Meeting with SK

I met a person yesterday. He joined TCS recently. He is a visiting prof. in one of the University in US. He hailed from financial services background. I am putting his advice in his own words.

"....I am not used to hard working. I do smart working. People ask what is smart working? Spending n number of hours in working is not smart working. I am currently asking the senior management to take half a day off from the routine work and think through the long term plans. This is one example of smart working. People are confused about the two terms responsible and accountable. I can explain the difference with an example. The delivery manager is accountable for the product / service delivery to the customer. But it is the project manager who is responsible. If the product / service delivered is a success it is the project manager along with the team gets praised. However, if anything goes wrong it is the delivery manager who takes all the blame. In the project the Project manager is accountable for the delivery and it is the project lead / module lead / team lead is responsible for the same. For the module it is the module lead who is accountable and the developer is responsible. Hence we must understand what we are responsible for and what we are accountable for. This enables us to work smarter. We must take time out for us and think through our long term plans and work accordingly.

We can read books. The reading habits among the generation Y is reducing. It is ok even if we read a novel. But reading is more important. It will be good if we read any of the management books. Reading triggers our thinking and makes us creative. Creative working will help us to be smarter."