Business Lingo Jingo

The internet and high-speed communication networks have made the world a smaller place and also impacted the way business communication happens. A few decades back it was the ubiquitous Remington typewriter that was the must have office equipment and then it was the turn of the PC486 with DOS (Disk Operating System) and a few office applications. Fast-forward and we not only have Apples and Blackberrys but the jargon that we use for business communication has changed a lot.

Jagannathan Krishnan who liked to be called Jack was our new business unit head who had just moved from the Bay area to head our India unit. It was BAU (Business As Usual) until one day there was a major escalation by one of our very important clients Lowtech Transport Services resulting in the termination of the AMC (Annual Maintenance Contract).

Jack called for an emergency meeting at 8 AM and took note of the situation. He asked Padmanabhan aka Paddy the Program manager to send the MOM. He then responded to it by instructing the team to take CLCA by EOD. As it was early days for me it took me a while to know that MOM meant Minutes of Meeting, CLCA meant closed loop corrective action and EOD meant End of Day. Jack also ordered that a core group be formed and a RCA (Root Cause Analysis) be done to figure out on HTH (How The Hell) such a Faux Pass was committed by our technical team.

In a few days, the RCA was complete and it turned out that the main reason for the problem was caused by PURE (Previously Undiscovered Recruiting Error - an employee who looked good on paper but isn’t doing well on the job). Jack on reading the RCA wasn’t convinced that PURE was the problem and asked Paddy to verify and give a new report by weekend COB (Close of business).

Paddy meticulously completed the RCA and met Jack and said, “Jack IMHO (In My Humble Opinion) the main reason for the error was not PURE but in fact it was PEBCAK (Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard: Technical jargon used when the problem is the user not the equipment or the system)”

“ OMG (Oh My God) are you sure that was the problem? “ questioned Jack.

“Yes Chief “ replied Paddy.

“ Ok Paddy now that we have identified the cause and we are certain that it was nothing to do with the competency of our technical team, I think we should bid again for this contract, I suggest you take a hard look at the RPF(Request for Proposal) and then give them our BAFO(Best and Final Offer) by tomorrow afternoon”

Paddy quickly responded “WIIFM(Whats in it for Me) chief”

“ You can take the next week off and complete your long pending Coorg vacation“ said Jack

Extremely thrilled that he could take the whole of next week as vacation, Paddy sat through the night working on excel and powerpoint. Luckily by early morning 5 AM he had prepared the SOW(Statement of work) and also a detailed WBC(Work Breakdown Structure) and he immediately sent a mail to Jack which read

“ Chief, PFA(Pls Find Attached) the SOW(Statement of Work), WBC(Work Breakdown Structure) and the CC(Cost case) sheets. Request you to RAR (Review and Revert) at the earliest”

Jack being a early riser, replied in exactly 15 minutes and it read “ Paddy , marked are my comments in blue, the comparisons of LowTech Transport Services to Rapidex Transport Ltd needs to be removed from the PPT(Power Point Presentation), looks like you are comparing A2O(Apples to Oranges). Pls treat this as VHP(Very High Priority) and revert by EOD(End of Day) ”

Little did Jack realize that Paddy was faster than him, he had already switched off his mobile and put in an OOO(Out Of Office) memo for next 10 days and was on his way to Coorg.

Where is my pay hike?

Analysis Anandan was the star programmer in our group. For a change I had come across a guy who was not only a very good programmer but was also an excellent team player. His debugging skills were amazing and so was his sense of humour.

It was the first week on July and I noticed a rather dejected Anandan walking out of the meeting room with a letter in his hand. Knowing very well that it was about the annual salary increment program (also popularly known as SIP) I asked,“So Anand , how is it this time?”

Anand said in a rather loud voice, “It doesn’t even compensate for the annual inflation, at this rate we will be actually losing money each year and the SIP cycle should be renamed as the DIP cycle.” 

KK  aka Kubicle Krishna, the cool dude in our group who also happened to claim that he was a network infrastructure specialist was passing by, stood and said “I agree this is not acceptable, I haven’t got a decent hike since the last 3 years. Just because I have been in the same company for the last 12 years doesn’t mean I cannot get a job outside, the management should reward loyalty, we should not be taken for granted,” he whined.

Soon the group of three in the aisle got bigger with people around also joining in, all curious to know what they could expect from this years Salary Increment Program Cycle. While most felt that changing jobs was a good way to move up the scale, some felt upgrading skills was a smart strategy, a few of them thought job rotation was an ideal way to expect good salary increments  but some of them in typical Indian karmic style just resigned to the four letter F word also known as ‘FATE.’

One may disagree but I have always believed that in most cases the longer one stays in the same organization, the deeper one gets into a comfort zone. The deeper you get into a comfort zone the tougher it is to get back to the job-hunting mode.

