The Hindu Business Line : Retain the 'Einsteins' in your office

EINSTEIN: (noun) An intelligent, curious, and technologically-proficient knowledge worker who has the know-how to keep everything operating without costly delays, breakdowns, and crashes - and the individuality to drive managers insane. With that definition in the blurb, Dr John M. Ivancevich and Dr Thomas N. Duening provide the `tips and traps' for `Managing Einsteins', that is, leading high-tech workers in the digital age, which includes keeping them out of the grasp of the talent-starved competitors. Read on:

The world population of 6 billion has within it at least 200 million actual and potential Einsteins. Even if only 20 per cent of the potential Einsteins are now working in organisations, it would mean about 40 million super-intelligent individuals are engaged in intellectually rich work and projects around the globe.

E = MC2. E is equal to proper amount of management (M) times communication (C) squared. Simply, Einsteins require less direct management and require more open communication than other employees.

A light managerial touch with a liberal dose of honest communication can tap into an Einstein's vast reserve of personal motivation, leading to high levels of effort (E).

Teaching Einsteins must be done correctly to be effective. Don't make them sit still for instructions unless you have the following in place: a) A clear lesson; b) A lesson that concerns their craft; and c) A technique for measuring effectiveness.

Sprint University has 50 per cent of its 1,000 courses available through the World Wide Web, videos, workbooks, and the firm's intranet. Sprint's research showed that students learned slightly more online than in the classroom. The biggest gain Sprint found was that students attained their knowledge in just over half the time online.

Einsteins are smart, and they can understand a complex process. But if the process is more complicated than it should be, they will recognise it immediately and resent having to comply. A stupid process is made more stupid if it's also more complicated than necessary.

Without honest feedback, Einsteins can develop major blind spots about their performance.

But the grouse of most Einsteins would be that they fall in the blind spots of their managers.

Doomsday call

For 3,000 years a code remained hidden in the Bible till it was unlocked by a computer. Thus begins the intro to Michael Drosnin's book "The Bible Code 2", which is actually a countdown, because "we may have only four years to survive." Excerpts:

Eliyahu Rips, the mathematician who discovered the Bible code, appeared by name in the Bible, in the place that the Bible tells the story of God coming down on Mount Sinai. It was clearly no accident that `Sapphire' read backwards spelled `Rips'. Mirror writing is a very ancient tradition. Indeed, the Bible itself says it is the way to see the future. The first of the prophets, Isaiah, said it: "To see the future you must look backwards." The same Hebrew words can be translated, "Read the letters in reverse."

Human speech was an intentional act of genetic engineering. That is clearly stated in the code: "I will place the language gene" is encoded in the Bible, crossed by "I will make intelligent."

Arafat stared at the code table intently. Now he was shaken. His lip trembled uncontrollably. His eyes bulged wider. He seemed far more shaken by this than by the warning of his own assassination.

I don't believe in God. And although almost all scientists now agree that there is almost certainly other intelligent life in the universe, I won't really believe in little green men until they land here. I'm a reporter. I want hard evidence.

When I spoke to Dr Rips in the days after 9/11, after we had both found the attack on the `Twin Towers' perfectly encoded in the Bible, I told him that even totally secular people now believed we lived in that ultimate time of danger foreseen by all three Western religions.

It is not possible to truly show the structure of the Bible code on a two-dimensional printed page, or computer screen, because it is really a three-dimensional cylinder. It is just like laying a map out flat instead of showing the globe.

A countdown that could scare you.

Books courtesy: Landmark. www.landmarkonthenet.com

Books2Byte@hotmail.com

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