21st century | Bhavin Gandhi's Blog

How to effectively provide negative feedback to your employees? Part 2

Most managers blame their employees for their poor performance instead of talking directly to them about these issues. Unfortunately, some of these managers try to take the easy way out, and turn a blind eye to their employee’s issues. After all, confronting someone about their behavioral issues is not the prettiest thing in the world. Thus, in this blog, I will continue my conversation from my last blog, and provide you with couple of other ideas that you can use while providing negative feedback to your employees.

Don’t give advice: Even though most managers recognize the importance of giving their feedback to their employees, they completely misunderstand the meaning of feedback itself. Instead of utilizing the feedback time for giving their feedback to their employees, these managers try to give their advice to their employees during these feedback meetings. It is not always appropriate to give advice to other people. If your advice does not work, you will be blamed later for it. Thus, you should rather try to share your opinions and ideas with your employees, and let them come up with an appropriate solution by themselves. Suppose an employee who is having trouble with some task comes to you and asks, “What am I doing wrong?” Instead of giving advice, share your personal experience with your employees. For example, you might describe a similar problem you had, and how you handled it. It is then up to them to decide what to do. This approach will not only make them independent, but it will also improve their knowledge base.

Don’t delay your feedback: If you want to provide an effective feedback to your employees, you need make sure that your feedback is always timely. Well timed feedback is more likely to provide you with the right results than delayed feedback because it allows the person to correct actions or behaviors while they are still fresh. For example, if your employee messes up the accounting system, you might want to discuss the problem with the responsible employee immediately, if possible, or at least within a day or two. Even though you want to provide your feedback to them immediately, try to consider the environmental factors first. For example, if you point out the employee’s mistakes in front of a group of coworkers, it is likely to be resented. Thus, try to provide the sensitive feedback in a private setting, probably in a one-on-one meeting or something.

Don’t be overpowering: No one wants to look bad in front of others, we all want to feel intelligent in front of others. This goes for your employees as well. During your negative feedback communication, your employees will often continue to argue for a plan even when it is obviously not working or in the best interest of the organization, because they want themselves to look good in front of you and others. Thus, during these meetings you should provide an avenue to your employees to save their face. Your employees are more likely to accept your negative feedback if you allow some degree of face saving for them. For example, instead of saying, “Your idea was rejected,” mention that the rejection was due in part to lack of funds or other factors, thereby allowing them to save their face.

With these pointers, I am ending my two-part series blog about – ‘providing negative feedback to your employees’. If you have any other ideas through which we can make this process easier, then please share your ideas with me through your comments here. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on June 8, 2015 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

Tags: 21st century, Effective Feedback, Employee Communication, Help your employees, Leadership, Management, Mentor your employees, Negative Feedback

How to effectively provide negative feedback to your employees? Part 1

26 May

First of all, I would like to thank my readers for really liking my last blog series about ‘honest feedbacks’. I really appreciate your feedback, so please keep it coming. Secondly, many of you have asked me how to provide honest, but negative feedback, to your employees, and hence, I am writing this two-part series blog for answering some of your questions.

Refrain from personal attacks: While giving feedback to others, try to direct your feedback towards their behavior rather than towards that particular person. A common mistake lot of managers make is to criticize the person rather than their negative behavior. If you tell your assistant that she is a poor excuse for a secretary, then it is a personal attack rather than a constructive criticism. These kind of feedback can only make your employees more defensive towards you and your feedback. So, try to identify the problematic behavior and focus on what can be done to correct it in the future, instead of launching personal attacks towards your employees. For example: This is what you tell your secretary when she makes an accounting mistake … “Jackie, an accounting mistake like this one can cost way more than our weekly office budget. From now on, please check with me before finalizing any orders costing more than $100”.

Be descriptive: While providing feedback to your employees, don’t be evaluative or judgmental, instead be descriptive. Descriptive feedback is tactfully honest and objective, whereas evaluative feedback seems to be more judgmental and accusatory to the feedback receiver. Here is an example of an evaluative feedback: “Where is your sales report? You know it is due on my desk no later than 9:00 each morning. You’re obviously not reliable anymore.” Here is an example of a descriptive feedback for the same situation: “When you don’t turn your sales reports in on time, I’m unable to complete the departmental report on time. This makes both of us look bad. You’ve been late twice this month. Is there something I can do to help you get those reports in on time?” Like in this example, descriptive words are more likely to result in cooperation.

