Plane Crashed? Meeting cancelled !! I need to resign now.

“Pride goes before a fall” is a saying which we are all familiar with. Quite often we are too happy and complacent with what we have been doing. The praises showered on us by our bosses, colleagues etc keep us as happy as anyone could be. Once we have made a good impression, all we tend to do through a working day is to sustain the good impression – to smartly delegate the tasks in the 1st half of the day, to have an extra relaxed lunch in the noon and a then to have busy afternoon on facebook, naukri.com and g-talk. A half-an- hour follow up with your sub-ordinates (aka reportees) just before leaving would round it up. And you get another “good work” mail from your boss:

11:30 am on a Monday:
Boss: Arun, what happened to the launch preparations for Project X?
Arun: Sir it is all done!! We have done day wise planning for the next 2 weeks. I will show it you in 2 hours after making some fine tuning, sir.

Boss: Brilliant! Good work arun.
Arun: I knowww.. sir. Infact I have made similar plan for Project Z also.
Boss: What is project Z? I havent heard of that at all!!!!
Arun: It is the next main thing, sir. Will let you know.
Boss: Good show! You seem to have all the secret info.

11.45 am (Arun summons his reportee Ram):
Arun: Ram, WHAT have you done about launch preparations for project X?
Ram: Sir, we are yet to start it. We don’t even have basic information about the launch.

Arun: That’s YOUR mistake. I want a day wise plan with all the activities detailed in 2 hrs time.
Ram: Sir, But making the plan takes 2 days, as you know.

Arun: Ram, try to understand that this is a "dynamic company". You need to rise up to the occasion.
Ram: Sir, How about time till EOD today?

Arun: Ok. I will see you at your appraisal then. Be "Sensitive to the business needs", Ram.
Ram: Sir, Two hours would be fine.
Arun: There you are! Call me at 13:45 for the review.
Arun: Also need a similar plan for Project Z by tomorrow night.
Ram: What is project Z? I have no clue!!!
Arun: Even I don’t know. You find out. But I need it.

Arun: Ram, it is important to sometime work outside of your responsibilities and get yourself exposed to all aspects of business. That’ll help you grow up in this organisation and handle the REALLY COMPLEX things that I do.
Ram: Sure sir.

12:00 Noon to 13:30 hrs (Arun’s updates in no particular order)

12:02 Arun Anand “likes” the status message of Divvya Hariharan.
12:04 Arun Anand and Priya Sunder are now friends.
12.07 Arun Anand commented on the photo of Krishna Kumar
12.09 Arun Anand took the “ten questions to know your personality quiz”
12.12 Arun Anand is now using facebook in हिन्दी
12.15 Arun Anand is now a member of “Mumbai’s read newspaper while taking a dump” group
12.22 Arun Anand has found a wandering stallion on their farm in FarmVille
12.33 Arun Anand just answered a question: Is Chetna Iyer a Virgin?
12.59 Arun Anand commented on his own status: “The Jalebi in today’s lunch wasn’t good”
13:02 Arun Anand just joined the group “Indian’s company’s pay less & make you work more”

So that was a brief snapshot of what the extra ordinarily busily middley management (MM) do in several companies. Some other day-to-day tactics that the MM do are:

· Call for all important issue related meetings and directly make your presence felt in critical issues. Doesn’t matter even if they do not understand what the actual issue was. The senior management and the junior management understand it well, though. Let them speak to each other. You just need to be present as a middle manager. As a broker.

· When your sub-ordinate’s presentation is exceptionally appreciated, you just have to subtly tell the directors that it was all done under your guidance and it comprised fully of your ideas.

· When the senior management finds a fault, all you have to do is call your sub-ordinate on phone in front of the senior management and ask him for explanation

· All of your sub-ordinates good work is because of your guidance and all of your bad work is because of sub-ordinate’s lack of efficiency or attitude.

· Tell your sub-ordinates to work till mid night and solve an issue urgently. But tell them that you have to leave early at 4 p.m. due to some important official meeting and are unavailable on phone till 11 p.m.

· Shout out loud, by means of e-mails, or by holding meetings, the importance of building robust processes, doing long term planning and having a dynamic marketing framework. Do it once in at least 3 days.

Last but not least, always walk hurriedly. And keep talking to someone urgently, always.

So, coming back to the main topic, Once you have learnt the ropes discussed above, you are complacent and you have managed to learn the tricks to impress everyone around. When life’s all smooth, that is exactly when something goes terribly wrong. Some major major mess up occurs. What would you do? You have several options in front of you:
· To blame it on a subordinate stating he’s the cause of the whole issue;
· And / Or to get involved in the issue and find a plan B to resolve it;
· And / Or to put in a process so that the mistake will not be repeated;
· And / Or to apologize and accept the full responsibility of the mistake and take the ire of senior management.

