Sunday, February 1, 2009

Indecisive Decision Makers :)

Making decisions on behalf of someone is something which requires clarity of thoughts on the part of the decision maker. Operations research, well I am about to post graduate in it, teaches us decision making tools. Learning of these tools has inherent assumption that the learner is a rational thinker with a clarity of thought.
Now I start my life story, I was a gem of my parents' eyes ever since I first touched my course book. Marks and I seemed to have unbreakable bond, something which no parents would dislike. Then came the time for the first important decision of my life which was to select my stream after class 10th. If someone would have asked me this in class 9th I would have said "commerce". After class 10 results, it was "Science". God knows why I took this decision but I didn't care about it at that time. I did fairly well with science as studying was something I was always good at. Now after class 12 came another time for taking a decision. My friends, unlike me, took a decision that come whatever they would be doing engineering. I, as indecisive as I was in class 10, decided to join B.Sc. (my dream was to become an engineer or maybe something else:) ). With no less scores I passed my B.Sc. Now I was wondering "What Next". MBA was lucrative option but confused as ever I messed up my entrance exams only to land up in Operations Research where I found people who were no less indecisive than me. It seemed that God had collected all the indecisive people together to make them learn decision making tools. With economy in recession, we are indecisive about our future whether to do further studies or to look around for a job.
Certainly our clarity of thought is worth appreciating.....:) and I don't think it would be wrong to call us " indecisive decision makers".

Cost cutting

Cost cutting was something which was unheard but still existent. I heard it only when it was least required to be heard - the time I was ready for a job and was on verge of starting a career. Economy going down into recession was the only thing to read in the newspaper and lost bonus and worse, loss of job was only thing friends communicated. What started with fall of an investment bank and few bailouts turned into a serious problem not only for US but also for a not so decoupled East. Soon India and China were only countries showing positive growth though very less as compared to their previous years.
Indians have only been a poor brainy lot for the West. When they (West) are growing they require the best talent and what they do is, recruit an Indian. But when they are falling, what they do is, fire an Indian coz he is a foreign national.
Recession is a very nice excuse to fire employees, disown them of their bonuses, kill their promised increments and what not. There are many companies on which current recession is having no effect, still these companies want to implement cost cutting and why not, they have a chance to get same work out of their employees with no yearly bonus and increment. Poor employees trying to save their jobs keep silent and see their year long hardwork going waste with no promotion and monetary benefit. Some of them are even willing to work with a decrement in salary. With a speculation that recession will stay for a year, employees are highly demotivated and may not be willing to give their 100% as they are quite sure that there will be no bonus or increment to account for their hardwork. New joiners would enter their jobs in pressure situation. God knows what reason may be given to them for their termination from job.
I hope this situation is not here to stay and may we have good old times back again...