Unfair Advantage - random and over usage not fair!!

Infact it has become an abuse now! As if all they want out of Life is just an Unfair Advantage! Only time seperates us from that would-be-era when even 'death' would be termed as taking 'unfair advantage'! (if you feel that's ridiculous then you are not thinking in corporate terms you ethical moron! for a hint think like wally does...)

Okay! You have no clue what i am talking about? :) Well here it is...

Our thought leader once made a much thoughtout statement on our sourcing strategy. He added that by our immaculate sourcing and training we have a huge pool of super human employees and thats why at any business deals we pitch in we have an "Unfair Advantage!" over others. Bingo! there you go the managers caught the phrase and hooked on to it. What started was a frenzy of consumption and depletion of the phrase. So whenever you want to overemphasize a point or two, what you got to do is simple, just add the phrase "unfair advantage" to it. So one keeps hearing things like:

• Lets take unfair advantage of the situation
• Lets transform this into an unfair advantage for us
• Thats why we have an unfair advantage in this

etc. etc. So whenever you mean something very close to 'having an edge', 'strength', 'a positive thing in favor' you say 'unfair advantage'. Even this was bearable but now a few have started going overboard and using the same as punctuation marks in all their office talks! I mean the ones like:

• Gosh! the traffic was a killer today just because people were taking unfair advantage!
• Kids these days are smart taking unfair advantage of parents!
• etc etc

Waise on second thought (i always enjoy the second thoughts more :D ofcourse till i dont get the third one :P) 'unfair advantage' usage is not just corporeal it is also very much philosophical and spiritual. We all say and hear that life is 'unfair'. So why not take advantage of this grand truth of every beings very existence! That way we check mate life/existence by beating it in its very own game of being unfair.

Some very basic suggestions for the same are:

1. Wake up

2. Work with not against others

3. Think with your head not your feelings

4. Count your blessings, not your grievances

5. Choose preferences, not demands

Message of the Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso) on the same: "When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.Follow the three R’s: Respect for self, Respect for others, Responsibility for all your actions.Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time."

P.S. If you are reading this i guess i have managed to take unfair advantage of your time :)

P.P.S. If you denied reading till the line above then you just took unfair advantage of the setup where i have no means to know the truth! In any case you do see the potential of the phrase..dont you?? :D

"CAM" ya fir "CRAP"

Before i start... imagine this:
>Me(to my Boss): I have developed an elaborate, multidimensional, end-2-end, multifaceted, Business Intelligence decision Model for outsourcing
>Boss:Umm.. Sounds interesting! So whats the final output of the Model like?
>Me: it's cutting edge CRAP!!

or this :
>Me(to customer): Lets us use our End-2-End Outsourcing Business Intelligence Decision Model and checkout your outsourcing needs and recommendations.
>Customer: That would be great! Let me use it (And he feeds a few inputs to the model and Whoosh.. comes the Gospel of truth himself)
>Me: There it is!
>Customer: Its all crap!!
>Me: Exactly state of art CRAP it is!

Now if you thought those are fake, cooked up scenarios, then you are mistaken my friend! It actually is a very realistic scenario for which we are working at. We have been working on a decision model for sometime now. But were just not able to break the shackles of all the existing Me-Too models thrown at us in dozens. The common flaw they all had was that they were unilateral, one dimensional. We finally did manage to get a framework in place which 'attempts'(thats the Keyword here :D) to give a breakthrough. But in todays world of Kotler
just having a novel Model doesn't work, one needs to garnish and sugar coat it.. market it and market it well!

Thus began the search to put it comphrehensively on a single page and give it a real chic look. Our artistic flair comes in handy at this. The process goes like this..
Step one: To comeup with a nice looking modular, sectional, co-axial, aligned, cross attributed graphical representation.
Step two: Wysiwyg labeling and nomenclature so the sections get christened like, 'cross assessment', 'capability assessment', 'competitive assessment' etc.
Step three: To name the model, a model that would provide recommendation to the customers for their requirements! What should the client say when he gets to see the output? He should say, "hey, i 'C'annot 'A'gree 'M'ore!" right? So there it is we call it the 'CAM' Model :) Now its easier comeup with a managerial fullform for the same there were many but i choose, 'Cross Analysis Matrix' Model because my graphical representation looks so.
Step four: To check that we didnt left out on any thing. And this is very important step! I realised that i haven't labelled the final outcome section!! Then comes the top most realization that the model is still in an 'attempting' phase so the output might turn out to be useless... a total 'crap'. And bingo there it is again, we call this final section 'CRAP' (to acknowledge the mighty all prevailing truth) Again think think and think for a managerial fullform and we choose 'Capability vs Requirement Analysis Projection'.
Step five: To make life of other lesser mortals a bit easier in comprehending the model, however useless the model maybe. So prepare a HowTo for the model.