As aspiring corporate honchos, even the most cunning of middle managers would try to rise up to the occasion and “solve” the problem than escape it… At least we’d ensure that we stay put even if a colleague or a subordinate or a boss is sacked. But surprisingly, the new trend in today’s 3G India is to just “escape” or “flee” oneself from the burden of “solving” it.

In other words, Resign!! This new age management concept has originated from none other than the Govt of India’s leadership. All the management guru’s by from drucker to kotler would be appalled at this strategy, which is invariably the best among all the options.

Here are few questions to test your MQ (Management Quotient):

Q1. What should you do when a plane crashes at Mangalore due to a bad runway?

As a responsible civil aviation manager, you should immediately resign. So that you need not sit through the burden of planning for modernizing the airports, raising funds again (what you raised initially was converted into a 17 storey palatial residence in your wife’s name at Worli seaface), fighting with AAIs, and fighting the innumerous no of PILs against you.

You are saved of all the aftermaths of such a shameful episode by a simple resignation. Also, After two-three months, when the govt finally finds that you have whacked the Rs 2000 cr approved in 1993 budget for modernizing the Mangalore airport, you are no longer the minister. As you have already resigned, they cannot sack you also. How wise!! And you are in a ferry from Vancouver to Victoria when the press is hunting you down there. And In addition to all this, you come out with an elevated public image: “Wow. Mr. Patel resigned when the tragedy happened. Whatay responsible minister he is!” You have ensured your victory in the next election. And your worli seaface house will stand for another 100 years. Phew!

Q2. What should you do when naxals attack a town in your country and claim 112 lives?

Resign!! You can save yourself of the burden of by-hearting the names of dense forests in the country, memorizing the names of various naxal outfits, their mother organizations, their affiliates, their hide-outs locality names, the names of their chiefs, the names of nearest police regiments in these areas. You can save 100+ interviews that you were to give on the TV, save 10+ LokSabha sessions, allegations from the opposition party, explanations by the police department etc etc.

Just resign!! Chances are that you’ll be hired back again as the finance minister when the current finance minister would offer resignation on some imminent issue. And he can take the seat of Home minister!

The Resignation Escalation Matrix is as below:

· The ministry is formed and the new Railway minister has allocated Rs 3000 cr for railway upgradation (in other words, his Worli sea face or Jumera Island home upgradation)

· If a train accident occurs, the railway minister should resign, having pocketed Rs 500 cr already

· If a train accident happens again, the new railway minister should resign, Rs 400 Cr gone with the wind.

· If a 3rd train accident happens, the PM should resign, He always got Rs 800 cr btw.

· If a 4th train accident happens, the govt blame British who laid the tracks in 1810 for low quality work and opposition to blame govt.

· If a 5th accident happens, the opposition will win the election and the current ministry collapses. New railway minister appointed. New vision. New budgets.

· If a 6th accident happens, go to step-1, start all over again, Increase budget allocation to Rs 4000 cr this time.

· Go to step-1. Don’t waste time.

It doesn’t really matter even if nothing happens on Railway infrastructure per se.

Similarly, top-6 reasons to resign from your current Job

· You have done some major mess up which you can’t pass on to anyone else in the organisation. Not even to the canteen fellow.
· Having relentlessly spent time on facebook, twitter, You feel you have done work Rs 20 Crores and hence deserve atleast 10% of that as your commission. And the company feels that your expectation is very high.
· You feel that you have talked the word “paradigm shift” the maximum in the meetings. But you realised that your silent south Indian colleague got the maximum bonus.
· You feel that you are the cause of the organisation’s existence and the organisation feels the otherwise.
· Your boss followed up with you on a work related matter, in a polite and gentle way, in front of your crush Catherine. But for some reason you had told her earlier that you were the boss.
· Your boss just realised that even the emails that you sent were written by your sub-ordinates. Out of hurry, you one day forgot to remove the signature of your reportee when you forwarded it to all.

Phew...

You have a launch tomorrow? I have an off.

