The Art of Shirking Work

As I prepare to hang my boots after slogging in private companies for thirty-five years; I think of several valuable lessons which I unfortunately learnt too late, which are of no use to me now, but which can be handy for the younger generation.

One of them is about the art of shirking work. 

If you are a natural work shirker, do not read any further; for you would be a better faculty than I am. Mine is acquired knowledge, while yours would be a god-given gift.

I see that you are still reading. Well, so be it! Master these tricks, and good luck to you.

Play to the Gallery

You may find it difficult to remain awake on your desk; but meetings are a different matter. You need not attend them fully. While attending one, appear lost in deep thoughts at regular spells, draw patterns in thin air, and occasionally nod your approval. Look at the boss when he is not looking at you. Grab subtle hints at what he likes and what he detests. Play to the gallery, try to speak the boss’s thoughts, regardless of how moronic they may be. Exaggerate for greater effect, and then look at the boss. For example, suppose a warehouse is to be built. If it usually takes ten months to build one and another month to make it fully functional, chances are that your boss may like it to be completed in six months. Bosses can be like that! Now, during the discussion, when the poor project in-charge protests that anything under eleven months is not possible, look at him aghast. Tell how even a day outside six months would amount to nothing but a complete disaster, and ask whether he is aware how the Chinese construct bridges so fast. Make brief eye contact with your boss, and if you see approval in his eyes, get engrossed in some mundane mail on your laptop. Revert to nodding approvals. If the project in-charge sticks to his guns, murmur, “I think more than physical handicaps, we are facing a mental block here.” Extend the deliberations so much that your project is never discussed.

Wondering how does it amount to playing to the gallery? Your boss alone is the gallery, you idiot!

Use Jargons

Just because he is your boss does not mean that he knows the difference between judicious and judicial. Keep good words and pronunciation aside. Use jargons, plenty of them. Remember how the Godrej Puff and the Orient PSPO ads projected a domestic refrigerator and a ceiling fan as some engineering marvel? Do the same. KRA, AvP, 5S, paradigm shift, proactive, etc., have become dated. Use some unfamiliar words with dramatic effect. For example, while others discuss a project which requires you to work hard, stand with a bored face and ask, “What about picking up a MILE project rather than these conventional ones?” If someone asks what is MILE, look at him with pity and say, “Maximum impact, little labour. We all know that from our childhood, don’t we?” Of course, this MILE project will require you to dine at five star hotels and travel abroad business class.    

Handling Budding Stars

Every office has some zombies who are goal oriented sincere, hard workers. Fortunately, most of them are so engrossed in achieving their goal that they have little knowledge and time for office politics. They are either already stars or are budding stars. Make friends with them. Don’t engage them in lengthy discussions – just try and win them over with small gifts such as a book, a doughnut, a bright smile, etc. Talk to them with extra warmth. And then, when the iron is hot, strike. Pass on some task that is too simple to be refused. Slowly make it your birthright to treat them as your errand boys. If they refuse, let it be known all over. Paint a picture – this so-called great achiever can’t perform even such a simple task! Either the fellow will leave in disgust or will be compelled to do your work. Whatever be the case, you will be saved from doing little things as you are cut out to do bigger jobs which can be accomplished only when the entire senior team contributes. Settle for a beer, pal!

Sitting Arrangement

If you sit opposite the boss, most of the work will fall on you. Sit on his side with three people separating the two of you. If he still particularly entrusts some work upon you, accept it with great confidence, seek the opinion of others, select the most enthusiastic participants, and either pass on the work to them or include them in your team in the larger interests of the organisation.

Find Fault

You are extraordinary, and it is only you who can take your company to extraordinary heights. While everybody goes gaga over some achievement, praise in general but do not forget to mention some shortcomings. If you can’t think of one, say, “Overall wonderful, but it could have been in a different league altogether if we had taken care of certain things. I can’t really put a finger on it, but many people carry the same impression.” Don’t allow the trick to boomerang by having the task fall on your shoulder. Avoid it with a dash of generosity, “No, he did it so well. He deserves another chance to excel himself.”

The Principle of Admiration

 
Admire your boss when his boss is not present. It is his boss who must be admired and not your boss, if the superman is present. Remember to admire only the highest ranking individual. If you do not know what to admire, say something such as, “You are such a vibrant source of inspiration for the right minded people.” Sugarcoat your words every time you talk to the boss. He will develop a soft corner for you. Use it to get a cushy assignment.

