Rumbling Thoughts

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An empty coffee cup

A blank notepad

Soft purring of the machine

And the many open windows

The blinking cursor

An idle mouse

Silence of keyboard

And an unfinished poem

For the mind has gone wandering

To a land far far away

Unknown to confined brain

Mind's source of freedom

A single thought

Looping infintely

Leaving everything else

Searching for neurons

Unable to leave the thought alone

It was a single thought marathon

Leaving the unattended thoughts fuming

The brain slipped into sleep mode!

PS: Thoughts were simply rumbling without any purpose. This was just to vent them out!

[Comic Strip] Employee Motivation Levels

[Devil's Guide] Essential Skills Of A Manager

Disclaimer Alert: These experiences are partly fictional and has been collated over my brief stint in the corporate world and does not correlate singularly to any of my past / current managers or even my friends' managers. 


Though, we may not like it, we all spend quite a bit of our time of our lives with our managers if we are employed. At certain point of time, we do have people under us whom we have to manage and they too won't like us in most cases. Here are some of the sure shot ways which will make their lives a bit more tougher and project you as a leader of men in front of your own manager for your next appraisal!

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• Irrespective of the directs' performance, you need to learn to rate similar performance the lowest or the highest. Your job as a manager is the ability to justify both ends of rating for a similar performance. The bell curve, your peer's performance and the organization's hierarchy are your primary weapons. Learn to use them effectively.

• During any discussion, when the direct has a valid point, it is imperative to take the valid point so far as infinity so that like a unit positive charge sitting at infinity, it  has no effect. You need to have a wealthy experience of anecdotes, and ability to change the context without the direct's knowledge. Some managers are so good with their anecdotes, the direct suddenly forget, why on earth he is listening to him. Then there are managers (the most dangerous kind) who can make the direct's valid point completely against him. 

• Learn to create a story. Mistakes happen in a professional environment. The true test of a manager is to create a story that will deflect the blame. The blame can be shifted to another person, team, process or even the tool that is being used. The best in business convert the mistakes into achievements. On a separate note, this probably is a reason why IIM grads get into writing books. They are good at creating stories.

• Learn to be provocative. All the directs will say "I am fine" when asked how are they doing. Only by probing and instigating, does the true emotions come out. Good managers are very good at provoking. For each and every word you utter, they observe closely your body language and hit you right where it unnerves you. Some are so good at this, that every meeting is an emotional drain on you and you come out just thinking, how on earth you opened your mouth in the first place.

• Learn to manage your directs' time effectively. You read it right. it doesn't matter, how you manage your time. But it really matters whether you can manage your directs' time effectively. The ideal state for a manager is to have all the directs working 8 hours non-stop. Productivity and innovation are the buzz words to live by.

• Learn to schedule a meeting without an agenda and still exceed the schedule at least by the duration of the original meeting. This tactic helps you pass up time when you do not have anything to do or when you are getting bored. Talking with the team, increasing the bonhomie within the team and status updates are your arms for this.

• When asked to present, present for the whole duration of the meeting. Even if there is a single slide, talk as if there is no tomorrow and stop exactly a minute before the meeting is supposed to end. Your authority is stamped. Everything will be followed, no questions asked.

• Learn to use the meeting room wisely. When I say wisely, it means indiscriminately. It just sends out a message, that you are very busy and should never be messed with.

• Finally sometimes, when your directs make a mistake in a report and try to cover it up, make the cover-up fool-proof. It helps!

For the more office gyaan click here. Self is not responsible for any misfortune arising out to anyone following this sagely advice. 

The Decade Gone By...Happy New Decade!

This is intended to be funny. So I expect lolz, rofl and all their derivatives in the comment section. Failing to do so would imply that you are hurtling through the depths of despair and darkness. ;) 

Before the decade started I was just an un-germinated seed whose aim was not to become a tree but a juicy fruit like an apple. Darn, I should have been a leaf then. I would have modified myself into a full-grown onion. I would be now priceless. Only later would I understand the repercussions of dreaming of an apple which you will too soon find out.

1.Sparkling School Days

Anyways, the decade started with a bang. A mix of improbable physics, concentrated chemistry, bilious biology and 13 girls. Yes 13 girls. That was the first time when I had to spend time in a single room with 13 girls along with 46 other guys who were more or less on the same page. Most of the 47 of us were from all-guys-and-no-girls-classes till then. The result - I learnt two important lessons.

