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.