Smothering the Brand

Who spoils a brand?

The product? The competitor? The customer? The publicist? The stockist? The retailer?

You could have chosen any of the answers above; and would have been correct. The fact is, anyone is capable of harming or destroying a brand. However, neither the building nor the collapse of the brand happens in a jiffy. Rejection by a person, society, or even the government does not wipe out a brand overnight. That’s the reason behind the revival of Maggi noodles this year and Coca Cola in the late Seventies in India.

So, do not get disheartened by one-off observations such as “Chivas Regal is soooo ordinary” or “Big Bazaar caters to the cattle class.” Provided, it is not a Chivas Regal or a Big Bazaar employee mouthing that statement.

About a decade ago I was assigned to make a caller tune. The company prided itself on customer relations that went much deeper than commercial considerations. I wrote the lyrics, set the tune, and got a peppy song recorded – “We are there for you, we care for you ...” Everybody was excited! And why not? Tailor made caller tunes were, and still are, rather uncommon in the brick and mortar industry.

The caller tune, naturally, was on each mobile connection in the company. Many-a-times motorcycle borne service engineers, executives on shop floor, or officials not in a position to take the call allowed it to go unanswered. Sometimes even repeated calls could not be answered. And when the recipient was able to return the call, it was perhaps without offering an apology and an explanation on why the call was not answered in the first place. Over the years the excitement turned into dismay. Customers started claiming, “You don’t care for us”. One fine morning the company coolly removed the caller tune.

I am very particular about using my official cell phone only for official purposes during the office hours. Once I took my car to Ford for servicing, and had to disclose my cell phone number. I made it clear that the number should not be called, and was assured about the same. However, within fifteen days I received a call about when I would like to book my car for servicing. I politely informed the caller that the car had been serviced recently. An apology, and the call get disconnected. But then, within a week I received a reminder with similar content. The onslaught continued unabated.

Ultimately I had to block the number. Though I still like the Ford car, I hate to receive a call, any call, from Ford.

Once a colleague, a senior sales engineer, received a call from a prospective customer. He got the details, and while passing them on to the appropriate engineer, made an observation, “Ki Rokum Log? Nije Ke Chutia Bolchhe (What kind of a person he is, calling himself an idiot)!” Chutia, an abusive word in Hindi, is a surname in Assam. If you laugh at a customer even before booking his order, what would you do when the time to serve comes, I wondered.

Sometime back a woman visited us. She represented a public relations agency. I took her around, explaining the high points and hoping that she would catch the USPs of our products, processes and facilities. As I was entering a shop floor, the guard looked at her, pointed a finger, and asked, “Yeh Kaun (who is she)? The woman was taken aback, and I had a tough time recovering lost ground.
Long ago I had read about an incident that refuses to fade away from my memory. A lady returned a packet of cheese to the seller, stating, “It is stinking.” The seller returned the money, saying, “Oh, is it?”, and tried to smell it. The woman never returned to that shop.

In all these cases, it was the employee who smothered the brand. Unsubstantiated claims, responding
in a bored manner, switching over to the vernacular – there are so many ways of upsetting the customer and spoiling the brand. Regardless of how it is projected, what matters is how the brand is perceived. Don’t spoil that perception; don’t smother your brand.

Office Politics and Networking

Do you like silent workers who make no fuss and complete their work with integrity?

Or, do you prefer workers who not only work but keep you informed about their achievements, making you wonder whether you are doing justice to their full potential?

I possess the temperament of the silent worker. Eleven years into my career, I was praised for it by my bosses in the multinational I served then, “Unlike others, he keeps to himself and does not indulge in negative activities.” I was rewarded with promotions and pay hikes. My career growth was better than that of my peers. I was included in conferences and meetings meant for senior officials. The Managing Director and the Vice Presidents were friendly to me. My words were respected. Unwittingly, I had become a sort of a yardstick. Though a lowly manager, I became part of a delegation to Singapore and China. I got selected as one of the top hundred salesmen worldwide, and was honoured in a special ceremony in Hawaii. I was given a double promotion and transferred to head the sales branch in Pune. What else could a silent worker ask for?

