Funny (and Not So Funny) Short Stories: 2011

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Funny (and Not So Funny) Short Stories: Then, Dave Ingle Lived Happily with His Wife Ever After

Then, Dave Ingle Lived Happily with His Wife Ever After

Dave Ingle mentioned pretty matter-of-factly, “Please do not mistake me when I say that I have been literally forced by my bosses to attend your training seminar. Pardon me to say that these training programs are a waste of time. I have attended several of such seminars and I have not been benefited by them at all. And yours is a six day long program with a much fancier title “personal and professional excellence” and so, that much more waste of time. So, right away I am declaring that I will be physically in your seminar hall but for all practical purposes, my mind will be somewhere else. Do not expect me to take down any notes or ask any questions or participate in any activities here. Just leave me alone- that’s my simple request”.

In our hundreds of seminars where more than 150,000 people have participated from around 250 organizations, it was not a strange or new experience for my wife and me who conduct many of such training programs jointly. We do come across a few participants in our seminars who express such opinions for several reasons. So, like mature people, we listened to Dave Ingle and allowed him his way in our class room. Interestingly, he was sitting around the very first table in the seminar hall, pretty close to us and exactly facing us. We could not fathom this aspect of his behavior; rather we had expected him to be the backbencher.

We started our sessions. My wife and I kept a watch on Dave Ingle though. Dave Ingle was sticking to his promises to us to the letter. He was seated with blank face and did not utter a single word nor lifted his pencil even once to jot down any notes.

Our seminars are normally very participative with short lecturettes and many management games, individual and group exercises, case studies, role plays, discussions, peer group learning, videos, questions and answers etc. Almost every participant except Dave Ingle started enjoying our sessions.

The seminar hall was warming up with lots of rich learning experience.

Towards evening of the first day of the seminar, we noticed one small change in Dave Ingle. He had started listening to our lecturettes and discussions etc.

Next day after a session or two, we noticed one more change in Ingle. He was writing something on his note pad. We concluded that he might be doodling to kill time. He had brought a highlighter pen and intermittently, he was using it too, on the paper.

Two more days passed. The seminar was progressing famously. Dave Ingle’s activity level increased. He started solving the individual exercises and started taking part in group activities though always pretending that he was not much serious about them and was involving himself just for the heck of it.Fifth day’s sessions brought about a marked sobering effect on Ingle, his countenance was displaying a quiet satisfaction and his entire body language was screaming as if to tell us that he was in terms with himself- my wife and I discussed it a bit during our seminar review conference between two of us.

Surprisingly, Dave Ingle met us privately during the lunch break. He requested for an appointment with us at the end of the day if we could squeeze in some time for him. We readily agreed.

Dave Ingle, my wife and I met up in the evening. We waited for him to speak out, “I have been going through a very critical period in my personal and professional life. But I must quickly admit that your seminar has been an eye opener for me. Yours is a very different seminar than what I have attended so far. You do not use the hopeless jargon and your messages are forthright and really beneficial. I have started finding many answers to my various dilemmas. Many of these things that you were telling in your training program are the very things my wife keeps telling me. I never heeded to her, rather I never understood her- I had even serious fights with her on those ideologies. Your explanations have brought home the meaning of all that. I am going to put these things now in practice in my personal as well as professional life. Hope, things work out well for me.”

He then shared with us a list of points he had picked up from our training program and had highlighted them with the highlighter pen he was carrying with him. We are reproducing the points as written by Dave Ingle below:

Make yourself capable of managing things independently by imbibing and practicing correct values, knowledge, paradigms and will power to execute. And so, shun the need to be dependent on any kind of crutches.
Yet, despite this, one should remember that human beings at home, society and profession live interdependent of each other. So, better take cognizance of it and maintain appropriate relations with others.
Every person is a bundle of strengths and weaknesses. It is easy to spot the weaknesses in others. But if one starts seeing and appreciating the good points of others, things become that much easier for self and others. Every human being has some definite strong points.
Therefore, one should always communicate with everyone else and that too, respectfully. Communication without due respect is no communication.
Listening with empathy is the core of any communication.
One should not be reactive. There is always space and time available to everyone subsequent to receiving a stimulus. Using that, one can appropriately respond to a stimulus without need to give a thoughtless reaction.
Win-win approach is always beneficial in the long run as compared to win-lose approach.
Therefore, you can always sort out any kind of conflict with others by using the process of collaboration.

