Etiquette is a defined (or undefined) set of mannerism and behavior in a community or any social occasion. This is what makes a civil human being and its the first step to sophistication. Work etiquette is a basic requisite for any corporate job, well actually any job for that matter. This might vary a bit from country to country, based upon the culture and social structure; but ground rules are the same almost everywhere. Etiquettes at work help building a healthy work culture and reduce the stress level to quite some extent.

Lets have a few points jotted down here.

1. Be at work on time : This would be he ground rule one. This one never goes unnoticed by your boss and co-workers, and needless to say this is a much appreciated trait anywhere and anytime. No one would expect you to stay till late (unless there is some urgent deliverables). You would not have to make excuses, or answer anyone. And most important, it gives you a feeling of satisfaction; and thats a great way to start your day at work.

2. Dress appropriately : Be very careful about what you wear to office, your attire gives the first impression about you. Your clothes do not need to be expensive, all it needs is to be neat, ironed, of proper fitting, and makes you look smart. Flashy colors and designs are a strict no no. And of course no low or revealing cuts in your clothes. Accessories are always welcomed, but they should suite your clothing and appropriate for work attire.

3. Do not discriminate based on gender or race: How much educated and civil we may be, or portray ourselves to be, discriminations are not non-existent yet in our work cultures. Be it race, gender, social status or any other kind of discrimination, it makes people uncomfortable, increases the workplace stress, and decreases productivity in a longer run. Avoid making racist or gender specific jokes. And treat all your co-workers the same way.

4. Be cautious while using phone at work: Using your cellphone for longer duration, while you are at your desk could be disturbing for your colleagues. So go outside finish your conversation, if you think its going to be longer than a few minutes. While using your work phone, keep you volume low while on the phone, make use of headphones instead of speakers if you have long calls or meetings over phone. Avoid using work phone for your personal calls, or giving the work number for on line registration for your subscriptions etc.

5. Stay away from office gossip: Gossip has never done anyone any good. It can just hurts other people, breaks friendships, and makes people less trustworthy. And in office especially, others personal life, or even professional stuff as long as you are not directly involved with this; should be none of your botherations to care for.

6. Do not mix personal and professional life: Your personal and work life should stay separate. Your friends and colleagues are connected to you in different level of emotions, and that distance or barrier should be there for all good reasons. You can share some of your personal stuff at work, but that has to have a limit, especially the 'not going so good' parts. You can end up being the topic of office gossip, or be looked upon by your co-workers, as a guys who says it all to everyone. On the other hand, avoid asking people questions, that they could be uncomfortable answering. Or even giving advises without being asked for.

Following some basic etiquettes makes our and our co-workers life easier and the work-place becomes a better place to spend a major part of our day.

In the past few days, people seem to contact me through my personal site or KalaaLog.com with either some 'kudos' mails or asking some questions. Then there are some, who are starting out on some venture and want my assistance.

There is nothing wrong in reaching out and taking assistance of others on your venture. It is a choice to either do it on your own, or join forces with others. But when it comes to pitching, there are something that you can keep in mind that will save a lot of your time and also the one to whom you are pitching the idea.

Before I get into that, here is a summary of the chat I had with the person (who I will not name), where he wanted my assistance in a venture of his.

Him: Hi!
Me: Hello!
Him: I am planning on creating a website that does 'XYZ'. I intend to get revenue from that.
Me: Do you have a business model/business plan?
Him: Hmmm ... no.
Me: How are you going to generate revenue?

He explains for around more than hour, with some clarifying questions in between. By the end of it, he had a lot of 'ifs' in his explanation.

Me: So, in my opinion, this is not a feasible business approach.
Him: Should I try it?
Me: Sure you can.
Him: Ok I will. I need the website created. Will you do it for me?
Me: Will you pay me for my effort?
Him: Ha ha! No. But if I get revenue from the website, I will give you 50%.
Me: But you were not able to give explanation on the business plan. So, no - I will not work for free.