Keep it short: If you are providing constructive criticism to your employee, don’t have a marathon about it. Try to include only as much information as the person can handle at one time. Suppose during a performance appraisal, you give an employee a list of 20 items that need improvement. Even though you might feel better after fully expressing your feelings, your employee will only remember 2-3 major bullet items from that meeting and forget everything else. How can anyone improve on 20 things at the same time? Think about it, can you do that? What would have happened if your manager gave you similar feedback? Wouldn’t you require more time to analyze this much information at once? Thus, you should restrict yourself while giving negative feedback to your employees. Give only two or three suggestions that your employee can reasonably handle at a time.

These are some ideas through which you can effectively provide negative feedback to your employees. If you have any other ideas through which we can make this process easier, then please share your ideas with me through your comments here. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on May 26, 2015 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

Tags: 21st century, Become the best manager, Confront your employees, Effective communication, Leadership, Management, Negative Feedback, Performance Review

How to make your feedback communications more comfortable for your employees?

01 Apr

In my last blog post, I have provided you with a couple of tips through which you can get an honest feedback from your peers without putting them on the spot. In this blog, I will provide you with some more tips on getting effective feedback, but this time I will concentrate on a few subtle methods, so your peers don’t feel uncomfortable while providing their honest feedback to you.

Listen first, talk later: Too many people ask for feedback, wait only 2 or 3 seconds, before they start talking again. It takes more time than that for most people to organize and verbalize their responses. And hence, once you ask for their feedback, you should be silent for more than 10 – 15 seconds, and give them time to think and organize their thoughts. Once they start speaking, don’t disrupt them in between, even if you don’t agree with some of their comments. If you do that, they might lose their train of thoughts, and you will end up diverting the conversation to something else completely. Thus, I would recommend you to use a pen and paper (or any note taking application) during these kind of conversations. In this way, you can present your counter argument later without interrupting your peers while they are providing you with their valuable feedback.

Paraphrase: Even when you feel sure you understand a person’s feedback, it is important to paraphrase. For example, if your boss says, “This rush job has top priority,” you could paraphrase by saying, “You are telling me that this rush job has higher priority than any other job I’m working on now. Is that right?” By paraphrasing, you are not only making sure that you understood him correctly, but you are also asking for his validation on the spot. Do not assume that you understand the meaning of the feedback that you receive from others. If you even have a slightest doubt in understanding their feedback, then don’t be afraid of asking for clarification. Worst come worst, you will get the same feedback again, but you will ensure that you understand their point of view crystal clear.

Be interactive: Don’t let the feedback be one-sided deal. Even though, you don’t want to disrupt in-between, you want to make sure that you use encouraging statements during this process, so that your peers feel comfortable while giving their feedback. People usually adjust their feedback by monitoring the listener’s verbal and nonverbal reactions. And hence, you want to make sure that you are interactive and positive during this process. If you want a person’s honest opinion, you must encourage it by purposely saying such things as “Really?”, “Interesting”, “So, you feel that. . . .”, etc.

Follow-up with a reward: If you are a manager, you can reward feedback by complimenting the person, preferably in front of colleagues. You can also implement a reward system within your team, where “Best Idea of the Month” employee gets a public recognition through name calling or a personalized placard or a company pen with their name engraved on it. If you are an individual contributor (employee), you can sincerely thank people for their comments and perhaps write them a note of thanks. In this way, you will not only encourage them to provide their feedback again, but you will also encourage others to provide their feedback to you after looking at this person’s experience with you.

These are some ideas through which you can make the feedback communication slightly easier for your peers. If you have any other ideas through which we can improve our feedback communication, then please share it through your comments here. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on April 1, 2015 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

Tags: 21st century, Become the best manager, Employee feedback, Feedback meetings, Feedback process, Honest feedback, Leaders of Tomorrow, Manager's Guide, Take an effective feedback

How to get honest feedback from your peers without putting them on the spot?

16 Mar

Managers who encourage their employees to give honest feedback mostly find themselves improving the accuracy and productivity of their quality of work. I know I have. Feedbacks often increase employee satisfaction with their job by providing them with a voice and valuing their opinions.

In my last blog, I have identified many hurdles due to which people refrain from giving their honest feedback to you. And hence, in this blog, I will provide you with few tips and tricks through which you can get honest feedback from your peers, and eliminate any hurdles that you might encounter.