May 21st, 2009.
The whole company is looking forward to a mega mega launch. Never befor seen launch. Critical for the company’s topline, neckline and bottoms. The Marketing team is busy dealing with heavy duty event management firms and advertising agencies to freeze on the branding stuff. Product team working on the confidential launch pricing and positioning. The Team of architects are freezing on the plans and technical details. Mega Launch planned for 23rd of May. Times of India front page is blocked for a huge amount. The sales team is planning to sell 1000 apartments between 23rd May and 31st may. Revenue estimates at 500 Crores in the ten day period. And yet, at 6.30 p.m. when everyone is in neck deep shit, with one more day to launch, we get an intrusive mail that’s high on importance and urgency:

“Last 1 day to register for the Inter departmental cricket tournament to be held between 23th and 26th of May. HODs (Head of Depts) kindly send their team list to the undersigned latest by 3 pm on 22nd May”

Often they are everywhere. Often they are nowhere. Often they arrive too earlier than required. Often they arrive too late. Who are they? They are the efficient HR teams of the top notch MNCs of the corporate world. They mostly do not know what the other departments do. and vice-versa. How better can a give-take relationship be?

The other day, I was surprised when I spotted an HR colleague of mine, sitting in his cubicle at 8 p.m. on one of those days. Usually, the HR team’s bell-curve office leaving pattern shows that the 1st member leaves a few minutes before 5.15 pm and the last member leaves a few minutes earlier than 6.00 PM. So finding Amit at 8 p.m. in his cubicle was a surprise:

Arun: Hey Amit. How come you are late today?
Amit: Arre yaar. I have a deadline. I have to finish something urgent before leaving.

Arun: What is it? Some appraisal thing?
Amit: I have to finalise the rules for inter department Tug-of-war to be held on Friday.

Arun: So have you finalised it?
Amit: Yes….more or less same as last year’s tug-of-war. I have to add 1 more new department and hence slightly modify the prelim schedule.

Arun: But how could they give you such a tight deadline for this yar?
Amit: I know. Next time if they do this, I’ll quit.

The next day I spotted Amit walking into office at 12 noon.

Arun: So did you finish it? How come late today?
Amit: I worked for 2-3 hrs extra yesterday no. so thought of coming in a bit late.

Arun: I am glad. You are quite overworked these days.
Amit: I KNoww !!!…next week I have to organize the painting competition and in June, I have to organize musical chair and Quiz. I guess I have so many night outs awaiting.
Arun: Poor you.




Intentionally or unintentionally, their (HR’s) schedule of work invariable works out similar to the following:

1) Inter departmental Cricket matches are organised during office hours when IPO DRHP is to be filed the following week.

2) Free physical fitness check ups to everyone during the week of a critical launch. Several clients are invited by the sales team on these days. But meetings rooms are all blocked for eye test, ear test, BMI, Nutrition and so on.

3) Performance Appraisal during the last week of March. This is when the Marketing team is working double hard to get the sales numbers. The finance team is getting their accounts and books right. But the Appraisal online system works only between 25th and 31st of march. After the deadline no appraisals or ratings could be entered in the system. You have to finish all your subordinates’ appraisals (per person takes atleast 3 hrs) with in 31st march. Or forgo your increment. Or promotion. Or both.

4) 8 people from each department in mandatory for every tug-of-war game that is organised during mission critical assignments.



July 24th 2009.

Company plans for IPO. The DRHP has been approved by SEBI and RHP needs to be filed in 2 days (on Monday). The Marketing team is busy planning the campaigns. The sales team is busy consolidating the last minute sales/ revenue/collection details. The Finance team is tweaking the valuation, price band etc. The investment banking and the lead banking partners are being invited; The advertising, PR agencies are literally working out of our office and burning the mid night oil. In the midst of all these, on a Friday 6.30 p.m., and we get another mail:

“The routine pest control exercise is being undertaken from 24th evening (Friday) 8.30 pm onwards to 8.30 pm on 25th (Saturday). Inconvenience regretted – But there would not be any food, water, power supply in the mentioned period”.

Who are they? This time, they are the efficient Admin team. Neighbor’s pride. Owner’s envy. Here, I was surprised when Tina from Admin was spotted late on one of the days.

Arun: Hey Tina. How come you are late today?
Tina: Arre yaar. I have a deadline. I have to finish some imp task.

Arun: What is it? Some housekeeping thing?
Tina: I have to estimate the number of water bottles & calculators to be brought for new joinees..

Arun: So have you finalised it?
Tina: Yes..more or less. I received the new joinee list from HR last week.

Arun: But then what’s the complication?
Tina: We are confused which vendor to choose. One is quoting Rs 21 per bottle and other is quoting Rs 23. So I have to close on one by today end.

Arun: But how could they give you such a tight deadline for this yar?
Tina: I know. Last week I left only at 11 PM – I was deciding whether to subscribe for India Today in office or not.

Arun: That’s a tough task.
Tina: You are so understanding, Arun. I wish my boss too was.