And the chat ended with usual nicety.

By the end of it, we both had wasted more than an hour and it felt fruitless to me. It would all have been avoided if he had just sent me the business plan/model with all the analysis. The chat window does not allow for transfer of such information.

So, if you are going to pitch an idea, please do so with a proper business plan documentation. It should have these details:

1. Summary - A birds eye view of the plan. Some may not be interested in some areas. Save them time, by giving a brief overview that lets them decide if they need to put an effort or not.
2. Business Plan - The actual plan, which describes in detail all the stakeholders.
3. Revenue Potential - This is part of the business plan, but needs to be given emphasis. Basically, there should be a ROI (Return On Investment) with all the risks stated, and also the assumptions made.
4. Partnership Plan - This basically describes who does what, and what is the revenue split.

Having a business plan/model handy while pictching for an idea increases the potential for further work, partneship and/or investment. With out it, not all may have the patience, or time, to hear you out fully.

Lunch break is the most awaited and cherished one hour at work. But as much we all love it, the question is do we make the best use of these sixty minutes? Well, of the 8-9 hours at work, this one hour is completely our. It's up to us how we spend it. Five better (might not be best) ways to use up the lunch break:

1. Pack your lunch: Get the lunch packed from home, and have it at your desk when you are sorting out your mails or doing some such light work. You would be done in about 10-15 minutes, and technically because you were working in parallel, you have your full one hour break still.

2. Go out for a walk: Just get out of the office, and take a walk outside in the sun (if the weather is good that is). You can just go to a close by bookstore, and checkout some new arrivals. Or do some window shopping, if you are a shopping freak like me. The best part is, it would clear up your mind, and you come back to work rejuvenated.

3. Ask your boyfriend/girlfriend to join you for lunch: You think only candlelight dinners are romantic? This suddenly planned lunch at a small cafe can work its magic; especially when time is of most essence.

4. Go out for a quick bite: And when you are back you would have a good 40-45 minutes in your hand. Browse the net, write a blog post(if you are a blogger), read your favorite comics online, or check some news sites to find out whats happening around the world.... just anything in the Internet that interests you.

5. Take a short nap: this might sound funny, but trust me, a 15-20 minutes nap after lunch and you definitely would get back to work all energized. If your desk is too public a place for it, your car in the parking lot could be the second best choice. I have seen people doing it, never tried myself though. But it's got to be effective; sleep being the best energizer in my opinion and of course many others.

So make the best use of your Lunch break. You owe yourself those 60 minutes... 3600 seconds of luxury, and it's definitely not worth wasting.

Ever had trouble juggling with about a hundred emails, 5-6 meetings, and ending up with couple of missed deadlines; in a day's work? This is my experience every 2-3 days in a week. And I heard quite a few of my friends and co-workers whining about the same; not being able to manage such a busy day at work. Well, we all know out of those hundred odd mails a whole bunch would be just FYIs and another bunch would be just irrelevant for us. We see those mails and keep wondering, why would my name be there in that mailing list! And same holds true for the meetings; in half of those, people try to impose the “expert” opinions on others and argue over some matter thats remotely associated with the purpose of the meeting. And while attending all these meetings and getting lost in the unnecessary emails, at the end of 8 hours of the day you realize you missed some important stuff that was time critical. After struggling with such crazy days for few months, I finally came up with some tricks to have a more organized day at work. Here goes a few of those;