Dave Ingle told us that these were the golden guidelines he got from our training program and he had decided to follow them in all the aspects of his life. We wished him good luck.

Later on, from some other quarters, we came to know more about the family life of Dave Ingle. Around the time he was attending our training program, he was almost on the brink of taking divorce from his wife who was a lawyer by profession and was a sophisticated lady in her own right. Dave Ingle himself was a post graduate in engineering from a reputed institute. But Dave Ingle carried pretty wrong notions on how to lead personal, family and professional life. And so he was quite a misfit.

After an year or so of this incident, we met Mr and Mrs Ingle in a social party at a common friend’s house. From the looks of them, they seemed very happy together. The person who had given us the news of their divorce also confirmed to us that Mr and Mrs Ingle did not proceed with divorce and had sorted out all of their marital discords. They were an ideally happy couple now.

The stories being published on these pages here are available in the form of a book titled "Funny (and Not So Funny Short Stories" online as eBook as well as printed book Amazon.

Read other blogs of Shyam Bhatawdekar at: (Home Page for Writings of Shyam Bhatawdekar) http://writings-of-shyam.blogspot.com/

Novels and Stories

Novel "Good People" http://good-people-novel.blogspot.com/
Funny (and Not So Funny) Short Stories http://funny-shortstories.blogspot.com/
Stories Children Will Love http://stories-children.blogspot.com/

Friday, December 23, 2011

Funny (and Not So Funny) Short Stories: Time Management Is about Doing Important Things in Life

You may like to read the stories for children at http://stories-children.blogspot.com/ and tell them to your or other children.

Time Management Is about Doing Important Things in Life

(The story given below essentially deals with “time management”. You may like to read another story on “time management” at: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.net/index.php/2010/01/15/training-works/ or http://management-anecdotes.blogspot.com/2009/12/training-works.html

Peter Gonzales was quite a frustrated soul. His organization had a funny rule that denied promotions to the designation of “manager” and upwards in each one of its technical departments to any person who was not an engineering graduate. Peter Gonzales had stopped his studies after getting a diploma in mechanical engineering. He had believed all along that his industry and hard work could take him to places despite his modest formal qualifications. He never imagined that his lack of education would come in way of his promotions to higher levels in the hierarchy of the company he was working for.

Around this time when Peter Gonzales was highly frustrated, this company contracted me for an assignment of mentorship to the employees of the company. So, he was one of my earlier subjects to mentor.

“Thrice my boss has recommended me to the position of “manager” based on my performance appraisal but every time it has been rejected. The HR department puts forth the rule book of the company and my case gets sidelined.” Peter poured out his heart to me in our first meeting. He told me that he had even contemplated leaving the organization but it was not easy to get another decent job in that region due to paucity of industrial firms in that region. Plus he had some family compulsions. His ailing old father and mother used to stay in a nearby town and he was required to be around to take care of them. So, he preferred to stay in the township of the company that was close by to the town where his parents resided.

Thus, in a way his fate was sealed if he had to continue in this organization. Did he really have a choice?

After considerable discussion with him, I proposed to him, “If your formal qualifications are coming in way of your progress, why don’t you think of getting an engineering degree by joining an evening course in a nearby engineering college or join a distance learning program that might be available somewhere. He had thought about it but there was no engineering college in that region and only distance course available was AMIE (that was considered equivalent of an engineering degree and was also recognized by his organization). However, as per Peter, AMIE was a very tough course and needed one to work very hard and without much guidance from anyone. It needed lots of spare time too- that’s most important requirement for completing AMIE. Now that he was a family man with a wife and two kids and most of his time is taken away by them, he just could not take up AMIE course.

I said, “I agree with you that for every person, time has always been a constraint. No one has unlimited time at one’s disposal. But if one can do a good “time management”, it was possible to find out time particularly for those activities that are important in one’s life. Many people spend lots of their time on unimportant activities and thus do not find time to do the important activities”.

Peter became a bit defensive, “Do you mean to say that I while away my time on unimportant activities? After coming home from office I have scores of errands to attend to. I need to do grocery, go to bank, go to post office, attend parent-teacher meetings in the kids’ schools and so on. Are they not important jobs? And we need to do a bit of socializing- after all we are living in this small township and we need to maintain relationships with our co-dwellers”.

