A lot of professionals working in big firms are only content with the same mundane work as they are compensated with fat salary, though they are not utilizing their full potential. There are other who jump off the cliff to start a company of their own or work in a startup. If an economist has to term the attitude he would use the term "risk appetite". Both these kinds of employee would try to gauge the "Return of Investment" (ROI) of their efforts and the quality of life they lead or will lead in future. But the quality of life has a major (in my opinion the primary) factor which is "Happiness at work".
As professionals spend a huge percentage of their time at work, it is only imperative that work holds a key for a persons well being. Even if a professional tries to keep personal and work life as discrete as possible, frustrations in one will naturally have an effect over the other. This is because its a innate human nature to be multi faceted constrained with a singular emotional nerve center.
There are no doubt lot of books are written on how to be happy at work. I am not going to tell why or how to be happy at work. I am sure these books would have given lot of pointers for it. I am here to say when people will be happy at work. In my opinion its the culture in the organization, the quality and compatibility of colleagues and the trust they entrust on each other, the team culture and the freedom of space to pursue a persons interest at work (something that should not diverge a lot from the line of work, after all professionals are paid for their time).
If I have to choose one of these factors, I would choose trust. Any relationship is only built on trust. Economy runs mainly on the trust. The very concept of money is trust. But its a sad state where people in a race to be successful have forgotten that the success they are trying to achieve, is nothing but a trust level of all the stakeholders involved. And when people forget that, it will naturally shake the foundation of happiness at work which in turn percolates to personal happiness.
To be happy at work can be a very easy or very difficult depending upon the trust a person places upon himself and others in his team. All other factors are just derivatives of this simple mantra. But though a simple mantra ittakes a long time to derive it. Dr.Manmohan Singh when addressing the world on the recent economic downturn had said "Trust grows like a coconut tree but falls like a coconut". Golden words to be cherished.
I took my family to watch a matinée show of the film 3 Iditots. I thoroughly enjoyed every scene of it and am proud to be a fan of Amir. But one thing that stuck me well was the message conveyed.
To give a brief background on myself, I am from a family full of doctors. My parents, my sister, my sister's husband, my aunt, my uncle everyone of them are doctors. When I had passed out of high school I had a choice of becoming a doctor too. It was taken for granted in my school that I will become a doctor. But I loved solving math problems. I will not forget the day when I laid hands on a computer for the first time in my life. I drew a house in MS paint and immediately wanted to know how it worked. Its the curiosity to know and a passion for math that made me choose Engineering. Boy, was there opposition from my family. It was year 2001 when dot-com bubble burst, when lots of Indians were coming back from US due to lack of opportunity after Y2K. And I became a rebel in the family not to choose the family path.
Today I can say for sure that the decision to pursue my interest and passion has served me well. There was one message that I have learnt late after coming to the industry, one which is conveyed very well. Don't run after success, pursue excellence. A big thanks to 3 idiots team.
I had written a post titled WHY PAY TAXES? where I had poured out my frustration on the tax policies in India. Today I heard a wonderful news. The charitable status of BCCI is revoked. And guess what they have to pay penalty to cheating the Indian public. I am doing happy dance right now.
I only hope that the money got by taxing the richest commercial cricket body in the world is channelized to develop other sports. All in all this news has made my day.
Now I can say I will surely pay my taxes. Thanks.
