Am I adding Value !!!!

Hey, That's a question that must have haunted some of us, or at least a question we thought is worth asking at the initial phase of the career.A question which always hanged out from the beard of a yogi, a question always passed around as philosophical one. A question that pinched some of us while walking to the bus stop, with that I pod plugged in, deep into the ears, ear's that's stopped listening to our inner self. The question has a problem, quite a genuine one though, like all the questions we had, it loses it's value as we mature, mature in the sense when we get in sync with our colleagues, who have home loans and troublesome kids to take care, when we are in sync with the presentations that would depict everything on the earth in three colors, Green - Happiness, Orange -- I am Living it out and Red -- Death is coming :). Who has time to add value @ work when your wife is pregnant, petrol is touching sixty and Ohio is banning labor coming to India!!!!.

But I am sure the question rings up a lot of minds and that's why the world is moving on, being in a 1000 dollar a month support job, talking about value is as ironical as President Bush preaching peace, while Iraq was getting blown into smithereens.Adding value need not be inventing something new, it could be a simple change in the way we do the job, might be by making a field in a CRM tool mandatory, which never gets filled and thus delays the processing of customer orders. By removing a bit of waste on a daily basis, we could add value. Am I talking Lean, quality philosophy, no, no ways, Lean is after a certain level of understanding of our own job, after we know to do it right and then we search for smarter ways to do it. Not before that, cause before that Quality methodologies will be as cold as the conference rooms where we took a nap, while these were getting pushed on us.

Thinking about value, one question that would make the term "value" a much more lay man friendly term is when we think about the end customer, he could be internal, external, nocturnal or what not. If we could talk to him on what he think will make life better, that will add a lot of value, assumption is the mother of all "Ups ". In this short span, I would have seen projects worth hundreds of thousands of dollars going into the drains , cause they were built around an imaginary customer, wearing a Gucci, smoking Cuban cigars, with blonds around him, where in the actual customer was an accountant sitting on a pile of files covered with dust and dirt.

I am a mazdoor myself, I do not deny it by any chance, I am paid to dance and so will I, if it's salsa I need to learn it, might be Bharathanatyam is all I know. But then adding value is no choice, you can't compromise on that, cause We spend two hours traveling to work, an hour getting ready for it, half an hour to an hour undressing and getting out of it and those nine long hours that keeps the digestive and the economic system alive, we spend those @ work. In short close to 75% of the time we are awake, we are doing something related to work, could we let it go under the carpet, when we insist that life has to give you a sense of achievement, could we actually remove these long hours and then look at life, what do we have left in that case. Might be it's not the way everyone looks at it, but then it's a good way to look at it, cause out of 10 things we do at work today only two or three must be existing down the lane a year, otherwise you are not just screwing your life, you are adding a lot of crap for someone filling in your shoes !!!!!!