Skip to main content

2 weeks of COVID lockdown

And here are my achievements (slightly tongue in cheek, so...)

Caveat: Work is happening. I have always seen that WFH is way more productive since the person has work within reach. So the person manages work in a way that it suits them. I often start earlier in the day, for example. And without the commute, it is possible to be way more productive. Meetings are also scheduled in general - unlike at work. Downside is quick 5 minute catch ups dont happen. Leaders opinions cant be sought like at work. So, keeping this aside...

Pros:
I learnt to make Chapatis the shape of Africa. World, here I come.
Games that were bought long ago, but never managed to be played have been opened (weekend).
Very little clothes to wash (rest assured, we are taking personal hygiene seriously)
A long walk each day because the fitness class has also closed down
A 20 minute power nap on some days
My office bag got washed (I washed it)

Cons:
Walk to the kitchen and eat guilt free because no one is watching
Work constantly spills over
Monitor fatigue
Kids want to play, but that cannot happen with work constantly on the mind
Work is constantly on the mind, the line between work and home is erased (given a 24/7 work culture, it is erased anyway)

One thing it is doing is questioning the need for offices itself. Who knows, a virus might change the way we work.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Be Civil. Make nice!

Popular posts from this blog

The man who saved Pumpelsdrop

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and
Post a Comment
Read more

The Mintzberg triangle

At a recent training, someone spoke about the Mintzberg triangle. I located it here . Image from that page reproduced here. The page linked above has a better explanation of diagram above, but what intrigued me was that the triangle exists for practically anything. The facilitator referred to this in the context of facilitation. Of how facilitation has science, craft and art to it. That is so true,  I thought. Worth a thought! Need to read of Mintzberg though...
Post a Comment
Read more

Waigaya and Sangen Shugi - Honda

Two big takeaways from Driving Honda were Waigaya and Sangen Shugi. A few days ago, we were working on a strategy module for a company. As we leafed through old and new theories and books around the same - one comment which caught my eye was Henry Mintzbergs comment where he says "Strategy is like weeds, it has to grow all around your company" A lot of times organisations dip into their pool of employees (and sometimes customers) and solicit ideas from them. This happens either at an offsite or a meeting or some quarterly review and the ideas pile up. Most companies today have an innovation program that encourages bottom up ideation. Many of these ideas are future strategy - provided someone is listening. Sometimes these ideas are not immediately implementable - but if one keeps looking, there might be valuable stuff in there. And if (post such programs) ideas die very often, the motivation of someone to keep doing it will also diminish. Waigaya is what Honda call
Post a Comment
Read more