I enquired, “But all of this cannot consume your entire evening. And why don’t you train your wife to do most of these things? She can surely handle all these jobs on her own with a little bit of hand-holding in the beginning but will become quite independent after some time. Then you will have good amount of free time on hand to concentrate on your AMIE studies”.

Hearing this, Peter did some mental calculations and said, “But we spend some family time together watching the television (TV)- only entertainment in this township”.

I asked, “How much TV do you watch every day?”

His reply shocked me, “At least 3 to 4 hours every night- that means at least one movie a day”.

I argued, “But that’s an overdose of entertainment by any standard. If you insist on watching so much of TV and indulge in so much of entertainment, you can be satisfied with the success story of entertaining yourself throughout your life but I can give you in writing that you will retire only as an “assistant manager” while all of your colleagues will climb the hierarchical ladder. You may not like that situation. More than that, your wife and kids will not like being left behind. You are still very young, just about 35 years and you have another at least 25 years of professional career. So think about cutting down on your entertainment and easily save 3 to 4 hours of you precious time. Use that for completing AMIE. It’s just a matter of 2 to 3 years. After you achieve AMIE, do spend some of your time in entertaining yourself.”

It seems that my constructive criticism of him worked positively on him. He realized that doing AMIE was by far the most important thing in his life at that juncture. For this, he felt convinced that he needed adequate time to study the various difficult courses of AMIE. He understood that he could manage this time for himself for AMIE by training his wife to do the chores like bank, post office, grocery, parent-teacher meets, socializing etc thus delegating all of this work to her. They can cut down on watching TV thus freeing all of them to divert their attention on more important things in life.

He wrote to me later on that he had finally enrolled himself for AMIE course.

After a gap of around 3 years, I got a phone call from Peter Gonzales that he completed AMIE successfully, got promoted to the position of “manager” and the company had allotted him a higher category of house in the township.

I congratulated him on his excellent demonstration of “time management” in action.

The stories being published on these pages here are available in the form of a book: eBook version titled "Funny (and Not So Funny Short Stories" from Nuubuu http://nbuu.co/1 and Printed book from Amazon.

For everything you wanted to know on building leadership and management, refer Shyam Bhatawdekar’s website: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com/

(Also, refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/)

For “out of box thinking” articles by Shyam Bhatawdekar, refer: (Out of Box Ideas) http://wow-idea.blogspot.com/

Read other blogs of Shyam Bhatawdekar at: (Home Page for Writings of Shyam Bhatawdekar) http://writings-of-shyam.blogspot.com/

Novels and Stories

Novel "Good People" http://good-people-novel.blogspot.com/
Funny (and Not So Funny) Short Stories http://funny-shortstories.blogspot.com/
Stories Children Will Love http://stories-children.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Funny (and Not So Funny) Short Stories: Creativity Unlimited (Creativity Unleashed)

You may like to read the stories for children at http://stories-children.blogspot.com/ and tell them to your or other children.

Creativity Unlimited: Creativity Unleashed

In some of our management case studies authored by us, we have reported some specific instances of significant benefits the participants of our training programs and mentoring sessions derived from what we shared with them in these sessions.

If you feel interested in them, we request you to refer the following links:

Management Anecdotes http://management-anecdotes.blogspot.com/
Training Works http://shyam.bhatawdekar.net/index.php/2010/01/15/training-works/ or http://shyam.bhatawdekar.net/index.php/2010/01/15/training-works/
Johari Window in Action http://shyam.bhatawdekar.net/index.php/2010/01/23/johari-window-in-action/ or http://management-anecdotes.blogspot.com/2010/01/johari-window-in-action.html
Leadership Means Making Ordinary People Do Extraordinary Things http://shyam.bhatawdekar.net/index.php/2010/02/03/leadership-means-making-ordinary-people-do-extraordinary-things/ or http://management-anecdotes.blogspot.com/2010/02/leadership-means-making-ordinary-people.html

This particular case study belongs to the similar genre.

You may recall a few things about the concept called “Johari Window” propounded by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham. My wife and I were explaining this very concept in a six days long executive development training program in one of the units of one huge conglomerate. We are management consultants of pretty decent repute and therefore, often called upon to conduct various training programs for the executives of a large number of corporations. That keeps us pretty busy.

