Need a "Pokhran" ?

Betaal : Viky ! Another puzzle for you.

This is about an employee in this org.

This employee is caught in a downward spiral of negative perception. He got hired in a wrong role. A role that is not easy to be successful in a core technical, chaotic dept like ours.

To make things worse, his management changed on him three times over last year. And all threee coached him differently.

Its been more than a year and he has nothing to show as his major accomplishment. He probably had one of two scopes given to him. But too early with too bad coaching and he has failed to make an impact in both cases. In those cases, someone else overrode him with their technical knowledge and history with the org.

This employee is smart and ambitious. But never been able to focus because of management change and variance in guidance.

Been more than a year, and there is nothing much thought about him. People ask him in the meetings to take notes.

He has been given couple of weekly reporting jobs. And moreover, the perception around his name is not great. And consistently becoming worse.

Employee wants to break away from this spiral and make it up. The will is there. The opening is not there. The matching level of initiative and technical and org

know-how. He is getting those slowly. But may be too slowly.

How would you help him out of this spiral ?

Vikram so far has simple solution to these problems. He cuts his losses and let the employee go out to other companies where he will be successful.

He believes in not dealing with these problems. He believes that its the employee who could not keep up, and would be better off with a new start somewhere else, in a

little less challenging environment.

But Vikram also know, Betaal wont ask him this puzzle if he expects this answer.

He goes in to a thinking mode for a few seconds. And then tells...

Vikram: This employee needs a "Pokhran". And smiles. When there is nothing much to loose, you need a bang to recover.

The employee should take one action in the org that all know is a problem area but no is working on. Complete it.

Market it. Have couple of his support structure publicly appreciate it (its not doctoring, if the intention is seriously to bounce back and contribute).

When world was not thinking much of India, even if she had more than half of the population starving, spent thousands of crores to do "Pokhran II " test.

Within 5 years (after many condemnation and sanctions), India was on its way to Shine. The old negative perceptions are not gone. But they are way too

shadowed by the new achievements. Countries have taken her very seriously. And the negativity is gone.

Positivity is re-generative : )

Betaal smiles and nods in appreciation of Vicky's analysis and solution.