Here's a li'l sneak preview of my job profile and work environment.
Exactly 2 months and 7 days old into my job, I realize working in a bank is very much a continuation of a B school life, the difference being that, then I had a choice of working hard and free riding and now, I have to work hard because my performance is being pegged to my division's revenues.
Things which I realized these two months in my current role:
1. Be extremely good in multi-tasking - Sample this; you come to the office at 9:30 am and open your inbox and see a flurry of emails from every nook and corner of earth. Customer generated "push-mails" to get things done at my end (I get some 3-4 such mails everyday), follow-up mails from my supervisor on the deliverables which are approaching the deadline (some 2-3 mails again), some mails from your team mates (favor mails + SOS mails + coordinated activity mails), some mails from asia pacific, europe for some product enhancement, new product design (some 1-2 mails). What next? So, I open an excel sheet, put a timeline and start prioritizing my activities for the day. By the time I finish doing this exercise, I find some more mails (fitting into either of the categories listed above) in my inbox.
By this time I realize, taking up things one activity at a time and seeing it to its end would be sheer asinine. So, what do I do? I get back to my excel sheet, start re-prioritizing things, prepare Gantt charts and list multiple activities at each time frame. I never realized the course on Project Management (where I scored a measely 2.4/4.0) would come so handy to me one day.
2. Work hard, but more importantly work smart - Well, this was one apothegm which I came across in the first week at IIMB during those rough interaction sessions with the seniors. I guess, it took me over 4 terms to understand the relevance of this pithy, but let's not delve into that now. Like everywhere else, in a bank too there are ways of getting things done the smart way. Be it through those informal minutes when you bump into a colleague in a 'happy-peeing' session or those odd "coffee-with-colleague" minutes that you spend in office, networking does help tremendously. Sometimes, you get valuable suggestions of how to get things done fast, at other times it only helps you prioritize your activities well. Bottom line - network with people in your work place and allow them to show you the smart ways!
3. Help others - So much as I would like to say, a bank is afterall a money machine and likewise the people who feed the bank are also in a sense money machines. The compensations, bonuses, everything else is linked to the amount of money the bank is making. Hence, it is not too ominious to imagine that the level of competition in a bank is quite high. 3 weeks after I joined the bank, I realized the level of competition is as high if not more than in IIMB. To make things more visible, one of my senior colleagues also told me this, "Try and be selfish, remember everyone sees their own share first".
But then the last two months, I've tried to be extremely un-selfish :) I've tried to cooperate with everyone as much as possible, tried to help my team members, members from other teams in whatever capacity I could and tell you the aftermath in a nut shell: The results have been good, as they have in a way fallen back to me at times for more help - to me this means greater visibility and at other times have helped me with my own doubts - like the mentor/mentee thing which we get so used to in a B school.
4. Show results and let others know of your contribution - My father has always told me that there are different types of people in a work envorinment. Some who would be extremely hard working and dilligent with their work, some who would free ride taking their places for granted and some who would let you work and take the credit at the right time.
So when I joined work, one of my team mates who was leaving my team did ask me to be wary of certain people in my division as they were the guys who fell in the third category mentioned above. Just to make things a li'l simple and effective, I make it a point to mark my supervisor on everything I do when I'm dealing with these people. My team mates say that's a smart way of getting noticed, but who cares as long as I'm working hard and getting noticed!
Ok, enough of gyan on my work front for the week...
Exactly 2 months and 7 days old into my job, I realize working in a bank is very much a continuation of a B school life, the difference being that, then I had a choice of working hard and free riding and now, I have to work hard because my performance is being pegged to my division's revenues.
Things which I realized these two months in my current role:
1. Be extremely good in multi-tasking - Sample this; you come to the office at 9:30 am and open your inbox and see a flurry of emails from every nook and corner of earth. Customer generated "push-mails" to get things done at my end (I get some 3-4 such mails everyday), follow-up mails from my supervisor on the deliverables which are approaching the deadline (some 2-3 mails again), some mails from your team mates (favor mails + SOS mails + coordinated activity mails), some mails from asia pacific, europe for some product enhancement, new product design (some 1-2 mails). What next? So, I open an excel sheet, put a timeline and start prioritizing my activities for the day. By the time I finish doing this exercise, I find some more mails (fitting into either of the categories listed above) in my inbox.
