Not feeling well, will not come today !
Not feeling well, will not come today !
Above is neither a quote from a great management guru, nor from a motivational trainer.
But one of the great punch lines to keep the entrepreneurs on their toes.
Normal philosophy we should keep on adding challenges so that we can work out of the box and life does not get monotonous. The challenges help people to be “alive” instead of being relaxed.
Still confused? Not able to relate? Hold your breath for something very interesting.
The above line is one of the most common SMS from the employees for any organization at 9.30am on a busy working day.
The SMS can be reframed in any other sentences also like follows:
1) Having Fever, Not Coming Today
2) Need to go to doctor, unable to attend office
3) Have some urgent work, will not come today
4) Food poisoning since yesterday night, not coming
5) And so on
More interestingly all these come by SMS only and followed by “mobile switched off” or “mobile kept ringing”.
Besides, even though I have written the full sentences of the SMS, but in reality it comes in very crisp format (shortening of words like “nt” in place of “not” , “ofc” for “office”, “wrk” instead of “work” etc) inline with twitter/whatsapp era.
The noticeable fact is that all the messages are coming as “informing a decision” instead of “seeking approval”.
I caught a sales guy on a Tuesday since he was absent on Monday by sending a SMS “not coming today, going to doctor”, followed by non-answering of calls.
My apprehension was there might be some extreme emergency (like his own heart attack or someone in family would have been seriously ill and had to be admitted in ICU). Otherwise he could have taken an approval last working day (Saturday) or might have taken a permission over phone Sunday evening (the mobile connection is given by company and charges are borne by office only) if it was a planned activity.
But I was wrong. It was a planned activity to visit a doctor for a routine checkup and he did not attend office even after doctor visit was completed by 12noon. And he remained unanswered once I wanted to have justifications.
I was shocked like all other clueless facts in my short entrepreneur journey.
If he would have called me on Sunday evening and take permission for a doctor visit, who will not allow?(unless someone is mad or inhuman).
Only this preplanning would have helped the organization to schedule the Monday activity without him. But yes, organization would have asked him to join work in the 2nd half instead of taking off for the whole day.
I have started my entrepreneur journey after working in several big corporates in different positions. I started as a trainee engineer and gradually climbed a path. But even in my last working tenure (where I used to head a regional vertical and my reporting boss was in mumbai) I was same way hesitant for taking any leave as it was 15 years back. I still cannot recollect a single day where I have taken a sick leave suddenly. Yes I had taken leave with proper approvals, delegation of responsibility and a proper hand holding of the person who can carry out tasks on my behalf. More precisely organization should not have impacted due to my absence.
But I found the accountability, ownership, responsibility etc are completely missing in present work culture.
Am I expecting something “out of this universe”?
Let me comeback to the punch line. My immediate reaction to this should have been like this:
“What kind of fevers did you have? Dengue? Ebola? You had to be admitted to hospital in emergency?”.
But “No”. I have stopped reacting to these since overall echo system is like this. We may keep on replacing people but attitude, approach remain same.
Hence we keep on accepting, accommodating, holding our nerves without taking disciplinary actions.
But how long?
And we all have to do it together to change the game.
Love to see reader’s opinions
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