1. Make use of email client: Whether you are using MS Outlook, IBM Lotus Notes or any other such application as your email client, leverage its functionalities. They have tons of features to help you manage your everyday work. Calendar, tasks, follow ups are the functionality on Outlook, that I make the most use of. The tasks those are time specific and critical, a calendar entry can be set up for those with a reminder, so the message pops up before 15 minutes on your screen. Helps you in two ways; you wont miss things out and have some buffer time in hand. Your calender will show busy to other people, so that they cannot set up another meeting at that time, and you can use the blocked time to finish of your work. Similarly, using follow up in the messages, those need to be addressed at a particular time (after 2 days, at 10 am) or have some other dependency. Or may be, if you are waiting for your DBA's response about some details you asked for; a message sent with follow up pops on their screen.
2. Use a daily planner or PDA (if you are a tech savy): Investing some money on a PDA and some time updating it, never goes useless. If you are stuck in traffic getting late for work you can check your reminders and calendar entries and end up not missing an an important meeting. You can always join the meeting through your cell phone. Or if something comes up when you are at middle of your lunch or away from your computer for some reason, you could probably make use of the contact info or other such minute detail, and respond to a call, without having to go back to work or near your computer.
3. Organize your mailbox. Create folders and sub folders based upon individuals or a group of people or even different applications; whichever works out best for you. Take the backup of your mailbox every month, or may be more frequent if so needed. An organized archive of mails could save you lot of effort on a work. You get into an issue, that you had worked upon several months back, and found the fix after. Now you can just go back to your archive, and get the resolution. If not, at least you would not have to start from the scratch again. And most important, archived mails can work as very good proof at times, and save your butt justifying your claim of doing something (or not for that matter), sometime in past.
4. Utilize the time when you are in some unnecessary meetings (the telephonic ones). Well this might sound a bit rude, but you would agree to me that of the 4-5 meetings you might have in a day, there will be at least one to which you would have been invited just for no apparent reason. You can always decline such meetings, or accept tentatively, but at times you just can not avoid those. Another such type of meeting could be, the meeting would be for one hour, with twenty people invited and your job is done once your questions answered in 5 minutes or so. In such meetings, you can join the call, have the headsets on, put it on mute and do some multitasking; sort out your mails, put some follow ups, reply to few of them, or do some work that does not need you cent percent attention.
5. Talking to people instead of sending a bunch mails; at times I have seen tons of emaila going back and forth among just two people or may be a group of them. Someone needs some clarification, you reply back explaining it, but its not enough for them, they have few more questions, and then some more. Matter worsens if more people involved. Another reason, people do not respond to emails immediately and you cannot blame them, always, they could really be busy. I have seen things getting pushed for days and weeks, due to this kind of communication gap. If that kind of situation arises; just pick up the phone and call the person. At times ten minutes talk is much more fruitful than sending ten emails back and forth. And if there ate more people involved, you could set up a meeting with all those people for 30 minutes or so. Everyone can get together and talk, and get the clarifications they need from each other. Email has its own importance, in communication at work, but a phone call or just going to the person who sits two aisles away from you and talking to him in person does its trick most of the times.

There could be a lot more to add to this. Anyone has anything more to share!

Its not easy to say 'I Quit', just one fine day. Its not simple to break that bond with your work and the people you have had around for considerable time of your day, and the rappot you have built over the years (or months!). But at times its probably the best thing to do, the best of choices atleast for you.

We all get into this thought process of quiting at some point of time or other. Which could have been triggered by, a fight with the boss, or the constant work pressure eating up our personal time, or probably some obnixious colleague. But as normal human beings, we prefer to compromise a little bit to stay back, in our comfort zones, which we would have built over time. And well, its not wise too, to put papers for some silly reason. You could be just loosing it all, for yourself and the company you were working for; the reputation at work that was built with collegues and management, the knowledge of domain (of work), and the effort that was put all these days to achieve the above. At times it might not be simply worth it.

There is a limit though to everything, the crossover point for which could be determined only by the individual. So, its that simple. when it gets to the crossover point, you quit. And that holds good just not for work.. for relationships, habits (read obsessions) or anything else for that matter.

