at functional work.

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