The DilRAMbert Principle

I was so enamoured by ‘The Dilbert Principle’ that I thought I should write my own version – this post is the result of such an intention...!! Although I realize that I cannot even come close to Scott Adams in satire, I am hopeful that when someone reads this post, they are able to identify with it !

The picture posted at the beginning of the post is the caricature of a person I wish to call DilRAMbert – a combination of Dilbert and Sriram ! This sketch was drawn by my daughter, modelled on Dilbert, with an Indian touch – watch the moustache and the dark hair ! Vaishu has done a fantastic job – I actually showed her a picture of the original Dilbert character, asked her to mix this with an image of myself, and come out with a comical character, and the result is for there on top to see...!! Proves what a versatile artist Vaishu is...!!

I have separated this post into several sections, each dealing with various aspects of corporate culture, most of the situations which I have myself gone through or witnessed.

HR Hiccups

In this section, I will cover the common working methods of the much maligned Human Resource departments. Adopting the same approach as in my previous post, I have put together a table capturing the common statements they make and their actual meanings...

Human Resource Department Statements	What they actually Mean
We are an equal opportunity employer	It would however help if you are connected in one way or the other to the senior management...
We attract and retain the best talent	Best possible talent is what is meant here. There are many reasons why the BEST talent CANNOT be here : 1. We cannot afford them anyway 2. If they are the best, they would not be dumb and stupid to work for us, even if we can afford them
Our policies are followed in both the spirit and the letter	Depends on what is convenient for the situation.
We have the lowest attrition in the industry	Our attrition calculations do not include : 1. Employees who leave because they are unable to put up with their bosses – this is strictly an interpersonal issue 2. Employees who leave because of unsatisfactory pay – this is because in a tough economic scenario, we expect employees to actually gladly accept pay cuts 3. Employees who leave because of lack of role clarity – we believe that role clarity is a misnomer – the order of the day is to work with continuous change even in roles and responsibilities
We don’t give our employees jobs – we give them a career.	We have conveniently dropped the last two words. The complete sentence reads like this : We don’t give our employees jobs – we give them a career-long nightmare
We call our employees ‘Associates’	Associates in deceiving clients (sort of partners in crime...)
We encourage employees to seek work life balance	We expect them to work the first twenty years of their career like horses, and spend the next twenty living a life of their choice recuperating from all workplace ailments that flesh is heir to....
The company policies stipulate that .... (these are usually the first few words of a response to a specific query from an employee)	Anything that follows the phrase ‘The company policies stipulate that....’ is not worth listening to. The answer can simply be taken as ‘NOPE...’ For instance, the employee would have naively asked, ‘Am I eligible to take a compensatory day off for work I do during weekends...?’ The HR guy would respond, ‘The company policies stipulate that....compensatory off is permissible if and only when exigencies dictate the necessity for such urgent work. This however has to carry the approval from the concerned project manager, duly logged into our timesheet management system. The policy also stipulates that such compensatory off is to be availed within 2 weeks from the date when such urgent over-the-weekend work was undertaken, and the final approval for such compensatory off shall rest with the HR Head in all cases. In cases where the compensatory off is availed by the employee before being duly sanctioned by the concerned, such absence is liable to be treated as LEAVE WITHOUT APPROVAL AND LOSS OF PAY’. Instead of so many qualifying criteria, a better answer would have been a plain and simple ‘NO’

Management Mumbo-jumbo

This section captures some statements of universal validity made during meetings. Notable about all these statements is that they are mostly ALWAYS delivered by a senior management representative, with a lot of earnest conviction and a facial expression to match.

The notable theme in all these statements will fall under only two categories:

• They will express a generally known truth indirectly or with sarcasm, much like the following convoluted example : 

While all species in the animal kingdom are known to exhibit seasonal mating behaviour, man is the only exceptional mammal characterized by year-round mating.  
What this statement means is this :
Man is the only so-called civilized animal which has sex throughout the year

• If they do not fall under the category above, they will be peppered with so much jargon that an uninitiated listener would be too confused to understand anything whatsoever.

Here are some of the best samples from my repertoire :

Profit is the difference between net income and net expenses

(This comes from a Harvard Business School graduate, who believes that anyone who is NOT from Harvard, is as good as ILLITERATE, and needs to be educated on the fundamental aspects of business, the essence of which is as captured in this statement)

We are all here to serve our customers

(Oh...thanks for reminding. We thought we are here for a decent pay check every month)

Quality is important, but I prefer profits

(Bravo....!!)

In order to improve efficiencies, we have to optimize in all possible ways

(This was a gem – who else but a seasoned veteran of corporate culture could talk with such style and conviction...?!!)

In order for our company to make a quantum leap into a futuristic realm of providing competitive business advantages to our clients, we all need to champion a fundamental paradigm shift on our approach to quality – a paradigm which encompasses PPM, TPM, 5S, Kaizen, Poka-Yoke and Six-sigma practices, all of which are the corner-stones of TQA.

(Phew, that was quite a mouthful…! He has succinctly summarized the last 60 years of Japanese manufacturing management approaches to quality in a beautiful sentence of less than 60 words. ENGLISH, indeed is a LOVELY language ;))

We must display a level of customer centricity which allows us to even change our Vision and Mission statement according to what our customer expectations are.

(Heights of Customer Centricity...)  
It is the duty of every employee to continuously innovate, seek better ways of doing things, act as quality evangelists, and don the role of customer-centricity champions, which are the only ways to ensure our company’s continued existence in the business. 
(Very valid truth – one employee came up with the concept of reusable toilet paper – can we call that INNOVATION ? ;))

(Also note the careful choice of the vaguest terms – ‘innovate’, ‘quality evangelist’, ‘customer-centricity champion’ – none of these have a clear definition, and all these are straight out of ‘Dilbert’!!!)

