Here is a piece of news taken from http://www.inditimes.com/ which may appear relevant in the modern context. But be careful! No body will come to your help if you apply it in your case risking to face the wrath of your boss.
(16 Apr, 2008, 0207 hrs IST,Jayashree Bhosale, TNN)
PUNE: Sanjay Kamble is a talathi in a distant village in the Konkan, at the lowest rung in the hierarchy of the revenue department. His effort now is to break the habit of a 25-year working life, learning to address the district collector—the top boss of the Indian administrative system at the district level—by his first name, and not as he has been trained, as sir or even sahib. With the help of a B-School project, Sanjay has got so far as addressing his boss as Vikasji. Now, he has to reach the next level of calling him Vikas. The Ratnagiri district collector Vikas Chandra Rastogi started a programme last April to improve the responsivness of the administration. This is where the Pune-based Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (SIBM) stepped in, and among its first suggestions was the need for greater communication between the layers of the government machinery. What better way to achieve this than by letting the subordinates call their boss by first name? The project, though, is more than just calling a boss by his first name. The aim, eventually, is to bridge the huge communication gap between the field staff and the officials who run the district yet are unaware of ground realities. A year into the programme, Mr Kamble, the talathi, says, “My job is to survey the standing crop. But due to the non-availability of survey maps for the last 15 years, my work used to suffer in terms of accuracy. This is the first time in so many years that I can now tell the collector about this problem and he has started pursuing the matter.” Rajesh Panda, assistant professor, SIBM, which is running the project, said this was part of their project, to get the staff to talk to their bosses about problems in carrying out their work and related issues. Mr Rastogi said, “During the years of service in the civil service, I have realised that human resource is the most powerful and yet the weakest link in the administrative system. There is on-going training for the staff and the entire approach to training is ad hoc.” So, the collector handpicked a core team of 20 people who are undergoing a year-long initial training programme. This team will then pass on their training to others. “A monthly magazine, called ‘Mahsul Ratna’, has been started along with informal gettogethers of people across the entire chain are the other two initiatives for breaking the hierarchical barrier,” said Arun Mudbidri, director, SIBM. These people in government service do not get promotions even for 15 to 20 years. Words of appreciation rarely come their way, all of which add to the sense of alienation and demoralisation. “We made everybody feel the importance of their contribution thus generating a sense of confidence,” said Mr Mudbidri. At these informal get togethers, the rank and file has to come in informal clothes. They have to address each other by their first names. “We pick up any topic and find the bottlenecks. For example, at a recent get together at Chiplun, we discussed the issue of too much of reporting. The participants felt that the officers ask for too much of information, too frequently, which leads to wastage of time,” said Mr Rastogi. The final results of the training programme will become clear once it is completed, by December. Yet, a sense of enthusiasm has been aroused in the Ratnagiri revenue department. “The practice that the boss will order and the concerned persons will follow has been changed. We now find our work interesting,” said Dilip Desai, another talathi from the department. SIBM has not charged any consultancy fee for this project. The collector has made arrangement for paying for the travelling and residence expenses of the Symbiosis staff with the help of industry. “ Once the project is complete, I want to approach the government to help in sustaining this activity in the long term,” said Mr Rastogi. While SIBM has lost its consultancy fee, it has received a good response from many other players. Along with some foreign institutes of management, two district collectors from Andhra Pradesh have shown interest in the model. We are waiting for the final development of the business model, said Mr Mudbidri.
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