Simplify please

I would like someone to help me understand why have HR teams over all these years continued with, in my opinion, a very funny way of calculating leave. If you take a holiday on Friday and Monday then the weekend is also counted as holidays or if you take leave before and after a holiday then the leave will include all the days of holiday.

How does it impact the organisation so badly for having a need of this nature. Are we of the opinion that if a person takes leave on Thursday and Friday then we count them as two days of leave because we have lost two productive days of work. But if a person takes leave on Friday and Monday then we have lost 4 productive days of work.

Organisations spend huge amount of time trying to explain this funny policy and people spend lots of time trying to find ways to not lose unnecessary leave days. They also spend huge amount of time just keeping track of whether the person went on leave where there were holidays in between.

It would be so much easier to just reduce your total number of leaves and count only the working days lost. It would make the policy simpler to understand and also administratively easy.

The only problem I see with the change is that we may not be in line with the benchmark practices in the market, should give you a good reason why you should not give too much importance to senseless benchmarking.

Regards,

Sanjay

Leadership learnings from Dhoni

Since cricket will remain the flavour for many months to come, thought of noting down what I think are the learnings Leaders can take from Dhoni.

The key ones being :

Go by your gut-feel and do something different : There are times when conventional logic tells you to go on the beaten path. A true leader would need to take decisions which have not been tried and risk being criticised by all and sundry, but if your gut-feel tells you that what you are doing is right, just go ahead and try it out. There is a 50:50 chance for success but when you succeed it will be something awesome, when you fail, you will be in the same place as all the others who have just been giving conventional advice.

Give credit don't try to grab attention : The most amazing thing I find about this guy is that he allowed Sachin and Gary to be carried around on shoulders. He stood on the sides in pictures and yet everyone would give him credit for what he has achieved, without him asking for it. Sometimes it just helps to not hog the limelight, let the others enjoy the moment equally as they deserve to share credit as much as you.

Face challenges head on : Always face crisis situations head on, rather than push others in the fire. To do this, one needs tremendous amount of self-belief, have good knowledge of subject and expertise, build all of those so that one can face the challenges rather than hide behind the team. The team loves leaders who are hands on supporting them in difficult times.

Be Cool : A cool head will find a way out of crisis. A tense person will will not be able to see the path from the woods.

Great show team India. Hope we keep repeating this success.

Regards,

Sanjay