Ask for it: Tell people you want their feedback. When people feel that their opinions and observations may be used against them or that your feelings may be easily hurt, they withhold their feedback. Thus, let them know that you consider their personal opinions, questions, and disagreements, not only useful but also necessary. If you are hesitant to ask for their direct feedback, try to use 360-degree feedback with the help of your HR Department. In that process, your peers, superiors, subordinates, customers, suppliers, and sales staff provide their feedbacks anonymously to you. So, you are more likely to get their honest feedback.

Be specific: When you ask for someone’s feedback, they are mostly confused, as they don’t know where to start. That doesn’t mean that they don’t want to provide their feedback, its just that they don’t know what you are looking for. Thus, before asking for the feedback, its your job to identify the areas in which you want the feedback. If you want personal feedback, you might say, “I am trying to improve my presentation’s delivery and am interested in knowing how confident I appeared in today’s meeting.” Similarly, if you want only feedback pertaining to the organization of your ideas, then specify that topic.

Make it regular: Let’s assume that you are working for a hands-off manager, who gives you work flexibility, and doesn’t meet with you that often. Now, imagine a situation where he suddenly stops by your office and asks for your honest feedback. What would you do in that situation? I don’t know about you, but I would be baffled, if my manager doesn’t have the habit of asking my feedback regularly. Instead of giving him my feedback, I might think that I am in some kind of a trouble. Won’t you? Your employees will have the same mindset. Thus, it is very important for us, as a manager, to set aside some time for regularly scheduled feedback sessions. These sessions will not only help you get your employee’s honest feedback, but it will also show your employees that you value their feedback and care for their opinions.

These are some of few ideas through which you can make it easier for your peers to provide their honest feedback to you. Wait for my next blog, where I will provide you with some more insight on effective feedback taking. In the meanwhile, if you have any other ideas through which we can improve the process of feedback taking, then please share it through your comments here. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on March 16, 2015 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

Tags: 21st century, 360 degree feedback, Become the best manager, Employee feedback, Honest feedback, Leaders of Tomorrow, Manager's Guide, Take an effective feedback

Why do we refrain from taking or giving feedbacks to our peers?

02 Mar

As a manager (or a leader), we should continually be looking for feedback from our peers and employees, and try to improve ourselves. After all, management is more about listening than doing, isn’t it? Even though you would like to improve yourself from these feedbacks, they are hard to come by. So, before we find out a better way to get feedback from our peers, we need to find out basic reasons due to which people feel uncomfortable taking (or giving) their honest feedback.

It emphasizes inferiorities: Honest feedback can sometime make people feel psychologically attacked. Even the most experienced manager or employee can become defensive when feedback seems negative. Take this for an example…Recently, I had to deal with a situation where one of my employee was struggling with time management, so I recommended him to take some time management training. Even though he is a top performer in my team, he was offended by hearing that I was disappointed with his performance. Instead of seeing this feedback as the opportunity to learn something new, he saw it as a personal attack instead.

Don’t know what to ask: Some people misunderstand feedback as the sign of poor communication. To those kind of people, feedback indicates that the message was not communicated very well, and hence, there is a necessity for feedback to get on the same page again. Often people are either so confused that they don’t know what to ask or so confident of their understanding that they ignore the need for any kind of verification. Thus, people refrain to ask for any kind of feedback, after all, no one wants to admit that they didn’t understand anything properly.

It is time consuming: No matter what kind of feedback you are seeking, verbal or written, it is always going to be time consuming task. Then it maybe at the meeting or through an e-mail, you need to make sure that you ask the right question, and get the honest response. Unfortunately, most of the managers won’t take the time to make sure that everyone is on the same page by asking for their feedback; instead, they will prefer to redo their tasks that should have been accomplished correctly the first time. Maybe they are used to this practice of dictatorship, or maybe they are afraid to put in the required time to ask the right question.

People are afraid: If you work in a developed Nation like US, UK, or Canada, you don’t want to admit that you are afraid of your Boss/Manager. But inherently we all respect the authorities of our Boss, and we are kind of afraid of their authorities as well. Even though we are taught to speak up our mind, we sometimes refrain from providing true feedback to our managers by being afraid of the consequences that it might have in the future. Is that not true? There is nothing wrong with this behavior. From our childhood we are taught to respect authority, then it maybe the authority of our parents or our teachers.