I smelt disharmony on my very first day at the Pune office. It had three sales engineers; two belonging to one division and the third belonging to another. Most of the business came from the first division. The lone engineer felt ignored. He did not keep others informed about his movements, and generally behaved like an outcast. He appeared to be struggling to run his separate office from within the existing one.

I corrected the situation by organising family events in which I insisted upon his presence. I also introduced a system of sitting together and sharing each-others’ lunch whenever possible. I observed an improvement in working relations, and was happy about it.

How mistaken I was!

One day I received a call from the divisional head of the outcast pal. The head spared no words in expressing his disappointment in me, demanding to know why was I preventing his engineer from attending to phone calls during the lunch period; why was I leaving the office within fifteen minutes after the closure time; and why was I not entertaining his engineer’s customers.

I was at a complete loss of words! It was true that I discouraged colleagues from taking calls during lunch. There were no cell phones then. One had to leave the table to take a call, and others had to wait for the person to join back. Just three calls could stretch the fifteen-minute lunch to thirty minutes.

I used to leave the office shortly after office hours, because I wanted to give time in the evening to my small children. I was travelling most of the days, when I did not see them at all.

So far as not visiting the engineer’s customers was concerned, I balanced my time amongst all three engineers, visiting customers who merited it.

Obviously, the engineer had used my name to protect himself from the aggressive division head. Sharing the reality with the head would not have cut much ice. The damage was done. My good intentions were thwarted by the short-sightedness of some people. I started looking for a change, and within a year changed jobs.

The company I joined had a young managing director. He told me that my earlier bosses spoke well about me, one of them going to the extent of accusing, “You have poached one of our best boys.” I headed the Mumbai region, away from the MD and Vice Presidents who sat in Pune and elsewhere. I increased sales by 50% in two years, made inroads into white goods bigwigs such as Godrej & Boyce, and, true to my silent worker style, did not make a single courtesy call to the MD during the period.

That proved to be my undoing. I never became close to the MD, and finally left the company on completion of my three-year contract.

The worst was yet to come. After a one-year stint in another company, where I was instrumental in effecting a 100% increase in sales, I realised that unless one was also good at politicking, delivering good results alone was not sufficient. I decided to try my hand at doing business. I had saved a decent sum, my provident fund was good, and investing these two I could easily manage the setting up and the initial year, I thought.

The company was launched.

The business was dull, but I was trying. I had the back up of an international IT giant. How could I fail, when lesser known outfits were doing so well? I kept on paying the royalty, and worked hard to expand the business. And then, one day, the skies fell. The company unceremoniously closed the business unit under which my company was operating. Not only was my investment wiped out, I was left to start life afresh with not a penny in my pocket!

I nurse no grudge, no ill feeling towards those who did wrong to me. But I have a regret. I wish I had been able to change my nature, and had networked my way to the head of the division, to the MD, and to the IT giant’s business unit. I would have been better prepared for the unfair onslaughts then. I still look upon office politics as a dirty word; but ability to network can be a saviour.

Now, coming back to the two questions I asked in the beginning. There is no harm in preferring workers who not only work but keep you informed about their achievements. But, before believing them, please check – are they taking undue advantage of the silence of a colleague; are they misinforming you; are they serving neither your company nor you but only themselves?

Bad Books; Unfortunate Students

Students from backward areas are often mocked upon for their inability to converse in proper English. I recently had an opportunity to meet such a student. Though only in class one, he loved his books and pointed out his favourite, Knowledge Update, for its “nice pictures and content”. Priced at Rs.130, the book is written by Ajay Shrivastava and is published by Spectrum Publications in New Delhi. As per the book:

1.      Long jump is a sports event in which a person has to run a little distance up to as far as possible.

2.      Its name is the significance of stupidity in generally.

3.      It can lives a very long time.

4.      There are millions type of animals lived in sea. 

5.      The Sydney Opera House is in the Australia. 

6.      The Mammoth was a enormous, hairy elephant like animal with large teeth and tusks.

7.      Many skin soaps are being made by neem leaves.

8.      The Big Ben is in the (a) Australia (b) Egypt (c) United Kingdom.

S    Students are also informed about ‘star persons of our country’, numbering eight. These are ‘Marry’ Com, Salman Khan, Aishwarya Rai, Amitabh Bachchan, MS Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar, Anna Hazare and Narendra Modi.   

Are the students not being blamed unfairly?

 

Don’t Think Negatively!