Just a few crossover points I am jotting down here;

• When your relationship at work, with your boss or collegue or management is battered beyond repair. That is when, all efforts to mend it have given up (from both sides possibly), its probably the best to just let go.
• When the ethics and culture at your workplace become polar to your principles and values in life. Working in such an environment, would just take away your peace of mind. And you can never be productive in such a situation.
• When you realize that your work life is consuming a major chunk of you personal life and time. When you leave work at 8 pm, carrying home some files to be worked upon over the night. And you cannot remember, when you took a day off last time or went for a vacation. Its probably time.. you say 'It's enough'.
• When your company is loosing its market shares, downsizing the work force, and loosing its customers, probably its time to say goodbye. It might not sound very fair.. but it is just what needs to be done.
• Moreover, when you realize that, this is not the job you really wanted to do ever. Your passion lies in something else. But be 200 percent sure before going for a change of profession. And give ample time to think about the pros and cons of taking such a huge step. A guy I know, quit his well paying job at a telecom company to join an university to study music. It was pretty difficult a decission for him and his family. But they had to plan for it well ahead of time, and make some sacrifices.

To be happy in life, just know when to QUIT.

At work, almost everyone would fit into any one of the above two categories.  They can belong to a team, working under a team lead or manager. Or they are managers, team leads having a team of people work for them.  But there would be some, who would fit into both these positions at the same time.  And striking a balance between both of them can be quite tricky (read dangerous  ).

At workplace, reaching out of one's comfort zone is talked about quite often. A brilliant example would be; when you are given five new resources and asked to build a team to manage a critical project.  Especially when the nature of job is very demanding; mistakes, schedule slippages are bound to happen.  Thanks to the new team who will be in the learning curve for first few months. Few tips to manage the time and pressure at work in such a situation, it’s from my personal experience;

• Know your team: while building a team know about each individual. Having a choice to choosing the team, not many are privileged enough. So try to get a fair idea about the individual, their educational and professional background. It helps build the rapport within the team.
• Knowledge share: This is the most important part, knowledge transition. Prepare a schedule and stick to it. And sessions, discussions, documents are not enough for learning; have the team start working on real scenarios from initial period of knowledge transition. Let them take risks, make mistakes and learn.
• Taking Responsibility: The team lead should be responsible for the team's action or behavior. The lead should act as a shield (transparent though) for the team to higher management or clients. And at the same time the team should take responsibility of the work and have an ownership attitude towards the project.
• Dealing with higher Management: This part is quite tricky, the transparent shield has to be built quite carefully.  Be protective towards your team; cover up for their mistakes, but not at the cost of your own reputation. If you take all the responsibilities, the team will never learn to do that for themselves. Do not hesitate to break that protective shield, when you feel it is too much. Pushing too hard at the expense of your own piece of mind, does not make sense.
• Perfect balance of Approachable yet Commanding: As a lead, your goal is to have the work done, yet not upset the team.  Extend a helping hand when they need it. Be reasonable and approachable to the team members, yet make it clear to them how particular you are about completion and perfection of work.

Couple of tips and tricks, it worked for me. Sure will work for others!!

This is something that I have learned and practiced during the years I have been at a job.

The job gets hectic sometimes and very absent some other times.  You never would be getting work to do the proper 8 or 10 hours a day.  I have known many of my friends cuss about needing to work up to 14 or more hours a day and sometimes not have anything to work on.  It can be really jarring sometimes.

The key to it is to have a mental tally on how much you work for your employer and how much you work for yourselves. Some of the work you do for both.

What is the work you do for your employer? It is the work that runs the business and earns the revenue for the company or firm you work for.

What is the work you do for yourself?  It can be anything - from going out hiking, working out in the gym, reading books on lateral subjects - any thing that helps you improve the quality of your life.

There are some things that you can do for both.  For example - train for a particular skill. It helps you and it also helps your employer because they can use your skill as leverage.

Identify all the work you do and see if you can put them in these baskets.  Keep a tally of how much you do for your employer and how much you work for yourself.  Decide on a ratio, and see to it that the effort you put works in maintaining this ratio.  It may not be that you can do so everyday - but tend to maintain it over a week or so. If you overwork one day, try to do things for yourself the following day.

In effect, it will keep you satisfied that you are not being ripped off by your employer.  The 14 hour days will not feel like hell, and your quality of work and productivity would improve.  It is good for you and it is good for your employer.

