Gain the competitive edge at work

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Mistakes are good, too!

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Wading through testing times

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Understanding the importance of Ethics

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Do what you love to do

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To change or not to change

While most of us are able to recognize the right time to quit our jobs and move on to a new job, there are many questions that disturb us and keep haunting even after we start working in the new job. People often wish there was a checklist that will help them or a quitto-meter that tells that time is ripe to make the next move. While we leave these new gadgets to be developed by psychological experts, here are some pointers that will help you find out if you made the right decision.

Identify your state of mind. You think that it is clear in your mind that you are not happy with your current job or that you are too happy with your current job. But, there is something more that you need to do to know your state of mind. Indeed, there are some subtractions that you need to make to your inference.

First, subtract the industry trend from your state of mind. Even if there is recession and your industry is likely to collapse, you might survive if you are happy with your job and you do well as an expert. Or, things might pick up. Understand that it would be more difficult to establish yourself in a new industry.

Second, remove inferences and others' opinions. An uncle from England might suddenly criticize your choice of job or the company. Or, a friend might brag about his company and extra perks it offers. While some of them do it with a very good intention, it might not always be to your advantage if you base your decision on their expertise. Take into consideration all the factors that make up your current job - your comfort zone, your skill set, and your personal and financial status and requirements. Assess your happiness with respect to all these factors and estimate the impact of change on all these factors. Thus, you will be able to appreciate your current situation and the opportunities available to you in a fair manner.

Then, remove other people's feelings. Now that most of your colleagues want to quit the job should not necessarily motivate you also to do so. Analyze the various factors at your current job such as performance, pay, team dynamics, and growth prospects for your role to identify if it is time fo you to explore other opportunities.

Finally, never lose an opportunity because of just people. If you have a wonderful team at your present company, while all other factors are not promising, you might as well decide to move on. Remember that you can remain friends with the people despite the changes. Likewise, you can always come across good people and build new relationships. Hence, you need to focus on your needs and wants while taking the decision.

Work Out of the Box

Manage. Prioritize. Strategize. Plan. Execute. If you find these words troublesome, it is time to rethink the way you look at work. It is not just enough to think out of the box. You need to work out of the box. You need to realign your view of work and life. Here are some interesting ideas that help you do this. Well, you can manage your work on the basis of time, urgency, or magnitude of work. However, this article focuses on other ideas that help you in managing and does not describe any of the above methods of time and work management.

Break your work into sub-tasks. You must have heard it umpteen times already to break your tasks into sub-tasks. However, the catch here is that you must also classify the sub-tasks into two categories - tasks that you like to do immediately, and tasks that you prefer to delay.

Do what you like, first. This might not always be feasible to do. If you begin doing things that you like, you tend to get into the working and accomplishment mode and start completing things. Hence, it is always better to start your day or your session with tasks that you like to do.

Like whatever you do, next. The idea stated before does not necessarily mean that you should keep delaying the other tasks that you dislike. You must, instead, develop a knack for liking all tasks that yield good results for you. There are different reasons for disliking tasks - they might be tedious, boring, or associated with uninteresting people. Sometimes, you might not be in the right frame of mind to do certain tasks. You need to identify the reason as to why you dislike each task and work upon it individually. Avoid mixing tasks and your impressions regarding the tasks. This is similar to the way in which people mix different events and start blaming their lives and get into depression cycles. Hence, it is always better to single out tasks that you do not like and deal with each one individually.

Focus on the results. If there are tasks that do not yield favorable results, identify the reasons for the failure. Either you are not well-equipped to handle them or you not inclined to handle such tasks. You have to train yourself well for the former situation. In the case of latter situation, you must find better ways to execute the task or find ways to delegate it to others. You might also need to work with better associations in some cases. More often, we dislike tasks when we need to interact with unpleasant people. The significant reason behind such a dislike is the ignorance towards developing better relations with people. If you master that art, there is no looking back in the execution of people-dependant tasks.

Do things differently. Break the regular pattern. Experiment. It is easier to change the steps in a process when you have the time. Thus, you might come up with better ideas. Discuss with team mates. Brainstorm. Share new ideas. Conduct further research. Dig deeper into the process cycles. Spend some amount of time everyday to identify ways to do things differently. You will be surprised at the outcome. Well, it is not just about top management and leaders to come up with ideas. Most ideas come from the frontline staff who work day in and day out.