1. You can never understand any of the three subjects. They are supposed to be mugged up. The teachers don't tell you this secret directly but to their credit they do throw ample hints like writing illegibly on the frame of the blackboard or by drawing larger-than-life size figure of a frog's digestive systems or by whispering during the lecture. 
2. The previously believed assumption that in presence of opposite-gender, you tend to score more was burnt to ashes and the urn was thrown in Sabarmati Tiver to ensure there are no future ashes contests in this regard.

2. Out to be an engineer

The first thing that they tried when I entered college was try to teach me drawing. Of course they did not say it upfront. They called it Engineering Drawing. Unfortunately they didn't know that I was incapable of any kind of drawing. Bet a third grader can still beat me in drawing. Yet they wanted me to draw something more complex and more intelligible which was simply out of scope for me. However, they never lost hope. I responded in kind, scoring an improbable 2 out of 40 in spite of drawing on both sides of the drawing sheet given to me. Might have let the sheet alone and they would have given more for cleanliness. Yet, they persevered and finally they taught me to draw straight line an incredible achievement after 12 months of training.

3. Journey in Electronics

They still hadn't given up on me. So then they tried teaching me electronics. I started enthusiastically dreaming about having a small shack with all colors bulbs creating strange sounds and radio transmitter similar to the one seen in old Hindi movies. However fate had other plans. Whenever I tried building anything, the only output I would get was an eerie silence. Now a civil engineer can see a building that he is building, a mechanical engineer can see what is going wrong. An electrical engineer would either see a smoke like that after a pope is selected indicating something went wrong or he gets electrocuted. A computer engineer gets an error message or the blue screen of death as a last resort. But for an electronics engineer, nothing. Only an eerie silence. Nothing blowing-up, no shocks as maximum voltage only go up to 5V. So I did the next best thing. I took up projects where you just need to give presentations and stayed an two arm's length from the soldering iron.

4. First job in Reliance

Despite the utter failure in engineering, Reliance somehow thought I was just an unpolished diamond and picked me up. Once there, they again started teaching me a new philosophy. They said  - 

"customer ne baatli ma utarvu aavu joiye"

That literally translates to  "learn to insert a customer into a bottle". It is more nearer to pulling a fast one on the customer to get your work done. I started working on acquiring on this skill. But instead of me putting the customer into a bottle, it was the customers who put me in hole, not once but twice by sending e-mails to Mr. Anil Ambani. :( . That was the beginning of a great friendship between us as teams from Mumbai headquarters, bosses of Gujarat state, and my boss all started asking for my well-being. So when it came to third time, instead of trying to put a customer into a bottle, I challenged the customer to put me in hole. :). After all I had Anilbhai's backing. But the next morning, my boss called me and told me - Dude, I guess you enjoy digging up a grave for yourself. But pal, why are you digging my and my boss' grave alongside yours?  Well I got the drift, and jumped ship from there.

5. In Cognizant, Chennai

Well here again they wanted to teach me. It now started getting on my nerves then. But they promised, this is different and this is JAVA. So I learnt and I learnt well. I learnt how to appreciate a good coffee, even if it comes from a dumb machine. Don't roll your eyes. The java logo always shows a hot coffee and they always talked about java beans which I took it for coffee beans. You can't blame me here. This was as good as I did anywhere before.

6. Blogging

Meanwhile I started blogging. I started with a bang by writing a java code that I learnt recently. Was big show-off then :). But soon my manager called me. It seemed he didn't like the piece code that I wrote. It was something on these lines. Eventually they decided I was not meant for writing codes, so they put me in testing. Here I had to find bottlenecks. The old bottle reared up its ugly head. However, I felt good. From all the past experiences, I knew I have never built anything. At least I can break what others have built. Things finally were falling in place for me. At least it seemed so.

7. My First Project

I had received the most challenging project that was possible. I had to work 11 hours daily on it. Coffee-breaks, tea-break and lunch-break constituted 4 hours interspersed with 3 hours at cubicle and finally a continuous stress of 4 hours of table tennis with no manager's supervision for either of the activities. The bottlenecks - Well the project had many bottlenecks that I never had to look for one. Finally after 5 stressful months, the project was scrapped ending the dream run. Yet that project is still on my resume still glittering in all its inexistent glory.

8. Pune beckoned

I moved to Pune or was I moved to Pune is still a mystery. Theoretically after mutual agreement between my manager and me, I moved to Pune - is probably the politically correct way of telling it. Unfortunately here the bottles started haunting me again. I had to find the bottlenecks. That was my mission. I went after the mission with great zeal. However, they never described the catch in finding bottlenecks. This did me in. The catch is the famous - apples to apples comparison. They told me I was comparing apples with oranges and so all the necks that I was shoving were not of any bottles. Never mind, if you did not understand the above statements. In short, it means I goofed up again. Until some days after the incident, all I could see was apples, oranges, bottles, bottleneck and bottles without bottlenecks.