Compared to verbal communication, communicating through email or letter would be secondary.  But today when half of the team sits on one corner of the world, other half on the other end of it, most probably in the client location, importance and criticality of this form of communication is undeniable.

Unlike verbal communication, the receiver of the communication does not get to hear the tone or emphasis on the main point of the subject matter, neither does he can see the expression or body language.  Hence the presentation of words, have to do the job.  Few basic points if taken into consideration, solves the purpose more or less.

1.  While typing names in the ‘To’ list take into consideration organizational hierarchy.  To list should contain the names, the mail is intended to and cc list should have the people to whom mail is being sent just for reference.

2. An appropriate subject line is a must.  This should be concise and to the point. Try to follow the same/similar subject line for an ongoing matter or discussion.

3. Although emails are not as formal as general letters, usage of proper salutations and mentioning the receiver’s name makes the email more appealing.

4. Though there is no formal definition how the matter should be presented in the email, it should not be very long (more than one page unless very necessary) nor very short. The subject matter should be placed simple (no too verbose) and straight (do not try to confuse the reader by beating around the bush).

5. Be professional.  Avoid using abbreviations of technical terms or short messages ('u' for you, 'r' for are).  Email address should preferably be in this format firstname.lastname@abc.com. Never use the ones used for personal mail (choco_rosy@abc.com).

6. Bold, capitals, italics should be used appropriately to emphasize some words. But too much of usage and using these all together might result the email body look messed up.

7. The mail should end with proper salutation again (even a 'Thanks' or 'Regards' would do for email). Adding your signature always gives a personal touch. It can constitute of your name, position and contact details if needed. Some people add a signature statement as well. But "not too flashy" is always better.

8. Watch out for the spelling mistakes and grammar usage. A spell check is must before hitting the Send button.

9. Double check the attachment before sending, if you are sending one along with the mail.

So here we go.  I think I covered the basics of email etiquette.  Any thing I am missing, anyone can think of?

Communication is an art.  Communication skills play a major role in one's work life.  It makes one known as a friendly, co-operative colleague or even otherwise.  At workplaces today, when we have to deal with people of different hierarchy, different roles, and moreover people from different cultural background, communication skill becomes still more critical.

So are you known as a grumpy boss, or a whining employee, or an insatiable client or inconsiderate and rude co-worker.  Instead of being frustrated and blaming everyone else for this, may be you should just step back and scrutinize how you are communicating with your team, superiors, subordinates or clients.

Communication skill, is not only possessing an excellent vocabulary and neutral accent.  It takes a lot more; body language, eye contact and most important is to be an attentive listener.  You would have to build the trust, for any relationship to work out fine; a collaborative team member, an apprehensive boss, or an amiable client to work with.

Here goes just the verbal communication, other type of communications would be covered in next couple of posts.  And so are the problems that we face during communicating and their resolutions(?).

If work is a burden, only then it looks like a work.  If work comes out of love, it becomes worship.  Then there is no need for any meditation.  It is enough.  The work itself becomes a meditation.  You are so deeply in it that the mind stops.

While working, work so totally that you forget the whole world, so that only the work remains not even you, you are also forgotten. Deepdown you are so involved that the work becomes a great meditation, a great transformation.  If you are doing a certain thing as work, it will exhaust you.  If you are doing the same thing as play, it will refresh you.  It is not the work,it is the attitude!!!!!!

A non-doer is a flowing person, alive.  A non-doer doesnot mean that he doesnot do anything.  Rather, he never thinks "I am doing it".  A non-doer will do many things and will not be tired because there will be no tension.  He will do many things and will not accumulate any ego because he is not the doer.  Things are just happening.

Love comes first.  The present moment is all here.  Tomorrow is too far away to worry about.  Well,have you ever met anybody who really love the works they do?  Most people seem to be in it for the money or more accurately for the freedom and comfort that the money povides.  The result is that people learn to work for money................but never learn to have money work for them.