Do different things. Break the monotony. If you have been doing the same job for a long time, take a break. Do something else that interests you. Do some new tasks. Meet new people. Develop new ideas. It does not mean that you start singing loud at work. It means that you do something very different from your regular routine. It gives you the necessary respite. If your job is to write code for software every day, try painting or photography for a day. Today, make a list of all interesting things that you have not done in your life. Start doing these things once in a while and remove items from the list. Such a list will also broaden your perspective. You will also appreciate the importance of taking vacation frequently to rejuvenate your spirits and keep your creative juices flowing.

Big picture or finer aspects

Managers often confuse us by asking us to look at the bigger picture when we want to focus on the finer aspects of a task. At other times, when we try to look at the bigger picture, these managers focus on some trivial task. How to identify the situation and have the right perspective of your work?

Look at the bigger picture and work on the finer aspects. Learn to master the art of having a helicopter view of your work before you begin it and then break it into tasks and work upon each task seamlessly. The real trick lies in having the right perspective of your work at the right time. Too many tasks left unfinished might indicate that nothing is going as planned. However, a little bit of analysis will let you realize that all the tasks are going ahead in full swing and you need the right time to complete them effectively. In fact, you will also appreciate the importance of dependencies and other constraints and work toward handling them effectively. Here are some situations in which you need to carefully choose between the two approaches.

• Executing the project - Get an overall view of all the activities, regardless of your role. Find out about the sequence of activities and the different people assigned to the different tasks. Collect their contact information and keep it handy as it may help during the course of execution. While gathering all these details, focus on the nitty-gritty of all relevant information and not on the depth of the individual tasks.
• Executing the tasks - If you are assigned a single task, you should be able to know everything about your task and its relationship to the total project. Learn to identify similar tasks in your projects and keenly observe the progress even if it is beyond your responsibilities. This gives you a chance to collaborate with your team members and leverage on their experience when you encounter a new problem. As noted earlier, understand the interdependence between the various elements and realign your tasks accordingly.
• Dealing with issues - Identify if the issue is for an isolated event or related to other events and evaluate the impact of the issue on the various events. If there is considerable effect on a good number of events, you might seek the help of your manager to take a look at the bigger picture of the problem and take steps, as necessary.
• Tracking the status - You must know and track the status of the entire project if you are leading the project. However, you are required to know the status of other tasks and get regular updates even if you are responsible for a few tasks. As you do not work in isolation and realize the fact that your work is dependent on others' tasks, tracking plays a significant role. Here again, depending on your role, you need to be continuously updated about the progress.
• Assessing project efficiency - You can determine the efficiency of a project by considering the time and efforts you saved from being wasted. When you track the progress on a timeline, it is considered efficient if all the tasks are completed in time. More often than not, projects get delayed and deadlines get postponed. Break down the tasks into sub-tasks and track the progress. Thus, digging deeper for the finer aspects will help identify the root causes and mend them in the right time.

Mark your digital presence

Did you ever Google your own name? Did you get any results that directly relate to you? Did you ever try to search for your name in any of the search engines? If your answer is no, mark your presence on the Internet even before others do it for you. Use the Internet as a platform to showcase your expertise and skills and learn more from other experts at the same time. It is not only programmers, designers and journalists who can place their portfolio online. There are many ways in which you can comfortably showcase your expertise and mark your presence online.

Blogs - This can be a good place to begin. You can write anything about everything that you want to share with others. A new mother in California became famous overnight after she began sharing her experiences about bringing up a naughty child from the day one. Use your blog as a personal diary to let the world know more about you. Or try to include some tips about how to perform effectively in your job as a technical writer. Try blogger.com or wordpress.com to begin with a page of your own thoughts and experiences. You can later enhance it to build your own website. Try podcasting. A podcast is an audio file publicly available on the Internet. You can either use the existing podcasts to broaden your knowledge on a particular topic or make a podcast of your own if you have the skills and expertise. Yet, you need not rock your brains on how to make your own podcast. The search engines have many solutions here also. It is just the content that you should own.