Now  that it was well past 7 PM on a Friday evening (For some strange reason I have always noticed managers use Friday evening to convey our ratings and salary hikes) most of them started to leave for home, some got back to complete their game of Solitaire and some to download the latest chartbuster songs but it was just Anandan, Krishna and me left in the aisle thinking on what the solution to this complex problem of salary hikes and comfort zones was.

In his characteristic tone Anandan asked Krishna “ KK how the hell do you cope up with such an “efficient system?”

KK cheekily said “They pretend to pay well, I pretend to work well”.

About colleagues and camaraderie

I have often observed that most of the youngsters and new recruits in the Information Technology industry spend really long hours at the office working, sometimes working for 60-70 hrs in a week. The very fact that a vast majority of them are away from their hometown and do not really bother to socialize or visit new places makes them spend a lot of time at the office. While some of them work on their projects, some are interested in keeping themselves updated on the latest technology in their area of work, while  most of them are hooked on to music download sites, cricketing sites and social networking sites and in the process use a large part of the bandwidth which is meant for productive work.

Not surprising is the fact that most of them tend to form groups with people either from their hometown or home state. While some of them remain colleagues very few become your friends. Things today have not only changed but also left us wondering what camaraderie is all about.

We now hear about how the big IT firms want to hire 20,000 in year one and then 30,000 in year two and so on and so forth. All of them talk in terms of only thousands. Looking at the pace at which employees are added I feel we will reach a day when a board outside a fortune 500 IT services firm in India will read ‘ Trespassers will be recruited ‘.

Offices have now become campuses and employees have now become resources. Gone are the days when we used to have our induction in a posh star hotel. Due to paucity of resources inductions today are held in virtual classrooms and via web conferences. The knowledge industry as we call it is slowly heading to work as a factory model barring the long sirens that we used to hear from the old PSU factories or the textile mills.

Our colleagues change as we change our projects and jobs. I once had  one  Srikanth Palepu from Hyderabad sitting in the cubicle next to me and a few days later it was the turn of Ravidran Pallaniappan from Madurai . When I came back from my vacation it was Sunil Singh from Lucknow occupying the same seat. When I asked Sunil he told that he had just joined last week and he was using this as a temporary seat until he got his US visa. Apparently, the Human Resources team had promised him a long-term onsite posting with family.

Unfortunately, I really could not check if Sunil got his Visa and went to the US as it was now my turn to move to a new project in a new location and meet some more new colleagues.

Its assessment time

Its December and its the time of the year where managers and their superiors along with the influential human resources team sit together and discuss on which employee gets what kind of a rating at the end of the year for all the hard work that he has put in during the year.

To make it look like a very serious effort they use the acronym TBDM for this excercise.

I happened to bump into my manager Venkat’apathy’ and asked him . ‘Hey Venkat seem to be busy ( for a change) ‘Oh yeah buddy I am in a TBDM since 8AM and we expect this to last till atleast 10 PM’ Venkat said winking at me as though to give me a hint that even my career progression was going to be discussed today .

Considering the novice that I was I quickly asked my senior colleague Kumar what TBDM was. To which he said ..’ Come on Nitin , don’t tell me that you didn’t know what TBDM was’ ‘Not really’  I said . Well then  TBDM means Team Based Decision Making ‘ said Kumar .

I then asked Kumar what exactly happens in these meetings. Kumar with a sigh said  ‘Well Nitin . do you want the right answer or a nice sweet answer ‘ . I said Kumar Sir I would like to know both. ‘So here you go ‘ he said ‘  The nice answer is that TBDM is a process where managers across different teams sit and discuss the contributions of each individual, the focus here is not only on what they have contributed to their team and but to the organization as well .

Individuals who have taken the initiative and helped other teams, conducting training programs, participating in organizational events, filed for patents and the likes and at the end each candidate is rated based on their actual contributions ‘ sounds interesting I thought to myself. So then Kumar what is the right answer I asked imperatively. With his charateristic  cheeky smile  Kumar said ‘ Its actually pretty simple in this TBDM, managers try to push forth the names of their subordinates who really matter and in most cases succeed in doing so’ 

I naively asked  ‘ You mean those who are very important to the team’  Not Really came the reply from Kumar. When I say ‘ Really matter it means the ones who really matter to the manager, the ones who constantly strive to impress their bosses, the ones who just leave the office immediately after the boss has left, the ones who organizes the team lunches and the birthday parties, the ones who send business as usual mails also at 4.30 am, the ones who attend conference calls even if it doesn’t concern them in any way, the ones who are the first to say ‘Yes Sir’ for anything  that the boss says, the ones log on even on Independence day, Republic Day and Labour day  and send reminders mail to the rest of the team with a CC to the boss.

To cut things short it means its basically those guys who take the INITIATIVE

Thinking for a few seconds I said Kumar Sir  ‘ Some call it Initiative while some call it Sucking Up ‘

Kumar wittingly said ‘You are a very quick learner Nitin‘

I did not dare to say ‘Yes Sir’.