Yet another day. I was busy fighting with a market research agency on phone. My colleaugues are either fighting with some vendors or fighting with the sales department. All of them are actively doing many things with high urgency levels (a mega launch is around). Suddenly a Bell rings. TRRRRRRRRRRRRRINGGGGGGGGGGG.

Announcement: "Dear staff. this is a routine fire drill. please do not panic. do not use the lift. please take the fire exit staircases and assemble at the parking area. We repeat do not panic.. " We all hesitanly walk down from 7th floor to level 0. My Brand manager also sprains his leg in the way down.

There, When we are panting, when we are wondering whats happening, the admin head explains: "Thanks a lot for your co-operation. We have evacuated in 15 mins flat. wish you all a happy weekend!" WTF...You go home after evacuating us in 15 mins. You get a promotion next year. what about our launch?

Intentionally or unintentionally, their (admin’s) schedule invariable works out as follows quite often:

1) The Pest control will happen only on those weekends when the entire organization has to work together as a team to deliver something very important on Monday.

2) Do EPABX maintenance (of-course by shutting it off) only when there’s a launch and lot of potential enquiries are expected.

3) Do A/C Maintenance only during working hours, preferably in summer only.

4) Conduct mock fire drills exactly just an hour before an important client presentation when a team of 7 senior people are visiting us from London.

5) They go for the team outing (HR has said that all depts could go for a 2 day outing in a year) when CEO has just requested a make over of all site offices across the city within a weeks time.


So a typical yearly schedule of the departments of a busy, reputed organization could be seen as follows:

January:
Marketing: 3 project launches - To achieve revenues of INR 3000 mn
Admin: To conduct pest control & fumigation, To shift marketing department employees to 4th floor from 2nd floor. Has to be done in Jan itself.
HR: To organize mega inter departmental antakshari competition on 4th floor, after shifting.

February:
Marketing: 4 project launches - To achieve revenues of INR 4000 mn
Finance: To bid for the merger of the company with company X.
Planning: To provide the first preview of the mega township with 8000 residences.
Admin: To conduct mock fire drills 3 times. To disconnect the company from Reliance’s boardline number and appoint Airtel as the new vendor. Shift pre-sales & sales to a new building block.
HR: To organise employee satisfaction survey. To conduct mandatory training of 5 full days for sales team members as a part of global training policy.

March (year end):
Marketing: 7 project launches - To achieve revenues of INR 8000 mn. Yay.
Finance: To raise 3000 crores by way of debt syndication.
Admin: To change the canteen vendor. No food for 9.5 days. Marketing team looks more complacent. shift them back to 2nd floor.
HR: To make sure that all employees avail their stipulated unavailed leaves and that no leaves to be carry forwarded to the next year. To make sure that all the employees’ appraisal reports and ratings are ready by 28th of March.


April (New year & Summer start):
Marketing: 4 project launches – This year’s turnover should be double last years.
Finance: To execute IPO.
Admin: To do routine A/C maintenance. To maintain the sub-station power feeder. No power on 2 weekends. Shift HR team.
HR: To organize Company Premier League cricket. HODs to compulsorily nominate 2 teams of 9 members each for this cricket extravaganza.

IT: Shut down LAN for 4 days and shut down SAP for annual maintenance.


Uff. Happens in your company too? I am sure. Enjoy.

Wanna know how the futuristic admin / HR would function:

1) They'd appoint McKinskey to decide the Overall admin strategy. This includes: Deciding when to do strategic fumigation to kill the maximum number of pests. (McKinsey ofcourse would hire a consultant who exactly knows at what time of the day the pests reproduced effectively and how often they go into hibernation in a day) . It includes When exactly to buy dustbins, water bottles and how many. How many times to change Phone-lines in a year. etc. Automated mails will be sent to everyone on the concerned days so that Admin people can leave on time.

2) HR would learn from other companies on which games worked in which companies. They'd do a quick survey and say that Chinese automobile industry found that "Conducting choir Music competition increased productivity by 0.5% when compared to Cooking competition". And they'd adopt this into the indian context of Musical chair and Rangoli competitions. They'd appoint agencies that strategically conduct these games in the right time of the day and in the right month in order to have the maximum productivity gain. They'd also say that while infosys organised Traditional dressing day, their attrition that month reduced by 120 bps and hence thats the way to go forward.

Uff..

Boob Quakes all the way - creating disasters since time immemmorial..

Initially I thought it’s a sudden, unexpected, Jittery, yet powerful Quake that happens in the Boob, which results in Wardrobe malfunction et al. I was mistaken: Upon researching I learnt that it is Earth Quake which is induced by a Boob. How is that possible? Men Ogle at them --> Women who are immoral induce these men to have immoral relationships --> this leads to “excessive negative energy” in some part of the world --> to get rid of such immoral people, Nature-God creates an earth quake, called a BQ.