Forums and communities – There are innumerable forums and communities relating to almost all job areas – programming, software testing, designing, writing, recruiting, Human Resource management, and even sports communities. Join these forums and you will be surprised at the help that you can get and benefit. People benefit in many ways by sharing their knowledge – they get exposure primarily and get to learn more by listening to the varied doubts of others. Information hoarding is a thing of the past. The netizens are more than willing to cooperate and collaborate. Wikipedia defines a Netizen as a person who actively involves in online communities. You can also enroll into a mailing list that is dedicated to your sphere of work. Search for your particular group on any of the hosting sites and join the group.

Online bookstores – You read enormous literature related to your area of business or operation. Spare a few minutes to comment on a popular book to help others choose the book. You gain advantage by being listed in the search engines thus automatically.

Articles and Contributions - Highly experienced employees can also contribute articles and advice to some websites. There are a host of websites that solicit your articles and advice on various issues. It all depends on your perseverance to find the sites that require your advice. Indeed, there are many sites that have enormous requirement for mentors in many fields. Grab the opportunity to make the best use of your experience.

Advice – There are many places on the Internet where you can give advice to people who have specific doubts in your area of work. Browse through the articles that appear on blogs of reputed people in your area and add your own comments. Share your experiences in your comments and try to solicit responses to your comments. Thus, you get a chance to enlarge your network. Finally, refrain from commenting without any knowledge.

The other side of the coin

There are many people out there waiting for an opportunity to play foul. The danger may come from anywhere - your colleague who is your competitor or a complete stranger playing with your words just for the heck of it. Here are some precautions that you need to take while blogging or writing anywhere on the Internet.

• Refer to your company policies before you actively participate online.
• Refrain from speaking negatively about your company or working atmosphere at your company while you are a part of forums and communities.
• Do not use offensive language while speaking about others. Even though you have the right to criticize others, refrain from blatant criticism.
• Avoid using derogatory language against any group of people. Little statements have the chances to trigger crises.
• Never copy content from another blog or website without specifying the source. Beware of copyrights before you try the copy-paste routine.

To communicate assertively or aggressively

Certain people rule the roost at work with their assertive communication. The submissive ones are contented with every little chance they get to speak. If you are submissive and often feel helpless and cannot represent yourself strongly while communicating, it is necessary for you to re-evaluate your communication style. Your communication style will certainly belong to one of the four common types. You are aggressive where you win and make everyone else lose. You are passive when everyone else wins. The assertive attitude represents a win-win situation. Your communication style automatically becomes effective when other's needs are also met. Most people who are passive blame it on their lack of confidence to confront people. You need to understand that it is like the story of "chicken and egg." Your confidence levels will be boosted only when you become more assertive; yet you need to be confident to try to be assertive in the first place. Here are some steps through which you can make it happen.

1. Make the right move at the right time. Depending on the situation, you should choose between being passive, aggressive, or assertive. If you lack the confidence to deal with a coworker or manager for the first time, you can simulate these situations in a comfortable place and practice regularly until you master the right style.

2. Take charge of the situation by retrieving your positive image. Imagine that things are well under your control and project a positive image about yourself. Recollect the moments in your life when you have excelled and recapture the moments to gain control of yourself and obtain a positive image. Recall the powerful image of the successful you when you are disheartened. This technique keeps you back on track and boosts your confidence level to a great extent.

3. Project the retrieved positive impression. Take responsibility for your communication while creating a positive impression. Put across your views in a polite manner and let others take note of you. Non-verbal communication signals also play a significant role in creating better impressions. Make the best use of the words "I" and “we” while addressing people. With a right mix of non-verbal communication cues, you can easily create a positive impression.

4. Interlace your message with facts. You cannot drive home any point through mere positive interaction. Prepare well and gather all the required facts and present them politely. If you don’t have the sufficient time or if all the facts are not readily available, try to recollect and list out similar situations. Thus, you get an edge in the true sense.

5. Apt body language is a must. Look straight into the eyes when you speak to someone and expect positive interaction. Listen attentively, actively and put yourself in the shoes and seek a solution that benefits both. Try to get detailed answers from others rather than single words such as "yes" and "no." This will facilitate an easy solution within a short period of time. Prepare open questions even before you are ready for the interaction.

Assertive people can interact effectively with people of different styles of communication. Even though aggressive communicators need confronting, take some time to gather thoughts that allows even the other person to calm down. In most of the situations, choose to respond, not react. However, remember the fact that you have the right to speak up and be heard.