Can you find any other reasons due to which people refrain from giving their honest feedback to others? If so, please share it here, I would love to hear your take on this. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on March 2, 2015 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

Tags: 21st century, 360 Feedback, Employee engagement, Employee feedback, Employee inferiorities, Human Psychology, Leaders of Tomorrow, Management, Personal Development, Provide negative feedback, Reasons for no feedback

How to deal with the frustration of your employees?

16 Feb

We are all humans, and we all have moments of disappointment when things don’t go our way. And I am sure, as a manager, you must have encountered these situations often, when your employees are feeling down for not accomplishing something that they have set their target on. Although most employees can easily navigate through these small bumps, sometimes you need to jump in when you see these opportunities. Having a quick one-on-one chat with your employees during these tough times would soften the blow, and lead them to a quicker recovery. So, what should you talk about during these times? Following are some of my advice…..

Appreciate their work: When you sit down with your employee to analyze the issue, you must not forget to appreciate their hard work first. Tell your employees that their work is highly valuable and their efforts are highly appreciated. This kind of conversation starter will put your employees at ease before discussing their issues. If I were their manager, I would say something like this – “These kind of issues keep on happening, and despite our best efforts, sometimes things don’t work out our way. But look at what you have accomplished, you tried something new, and got new experience, that’s what is important. After all, you can’t be perfect at everything, right?” This approach will not only let your employees know that you care, but it will also ease their mood before before having the actual conversation.

Walk through the issue: Once you have soothed the attitude of your employee, you can then get back to the business. Now, try to talk to your employee about the issue at hand and walk through it with them. By walking through the entire scenario again, you will get some good insight on the issue, and might be able to provide your valuable feedback to your employee. If he/she was expecting one outcome while other team members were expecting something else, then try to find out where did this disconnect come from? Were there some missing communications or interactions? Don’t interrupt your employee in between or recommend any solutions, just yet. Try to listen to his/her side of the story and take your notes on what might have gone wrong, that’s all.

Help them learn: Once you have completely listened to your employee and her side of the story, now it’s your time to help her think through the ‘do-over’. Even though you are trying to help her, restrict yourself from coming up with any solution, just yet. Let her come up with her own solution to this problem. Ask her – “How can you handle it differently the next time?” Of course, the setback may have occurred even though she did everything right. So, try to ask her – “What were the factors outside of her control?” Try to help her gain a new perspective on these uncontrollable factors, so that she can handle them well in the future.

If you follow this three-part conversation while dealing with your employee’s frustrations, then you will encourage your employees to take better steps next time, rather than acting on their natural desire to avoid such situations in the future.

Was this blog helpful? Do you have any other ideas that you can share with me here?

Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on February 16, 2015 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

Tags: 21st century, Communication with employees, employee development, Employee engagement, Employee frustration, Employee growth, Help your employees, Leaders of Tomorrow, Management

What would you ask your employees, if you were given a chance to be an Undercover Boss?

05 Jan

Recently, when I was watching this show – Undercover Boss, I got to think, what would I have done, if I had an opportunity to be an Undercover Boss on the show. For those folks, who are not familiar with this show, please look at this link here. In a nutshell, this show is about how company’s CEOs and executives work undercover in their organization, and how they find opportunities of improvements through their experiences while working as a normal employee. If I were given an opportunity like this, then I would focus my questions on the following areas…

The whole picture: When you are in the field or working as a line employee, you want to find out two most important things about your employees and work culture, if you want to improve any kind of efficiency in your business. First, try to understand the depth of the knowledge people have about your organization as a whole. Second, try understand what kind of major misnomers are floating around the company regarding company’s perception and internal processes. By asking questions related to these area, you will get a rough idea on how educated is your workforce regarding your company’s functions, and what are some of the wrong assumptions that are made in their day-to-day work life.

The money flow: Not all employees need to understand all the details in the 10K (annual report) of your company. I don’t expect an IT Engineer to understand each and every financial detail about the company, but at the same time they should have some rough idea on how the business functions at its core. At least in the IT field, most people have never been taught how their business works, and hence, they fail to see importance of some critical decisions that we need to take to keep the business running. Thus, it is very crucial to ask your employees about company’s financials, and gauge their understanding on company’s core businesses, and how the company makes money.

Value of their work: As an executive/CEO, you should always make sure that your employees understand the value of their work. Then it maybe the IT Engineer, Janitor, or the field engineer; they should understand that they play a crucial part in your organization’s success. Thus, asking questions like.. “How is this job related to company’s overall success?” or “How is your job making a difference in this organization?” would be very helpful in understanding employees behavior towards their job, and how they perceive their work in the bigger picture.

