I was reading a few e-mails flying around in my athletic circles about how another friend decided to "cut back on sport" and "get on with life". This made me think about the other e-mails Id been reading from my non-athletic circles about how another stressed out engineer decided to "cut back on work" and "go live for a bit". I find these parallels very amusing, in my own quest to train like a world champion and feed my intellectual curiosity, that keeps me up, many nights, whether or not I am training.

As an employer, I find that the hardest thing to do is to be fair to my employees, CONSISTENTLY. Overall, my kids at work either stick with me for years or quit quickly. I prefer it that they quit quickly because there is no glamor in working for me, its 9-5, 6 days a week and no excuses. I dont allow people to work from home unless they have been with me for two years. I dont subscribe to "work whenever and however you want" models, unless they are studying part-time, in which case, the rules are different. Additionally, I am very conscious about paying people, ON TIME.
There were times in the last 2 years when I came very close to not being able to do this (pay people on time) but, by the grace of careful spending and unglamorous coffee machines, it didnt come to that.

A lot of people that come through our organization are surprised that we ask for no bond, pay for lunch and encourage healthy activities such as living close to work and walking to work, rather than taking a bus that is a major dent in your daily productivity to begin with.

What I notice however is that to consistently want the best for people, is difficult. Even by the most fair and amazing of bosses and employers. Ive been employed several times myself and its funny how different the equation is, when you are working, for a salary. It is only when I work for someone that I understand how irritating it is to work hard with some uncertainty of when I will get paid, or when the employers make stupid comments and brew up clouds of gray over what could well be a great turnout on a small and focused effort.

One of my favorite quotes is "Do as I say, not as I do", which really goes to show how far away preaching and practice can be, in the real world. Unfortunately, not all businesses can run as single-starrer Bollywood hits and definitely investing in some teams and co-ordination upfront, saves a lot of trouble later. One of the most important ingredients in a team is trust. If you have that, everything, including money is often secondary. However, in a totalitarian world such as ours, speaking plainly is not an accepted practice. So, very often I see my non-athletic, industrial types, wasting a lot of time with office politics, where the stapler went and who spent more on the Xerox-machine and Blackberry subscription than the next guy. Working for yourself takes away some of these headaches as its your Xerox machine and your blackberry to begin with :) However, I still believe in the wisdom of crowds, not just because my dissertation demands it.. but because I truly hope to have the humility to see that one person, alone, can only go so far.

In the meanwhile, I hope that as an employer and as an employee, my least common denominator will be to never expect money for nothing...... Cool Hand Luke mightve well said that "nothing can be be a real cool hand" but, Ill save that for the 30k mark in the Ironman rather than office politics.