A paradigm shift

In the corporate world of hectic activity and perpetual deadlines, it is always a challenge to keep expectations realistic and ensure that employees have some time for themselves. Work-life balance is an oft heard term to define this line between public and private time. In pursuit of this balance, some limit themselves to merely "doing their job" as defined by their roles.

Individual capability will vary but what is important is that each of us should add value to the system. Every small job well done will add that much more credibility to the system and greatly improves the quality perception about the individual and the establishment as a whole.

Perceptions (like stereotypes) are built at a micro level but are applied at the macro level. When you walk into a restaurant and the waiter at your table is rude, the conclusion that you would draw is that this restaurant is no good. One single incident by one badly behaved waiter is enough to trigger a general conclusion about the whole restaurant. What holds good for an eat-out holds good for a corporate and a country (of course the number of experiences with a corporate or within a country are orders of magnitude greater than an eatery and one single incident may not cause as much harm as it would to a smaller establishment. However the fundamentals are the same).

In effect, each of us has to realize that we do not just do a job, we create an experience for somebody else and the quality of that experience is going to determine the perception about the company that we work for and if, like me, you are in a country where work has been outsourced to, then it creates a perception about the country as well.

Work-life balance is important but keep in mind that just like your personal life, your work too is based on creating positive experiences for the people who have a stake in what you do (be it customers, your team members or anybody else). This will help build credibility about you and about the system that you work in.

We should stop looking at ourselves as defined by the roles of our jobs (say as software developers or project managers or waiters or salesmen and so on) but instead look at the kind of experience that our roles allow us to create for the stake holders. We should see ourselves as 'experience providers' and act accordingly.

This is the paradigm shift that we should bring about in ourselves.