Professional Loyalty a Myth

loyaltyWhat is Loyalty?

Have we ever thought of this word before. The answer would be yes. But the truth is “for others” and not when it comes to us.

If we take the direct meaning of the word loyalty there are different ways to use it. First, in Confucianism, it is meant as “do the best you can do for others”. Second, in Christianity, “if loyalty to man conflicts with loyalty to God, the latter takes precedence”.

But what it actually means?

We almost correlate it with “slavery”.

How?

If my employee quit, its against loyalty.

If my friend speaks to my enemy, its against loyalty.

If I discuss into healthy debate with anyone of other company in my line of business its against loyalty to the company, so on and so forth.

But, hang on. Did we ever do a self analysis about us on this so called myth “loyalty”. No we won’t. Because whatever we do, it is all because of a cause and if the same is done by others then we immediately weigh it in Loyalty scale. This is not for you or for me. This is happening in most of the People I am able to acquaint with.

We forget that we were also working with someone else yesterday and will be working with someone else tomorrow. If we had worked with others and come to our present company then are we “not loyal?” . We won’t accept. Why accepting? We won’t even analyse us in that angle.

When we recruit people from other company we won’t question them for “loyalty”. We even go extra mile asking them to bring other people from their earlier company to our company. Some may even do that.

But when they quit, we first give lecture to them on so called “loyalty” and particularly we will advise them in a commanding tone about loyalty.

Is quitting a job means not being loyal?

First please understand. QUITTING is not anything against LOYALTY. When we feel something is not going to our comfortness or if we want  advancement in our carrier, we have to quit and move on. Else both our company as well as us are not going to advance, why advance, we won’t even feel comfortable in the profession.

What is loyalty then?

Loyalty is a virtue or we can say it is the top of all virtues. So it is not something going to do with Profession at all.

Just be “true” that is what required in profession. True to your profession and true to your work ethic. Non solicitation is the ethic of any job. Just don’t solicit anything which rightfully belongs to others.

According to me, Loyalty is a very bad quality against Professional and Personal Enhancement.

If you Boss or your company speaks about Loyalty rather than trueness then you are at the wrong place in your carrier.

Loyalty will bring in a slavery mentality within you which will stop you in coming out of the cocoon even though you may feel or want to.

If Loyalty defines to be “not quitting job” even if I am sure that I won’t advance myself in the current position, then I prefer to be Not Loyal.

If professional loyalty means “being true” to the position I am holding and held, then I prefer to be Loyal.

Growth Roadmap V/s Expectation Over-shoot

growthAs a startup our first requirement is the best team to work with us. When I say team, I don’t mention just human who are SME alone (Subject Matter Expert). We start our business with a vision. If we are not able to sow our vision and mission into our core team then we will surely cannot reach our goal at the correct phase.

So what is required? 

The main need to have a strong core team is to transform our vision and mission through them. If the core team, even one of them, is not convinced with our vision then our failure starts there.

Is it an easy task to implant our vision and mission to our team? The answer is NO. It is not an easy task. It will take months together or even years to build the core team with same vision. Once it is done we are all set and the team can take us to the goal and even beyond.

The real problem starts here again. The human ego or human expectation is not a stable target. Two moving targets are the toughest to handle. When we say we have vision and mission for our company, we have to accept every human has their own vision and mission of their life.

As a startup we should learn to bridge the gap.

How will we do that?

Universal standard is, we will show them the roadmap of their growth with us. In the initial period their goal of growth will be a constant target. But when they see their growth through us, their goal of growth will become a moving target. Can we judge this as right or wrong?

No again. We are not here to gauge the growth of anyone. The problem starts, when the shift of our vision is not in phase with them. So either one will get fed up with the other.

The solution is don’t feed them fully. Leave an acceptable vacuum on their goal achievement so that they will know the value  of what we are giving. Else they will expect to grab more than they deserve. Its not their fault. Its human psychology. If we are not able to maintain the acceptable vacuum on the roadmap of their growth, automatically their expectation will over shoot than what they actually can.

Eventually the fault lies on us. Since we are not able to gauge the growth vs expectation we start loosing our core team which will be the last thing we like to happen in our business.

Now correlate the title picture with this concept and you can understand this concept!!!

Time to – Not Upgrade

timeChange is the rule of nature!!!

May be this is applicable for human life. But does this need to be the standard for electronics and mobile?

Have we ever thought “it would have been better not to have an upgrade”.  Not every application or every mobile should have a continuous upgrade. We should come to a state where we should have a base version which can be used irrespective of any upcoming upgrade.

I would like to bring in the most beautiful phrase here. “Need and Want”. Time has come where we should differentiate between Need and Want of the upgrade.

An upgrade could be of two aspect. The company is upgrading it because they want to add new features into that app or device which are really essential to further use of that app or device OR they want to make some extra money out of the new release.

If we start thinking the real need of a new phone other than what we have now, then every mobile manufacture will delay their new Phone release by another two years for sure.

Who is not ready to save some extra dime out of cutting our expenses?