Success Counts

All these years, when I see people like Tiger Woods, Michael Schumacher or a Sachin Tendulkar, I think what is that separates them from rest of us. I read a lot of article on them, saw a lot of their interviews and this is what I thought has made them successful in life -

Everybody knows that success does not go to those who never struggle. But while dreaming of success, one should be always ready for hard work. It is not something which can be achieved by spending money. What is needed is will-power, which comes from soul and heart, is needed. If our will-power is strong, we will be successful and a successful person is always found confident. But success demands hard work, struggle, sacrifice etc.

Emily Dickinson says – “Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed”.

It is to some extent true, however successes is success. It is counted sweetest by everyone who struggles. So, struggle hard and be successful. Nothing is impossible, because if our will is strong, we can achieve everything. After all, “where there is a will, there is a way”.

Do not be afraid of failure, because failure is the first step on the way to success. Learn to face problems, bear troubles. Don’t worry and be happy: Remember that if we laugh, the whole world laughs with us. But if we weep, we will have to weep alone. So cheer up, be optimistic and courageous. Make your will power strong.

And the man who does not want badly enough to do a thing; will make any excuse for not doing it. We should never allow ourselves to think that any task or work is beyond us and any position is too high. We have to toil hard, lift the road, rack our brains and sweat it out to secure a worthy goal. It is highly impossible to get success without hard work. We should be confident; hope for the bright future; always think positively and do not totally depend on fate, because we are the master of our own fate. With oour strong will-power, enthusiasm any great thing can be achieved.

“The Secret of success in life lies in keeping the head above the storm of heart. A successful person never allows his faculty of discrimination and Judgment to be disturbed by the rising tides of his mental emotions”.

Look Who's talking

While the whole world is crying over rising fuel price, and most of the developed as well as some of the developing countries are blaming India and Chinta for this, I came across this interesting article,
http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/jul/23look.htm

Read this and decide who is to be blamed....

United HealthGroup - The “CAPTIVE”

It took me a while to pen down this blog of mine which was going through my mind for long. Not sure what stopped me for so long, maybe I was trying to get my anger calm down and my hatred settled down. Considering I resigned on 14^th May 2008, It took long, isn’t it?

It takes me back to the day I joined UHG 14^th May 2007, full of energy, expectation and spark in my eyes to make it really big. I also remember the guys who joined with me the same day, but left it long back. Things were so good when I joined, on one hand Diwakar was there greeting everyone personally, on the other we had Prabir, full of life and warm smile. Things looked positive, energetic and I was feeling as if I had hit a bulls eye by leaving IBM and joining UHG.

Did anyone notice the coincidence that I joined on 14^th May 07 and resigned on 14^th May 08?

Today I feel sad. For what felt like an amazing organization has turned into and absolute nightmare where a group of confused individuals (so called leadership) are trying to take it to a place called nowhere. In a way it has become a monarchy where the king decides everything and he is surrounded by like minded ministers who thinks that the only way of moving ahead is buttering and nodding to King’s decision. Further to this there are some idiosyncratic guys sitting on top and getting appreciated for their lunatics.

The Problems

1. There isn’t any skill set to Job matching – UHG is full of individuals who are experienced at some level but are put into an entirely alien area or something which they do not want to do.
2. One of the worst set of Employee Relations Team – The Employee Relation team at UHG is more of a Supervisors relation team. The only thing that they care about is how to keep the leadership happy. They have forgotten their basic job and are warming the heels of Leadership to gain rapid strides inside the organization. I have never seen such pathetic set of ER team in my career. With an ER team like that Employee know that there isn’t anyone who will listen to them and care about them. I just hope that someone will tell them that thing like UFL, quizzes etc only works when an employee is happy and trusts them. For now it’s a time killing mechanism for most.
3. Employee Unfriendly – No policies for Employee, no benefits, nothing that will excite an employee. The icing on the cake is the Leadership which says “We do not have any budgets for things like party or team budget” or “ aapko party kyon chahiye, daru piney ke liye?”…..well I am speechless. They have budgets for Leadership off-sites for something like discussion about setting up competency. Competency in a captive? When I proposed this idea, I was given a feedback that we will not work like a consulting firm, we are a captive unit. It brings me to the next point.
4. No Respect for Employees initiatives – It’s an organization where the more initiative you take, the more you will be pushed back to the oblivion. Your crime – you are working beyond your scopes. Do I need to say more?
5. Extremely Poor Management skills of Managers – With due respect to some of the managers who are good, most of the managers I met or saw were delivery centric without worrying about the future and aspirations of their team members. The only thing that they are worried is about the delivery, rest all go to hell…
6. The Belief of US counterparts being clients – This has been one of the major pains of this organization. Ever since one joins the organization, one is forced to treat the US counterparts as the client. Similarly the US counterparts treat the Indian employees as their vendor and then rest we all know what happens in a client vendor relation.
7. Crazy timings – The 11.30-8.30 shift is very painful. It leaves you nowhere. You hang between day and night and your personal life goes for a toss. Leave everything for a weekend and sacrifice your rest is the motto.
8. Leadership – Most importantly, the leadership, I do not know how to describe them. They are a set of egoist people who care about their ego to the fullest and employee / organization to the farthest. They have made sure that the organization is an opaque one and no information flows from the top to the bottom. For example, team formation takes place without the consent of the Team Lead. One fine day the lead comes to know that an individual is joining his/her team. This is just one example among zillions of other. The leadership in this organization has ensured that no one remains happy and confident about their growth, their career path. One never knows what happened to the promises that were made to them before joining the organization. Promises like Variable to be paid 100% if not more, like reviews will be honest and will be the catalyst for appraisal etc. All the time they will say that it’s an open organization yet when you seek 10 minutes from their time they will not have anything for you. You write a mail, they will not even bother to respond. Your crime – you are not from the leadership team or even a project manager.

These are quite a few things to say, but I am sure I can write more. As I think, I am cursing the day when I selected UHG from 8 other job offers that I had. It was one of the worst career moves that I made.

For the few who are reading this, the good-bye mail that I wrote on the last day at UHG was a complete satire and every single word was an irony :-) . The funny thing is that everyone failed to understand this. Another feather in the UHG cap.

It has become a “CAPTIVE” in every sense.

[Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely of the writer. Based on what he's seen, heard and felt, and do not represent anyone else's views or concerns]