The ‘un’ Professional – Part 2
This week, lets look at the points from Subroto Bagchi's book the "The Professional", about what constitutes unprofessional conduct.
1. Missing a deadline
You have given your DVD player for repair. How many times you receive it on time? If it is not ready do you get the communication?
2. Non escalation of issues on time
Today is Monday; you know that your team will not complete the work by Friday to meet the dead line , when do you tell your customer that you will miss the deadline?
3. Non – disclosure
How many times you disclose the conflict of interest in your business?
4. Not respecting privacy of information
A famous personality might have taken a service from you. How many times you take consent from that person before sharing information about him/her?. Or son/daughter of a famous personality might be working in your team. Do you take care of their privacy?
5. Not respecting "Need to know"
Do you take care of the confidentiality of information with your spouse, relatives and friends?
6. Plagiarism
How many times you have come across people cut and pasting your slides and passing it as their own?
7. Passing on the blame
When something goes wrong how many times you have taken responsibility? Or how many times you were blamed for others mistake?
8. Overstating qualification and experience
How many times you have come across resumes stating 3 years experience when the technology itself is just 2 years old?
9. Mindless job hopping
The attitude "I was OK, My organization was not"
10. Unsuitable Appearance
Do you wear professional attire to suite your job? Do you maintain personal hygiene?
Look at these points from both as service provider and as consumer.
Many times we don't even expect a professional service from others, we keep on working on ourselves and try being professionals; others may be just taking your professionalism for granted, may be it is time for you to start questioning that.
(Reference: Main points from The Professional – Subroto Bagachi )
posted by Bystander ... at 6:11 PM
4 Comments:
I haven't read the book, but would like to react to the following: "Plagiarism: How many times you have come across people cut and pasting your slides and passing it as their own?"
I think it is taking plagiarism too far, don't you think? In a professional context, it's not as if someone is doing a cut-paste to write a book or something. Also, what about Knowledge Management? Wouldn't that also be plagiarism by the same token?
There is one more - informing or planning leave in advance. Many people don't do this. Also, in IT field, many people simply use the flexibility or work-from-home option freely without really working for the requisite number of hours.
@chandar
In a professional context one has to acknowledge the contribution made by all the team members or any individual. But I think your point is about using information from a common pool or repository, we use sometimes few slides from some old presentation or sometimes take it from Knowledge Management (KM) Repositories. In this case a person should be given a credit for his contribution to the repository, once it is part of the KM system we should be able to re-use it.
Legally as per the IP laws (and also as per employment contracts ) any intellectual assets developed during the tenure of employment is owned by the organization. So we are free to re-use any intellectual asset if it is used for the organization, we should use our professional judgment to share the credit.
We might have different views about what is plagiarism but I think you also agree that plagiarism is an unacceptable professional conduct.
@Nilu
Good Point… none of the Indian companies have the flexi/work from home option
First about planning leaves ! .. I have friend who had joined the software industry from Indian Railways he used to tell, in govt. jobs you have many leaves but one can not go on leave unless it is sanctioned and approved by the superior few days in advance you can not leave the post. To get the approval one has to apply many days in advance !!! … here in software industry we can apply (rather update) after coming back from the leave. Even if the person who goes on leave sends an SMS or informs on that day, is considered a favor to the manager.
About working from home it is really sad if people mis-use it. It is un-professional …. I suggest you read the book “The Games Indians Play” – Why we are the we way are … In fact I did not like first few pages the way the author has written –vely about Indians. But we have to confront that majority of us just take the short-cut or mis use the facilities given to us and rationalize it.
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