Don the Right Thinking Hat

It’s time to think right. Yes, while everyone is good at thinking, there are some people who think in the right way at the right moment and outdo others in various ways – job, management, work-life balance, and maintaining relationships. Unlike other aspects related to human psychology, right thinking is applicable to every human being at any age. It is more significant in the heavily competitive corporate world where each decision of yours is instrumental in carving your career. Good decisions are the result of effective thinking. A good thinker is original, resourceful, perceptive, practical, and logical. Here are some normal thinking hats that form the basis behind all our actions and reactions and can help become a good thinker.

Objective thinking is appropriate when things look confusing and you need facts to arrive at a conclusion. A neutral attitude develops with the help of this thinking. Managers often handle interpersonal relationships between subordinates with the help of this thinking. People skills are mastered easily by people who have an objective outlook towards solving problems and understanding people.

Emotional thinking is necessary when things are going out of your control. It is not good waiting for the events to unfold when you are sure of disastrous consequences. Listen to your emotions and trust your intuition and you might also want to show anger if nothing else can help solve the matters. Remember the importance of gut instinct and deal harshly wherever necessary.

Negative thinking is essential when you are geared to move ahead with a highly risky proposition. You need to spend time to understand why things might fail and plan fool proof measures to prevent blunders. While most of us are against the gloomy and negative attitude, we need to understand that it saves from many dangers. Remember the adage that a stitch in time saves nine.

Positive thinking helps when you are filled with hopes and you must go ahead with an optimistic outlook. You cannot always fear that something wrong is about to happen. Likewise, you cannot restrict growth by refraining from experimenting and trying out new things. A positive thinking attitude will be of great help under such situations. Mostly, when you have taken all the necessary steps and things are beyond your reach, thinking positively prevents pressure and tension from building up in your mind.

Creative thinking comes to your aid when you discover that contemporary and traditional practices impede your growth and things seem to be dragging. Cultivate new ideas that help solve problems. Make use of techniques such as brainstorming and mind-mapping to enhance your creativity. It is not always necessary that existing practices need to fail to let your creative juices flow. Some people employ creative thinking to stay ahead in the race and have an edge over others. Increasingly, the focus is shifting towards innovation everywhere across the globe.

Finally, thinking from a wider perspective is the most important type of thinking. Look at the broader picture and try to understand the problem at hand in relation to other systems in your organization. Project managers in charge of cross-functional teams often don this hat to build and manage such teams without any hassles.

These thinking types don’t often go alone. They mostly go in pairs depending upon the situation. You can be objective and critical at the same time when you have to reprimand a subordinate for being irresponsible. Likewise, creative thinking syncs well with looking at things from the broader perspective. Many other factors, such as risk, consequences, and the people involved play an important role in determining the apt thinking hat for you at any moment. Hence, focus on the outcomes while donning the right thinking hat. Balance your criteria and consider the effects of external pressures. Begin with testing the different types of thinking in different situations to arrive at the best combinations that suit your personality, goals and aspirations.

Ways to think out of the box

Whether you are predominantly left-brained or right-brained, there is some basic creativity innate in every human being. You need to enhance your creativity for various reasons – to improve your performance and withstand competition among peers; to break free from the monotony of daily work; to come up with interesting solutions to existing problems; to improve standards using your experience and insight; and manage work-life balance effectively. Here are some basic ways in which you can work hard to add to the flow of creative juices in your mind that are necessary for everyone.

Step out of your comfort zone. The first thing that you need to do is to take risk and do things differently. Only when you are ready to take risks and mistakes, you can learn from your experiences. If you stick to your regular mode of operation, you might end up with monotony. Begin making small changes to your daily routine and including things that you are not so comfortable doing. You might sometimes be alarmed at your own capabilities by indulging in activities that you always ignored. Then, calculate your risks and tread cautiously to experiment and gain from your experiments. Thus, you sharpen your judgment skills thereby adding to your existing set of decision making abilities.

Practice the art of thinking from different viewpoints. How often have you been asked to get into the shoes of the customer? Yes, you need to get into the shoes of not just the customer, but all the stakeholders who are involved. Interact with the different stakeholders to understand their own perceptions about the existing process and note down any improvements that they can suggest to make things better or to come up with something anew. Combine the assumptions and suggestions that you draw from the various quarters and there will be a new source of knowledge that you can apply while carrying your work.