By this time I realize, taking up things one activity at a time and seeing it to its end would be sheer asinine. So, what do I do? I get back to my excel sheet, start re-prioritizing things, prepare Gantt charts and list multiple activities at each time frame. I never realized the course on Project Management (where I scored a measely 2.4/4.0) would come so handy to me one day.
2. Work hard, but more importantly work smart - Well, this was one apothegm which I came across in the first week at IIMB during those rough interaction sessions with the seniors. I guess, it took me over 4 terms to understand the relevance of this pithy, but let's not delve into that now. Like everywhere else, in a bank too there are ways of getting things done the smart way. Be it through those informal minutes when you bump into a colleague in a 'happy-peeing' session or those odd "coffee-with-colleague" minutes that you spend in office, networking does help tremendously. Sometimes, you get valuable suggestions of how to get things done fast, at other times it only helps you prioritize your activities well. Bottom line - network with people in your work place and allow them to show you the smart ways!
3. Help others - So much as I would like to say, a bank is afterall a money machine and likewise the people who feed the bank are also in a sense money machines. The compensations, bonuses, everything else is linked to the amount of money the bank is making. Hence, it is not too ominious to imagine that the level of competition in a bank is quite high. 3 weeks after I joined the bank, I realized the level of competition is as high if not more than in IIMB. To make things more visible, one of my senior colleagues also told me this, "Try and be selfish, remember everyone sees their own share first".
But then the last two months, I've tried to be extremely un-selfish :) I've tried to cooperate with everyone as much as possible, tried to help my team members, members from other teams in whatever capacity I could and tell you the aftermath in a nut shell: The results have been good, as they have in a way fallen back to me at times for more help - to me this means greater visibility and at other times have helped me with my own doubts - like the mentor/mentee thing which we get so used to in a B school.
4. Show results and let others know of your contribution - My father has always told me that there are different types of people in a work envorinment. Some who would be extremely hard working and dilligent with their work, some who would free ride taking their places for granted and some who would let you work and take the credit at the right time.
So when I joined work, one of my team mates who was leaving my team did ask me to be wary of certain people in my division as they were the guys who fell in the third category mentioned above. Just to make things a li'l simple and effective, I make it a point to mark my supervisor on everything I do when I'm dealing with these people. My team mates say that's a smart way of getting noticed, but who cares as long as I'm working hard and getting noticed!
Ok, enough of gyan on my work front for the week...
4 comments:
Dood, u r getting time to make out ur little excel gnatt charts and even prioritize them.. am amazed!! and u call that multi-tasking...& working hard.... even worse u get time to pee network...
I thought ppl worked really hard at Citi ;)
muhahahhaaa!
Hi,
I have found that multi-tasking is actually not good for the mind. It decreases productivity overall.
Prioritizing your tasks is a great way to go about your day. Even I have to re-prioritize things as I go through my day, since I work with a staff of 30 that I have to take care of.
Thanks,
Richard Rinyai
www.theprofessionalassistant.net
traits of a would be CEO eh :-)
point 1 is pretty similar to what i see everyday a lil bit of cond formatting and embedded rules help in here, but i guess working with a bank the tasks tend to be pretty dynamic by the hour.
i never knew pee networking is getting so popular :-D
good to see you blogging :) i will bookmark this
Thanks all for your comments :)
@Bobby - pee network has its own set of benefits ;) try it out for yourself.. oh! I forgot, and it does help if one gets a helping hand from his boss (which will most likely to be a case with you!)
@Sachin - thanks buddy for visiting my blog :)
@Richard - thanks for visiting my blog :) Though multi tasking is not good for the mind, nevertheless in my job I can't do without it. Will visit your blog soon.
Post a Comment