Do you know what you are doing?

I suddenly realised that even in an organization like this, people are working in silos. The concept of synergy is lost.

I read this line in an IMD Article - "if your customer knows more about what they buy from you than you do, the true cost of unintegrated IT gets very large"

and its almost the same thing thats happening around me. the customer talks to me and gets something underway. at the same time, he talks to another person who probably sits in another location for the same thing. since there is not one effective communication channel established between the decision makers, sometimes we end up doing the same thing over and again. the customer is extremely smart. he knows that we work in such a model. so all he needs to do is get both of us working and choose the best solution. and what do we get - business at twice the acquisition cost.

very basic concepts that i remember reading from the management of organizations course keep coming into my mind. most of it just happens because it happened before. if you question the fundamental behind whats happening, then there is hardly anyone to answer. but if they need something, then they are constantly behind your back. i remember filling some workbook during work. i was new to it and all i was given is the last month's workbook to see and replicate. there were more than two sheets on that workbook and i was sure that the numbers in the sheets had to match. that was the logical step. so i went on and checked all the sheets a number of times and nothing matched. i was surprised. and we follow this every month like clockwork. do we really have an objective?

and in the next category are team members. in fact, i dont even know the kind of work these people are doing and yet i can figure out that some of them are happily free riding. but some of them are so shameless. they know that they are wasting time and still expect that they have to be promoted after a performance review. i know of one who is quite an experienced fellow - more than me, just in the number of years. but now i know for sure that even years of relevant work experience is definitely a bad criteria to judge a person's abilities. for this guy's work is just instruction based. if you tell him to think on the fly and do it, he will panic and break down or wash his hands and shout back at you.

and on top of all this is the bureaucratic nature of doing work. there is a restricted car park - where only people from certain levels in the organization can use. and then the people in support services keep opening the doors and saluting senior staff. if you are at a certain level and above, work gets done faster. if you are at the lower end of the ladder, then you are at the mercy of whoever that guy he is. he would think that he is doing you a great favor by just doing his job and nothing else. in fact, he is there to do that, but he thinks that he can keep you waiting as long as no one complains. QUASI GOVERNMENT - as one rightly put it.