Id, Ego & Super Ego: Sigmund Freud

These are the concepts learnt during my MBA days in Organizational Behaviour-I. Id, ego, and super-ego are the three parts of the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche.

Something happened in the workplace 4-5 days back which made me read the concept again and pen down my own views on it here.

Lets start with the definitions:

The id comprises the unorganised part of the personality structure that contains the basic drives. The id acts according to the "pleasure principle", seeking to avoid pain or unpleasure aroused by increases in instinctual tension.

The Ego acts according to the reality principle; i.e. it seeks to please the id’s drive in realistic ways that will benefit in the long term rather than bringing grief.

The Super-ego aims for perfection. It comprises that organised part of the personality structure, mainly but not entirely unconscious, that includes the individual's ego ideals, spiritual goals, and the psychic agency (commonly called "conscience") that criticises and prohibits his or her drives, fantasies, feelings, and actions.

In simple words, Id is unconscious set of thought processes, while Ego and Superego are partly conscious and partly uncounsious. Ego keeps on floating between consious, pre-conscious and unconscious stages.

Now, id is something which everyone carries since birth. basically id tells you to react without thinking of the consequences of what will be the effect on others. So, a child if hungry will cry inspite of its parents sleeping beside him. later in life Ego and Superego develops which makes the decision maker think about their consequences.
Ego is the most strongest in almost all human beings. it makes sure that id is not ignored and take superego alongwith for any decision...

an example will make it clear:
Two colleauges are at the same level in an organization and one gets a promotion and the other does not get promotion.

Now, if id gets too strong then the person submits resignation and goes off. if the superego gets too strong then the sub-conscious will say that you are worth this much only and hence would get nothing more in future as well. Here is where comes Ego. Ego satisfies the Id by going to the Boss and speaking the mind out regarding the propmotion... also ego makes sure that superego is not upset by speaking internally that this is not the end of the world and coming years will be better.

So its a myth that ego is the reason because of which person is not able to forget that his peer got promotion etc. in fact it is ego only which is making sure that the decisions are not taken either by id or superego and hence helping in a more structured and consious decision.

For more readings google it on net... happy reading :)

Why does it always happen with me?

This is a question which most of us have asked atleast once in our lives. The reasons differ, the circumstances differ, people are different, the manner in which this question is asked differs... but we happen to ask this question to ourselves consiously or unconsiously.

What makes us ask this question. People in general do not WANT anything bad to happen with them... I mean nobody wants rain in the morning before they reach office, nobody wants to be dumped by his girlfriend, nobody wants to get less increase in the salary, nobody wants a boss with whom your relations are bad... but still it happens... and we ask this question to us... why always me??

Most of the reasons cited above or otherwise, would be external factors, on which we do not have much control on. So, we just cannot make them not to happen or stop them from happening. Still we want and pray to God that it doesn't rain in the morning and so on...

What exactly can we do so that we consiously as well as unconsiously to stop asking this question? There can be no right or wrong answers. everyone faces this situation and has/ would find ways to get out of it as well.

In my opinion, one has to be forward looking and needs to confront situations as challenges wherein you always cannot win. we have to realize that good and bad things/ happenings are part and parcel of life and if any of these two is absent then the life will be single paced and a little boring !!

Surveys !!! 87% of the 56%, who completed more than 23% of the survey, thought it was a waste of time.

Opened my computer in the morning today, and I had received 2 mails asking me to fill some survey. As usual, since the mail was from an unknown source, i deleted them. If a working professional counts, s/he would be getting/filling/preparing close to 1 survey request every week (this data is from a survey again !!).

We fill and ask others to fill so many surveys. Everyday in newspapers, online, from friends, Boss gives examples of some crap survey, news channels ask us to participate in them.. we have surveys all around us. Search "Survey" in Google and you get 21,70,00,000 results... that's humongous...

I ask myself few questions when I see/read/fill/prepare any survey.
Why are surveys done?
What new information we get/gather from them?
Do we actually get something that we don't know?
How correct they are?
Are they correct?
What can be a better way of gathering data?
Can we design a survey that can answer all questions?
Why 2 or more surveys done on the same topic yield different results?
Can we do away with manipulating the survey data?
Can an ideal survey questionnaire be made?

The fact is we do not have answers to these questions. We all have so much information that we need not do any survey (lots of them give us what we call as "Common Sense").

Companies carry out compensation & engagement surveys which yield such complex results that nobody understands them and interprets them in their own way...
They remove any part which they are unable to understand and thus reach an outcome that is Employer Friendly !!

Then comes the analysis part. All of us are brilliant in analysis of data. and when the data is so huge like compensation survey data then it's a work of 15-20 days of long wait before any conclusion comes...
then it goes to the top management who interprets it in their own way (since they never saw the actual report which is 150 pages long)... they reach some conclusion on their own and ask the middle management to make some arrangements that they (Top management) had already planned/ discussed in the earlier Management meetings.

Finally the survey consultancy is paid huge sums of money. The companies declare in the employee meetings about their research. every one is gung-ho about their work.

Result of the survey is: The Performance Bonus of the company is higher than what the competitors pay and the average salary lies between 25th percentile and median. The changes in the salary made are: The salaries are revised by 8% on an average (which is almost the same for last year). The Basic Salaries are increased by only 4%so that Performance Bonus which is derived from Basic is also increased by only 4% while the total CTC increased by 8%.

What I feel is we/companies need to design a process by which we understand or read the pulse of the general trend in the market and do changes/modifications accordingly. Surveys should only exist to assist us in checking our decisions and if they speak differently to our understanding then measures should be taken.

I need not do a survey to check how many people commented on my posts... it's quite obvious and trend says the comments are not going to increase much in the near future!!!

Espanyol on cloud nine

Spain... Football World Cup 2010 Winners !!!!!!

what a team.
great learning by just watching how the players play on the field.
great job/work distribution by the coach.
great execution skills.
fantastic coordination.
no selfishness shown.
amazing levels of patience.
all players masters in their own arena.
all are treated equally.
modesty can be seen on their faces.
all seems so humbled by the occasion.
organizing and reorganizing in need.
what a team.

Career.. Now what is that ??

An year in the corporate gone by...
Lets talk about an individual who is in the similar stage... what he thinks... what he aspires for....
Mr. Karmakar Kapil is a PG in Marketing. He has completed 1 year of traineeship in a Manufacturing company.. Now he starts to think about his career more seriously. The initial thoughts are, as expected, vague and confusing. He inspite of thinking so deeply regarding the subject, is not able to figure out what exactly he wants out of his professional life.
Let us start with his current mindset.
1. He having completed some good time in this company, has understood how seriously is career of new comers taken by the top management. So, he knows what to expect in the coming time (whatever short or long it may be) in the company.
The expectation is that he will get stuck (or so to say labeled to) to one function for 2-3 years, with very less aspects of his personal interests taken into account for his own career.
2. His immediate superior is very kind in terms of giving him opportunity to speak out his mind regarding his career aspirations and interests. But, having told him also all that he had in his mind, he really doesn't know how much of that will be actually taken into account while giving him opportunities for advancement.
3. Since, this is getting murkier... he decided to talk to few of his friends... again they could not be of much help in his decision but certainly helped in understanding how to go about getting there !!

These are the things he could think of with his all the last year's experience... now he is planning to talk to his superior again with more specifics and then decide what needs to be done.

In the next post we will see what exactly happened during the meeting....
Well I know what happened... i guess everyone knows :)