Randomized Thoughts

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.