Learn more from the varied sources that you can get in touch. It is not just enough if you learn from all your stakeholders about their perceptions and expectations. You must have a keen sense of the industry trends. Keep a tab on all the technological advancements that are related to your field. Adopt the new technological advances in your regular chores. Likewise, stay updated on any papers and reports that experts publish in your field of operation. The Internet acts as a great source of information and you can certainly gain more by reading all the literature available.

Break the traditions and pine for change. Question the traditional practices if you want to really begin change from your direction. You can achieve this by identifying the least important activities that contribute very less to reaching your personal goals. Once you get into the habit of breaking traditional habits in your personal life, apply the same techniques at work to learn more and benefit more. To do so, first break your tasks into sub-tasks and assign priorities to them on the basis of their usefulness to your overall goals. Thus you arrive at activities that are more important and assign more priority to them. It is quite obvious that you have been very good at prioritizing things at work. The problem lies in the fact that you have never tried to prioritize your activities that are not related to work. You get to learn more and apply these rules to your work related activities also.

Try to analyze, infer, and assume. To conclude is to make a mistake. Analyze and benefit from learning the logic behind how things happen. Infer and understand the significance of orderliness of processes. Assume and learn the key role played by different people. Be wary before coming to any conclusion. You are likely to slip into a habit of illogical conclusions that serve no purpose. If you realize that you have just made and assumption, there are many great chances that you can change it as soon as you get new information that might be contradictory. However, you tend to hurt your judgmental abilities if you try to question your own conclusions. Hence, identify the thin line of difference between inferring, analyzing, assuming, and concluding regarding situations, people, and things. You can always conclude when there are enough facts to support your information. Yet, you should be ready to face any exceptions as you go along.

Challenge your beliefs before you set to change other’s beliefs. Highly creative people have the great task of altering others’ beliefs and changing the way they understand things. Even before you set to change others, you must change your belief system to accept newness. Flexibility plays a key role in such a situation. Look at things with a very open mind and refrain from having preconceived notions about any person or issue. Get into the habit of looking every problem on a fresh canvas to come up with your masterpiece solution.

Ways to avoid procrastination

To procrastinate is to put off doing something, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness. We hurry up in the last minute to deliver a half-baked task. Procrastination can negatively impact both work life and personal life. Here are some simple tips to prevent these problems.

First, understand that you are not compelled to do things. Recollect all the situations in life when you do not procrastinate. Reading your favorite novel, watching the scam report on the television and playing tennis in the weekend are some examples. You never miss these activities because you want to do them. Your mind is not under the impression that you are compelled to do them. So, replace your compulsion of "have-to" with willingness of "want-to". Do not compel yourself to do a task; just build the interest to do the task.

Never get troubled by the magnitude of the task. The bigger it is, there are more chances for a task to get postponed. You plan to finish a task even before you begin it. If you do not know how to complete the task, the pressure mounts. Hence, break the task into pieces and start with a small piece instead of trying to finish the entire thing. Focus on what you can do immediately. By doing so a good number of times, you will reach the final piece of the task and finish it with ease. Remember the fact that you tend to get perfect through practice. Likewise, stress gets associated with the task and you will start avoiding the task if you do not practice it with concentration. It is always better to complete a job than to delay it for want of perfection in the first instance. As a writer, you can begin with a rough draft. You can always revise it later to attain the desired state of perfection.

Avoid the habit of sacrificing pleasure for work. To undertake a project, you need not forego pleasure. People tend to work long hours with no time for fun. It might become demoralizing sometimes. To avoid these problems, you must mix fun with your work and begin enjoying your work. Ensure that all your leisure activities are well placed in your routine. Exceptional performers tend to take vacation quite often and work shorter hours than others. You will be more focused and attentive if you have a limited work time. Program your brain in such a way that it should pine for work.

Reward yourself for your achievements. Divide your task into sub-tasks that can be completed in a short frame of time. Choose a reward for yourself after completing each sub-task. Most often, you will work for more than the specified time limit and sub-task. The presence of a reward lures you into working more effectively. You attention is drifted from the difficulty of completion of the work to finishing the task for the reward. Enjoy your rewards and repeat the same exercise until you reach your destination. Procrastination is the result of stress or pain associated with a task. Reduce pain and associate pleasure with the task to move forward with a positive attitude.