So, in one of such sessions, my wife whose treatment of “Johari Window” is excellent, explained as to how a human mind is described in “Johari Window” as a window with four types of compartments. She mentioned that these compartments are termed as:

Open self (or arena)
Hidden self (or facade)
Blind self (or blind spot)
Dark self (or unknown)

While these four compartments of the mind present a very potent aspect of creativity of human mind which in a way is “unlimited”, the pity is that average human beings do not use even 2% to 3% of the capabilities of the mind. And it is true that either you use it or lose it. So, most of the people lose it. It is often quoted that creativity of seminal order gets unleashed from the human mind, at just about 15% to 16% usage of the human mind.

In order to increase the usage of human capabilities and creativity, we, in our training seminars, advise the participants to open up their hidden talents (those that are kept hidden in the hidden compartment of the mind and never used). We advise them to explore within themselves their hidden talents and scoop them out into the open compartment of the mind where they can then be used. This process is called “disclosure” of the hidden talents to the entire world.

We also advise them to constantly get the feedback of their talents and creativity from other people. Often times, the person himself may not be aware of many of his talents, in a way he is blind towards them. Many a time, these talents lying dormant in you are seen easily by the on-lookers. So, through a process of explicit and implicit “feedback” from others, you are likely to identify your talents towards which you were blind earlier. Now, having got them from the other persons, you can bring such talents in the open compartment of mind and start using them.

These explanations are quite revealing and create a positive stir and tension in the minds of the participants of our training seminars. They trigger their adrenaline flow and suddenly they feel motivated to embark on something that they never did before.

This is what exactly happened to Vishnu Jadhav who was sitting right in the front row in the seminar hall.

At the conclusion of the session, he met my wife and me privately and made an unusual request, “I am enlightened by what madam explained. As a result, I was introspecting myself throughout your lecture, particularly about my hidden talents. I think that I can become a very good artist. Like, I know how to sing, do a one act play, can be a good standing comedian. I think that given an opportunity, I can be a good entertainer. But till date, it has all been about only bath room singing. I never came out in the open to display these talents of mine. Madam mentioned that one should start using one’s talents soon after he realizes their existence within. And to start with, you advised that one should test these talents preferably in front of the known devils. Even if you make mistakes, the known audience will understand you better and good humouredly laugh it out. I, therefore, request you to give me about half an hour of your seminar time tomorrow morning. I wish to present a variety entertainment program tomorrow morning in this same conference room and experience for myself as to how it feels like coming out into the open.”

My wife and I looked at each other. It was quite an unusual request. We were retained by our client to run a training seminar and not organize an entertainment event. Initially we thought that it might not look professionally appropriate to allow Vishnu Jadhav to carry out this kind of entertainment program. Then both of us conferred with each other and came to the conclusion that if we denied this opportunity to Vishnu Jadhav, the spark that was created in him due to our coaching might die out. Why not take a bit of risk and allow Jadhav to present his entertainment program? We gave our positive nod to him. He was highly thankful to us.

We came to know later on that Jadhav took it very seriously as if it was a matter of life and death for him. He did rehearsals and even dress rehearsal throughout that night so as to present an impeccable entertainment program. And he did so. He gave a flaw less variety entertainment and kept the audience enthralled- to the extent that he got a standing ovation from the audience who spoke out saying that they never knew this hidden talent of Jadhav. They knew him as a diploma engineer of the organization and not an artist of such high caliber.

And that proved to be the starting point of the long journey Vishnu Jadhav embarked on as a first class entertainer. From time to time, he reports his progress to us by making it a point to meet us whenever we visit this client company. Also, we get the reports of his progress from other participants.

At this stage, he has organized his entertainment group on a professional footing. He advertises in the newspapers and gets invited to present his variety entertainment programs in different towns and cities. He and his group are becoming increasingly popular. He has started writing lyrics of his own songs. He has also become a news reader on one of the local television channels of the city where he lives. And he told us in his last meeting with us that he had many more things up his sleeves.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Funny (and Not So Funny) Short Stories: How Bosses Impress Their Subordinates (Lessons in Leadership)

You may like to read the stories for children at http://stories-children.blogspot.com/ and tell them to your or other children.

