Once a year every employee has to go through the appraisal process. Double the woes if its a bi-annual one. Its the time when you are told how good you could have been but how bad you really are. Urged to work on the weaknesses but never suitable rewarded for the strengths. Also thrown in are the typical mumbo jumbo of being proactive and taking the initiative and you come out of the appraisal meeting just as clueless as you were when you went in. Although words like faith, expectations and morale have lost their meanings in the transit.
Till date almost all my managers have told me to be more proactive and take initiative. Well I do understand the words coming out of your mouth but what the hell do they mean? A senior colleague was kind enough to throw some light on the matter. After a mind numbing explanation, I thought I understood it well. But I was just fooling myself.
He was very good at it though. Always setting up important meetings , sending out invites to all, reminding them about the agenda, making quick gestures to run to the meeting room where the meeting started in five. I happened to attend one such meeting and never before had I seen anyone so tongue-tied in a discussion. So what were the invites and reminders and gestures all about? Only pep talk to prove the point, I presume. Hoping that the initiatives taken were noticed by someone, although no good ever came of it.
There was another proactive freak in my earlier company. Always ready with possible scenarios and solutions and nag everyone with anecdotal narration of how some of the proactive things done earlier paid off well. The boss just thinks of something that should be done and he is ready with it. A client needs to be sent some critical information which had come to light in recent discussion, but Mr. Proactive has already sent a mail the day before. My question is, if you are so good at peeking into the future and be ready with what your boss wants before he wants it, where the hell are you hiding your crystal ball in this office? Is it under your desk? Clearly you are too smart to work under someone like that. In fact, that someone should get demoted in the next appraisal.
Here's a thought. When I last went to such a meeting, it by no means was lesser than a war zone, where I was fighting it out, armed with client appreciation letters and thank you mails from onsite coordinators and the manager, aka "the enemy for the hour", just undermined the efforts by hurling grenades, with "proactive" and "initiative" written all over them, that gave away my position and I surrendered to be taken as a prisoner of war and made to work without tiring or complaining or taking leaves, destined to survive another year on same, if not a poorly appraised, salary. That these terms do have any comprehendible or implementable meanings or are just some pseudo jargon to boost an employee's sinking morale remains to be seen. There is no known record that generous use of such mumbo jumbo has actually boosted someones morale. I think of them more like prototypes of concept vehicles in an auto show. Awe inspiring but almost impossible to bring to the masses. Forget the masses, did the priest even practice what he just preached. There was no initiative to promote me nor was there any proactive move to help the management notice me! I stay put, doing my work which goes on as usual. It is better off without the impetus that the deceptive jargon intends to make.
What would such highly initiated proactive people , if at all they aren't a myth, say about themselves the day they start putting the '-tives' to use. Would it be like, "I took the initiative to be proactive everyday" or maybe something like "I want to be proactive in taking this initiative" or maybe even attract severe criticism like "His proactiveness killed the initiative". I really don't know what to say.
I have my appraisals coming soon. Maybe its time to be proactive and take the initiative to find better avenues.
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