As I sat in my seat, clutching firmly to my bag and life, as the driver flicked through the traffic; a strange thing happened. An unnatural force, something pure evil stopped my auto. It was the demon of the red light, helped in his endeavors by the fellow demon the traffic jam.

Agitated with the possibility of being late I cursed under my breath and noticed something. The driver casually killed the engine and took out a newspaper, folded his legs and starting reading about the relationship status of a B town celebrity.

The humble bangalorian taught this finicky Delhite (a temporary arrangement) a thing or two about keeping cool!

-AP

1) The wise man says, “ when everyone agrees with you; you know you are wrong!”
2) The wise man says, “A Man who sinks into a woman’s arms; will soon find his arms in the woman’s sink!” Funny story this one– another time another day!
3) The wise man says, “Talking of Pain; few things beat the truth in causing it.”
4) The wise man says, “Talk is cheap; Until you hire a marketer for it!”
5) The wise man says, “In any meeting – the fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion!”
6) The wise man says, “In all meetings, progress depends on the unreasonable man!”
7) The wise man says, “A Liar needs the best memory! Therefore all men suck at it.”
The wise man says, “A Clean desk is sure sign of a sick mind!”
9) The wise man says, “The first draft of anything is Sh**!”

A more Potent weapon mankind has not found! This is the tale of the Stinker.

From the first e-mail sent out between DOD geeks to the sprawling myriad complex of the modern enterprise; the stinker has become as ubiquitous as the AK 47 in Africa!

What, my Facebook generation friends would observe; is a stinker. Having not yet put their feet in the muddy swamps of a Job, they are blissfully unaware of its existence.

Allow me to elaborate.

A stinker is an email sent with only one intent – to foul the mood, plans and ego of the recipient often as a vent for the increasingly rising frustration of an approaching deadline.
It is crafted from the annuls of hate deep in your gut, molded from the pressure of a deadline on your shoulders, decorated with the threat of consequence and dressed up as a trophy wife in words.

It must fulfill the below criteria to be called a classic Stinker; else it is just an abusive mail:

1) Subtle like a well placed compliment; just opposite though!
2) copied to the boss man and his boss man.
3) an emphasis on buzz words and the single most stress inducing word in the English language – URGENT!
4) A call to the sensibilities and responsibilities of the recipient

Writing a good stinker is an art form, and not many have perfected it!

The point is – that everyone must learn one thing ASAP after joining the corporate world – how to send a classically scented, convulsion inducing yet the very epitome of panache wrapped in 100 kilobytes of pure frustration.

1. From: Horse Lung nebula, planet MaXVol, decibel quadrant of the known universe
2. Super evil power: a pair of horse lungs that can cross 130dB easily when she is belittling someone on the phone

2)      Question MAN

1. From: Spectrum of the unknown, Britannica nebula, Planet Duh!
2. Super evil power: a insatiable appetite for doubts and required clarifications. Mostly from the planet – financialot

3)      The wizard of delegation

1. From: you-do-it star system, came to earth as an attachment on asteroid Outlox
2. Super evil power: same as an Outlook auto forward rule. Forwards all requests and delegates instantly

4)      The Animator

1. From: Planet ShinyObject, animate-on-click star system.
2. Super evil power: Animating all presentation to levels that would put Walt Disney to shame.

5)     Chief  Wannabe Bossman

1. From:  From the tribe of the Aggressors, located on the outer fringes of the corporate dust clouds around the midlife crisis quasar!
2. Super evil power: Trying to boss everyone around despite not being their boss.

It is about a life (mis)management philosophy; it is about a paradigm shift in managing business and crisis.

Now scatter and gather is a two pronged strategy -

1) Scatter

2) Gather

Yeah! Genius that’s it. Now to elaborate!

First comes the scatter – this is the part where you divide the problem into little parts and spread the work load around.

The key here is to set clear boundaries and responsibilities and align the stick and carrots for each party.

Then comes the Gather – get all the required parts and put together as one whole.

Simple isn’t it! Not actually – the greatest fallacy of this approach is that it appears simple.

There are two major points in human nature that make it unsuccessful everytime

1) you can’t get people to own responsibility to something completely and do as told. No they will come back and say that they thought that something-something was XYZ’z responsibility

2) people love meddling with other people work
So this is completely useless, you may think! You may also think that reading this post was a complete waste of your time. Well NO.

See the point that I wanted to make was very simple. Many of life challenges are simple to solve, to get over and get a move on, but that’s exactly the reason we can’t and fail repeatedly.

Take for example the case of the hope less couple – who want to break up and move on! (Scatter) and marry according to their parents choice (weather they are in love or not is another post). They want to move on and gather their life back without the habit of the other person in their life.

Simple isn’t it. But most fail here.

Another example is a plan that needs to be put together! You need it to be perfect! The best approach sounds like spreading the work between the concerned parties! Giving the fiance guys the numbers, the marketing the communication and branding and the business managers the GTM (go to market) strategies and they sit down and put it all together.

It sounds simple and like the right approach – that’s why it is the wrong one.

So whats the right thing to do?

Well in the Business plan it is best to get everyone in the same room – get a KT and make the damn thing yourself. That way everything fits in together perfectly – all numbers match up and you never end up over committing. The best way is to gather and then process. Scatter is the difficult part.

As for the couple above, well I don’t have an answer to that!

-AP

Marketing is a good profession, with opportunity to flex the creative muscle, to try something new and actually see your work out in the real world. (How many of the IT guys can say that about the financial analytics software they are porting from Mainframes to a Windows server environment)

But it does come with one major torture inbuilt. A grand scheme by the powers that be to ruin the perfection of your day and its called – process overload a.k.a water boarding.

So this is how it goes -

1) You get an Idea!

2) You make a plan around the Idea – do the research get the numbers and present to the Plan to the Big guns!

3) Negotiations ensue – big guns get convinced – ready to roll

4) Brief given to agencies – plans finalised

Now the trouble starts

case in Point 1) You get the estimates – now is a 1 hour battle with en ERP buying system where you raise an Purchase request to get a PO

2) You can not start any work till you get the PO – and it takes longer than in takes Saturn to go around the Sun Once.

3) Now you get the PO

This isn’t the end – that was the PO for media buy – now you got to pay the creative agency and adaptation agency – two more Purchase requests to be raised.

As you can see its a cascading effect – much like idiocy itself.

That’s only the first part of  it – the other is the unholiest concept of all that is unholy – TAT. The turn around time of a team/person is something like the devil power – an ability given by the corporate gods to slowly pierce your ear drums with a blunt nail, to move your ribs just so slightly apart and tickle your very heart.

Now don’t get carried away that a TAT means that the concerned has to do it in the time stated – say 48 hours. No no no that’s not what a TAT is; it’s the time after which they will even consider it for approval – and after at least three follow ups for good measure.

A TAT is exactly the time required (proven scientifically) to just be a minute longer than the limits of human patience.

Then comes the incorrigible buggers, the important yet completely unnecessary people in the approval flow. These are the keepers for an Old faith; the Faith of the corporate hierarchy! They will not approve till they are satisfied with the comments you have added

And they never write a mail to clarify – or call you for that matter. Nor will the get up and scream your name across the floor to clarify a concept so simple that a third grader would not have trouble understanding it.

Clarifying is not part of their Job (neither is meddling with or work- but that’s a different rant for another post!), No Sir! they will just reject he PR.

Oh jolly good – now you have to start over again….

This my friend is what one calls death by processes – and I am just another poltergeist flying through the dungeons of corporate processes!

-AP

Recognized by: Balding head and a beer belly.

Favorite Line: Can you show me how to insert a chart in my powerpoint!

2) The Rude Saleu!

Recognized by: Balding/graying head and beer belly

Favorite Line: Abe hum kya papu hain! (Hey, are we morons!)

3) The ‘Way too’ professional Lady

Recognized by: Designer wear and eye makeup

Favorite Line: Can we get a printout of this?

4)The Clueless Guy

Recognized by: Tie on a Friday

Favorite Line: What’s the total rewards program – oh I was marked on the mail! Must have missed it.

5) The tea totaler

Recognized by: Array of empty paper cups on his desk

Favorite Line: Earl Grey this time!

6) The Let’s Get it done yesterday guy

Recognized by: High speed walk in the corridors with his laptop tucked by his side - overconfident persona!

Favorite Line: We are way over budget and this needed to be done yesterday!

7) The Meeting Sage

Recognized by: Empty desk and his behinds imprint on every meeting room chair!

Favorite Line: We need to discuss this – lets call a meeting in 7F

The ‘Distraction’

Recognized by: Her walk (done twice every hour) and the industrial strength stiching of her trousers!

Favorite Line: Was too distracted to hear anything!

9) The Prehistoric Troll

Recognized by: Sandals (bata) on a Friday, drinking at office lunches!

Favorite Line: Are you gonna have the beer with the buffet? NO! Good, pass it on to me!

10) The Smart Alec

Recognized by: Disdain for formal wear, his blog…..

-AP

Did you get the answer without thinking? Good

Question2: What date is it today?

If you had to click on the bottom right corner of your computer screen to check, congratulations you are a Man!

From time immemorial women have given men trouble over their memories and crying afoul (worst still making us cry afoul) over this ‘memory loss’. To a girl a guy remembering her birthday/anniversary/birthday of her dog/special day/her first college play etc all by himself is a sweet gesture. A prime example of their devotion even!

Today I want to present the case for my fellow men. We do not have poor memory, nor do we suffer from memory loss. Its just that ours is a delayed memory + situational awareness problem that is magnified by our inability to multi task.

Allow me to explain; forgetting means that a piece of information packed its bags and left the attic that is our brain and went in search of inner peace to the Himalayas. Which is not the case – we remember exactly that 13th of August is Mum’s birthday and that you were born in the sign of the Scorpio! The problem is that when we are busy tackling the day to day mundane dribble, the information fails to pop up on time.

Usually it will pop up a moment too late – when the axe of accusation has already landed on our head.

This is how nature made us – this is what we are naturally. So ladies this one is a request to you, please do not try and make a lion eat grass, or make a fish climb a coconut tree and give your men a break.

I guarantee that they will be pleased to make that day as special as they possibly can for you only if you will be kind enough to remind them of it.

-AP