So if Boobs could create earth quake, they must be really powerful. However, there are many smaller disasters, yet dangerous ones, that we encounter due to the Boob effect. Some of them are follows:

Boob-Warden effect

When in REC Trichy, There was this dear friend called Dayanandam, who, during weekends, used to get us CDs that induced immorality into all of us. We used to call him Daya TV. We watched Daya TV in the common TV room – which had a single TV in a room & catered to 250 odd students who lived in that hostel. Daya TV has had a lot of impact when it came to “unifying” us and in creating long lasting friendship bond. Irrespective of whether we were Southies or Northies, whether we were juniors or seniors, whether we were in computer science or metallurgy, what unified all of us was Daya TV. Except when Daya TV was played, there was never a consensus of what we could watch in the channel. Sun TV mid-night masala was the only other programme which had at least some consensus, what so ever.

During the peak of such immorality, some times, the Warden lands up in the hostel. People who are in the last row or who are standing on the chairs & struggling to see the TV from behind, are often lucky to spot him from a distance and without making a noise, they slowly walk out of the room like the Zoo Zoos. But some people, like we mallus, who often reserved our front row seats in Daya TV, that too well in advance, (by paying Rs 5 per head to Daya in bulk) often fail to notice the people walking out from rows behind. Suddenly you notice that someone has put his palm on your shoulder. You shrug it off without turning back. He puts it again. You shrug again. Now someone has put all the lights on. You turn back and shout – “Put it off” – only to see the warden behind.

Warden: What are you watching?
Arun: CD..sir..
Warden: I can see that..
Arun: err..do you want to see more..err..sir?
Warden: Want to see. Not me. But the dean wants to see.
Arun: Why sir? He’s old no?
Warden: He will want to see YOU, and your parents may be.
Arun: Sirrr...sorry sir...
Warden: See me at my office tomorrow at 10 am.
Arun: Sir..sir...

Warden walks away. The guys come back. Show continues..

Such a situation when just 6 of us are taken to the Dean’s office is called Boob-Warden effect. Though not as disastrous as a Boob Quake, this can even lead to your rustication. But since our Dean was more keen on “advising” us in a genuine way, all we had to endure was a 1 hr gyan session.

Boob-Pyramid effect

While doing MBA, you often have beautiful lady visiting lecturers, who come and teach you courses like “Business Communication”, “consumer behaviour”, “marketing research”, “brand management” etc. When in such a lecture, while the young lady corporate honcho is seriously explaining the Concept of "Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid", often our attention is not on the CK Prahlad’s pyramid, but on some other pyramids which are making their presence felt.

That’s exactly when you hear your name: “Arun! Can you please come to the dais and attempt to explain what bottom of the pyramid means?” (for the uninitiated, bottom of the pyramid by CK Prahlad talks about much demand coming from the lower sections of the society which includes the lower middle class, villagers etc)

Lady: Arun, please explain the pyramid concept?
Arun: The larger demand will come for the bigger ..boo.. err..pyramids.
Lady: “for” or “from”?
Arun: “for” i guess..
Lady: Why ?
Arun: men like larger pyramids..i mean bottom of the pyramid is..err.. larger
Lady: by “men” you mean people..?
Arun: yeah..may be.. a few ladies too, may be..yes..so it makes both men and women who are interested in pyramids..
Lady: Bottom is larger why?
Arun: err..some ppl in the society have larger bottoms..err..fortune is there...
Lady: Ok..good. So you were atleast listening..

Without having any clue on what a bottom of the pyramid means, sometime you can still afford to get out of the situation. This situation is called Boob-Pyramid effect. It can at times be extremely embarrassing at times, though.

Boob Economics

When you are happily married or if you are seriously dating a girl, often you end up in a mall or a movie pavilion with her where there is exceptionally high supply of bigger boobs. She would invariable have noticed this even much before you have and would have anticipated your reaction too.

So at that time she would try to get your attention with some sympathy:

GF: “Aroo, y’day was my appraisal, my boss gave me just a A- when the stupid Ruchika got A+”.
Aru (looking elsewhere): “Oh..baby..i cant see her. You can” ?
GF: “I SAID my boss gave her A+. And A- to me”
Aru (not listening): “Your boss is also here ?”


At that time, to reduce the spike of “immorality”, nature has caused you to suddenly feel that a large LVMH hand bag was just thrown on you. Before you could realise, your GF has taken a cab and ordered “Versova”. This effect has now led to you reducing your sudden spurt in demand and finding an equilibrium. Boob Equilibrium.

Ufff. Quite dangerous they can be!