9. Recession

It was the biggest conspiracy hatched up by the underworld to end my blissful project-less a.k.a no-work period. My manager told me that you are committing a big crime by sitting on a bench (an IT euphemism meaning no work) during a recession. So he sent me to the Yerawada jail (not exactly but very near to that and very similar to that) for all my past deeds. Got a new manager to report to. He was a nice guy with decent expectations from me. But then again I managed to do the improbable.

The actual completion percentage  (red worm) dropped off instead of trying to catch-up with the expected completion (blue worm). It was looking like a horrible run chase by the team batting second in a limited-overs cricket. My manager only told me one thing - Either the red worm should start looking up or your salary will start mirroring the red worm. I took the cue and I jumped ship again. :)

10. Mumbai

Mumbai is complex, exciting and unpredictable. The pot-holes and the mumbai rains share a special bonding. They both mirror each other in every way possible by just turning up when least expected. Later I realized there was one more thing that was mirroring these two things. It was the project I was mapped to. Every turn was a new pothole and sometimes it would be big pit. Its sole existence is to remind you off the pit stops in life as in F1 race. However, it would be the kind of pit, where you only realize that you are in a pit after you fall in. So here in Mumbai I fall in pits and potholes in search of the illusive necks, bottles and bottlenecks.


So now anticipating a more exciting journey ahead starting with the current pit in which I am in....Happy New Decade to you all (if you are still reading :P )

The Games FB Addicts Play

When I first tried out Facebook (dont remember when), the invitations and pokes overwhelmed me and I soon got tired of them. So then I just went back to the only SNS (social networking site) which was popular in India - Orkut. But thats beside the point of this post. Recently, in Jan I again revived my dead account, and now am addicted to it. Again this is not what this post is all about. :). Having observed most of my friends on it, my mind went about classifying the various traits of other fb addicts... And this is what the post is all about :) But before going further few warnings –

• The post is very long so beware
• Have a lump of jaggery with you as the post may leave a bitter taster in your mouth.
• If reading a game you think I wrote it based on your behavior, rest assured you are not alone doing that as there are others too having similar trait probably differing in its degree and lot of us play multiple games at the same time – the multi-taskers! :P

So let the games begin -

1. The Guy Gangs Game

This is one of the games that most guys play within their group. In this game, there will be one innocent protagonist, who gives a very innocent status. This status may be completely innocent or at most it may have one innocent loophole. The next important character in this game is the Devil. He would be there waiting for this chance alone and the moment this innocent status gets posted, a sarcastic comment follows. This will be followed by a like on his comment, then a hot reply, another comment and pitched war between these guys start putting all their past, present and future dirty linen on the FB domain. The game usually ends, when the protagonist accepts defeat or deletes this post. But beware deleting may produce a child post on the devil's post which would take the war to the next level.

Although gals are never far-behind in this game, but they cannot match the low-blows that happen here. It does get real dirty here. But guys are guys. They have seen worse happening to them, caused by these same devils and yet they remain each other's best buddies.

 

2. The Status Game

The game is very simple. Just ensure you post a minimum of one status every hour. This includes the sleeping time as well. The status is not important here. Only the posting is important. It is said that career is not everything, and people need to take time to smell the flowers. Well this tribe of fb addicts believes in taking this adage one step further. Truly, they are one step above most other people in the ladder of spirituality! :P. But the game doesn't end here. The guy/gal will have some dedicated set of followers who find time to comment or like it. The beauty of this game is that it never ends even if the followers get tired of it.

 

3. The Calendar Game

This tribe is here to help the other addicts. They are the Good Samaritans here. They ensure that other addicts know what time of the day it is with good morning, zzzz, had a heavy lunch kind of messages.. They also give the day it is. For example, if as an addict you forget what day it is, just see their status - it will go like 2 days to Friday, Monday morning blues, and its weekend. The only catch here, sometime you may not be able to differentiate Saturdays and Sundays. They can take this as feedback in improving their humanitarian work.

 

4. The Motivation Game

This is another form of good Samaritans here. They are the enlightened souls who would post new quotes, wisdom statements, a song to listen every day, importance of friends, relationships... get the drift. Reading this will give you enough motivation to face all problems in life. The alternative to this would be to pick up a self-help book from a bookstore which is down-right boring. Again they are here to help people see the light! :) The light is too bright for you too see any shadows till far-far away.

