Do Your Job

You all know the story of donkey and dog and the washerman.  When dog refuses to act on thief's arrival due to his own resentment towards management (read washerman), donkey assumes additional role and brays aloud disturbing management's slumber.  Management was angry with donkey for transgressing the roles and broke its back.   But the story was retold somewhere and  managements in modern times rewards donkeys (no pun).  That is, professionals can take roles of professionals of other disciplines and generalists can fill all the space usually specialists are expected to occupy.  Anybody can do anything.  Moreover, they dominate and out maneuver the left over professionals who still stick to their jobs!

Today morning I tweeted that 

All organisations reflect the prevailing macro setting in the country. A pious organisation in a corrupt country? No way!!!

Then I read a column by Pratap Bhanu Mehta, CPR, Delhi on 

Jack out of the box in Indian Express
Link is here: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/jack-out-of-the-box/986173/3 

The crux of the article in author's own words: Indian discourse, whether in government or outside, is too dominated by generalists: people who can not only transgress their role, but who think they can take on any role.

Else where he writes: 

A society not governed by a sense of professional identities will indeed resemble a group of headless chicken running in all directions. It will be a society where, in the guise of deference to eminence, genuine expertise will be devalued; it will be a society where the credibility of institutions will be subordinate to the authority of perceived virtue; it will be a society where people seek recognition not in their own jobs, but their ability to act as superior to other professions; it will be a society that is not mobilising the talents of its citizens to the fullest because it does not value their core competence.

....... It may turn out that social change may not require hoary calls for “total revolution”. It is better served by a rather less enchanted, more difficult, but more prosaic slogan. Simply put: Do your job.

You can easily identify ourselves and organisations we work with the phenomenon Mehta is describing.  In fact, he was contextualising and giving perspective to Ram Devji's foray into politics.

Now you can relate  my tweet with the Mehta's  message !!!