What would you do here? I mean…. what would you ask, if you were given this opportunity? I would love to hear your perspective on this. So, keep on posting. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi.

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on January 5, 2015 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

Tags: 21st century, Employee engagement, Employee feedback, Know your employees, Lead by example, Leaders of Tomorrow, Leadership of tomorrow, Process improvments, Undercover Boss

Self-management for the self-employed

16 Sep

Those who are self-employed will understand that keeping on top of financial affairs is of the utmost importance. For those who are just starting out, this can seem a very daunting task, but there are ways of keeping the whole process manageable so that it does not completely take over. It is important that tasks like this are completed without the need to take time away from other essential aspects of running the business such as marketing and actually doing the work.

Getting – and staying – organized

It is very important when self-employed to keep proper accounts. Noting all incoming monies and expenditure is essential, otherwise it would be too easy to fall into the trap of having more going out than is coming in. If possible, a qualified accountant should manage this side of the business. While some small businesses may be concerned about the cost of hiring an accountant, most find that effective management of taxation can actually save them money in the long term.

The right accounting software should be used and all invoices and receipts input as soon as possible. This allows for checking of the system in real time and makes tax returns and other administrative functions far easier. It will also help to show when bills are due to be paid so that nobody ever needs to knock on the door to demand what is owed to them. One of the easiest ways to stay on top of this task is to dedicate a set amount of time each week to entering data. This should take no more than a couple of hours, but if it is left for any length of time it could begin to amount to several days’ worth of work.

Getting a helping hand

If the thought of dealing with taxation is too much to bear but being employed by another person is also too much, then there is middle ground that will suit. The use of an umbrella company is the ideal solution for those who want to work for themselves but at the same time need the security of knowing that they do not need to complete taxation paperwork themselves.

The freelancer or contractor registers with the umbrella company and becomes an “employee” of the company, which then deals with income tax and national insurance. The company will also deal with invoicing and collecting payments on the freelancer’s behalf. This means that the freelancer is able to spend that time dealing with building their business without the burden of too many administrative tasks. For that self-employed PAYE is still an option.

The important point is that freelancers are not put off going it alone by the thought of endless amounts of paperwork. Many people dream of becoming self-employed and, therefore, independent but, without the right approach to the administrative side of the business, the dream can unravel very quickly, so finding a solution that suits the needs of the business is essential.

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on September 16, 2014 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

Tags: 21st century, business management, Freelancing, Leadership, Management, self management, small business

Practical ways to make your Team Meeting more interactive.

02 Jun

We have all been a part of some kind of a team meeting in our lives. Though these meetings often start as an interactive exercise between you and your team members, they tend to turn into some boring status meeting down the line. As a manager, I am also guilty of making my team meetings boring. For example: When I first took over a completely new team, few of my team meetings were very interactive, where I was trying to understand my team’s needs, and my team member’s working styles. I used to ask them bunch of questions and make sure that their inputs are heard. But after few months, I got used to my team and their working styles, and hence, my focus shifted on improving productivity and eliminating issues. Obviously, as a manager we should be focused on our priorities, but we should always consider the team meeting as the opportunity to make relationships between our team members, and refocusing them on our company’s vision.

Invite guest speakers: By this, I don’t mean to say that you should go ahead and start spending your company’s dollars on inviting motivational leaders to your team meetings. Though once in a while, it wouldn’t hurt to invite someone, you can’t sustain this expensive initiative for long. So, my suggestion is to invite the guest speakers from your own company. If you work in a medium size companies like mine, you won’t run out of options. And this initiative will not only help you in building good relationships within your company, but it will also educate you and your team about the roles and responsibilities of other teams within the organization.

Recognize others: This is not that obvious. I am sure, as a manager, you must be recognizing the work of your employees during the your team meeting, but you might not have given this opportunity to your employees so that they can recognize their peers. Though the concept of this idea is very simple, it will do wonders during your team meetings. This approach will open up the communication between your team members, and help you build the trust relationships within themselves.

Leave with a positive note: After 3-4 months of taking over a new team, my team meetings have also become boring and predictable. And due to the nature of work that we do (testing), we were in the forefront of all the bad news about our products. Due to this, most of my meetings were very negative, and we came out of the meeting as if everything is coming to an end. So, I have implemented a simple but efficient solution. At the end of every team meeting, I required all of my team members to come up with at least one positive thing about their work during this past week. It did sound cheeky at first, but after few weeks, all of our team members came out from the meeting with something positive about themselves, and their overall attitude had changed towards their work.