 

5. The Game of Intrigue

This is mostly played by guys. I don't know why but this tribe has an uncanny ability to bewilder most of the mortal world. They leave you thinking, wondering, but even if you ask for an explanation, you get another intriguing comment. And you leave it at that as now you don't want to be seen as fool twice by other addicts at large. But for each tribe there are followers who simply like them even if they don't understand. Intriguing followers!

 

6. The Knowledge Game

This game is again mostly played by guys. The objective of this game is to post very useful links related to topics such as global warming, whether the world will face double-dip recession, the latest gadgets, or on the international events. They are the people for whom tons of academicians work publishing articles in journals, writing papers, etc. Their posts can give you sleepless nights if you try to read those articles unless you share the same genes ;)

 

7. The Ideology Game

This is one of the most dangerous games. Their numbers are less at this moment. But their posts sprout the ideologies they believe in and in which they fanatically follow. Their will be followers too but most likely they may not be fanatic. The goal of this game is to convert the moderate followers into fanatics. The ideology can take many forms. It can be your organization, your work, in some case religion too. The Techie game can be considered as a subset of this game where the fb user posts statuses based on passion for a technology.

 

8. The Followers Game

This game has no protagonists. The followers of most tribes fall in this category. You can easily identify them, by seeing their comments littered over most of your friend's post. They just like things and comment. Their comments are also short two words comments like - "nice one", "good one" ,"ROFL","LOL","cool" as if they are in a hurry. But they are the poor souls, the sheep who are confused of what facebook is all about. So they go about liking and commenting on most things that published on facebook. Spare a thought for them...

 

9. The Enjoy-Simple-Things Game

This is a tribe for whom we can learn how to appreciate life. They will have statuses like "Enjoying home made daal-khichdi" or "Shopped for groceries, bought food, cooked it and now afternoon siesta", "Listening to blaring music and working today (Saturday)". By posting it on facebook, they are showing the way to live life appreciating little things which other mortals forget about it.

 

10. The Fun Game

This tribe are very serious about being on facebook. They seriously want to have fun on facebook. So they will use their wit to produce some really funny-liners, or comments etc. They will have lengthy discussions on facebook with apparently no theme in the entire discussion. Sometime the statuses are posted so as to start having fun. The discussion in all cases veer towards some topic that is not even remotely related to the status. When you read such statuses, beware of reading the comments. It may be injurious to your mental health.

 

11. The Smiling-Photo Game

Another simple game! You just have to take a snap yourself in as many ways as possible. It doesn't matter if you are alone or with other people who as well will be having a wider grin. The only catch is you need to be smiling always. The main idea is to ensure that people remember your smile disregarding everything else in the picture. I am one already signed up for this game so I recommend everyone to follow ;)

 

12. The Shared-Video Game
Believe the simplest game of all. You just share a video that was shared by someone else and thats it. You don't even have to watch it. The guy who has posted liked it and he would at least be your friend or your friend's friend. The logic goes something like this - You like you friend's choices and your friend will also like his friend's choices, which obviously means you like your friend's friend's choices. So there you go. And you share. This is to share fun so that more people like it, more people will smile after seeing that and thus what you have done is spreading smiles, which is a not a very bad thing to do.

13. The Aww-so-Cute Game

This is mostly played by gals and these gal's guy friends. The objective is to have as many awww, so cute comments and likes as possible. Mostly the subject here will be a video with a small kid, a teddy bear, teddy bear playing with kid (oops vice versa), crying kid, laughing kid, mom 'n' kid, a sad love story, a beautiful love story, etc. The main aim is to enhance the cuteness/awwness of the video, pic by having as many likes/comments possible.

 

Apart from this there are other games which most of you know which create known tribes such as the mafias, the farmers, people who check their day's future with numerous fortune-tellers( obviously one will be true and for the few unlucky ones none will be true so they will go to more fortune-tellers :D), finding the best friends based on likes and comments (the first game I talked about – the devil became the innocent guy's best friends J) , finding love story of their life from rom-coms and dreaming about it, finding most matching girl/boy-friends. And then there are some stray sheep, fuel-tank, goat, etc. and which will leave you scratching your head thinking about what to do with it. But the best happened recently when I saw a message in fb that 72% of your friends are farmers an you can be one too. Was just wondering, if so many wanted to be farmers, why are they on facebook?

 

PS: I see lot of daggers coming out, if you are still reading – you can use those in the comment section ;) Btw - no hard feelings - just plain thoughts :)