Thats it! So now time shall tell whether the 'CAM' part is true or the 'CRAP' part :) (btw on second thoughts isnt my model well balanced in that sense :D) For now i am working on the 'HowTo' part.

P.S. for indepth gyaan on how to make a Model contact me in person.
P.P.S. creativity rules! and it kills once you have a tag called MBA :D

Vital Corporate Lessons - Rule1: TKNC

A friend recently gave this vital lesson of survival for all the new joinees in the corporate world. It might be cliche'd for veterans but should atleast be the corporeal first aid kit for the freshers :D Read below and if you find it useful let me know i'll convey your regards to him!

TKNC: Table ke neeche chupna(hiding)

It is a very handy and unique concept. By using this one can very easily deceive their Boss’ in believing that hum log bahut busy hai…thus making sure ke kuch aur kaam na mil jaaye. For this chup-chaap office aao, dheere se apne friends ke saath mail-baazi karo …aur jab junta kat rahi ho toh bheed mein ghar katlo…But dhyan rahe, boss ko ek bhi mail nahin maarne ka….boss ko aisa feel karwao ki tum exist nahin kurtey ho but actually it’s the other way round tumhaare liye boss exist nahin kurta hai :D
Bhoolke bhi apne boss ko apna cell no. nahin dene ka…(unfortunately inspite of being a veteran i gave it on the first day itself so dont get carried away :P) If it's very important and urgent toh let him email to your id …why unnecessarily give ur personal cell no. to any anjaan person!!!! Woh alag baat hai ki uske liye apni hazaaron mails mein tumhaara id dhoondna is next to impossible! :)

Crucial Caveat: By all means make ur presence felt in the HR dept, kahin woh tumhe na bhool jaaye stipend ke liye!! So Rule1-TKNC mein bas 2 stakeholders hai "HR dept" n "U"!!!!

~I think i have quite a few jem of friends like these so many more corporate rules may follow and i would finally complete my post MBA with honors :)

P.S. The prestige act of the above narration by my friend to me is that this sermon was given to me when i was doing his boss's job while he was ofcourse applying TKNC and i was... DUMB ME!! :( And to add salt to wound stipend ab tak nahin mila hai...

Who moved my Kitchen??

"Dude, who moved my kitchen?" .. i find me interrogating myself very frequently!

Rings a Bell!?..and you also feel there is some mistake there!!?.. if it does then first let me congratulate you as you are one of those smart individuals who seek inspiration from mice and its various glorified activities and desires! :) Further confirming my belief that one could draw inspirations from anything and everything in this world be it spider, mice etc.

But a block of cheese doesnt appeal to my appetite at all and i ofcourse am not a mouse... and hence the 'Kitchen'.

My Kitchen at NITIE was so darling and important to me and I always used to think that its going to be with me for ever. But somehow it slipped no matter how hard i wanted to hold on to it. So one thing for sure that has happened is that my kitchen has been moved by somebody and i am starving to death now. The mouse said, “They keep moving the cheese.” (Change happens.) Worst i am also stuck and lost in the maze (read cubicles) that too a quizzical and enticing one. And all that my daily search and toil in this maze leads to is discovering Cups of various shapes and sizes.

Tragedy is that though i always smelled my kitchen, I never realised that it was ever cold or old :(. So need of the hour is
->movement in a new direction to help me find new Kitchen
->to let go of old kitchen, and the mouse said sooner you do that the sooner you find new kitchen.

And yeah now i realize the importance of the mouse saying at one point, “Noticing small changes early help you to deal with the large changes to come.”

Dont know whether i am 'Sniff' or 'Scurry' and would depend more on what my mate in the circumstance Tom would like to choose for himself :). Going by the saying, "If you do not change, you can become extinct" i might be heading right away to extinction if i dont find my Kitchen soon. Dear reader..Wish me LUCK

Last but not the least, for all those who are reading this remeber:
“They keep moving the Kitchen.” (Change happens.)
“Get ready for the Kitchen to move.” (Anticipate the change.)
“Move with the Kitchen.” (Actually make the change.)
“Enjoy the taste of new Kitchen.” (Enjoy the fruits of change.)