The SP dictates that BD is responsible for getting the EFR from PMG. Only when the EFR is vetted can the WO be logged into the OMP. The BD representative who manages this is the CEM. Once the WO is logged, there has to be a formal PKOM, which should have all the MRs participating. When the project is underway, responsibility shifts to the PMG, who shall update progress through the WSR, apart from managing the RT up to project completion.  
Sounds confusing ? Read the same text with the following expanded abbreviations:

SP – Standard Practice

BD – Business Development

EFR – Effort Feasibility Report

CEM – Client Engagement Manager

PMG – Project Management Group

WO – Work Order

PKOM – Project Kick-off Meeting

MR – Management Representative

WSR – Weekly Status Report

OMP – Order Management Portal - a tool for work flow management
RT - Risk Tracker

Interview Intricacies

In this section, I intend to elaborate on the various situations and their associated comments that you would come across in a job interview. Many are what I have actually gone through myself !

Interview Intricacies	What they actually Mean
Tell me about yourself	They may mean several things : 1. The interviewer never bothered to go through your resume, and he wants you to do it for him 2. The interviewer has gone through it so thoroughly that he is waiting to pounce on you when you state something which is not there in your resume
Why are you looking for a change ?	Tough question, but a sure one. Intended merely to embarrass you, much like asking, 'why do you want to get married...?'
What were your key learnings during the course of your career ?	You would really wish you could answer this by saying  "Sucking-up is THE only way UP" After all, that is the only learning you gain however long and illustrious your career has been
Can you give me 3 reasons why I should select you ?	This means that your profile is so hopeless that even the interviewer is absolutely clueless about what to do with you
What is your current compensation ?	This is just for the record. Your current compensation will always be used to show how foolish your current employer is - after all, he has chosen to pay a good-for nothing bloke like you SO MUCH :(
What is your expected compensation ?	This is again just for the record. If your current compensation itself is so bloated, how can your expected compensation be higher ?   Whatever you quote as your expectations, expect a sarcastic laugh, which means, 'So you thought I am very dumb, like your current employer...?'
How soon can you join ?	This question can be paraphrased like this 'My project is suffering - I need a scapegoat, and you are the privileged one. How soon can you come on board so that I can blame you?'
You need to come on board quickly	If the previous question is skipped, only to be replaced by the comment alongside, it means :  'I need a scapegoat, I need one REAL FAST, and that is YOU... GOD DAMMIT, ITS YOU...'
We offer you a very challenging assignment	The assignment you are getting into is so god-forsaken that even swimming with your hands and feet tied up will look like a cake-walk.
Your responsibilities include frequent overseas travel	Be prepared to live life literally out of your travel bag, with jet lag as your constant companion.

Dangerous Definitions

Here, I have captured some of the most common office expressions, practices, eccentricities, and other such stuff, and my own explanations/definitions of what they actually are.

Office Expression	Meaning/Description
Meetings	a. Something where minutes are kept, but hours are lost b. The most effective and productive mechanism ever available to waste time
Review Meeting	Forum for exchange of blame
Team Work	Everybody following the boss, howsoever stupid he/she may be
Quality Policy	Motherhood and apple pie
Vision & Mission Statement	Following are the hallmarks of a classic vision and mission statement : a. It is coined by the senior management b. It is drawn up at an off-site meeting, after ‘brainstorming’ continuously for at least 3 days c. The final output will be a rewording of the Quality policy, which still is reminiscent of ‘motherhood and apple pie’.
Incentives (Some organisations call it PLI – Performance Linked Incentive)	A synonym for illusion – something which always seems to be within reach, but actually isn’t
Performance Appraisal	Forum where employees are convicted of criminal behaviour in politically appropriate terms
Business Plan	A detailed description with timelines, on how the company is going to cheat its customers and shareholders
Domain Expertise	What a company will have after its CEO reads an article about the domain in ‘Fortune’ magazine. In case ‘Fortune’ is not available, any business magazine would still qualify as a good starting point.  Very often, the CEO will find this domain being mentioned in in-flight magazines during his frequent overseas travels. More futuristic the domain, faster it will fall under the domain expertise of the company.
Case Study	What a company with ‘Domain Expertise’ as described above, will give to its customer, as a Proof of Capability (PoC).
Budget	Analogous to salary – something which you never will have enough of…
Standard Operating Procedure	That’s what it is – standard operating procedure. But who said it has to be followed? This is usually replaced by the Convenient Operating Procedure
Engagement Manager (or) Key Account Manager	An important position in a client-vendor relationship. If there is something going wrong in the relationship, there is always this guy who can be crucified.
Sales Projections	Pack of lies, worked out by : a. Conveniently, misinterpreting industry reports like Gartner Industry Outlook, or Frost & Sullivan Global Economic Survey b. From the figure derived from step-a above, add a buffer of 100 %, dole it out to the hapless BD folks as ‘Sales Targets’, and finally beat them black and blue for not meeting those numbers.
Sales/Business Development Terms	a. Lead – A visitor to your web-site, or a prospective-client representative who shakes hands with you in a conference b. Warm Lead – A prospective-client representative who shakes hands and shares chilled beer with you in the same conference c. Hot Lead – The same prospective-client representative who, after shaking hands and sharing a beer with you, asks you, ‘So...what do you do for a living...?’

I can actually go on and on....but I dont want to bore the living daylights out of myself, and anyone else who happens to read this post. I wish to also thank Scott Adams for insipring me to this extent....!!!  


Cheers !