Give a pizza party: I am not expecting you to provide pizza during every team meeting, but it wouldn’t hurt to provide food during some of your team meetings. I try to do that twice a year, once in the summer and once in the winter. Shifting your team meetings to lunch time and ordering some food for your team will provide them some motivation, and eating together with the team members will provide them the opportunity to socialize within themselves. In order to not make this an awkward event, combine this activity with some other interactive activity like “5 things about you”, “Things you would like to do outside of work”, “Your major accomplishments in life”, etc.

I hope, these simple activities can help you make your team meetings alive again. Do you have any other suggestions?

Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on June 2, 2014 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

Tags: 21st century, Guest speakers, Leadership, Management, Positive notes, Recognize team members, Rejuvenate your team meetings, Team events, Team meetings, Team work

How to end corruption in India (Part 1)?

28 Mar

With Indian elections around the corner and lots of tweets going on about the corruption in India; I couldn’t stop but think, how can a new leader stop an age old tradition of bribing? Is it only the responsibility of the new leader to change the overall culture of India? What about the people of India? Do they not bare any accountability in prospering this corrupt government culture from ages? Obviously, people have the intrinsic responsibility to be the part of this cultural change, but the major changes can be implemented by the new leader in order to reduce corruption in India. Following is one of the ideas through which we can achieve this goal.

I still remember that day from 2003, when I had to go with my friend to check out the application process for the new passport application. During that time, there was no consistent information available for a simple task like a passport application. No one could predict what kind of documentation will be asked for at the application counter, or how long it will take to finish the entire process. During our first visit, we ended up inquiring about all of that information, and noted down all the necessary procedures to acquire the passport. Next day, we took all the desired documents, which we had noted down the other day, and started our journey again. But during our next visit, the same person told us that we need to notarize all of these documents, and get few other documents. Obviously, we were two naïve kids at that time, who hadn’t experienced life. On our third visit to the passport office, we had realized that this was more than just missing documents. What would have happened to that officer, if he would have just given us the list of required documents at once? Ah. We had then realized that this was the sign given to us by the government officer to give him some extra money under the table. Though we didn’t give any bribe, and visited the passport office at least 8-10 times before getting our passport; most of the people would have given some money, and would have got their work done in 1-2 visits.

When people give bribes to the government officers in India, they are looking for a convenient way to finish their work. Shouldn’t these kind of tasks be convenient to begin with? Applying for a passport is not a complex task. I shouldn’t be giving some extra money to anyone for doing their regular job. Do you agree? If we were to have the consistent and transparent information available to us before making our trip to the passport office, we wouldn’t have to go through 8-10 different inconvenient trips to do a simple task. Unfortunately, that is how things work in India. For a country like that, where everyone is mostly busy and working 24×7, bribing an officer seems a convenient way to get your work done, instead of hunting for the right information to apply for your passport, ration card, etc.

One of the prevalent reasons behind the corruption in India is….restricted access to the information. When the same and consistent information is freely available to all the citizens of India, they can take their own decisions based on that information. Unfortunately, that is not the case in India. From applying for your birth certificate to applying for your death certificate, there is no centralized and consistent source of information where you can get all the information about all of these applications. Thus, you have to depend on the government officer’s best judgment on what kind of information you need, and how to apply, etc. There are many people in India, who would rather bribe the officer in order to get their work done, instead of visiting the office 4-5 times. Unfortunately, most of the government officers take advantage of this fact, and use the lack of transparent information to their advantage in order to get some extra cash under the table.

Thus, we need a centralized, transparent and consistent source of information in the Indian government. If we have that kind of a system in place, government officers are less likely to take benefits of our needs, and more likely to concentrate on their basic duties of helping people. And, maybe, then people of India can demand answers from the government officers based on the facts and consistent information, instead of basing their questions on their assumptions. Let’s make the system more transparent, so that we can hold our government accountable for their actions. If you had all the required documents for applying for your passport, then you should be able to get it within a certain time period. If you don’t get your passport application processed within the average processing time, then you should be able to question the officer and hold him accountable as per the transparent guidelines published by Indian government.

What do you think? Will transparency of information bring a new cultural shift in India? Will it be able to help us in reducing the amount of corruption in India?

Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi