GEMBA7-OBSession3 Vinodh Sankaran Learning Journal

Am I paid enough? Is my job interesting? Am I happy with my Job? These are common questions which arises in everyone's day to day life. Today my post is about "Motivation". How often are you motivated in your work place or in life? Motivation is the key factor through which employees and organization achieve their goals. In my case recognition, job satisfaction, promotions, awards, family, job interest, needs, feedback and money are the key factors which motivates me to work. Motivating factors depends up on individual's interest and needs. Even a strong motivational speech can make a huge difference locker room speech given by the football coaches before the national championship game or take the famous Steve jobs motivational speech on graduation ceremony at Stanford University in 2005(Thanks to Stanford.edu). I always motivate my team members so that they can foster the productivity.

Each organization follows their own style of motivating factors to motivate their employees. A competitive salary package, bonuses, health benefits, employee discounts, tuition aid, job rotation and awards are some of the key motivational factors which AT&T uses to motivate their employees. We also use Goal setting theory in our organization. A common smart goal is developed and it is converted in to individuals' goal based on their organization needs and interest. All our quarterly incentives are tied up with the goals and market performance. So we get bonuses every quarter, which psychologically boost the moral of employees.

In my organization to avoid the monotonous and job boredom we introduced job rotation program among the organization where an employee will be rotated every 18 months to different jobs to different teams. This had not only avoided the boredom it also educated the employee in all aspects and made them more powerful. I always motivate my team members regularly by giving thank you card, honest feedback, taking lunch often, birthday cakes, hosting super bowl potluck, gift coupons etc. In case of any family emergencies or severe weather I allow my employees to telecommute or be flexible with work hours, which will encourage to work with positive mind. I also allow my employees to take decision during key time, which will morally motivate them at work I learned this art from my manager Marcus. Motivation is one of the sensitive and key factor in an organization I hope you all enjoyed my view of motivation.

Both my teams Georgia Tech and Clemson University are 4-0 as of now I hope they will be unbeaten until they meet on october 29th at GA tech. Please be free to give me feedback about my blog. See you all soon with my next post.

Thanks

Vino

GEMBA7-OBSession2 Vinodh Sankaran Learning Journal

A person to succeed in his job he should be first satisfied with what he is doing. He should give heart and soul to his work. In simple words he should be satisfied with his job then only it will be win-win case for individual and also for the organization. I will make sure my team members are always happy with their projects assigned and also highly satisfied with what they are doing. As a manager I always knew my team members interest and needs and I will assign jobs based on that.If an employee is not satisfied with the job he is involved that will spoil the team environment because the particular employee may not be loyal and honest to his team members.

To be frank even if I am not satisfied with my job it will create a negative mood and emotions permanently. I always prefer to do "Sport or Casual Chat" on every monday morning and make my people happy with little humor so that a positive mood will be created before they get in to their job. Sometimes I personally sacrifice my emotions and mood for my team. If my mood is not good because of personal or health issues I will sacrifice it and will prepare myself to be in good mood because it makes huge difference. I personally like people who thinks positive, open minded, open to innovative thinking because it not only improve their performance at work it will also increase the team members mood and confidence.

How to find the positive people? A personality test will try to help manager to identify the character and attitude of his team members. Few weeks before I got an opportunity to take personality tests IPIP-NEO and Myers-Briggs type inventory (MTBI) background. I am so impressed with the end product because both the results resembles the mirror image of my character and attitude. This helped me to understand more about myself. I would like to introduce these tests to my team members so that I can get a chance to know more about my team members that would help me to create a positive vibration among my team. These two test are also depends on people mood and emotion if they are in negative mood and emotions the result will vary so it is highly recommended to take these tests in good mood.

Based on the MTBI test result I am a ENFJ(Extraversion, Intuition, feeling and judging)personality person. In order to have diverse team I would prefer to have different personality person with positive mind in my team and these two tests will help me to achieve that goal. But judging people is also one of the challenging job for manager. A manager may have his own style of judging people but I prefer to judge people based on the situation with my honest heart and take decision after a thorough research. Decision making plays a major role for human in all aspect of life. For example if you wanna buy a used or new you have to do thorough research and make a decision. Managers will be having their own style of judging and decision making model to find and hire the positive people.

Even though you have positive people in your team it all depends up on "Motivational Factors" you follow in the team which will produce a fantastic result. So my next blog will be on "Motivation" catch you all soon. Be free to give a feedback.