I get flummoxed on hearing the advice, “Don’t think negatively!” Once as I was getting ready to catch a morning non-stop Delhi-Chicago flight, my spectacles broke in an irreparable manner. I was to be on my own in Chicago, where I would land in the dead of the night. As I was thinking about how would I manage the situation, pat came the advice, “Don’t think negatively!” I was surprised. What was negative in in considering broken spectacles as broken? The next nugget of wisdom fell, “Think positively. You may find a spectacle repair shop open even at this early hour on your way to the airport, get it mended, and even be able to catch your international flight.” I nodded politely. Thankfully, I had kept a spare set with me, which came handy.

A close relative, about eighty-five years in age, was battling with cancer. She exceeded the doctor’s estimate by surviving for more than six months, but then her condition started deteriorating fast. She became a skeleton wrapped in white skin. Her face and feet swelled. She became unable to digest even the simplest of home cooked food. She lay painfully awake in the nights. Doctors, being consulted every day, could not offer any miraculous cure for the deadly disease. She got wind of the situation; and asked for a puja to be performed for her departure. She was no longer ready to accept phone calls even from her children. This was a drastic change, as just fifteen days back when I had met her, she was eager to meet relatives and was inquisitive about their welfare. The writing on the wall was clear – the end was near, perhaps just a month away. Her son tending to her day and night felt the same way. The other son, a doctor, too felt the same way. As I was discussing her health, a positive thought was pushed forth, “Some people who gave up survived for more than two years, so the negative thought about her death should not be brought to mind.” Luckily her sons did not think so ‘positively’ and moved her to a hospital.

I am finding it difficult to think positively and assuming that she has gone to the hospital to teach cake baking skills to the chef!

I thought of asking:

1.      Why do we send our children to the school? So that they grow into adults who are able to live with their full potential realised. But why this negative feeling that they will not be able to do well if not educated?

2.      Why do we take insurance cover? To take care of the eventualities. But why think negative? After all how many eventualities happen around us?

3.      Why do we watch our weight, be careful about what we eat, and take inoculations? Will it not be better to be positive minded and hog whatever came our way?

Negativity is often confused with rational thinking. The examples given above are certainly not of negative thinking but of rational thinking. On the other hand, negative thinking could be your feeling angry, horrible, being less productive, finding solace in junk food and useless web-surfing all day just because someone misbehaved with you in the morning.

It is normal to be cautious against failures. The amygdala, the brain region that regulates emotion and motivation, uses about two-thirds of its neurons to detect bad news. Humans share ancestors with bats, begonias and bacteria that go back at least 3.5 billion years. It was a matter of life and death then to pay extra attention to dangers, react to them intensely, remember them well, and over time become even more sensitive to them.

Only pigeons are known to close eyes when they see a cat. We know what happens after that. It is better to keep the eyes open and fly away to safety, so what if that is considered as a reaction emerging out of negativity!

The Confidence Factors

I came to Bengaluru eleven years ago, for what it appeared at that time, a short stint. The decade-long stay has made me confident about certain aspects, such as these:

1.      Auto-rickshaw drivers earn the most handsome returns if they do not go anywhere.

2.      If you have given a left-turn indicator, the two-wheeler behind you will overtake you from the left and then turn to the right. Its driver may look at you with contempt and ask “Wa?” as you manage to avoid an accident. Ditto for the right turn.

3.      The traffic police on junctions will clear opposite sides together and watch as vehicles intending to take a turn will be forced to move in the wrong lane.

4.      If your colleagues know that you do not know Kannada, most deliberations in official meetings will be in that language only.

5.      Even though the travel will be for a few seconds, the fan in the elevator will be switched on regardless of the weather.

6.      People wishing to come out of the elevator can do so only after allowing the new entrant to block the entrance.

7.      The bus will never stop at the bus stop.

8.      The conductor will always be short of coins.   

9.      It is impolite to wish anyone other than your boss.

10. Helmets must be hung from the left elbow.

11. Punctuality is of no consequence.

12. You can hoot at the people if they obstruct your vehicle’s movement on the footpath.

13. While it can be freezing cold indoors, the sun outside will burn you within minutes.   

14. Even if you receive water supply from an overhead tank, you must throw away all stored water and refill all vessels every morning with ‘fresh’ water.

15. The queue at the Tenderchicken outlet should be orderly. No such compulsion exists for the airline security check queue.