PLP Paper-2 14-08-2020 H20096-Rahul Motipalle

DIARY ENTRY – 14/08/2020

Dear Diary,

Today was one of the longest days in the last few years of my life since it started as early as
the previous midnight itself. I struggled to contribute to a group case study in the early hours
of today. Then I contributed with a decent slide to our group presentation, which was to be
made for committee selections. All of this resulted in no sleep since I woke up last morning.

Cut to the chase. I had two classes of Organizational Behaviour (OB) today, which were
highly interesting and intriguing, to say the least. My professor firstly defined behaviour,
which was interesting and gave me a new perspective, since I was earlier of the idea that my
behaviour was limited to the actions of mine that I presented to others. The concept of what I
do when I am alone also forming a part of my behaviour was really eye-opening to me.

Then, the class interaction moved on to two starkly contrasting types of human behaviour—
actions and reactions. I learned that being reactive clouds our ability to think clearly.
Additionally, learning not to react is a highly interesting way of developing ourselves. I was
reminded of the ‘Counting to Ten’ rule when Sir discussed the case involving the angry
worker and the supervisor. The rule can not only be applied to ensure anger management, but
it can also help us prevent making impulsive decisions. The supervisor could have clearly
avoided the mishap with the enraged worker and his suspension that followed, by taking a
couple of seconds to think and make a decision of either calling the security guards or loudly
warn the worker from a distance, instead of following his animal instinct of physically
manhandling the worker to prevent further vandalization of the workplace.

When Sir mentioned that reactions always leave us with a sense of regret, I could instantly
connect by virtue of my own experiences. When I was in primary school, I remember hitting
the class bully back after he had beat me and my friends for no reason, due to which I
unnecessarily ended up getting punished along with the bully. Only had I exhibited human
behaviour instead of employing my animal instinct, and waited to take the matter to the class
teacher instead of reacting instantaneously, I could have avoided a gruelling punishment of
kneeling in the hot sun.
One more significant takeaway from today’s OB class was that people who are responsible
do not react or act impulsively in tough situations. As seen in the case of the enraged worker
and the supervisor, it would have entirely been the supervisor’s fault in case there was a
production loss after the workers went on strike. In the heat of the moment, he probably did
not realize that the opportunity cost of saving one tube light could have been lakhs of rupees
incurred by the company in case the workers decided to go on strike.

As both this page and the day come to an end, I would like to mention one last thing I learned
about reactive behaviour today. Reactive behaviour, even if exhibited with a positive
intention, may cause harm. Suppose I find a child drowning in the river by the road, and I
decide to jump in to save the child’s life, I could counter-intentionally be killing the child and
also put my own life in grave jeopardy. It is better that I keep my calm and act by alerting
nearby people who might know swimming, or in a more urgent case, alert the police.

I promised myself today that I would minimize my reactive nature to the least extent possible,
and you know that I may not be anything else, but that I am a man of my words is for sure.