People Engagement

Microsoft Office gave man a unique option, amidst other array of choices, the ‘undo’ command. With this command we may undo any previous text or formatting and if ‘undo’ has to undone then there is a ‘redo’ command as well that restores the earlier text or formatting. Many times I have wished that if we could have the same buttons in our life as well…’undo’ the mistakes that I made, and ‘redo’ the same if the latter was a mistake in the first place. I don’t know how the world would turn-out to be if such buttons actually existed…may be a better place or may be even more chaotic. But the matter of fact remains that we are not lucky to have such buttons. One reality that stares at everyone’s face at some point of time is death, although we do not like to think about it, especially when it comes to our loved ones. God forbid if it happens to one who is close to us, this is perhaps one thing we wish we could ‘undo’… and ‘redo’ or restore life & vitality in them. Death strikes ha...

There is something peculiar about Indian Homes. Most Indian like to keep their homes spic 'n' span but generally the streets leading upto those homes have accumulation of filth. The waste-dunes can be seen mostly at street corners. So what does one conclude – Do Indian love cleanliness or are they are they fond of griminess? The truth is once they clean their home, they do not know what to do with the waste, since the municipal waste-bins are mostly non-existent, so they dump it outside their house (or may be it is convenient to do it that way!). The competition seems to be only limited to keeping own house clean and not getting together to keep the surroundings better. The municipal sweeper in turn dumps it around the street corner, where it keeps stinking till some festival or local elections are round-the-corner. Then upon the instructions of the local political leader, aspiring to woo some votes, the ever-elusive municipal lorry turns-up and does a ‘solstice-routine’, to ag...

Microsoft has launched an internal drive, called Garage , asking its staff to come out with unique ideas that could make life of women easier and simpler.   Employees have been encouraged under this initiative to develop mobile apps exclusively for women. Teams, each comprising 2-3 employees, comes out with ideas that could be converted later into solutions – both standalone and those that could be intertwined into the enterprise applications. Shopping App, Immunization Tracker (that helps smart mothers keep track of their kid’s vaccination schedule) are some of the new apps on the horizon. Engagement of employee through formation of ideation and innovation drives in the organization is one of the best forms of engagement. The sense of fulfillment and of contributing much more then one’s own work in a creative way has far-reaching consequences, both for the employee and the organization. Google developed many of its classic products, like Google News, in the same way. At a time...