Thanks

Vino

GEMBA7-OBSession1 Vinodh Sankaran Learning Journal

One of the important characteristic of manager is "Soft Skills" which is also called "People Skills". People skill is like an art and learning it will be very challenging task. A manager can be very strong in technical path but if he lags in people skill then his productivity will be affected. The main objective of the Organization behavior(OB) is to improve the people skills for managers. Organization behavior will focuses on groups, individuals and structure in an organization so that the profit can be increased. When my Professor Dr.Nagao discussed about the Volley ball in the class I was totally surprised because I basically learned all the team work basics from my favorite sport cricket. Cricket is basically a team sport if an group or individual or structure of team is not strong enough then team will lose the match(Thanks to Cricbuzz.com for the team picture).

The main aim of the manager in an organization is placing the right people at the right job but how the manager can identify his team members strength and weakness. Working in AT&T as business manager I interviewed my people individually and got their strengths and weaknesses by asking them "Best and Worst" day at work. Developing trust and confidence in the team will leads to better productive work ambience. I would always connect the people within my team and make sure they get maximum benefit from each other. This concept has been implemented in our organization as "One AT&T". It is really difficult to read people's mind but I would say once you learn this art it would make you a perfect leader in future.

As we discussed about "What great managers do" assuming I am one of the manager and want to add up on a point that a team should be diverse. It is not welcomed to have same kind of people within the team they should be unique from each other. I have a great team and I achieve my goals every project its all because of my team and their positive attitudes. Attitudes matter the most for a person. A manager should handle his employees in such way that there should not be any negative attitudes created among his team members. The power of attitudes can break the team and also the productivity. I always think positive attitude is one of the key to success.

Every human has emotions and its the responsible for the manager in organization that his team members emotions are not affected because it will create negative attitude among his team members which lead to a bad behavior in work environment and affects the organization massively. I will engage my employees to the project with their interest so that they will be motivated, involved in the job and also have positive attitude which will make them to achieve the job satisfaction. As I told you earlier that I compare team work with the sport so "Team work always win the game".Hope you all enjoyed my blog on Organization behavior introduction and Attitudes. Please be free to share your comments and thoughts

Thanks

Vino

Who am I

Hey all!! This is Vinodh Sankaran(Vino) and I work for AT&T as Business Portfolio Manager in Strategic Initiatives organization. My strengths are people and technical skills. One thing which I am currently working to improve myself in business knowledge and to achieve this I had started my MBA in Georgia Institute of Technology. I am confident that through Georgia Tech's Professor, courses and my classmates I can learn the business side of the organization. My goal is to learn the leadership, business skills and get myself equipped to lead the organization in global competitive market. I am friendly and easy going person. In this post I had shared my life journey with you all please be free to give me feedback or comments about my blog.

As everybody wonders the meaning of Vinodh Sankaran(Vino) it means "Different Person" in Malayalam language which is my native language and also the language people used to communicate in God's own country called "Kerala" in India. Yes I was born in Kerala one of the beautiful places on earth. Kerala is located in southern part of India and rich in culture, nature, backwaters, hill stations and boat races in backwaters.

From my 6th grade I got so much addicted to mathematics which lead to score of 100% on my 12th grade government exam. Because of this I got an opportunity to do my BS in Industrial Engineering in College of Engineering, Anna University,India one of the highly ranked and prestigous university in India which is as best as MIT in USA. After I graduated I got an offer to work as a Software Engineer for Infosys Technologies a leading software industry through I got experience on software technology ambience and I learned that I should be unique from others in order to get succeed in this highly competitive world so I planned to do my Masters in United States "a land of opportunity". I gave my GRE exam and got admitted in Clemson University to do my Masters in Industrial Engineering with full scholarship.

Life at Clemson was fully challenging and interesting. Major thing was the huge cultural difference. But I took it as a challenge and kept myself focussed on my career. Two best thing I enjoyed in Clemson was watching college football and the other one is playing cricket with my friends. Clemson Vs GA Tech is the game which I am looking forward this season and in great dilemma for which team to support.

When I am halfway done with my Master Thesis I got an offer from AT&T to do summer internship in 2009. That summer internship gave me a wonderful experience and I developed the software for AT&T which reduced the 80% of the cycle time for employees working in Network Planning and Engineering team. Highly impressed with my leadership and technical skills AT&T offered me a full time opportunity and gave me a option to travel to my school on thursday and friday to finish my thesis. Once I graduated in Dec 2009 I got promoted to Business Portfolio Manager and manages all IT and technical projects in Network Engineering team in AT&T.

I always had a dream to pursue my MBA from top business school and AT&T also want a young manager to focus on their global market so I thought this is the right time for me to do a MBA-Gloabl Business in GA Tech one of the prestigious universities in United States. I am proud to be yellow jacket fan now and really looking forward for this season.

My hobbies are playing cricket,soccer, watching movies and reading books.I have a passion on motorbikes and car racing. Yamaha R1 and Ducati are my favorites.