Sunday, February 21, 2010

HOW NOT TO GO THE JACK WELCH WAY – END CORPORATE IDENTITY AND SLAVERY



Lets face it folks. We live in a world where from the time you walk into your locality or meet a group of new faces much of the time you are compelled to focus on defining yourself and most of the shame/pride is attached to your identity about what you do or where you work. You are either very proud that you work in a top MNC or you are trying to cover up where exactly you work hiding the facts as it were. This is a real sorry state of affairs and I like to think of this as sometimes as a carry over of the slave mentality when we were serving the British. We are now reduced to a nation of workers either proud or covering up our identities whereever we work. I find even the pride carried by people doing business extremely noxious as if they are doing something great by buying and selling wares or so called consultancy which is finally only trying to help some Business run those margins better and make more money at the end of the day.
The blame can be laid at the doors of our so called society aka peer groups and peer pressure that abounds in plenty and also we have our self seeking coroporations who will do anything to make you a slave a al Jack Welch Corporate regime. They want to see you hungry for money, power and hierarchy and hanker for the next higher position or raise. Only those who hanker for these things are given proper respect among the echelons of management. You become a VP once all these have got to you head as much as it got into Jack Welch’s head so much that if we study his lifestory we will find that he has turned into a human monster who has divorced three loyal housewifes (one on whom he even cheated on to get to the next one) but was more concerned with staying loyal to the same corporation ie GE. And folks this is the kind of drivel he drove into his colleagues and team members. I mean what kind of a human being would be like that. So the next time you hear of vision, mission aka corporate greed in various forms being shoveled up your ass remember they rather see you as a Jack Welch Monster adding so called value to the company than as a sane family man who wishes to spend some quality time with his family members. All corporations are now being build on these foundations howmuchever your manager lies to everyday as to how important his family is but rather stay back late hours in the name of finishing work. So he’s only trying to save his ass at the end of the day and doesntly really care for family values which he preaches to you to sound human when he is really a corporate monster.

Are you the types who have been bought up on reading up Jack Welch’s series of books. Lets face it guys whom are we trying to emulate and read. A man who would rather divorce three loyal wifes but swears by only one Company all his life. Such a person would rather be called a monster than a

HR – cant stand a guy who loves long breaks and less interest in promotion. Potential miscreant and he is made to look like a criminal and he is buffeted with theories of how you should be hardworking and the corporate profitability from your continuous working with them is more important than you getting a relaxed vacation. This is corporate selfishness cloaked in the disguise of HR policy.All work and less relaxation contributes to the corporate coffers. Damn the importance of individual striving for personal growth other than career growth. Career is everything, career is king – this is what HR would like to believe in for your salvation and make you look like a Christian sinner if you don’t believe so and their open agenda of it additing to corporate efficiency, culture(money oriented) and fattening the purses at the end of the day. If you are not motivated enough to aim to raise in the corporate ladder or you stand contended to accept personal growth over coproate growth you become a liability because management finds it hard to deal with such individuals who value themselves a lot.

Boss hooks onto your child ego and you suffer merciless at the hands of a “merciless” parent ego at work. Most Boss-subordinate relationships are a hangover of our child ego which was nurtured on parental approval. If we had a child ego which was always seeking parental approval which it never got because most parents didn’t really accept you till were a topper, that same ego is nourished and used to advantage at the corporate level where you they give make you seek the rating that they give you as “approval” or worse approval based on massaging the Boss’s ego by sticking with his workalohic nature thought you might be better off at home and could have really done the work later. The Boss tries also to make it look like his workaholic nature is a positive thing as if he were doing it for his country when the real fact is his child ego is burning its ass off to get approval from top management’s parent ego and he is trying to rub it off on you. If you try going home earlier and act like an individual and not like a child it would hurt his parent ego and that bruised ego would get to you later on in meetings wherein he would unleash his anger sometime. Anybody who has not mastered anger or rather who is prone to it is deep down very immature. Remember there is no such thing as getting angry as an action its always a reaction born of poor temparment and maturity levels. Anybody who tries to fool you into saying that he uses anger to control his suboridinates is very much like a drunkard who tries to tell you that the bottle in his hand is in his control whereas he is already a slave to the liquour inside it. No true leader gets angry fullstop. A person prone to the emotion of anger has no mastery on himself so he never be a true master of others. Whatever mastery he gets out of others is forced and he will never get a motivated team loyal to him. The team would at worst tolerate him as much as a child tolerates and manages angry parents. They have to learn clever tricks to make sure they don’t anger him and much time and efforts go into massaging his ego and making sure they are towing his line in fear of anger and reprisal than stand up as individuals.

The Way out – Develop an identity on the basic person that you are and live a Low maintenance High Happiness/quality quotient lifestyle. By low maintenance lifestyle make sure you can always do with lesser paying jobs so that you are not a slave to the money you earn or get brainwashed by your peer groups and HR departments who thrive on your hunger for more money and raises at the end of the day to make you work harder for that extra promotion which you really don’t need. What you need is individuality and self respect. Don’t shy away from hardwork but not at the cost of hard personal growth and family love and parents which you were born with to cherish and which no money can buy. Don’t become a child before your boss to fall into his weakness for wealth and power that underlie his hardwork. You don’t need his approval at a basic level or to become like him unless you naturally see some traits worth emulating, its more often the case that he needs to become like you. This is the reason why you will find your boss always speaking once in a while at least something great about themselves. This is a subtle form of asserting a superior parent ego on you and gain control of your approval seeking from him. He wants you to always look upto him/her for approval. A Good boss wont do that. He will be very objective and ensure you have a good personal growth and life other than the work you share which is a but a small aspect of yourself. Working for the immature boss is the be all and the end all. There is no space or time where you can grow into a more mature and balanced person. The Controlling Parental Ego boss doesn’t really like to see you standing on his feet and the only time he would like you standing on your own feet is when he feels he has helped you become that and you would announce to the world that it is all due to his grace that you have grown. He doesn’t like you standing tall on your own feet and you will never find him acknowledging this fact openly he would rather see you stand tall on his shoulders as that meets his ego requirements.