Professional In The Post-Pandemic World

One of the most important tasks of professionals is to take decisions. Management is often called ‘decision-making without bias!’. Some of these decisions are taken with deep analysis and some with the ‘gut feel’. But even this ‘gut feel’ is actually the commutation of life experiences and the unconscious ‘decision algorithm’ we build in our minds.

- Rajesh Nair

One of the best definitions on a professional I have read has been from Mr Subroto Bagchi, the erstwhile head of the immensely successful and popular IT firm, Mindtree. He says in his seminal book, ‘The professional’, that a professional is someone who ‘will work unsupervised and certify the completion of his or her work’. The principle of self-accountability is important and vital. The younger professionals often remain task-oriented and need guidelines and advice to figure out the completion of their work. This is also perhaps, during the initial years, when we see our jobs as completion of directed tasks and lack the exposure to see where it connects to the bigger picture. So the professional is someone who will take responsibility for the completion of tasks and will not rest till he/ she delivers high-quality work.

One of the most important tasks of professionals is to take decisions. Management is often called ‘decision-making without bias!’. Some of these decisions are taken with deep analysis and some with the ‘gut feel’. But even this ‘gut feel’ is actually the commutation of life experiences and the unconscious ‘decision algorithm’ we build in our minds. So these decisions which we arrive at from our ‘feeling’ are not totally devoid of structure and not emerging out of some esoteric magic cauldron. They are from a mental framework tessellated from deep experience.