How Bosses Impress Their Subordinates (Lessons in Leadership)

The company had set up a new corporate marketing division in the capital city of the country. The chairman of the company used to reside in the capital city too and he wanted this new marketing setup away from the main corporate office of the company which was located in another metropolis. His theory was that the new marketing setup should not get contaminated with the hackneyed thinking of the corporate office of the company. The company existed for over 50 years and its products were as old. The chairman wanted the new marketing division under his own wings. The current CEO of the company was also from old school of thought and the chairman, being from the new generation of the family that had promoted this company, was not particularly pally with the CEO.

That suited Mr Harman too. He could thus be nearer to the chairman and away from the CEO. Harman was recruited by the chairman from his company’s competitor to head the new marketing division as its marketing president, mainly due to his high profile connections with the government officials. Government offices were the major customers of the products of the company.

After recruiting Harman, the chairman expressed to Harman that he wanted the entire division to be fresh blood and instructed him to recruit all the heads of the departments (HODs) under him from outside of the company.

Accordingly, Harman recruited four brilliant engineers with considerable managerial experience as head of marketing, head of sales, head of customer service and head of management services. Each one of them was a seasoned professional with excellent track record of success.

And that’s where he made his first mistake as a leader. The cardinal leadership rule is: as a leader, make sure that your subordinates are incompetent so that they keep looking forward to their leader to be led by him. Harman did not follow this rule. He recruited a bunch of real competent subordinates. They were pretty autonomous in their own behavior and would hardly need to be bossed around.

Then Harman also realized that his own professional qualifications (a mere bachelor of history with some vague diploma in management from a vague university) fell terribly short when compared to the qualifications of his four heads of the departments who were first class engineering graduates of the top notch universities of the country topped up by MBA degrees, again from the top notch universities.

All the five of them now were working in one office and they were all strangers to each other. And Harman became desperate to prove himself to be the real leader. He became obsessed by this thought and even in his dreams started planning out various strategies to achieve this objective.

Then on, in each one of his divisional meetings, he started bragging about the stories of his past glories- how single handedly he had set up the marketing division in his earlier employment, how he had become the youngest head of the department in his previous company and so on. Listening to all such tall claims, as the four heads of the department were about to get impressed, one of them suggested to do a bit of research on Harman and they found that he was holding a pretty junior position in his previous organization to have achieved what all he was claiming.

Then, Harman started sermonizing the four heads of the departments on the technical intricacies of the products that they were selling. He would learn one technical detail every day from somewhere and elaborate on it (by mostly using the wrong technical jargon). It was glaringly evident that he was trying to prove his technical supremacy despite being a history graduate. The four heads of the departments started enjoying these technical meetings. They would have lots of fun after every such meeting.

Harman was intelligent enough to understand that things were not really working out the way he wanted them to. His four subordinates were still not getting around accepting him as their leader. So he thought of another strategy- dropping names and showing his high profile connections.

One day, early morning he called a meeting of his HODs. He ordered tea for all of them and while they were waiting for the tea to arrive, he was fiddling with a flashy looking wedding invitation card. Then he kept it on the table such that the four HODs could clearly read from the wedding invitation card. The boss was invited by one of the most influential ministers in the government to attend the wedding ceremony of his daughter. He was expecting that at least one of the HODs would probe into the wedding card that established his connections in the high government offices. When no one did that, he asked his personal secretary, on the intercom, to connect to that minister and mumbled some instructions into the mouth piece of the telephone which others present did not care to listen.

Then, after hearing a click on the intercom signaling that the connection to the party on the other end of telephone line was made, Harman said, “Sir, thanks for the kind invitation. My wife and I will definitely attend the wedding. My wife joins me in congratulating you and the madam (minister’s wife) and your daughter. And sir, I will definitely give it a thought to consider your invitation to join your party. Good day, sir.”

Then Harman turned towards his subordinates (the HODs) and addressed, “Oh, this minister is actually my senior batch mate from my school days (he mentioned the name of some high profile school) to join politics and even offered me a post as an assistant minister to him. What do you guys think? Should I join the politics- all you know you could see me as your prime minister in the days to come?” And he gave a throaty laugh in his self praise. No one else did.

And the next day too, he called another meeting of all the four HODs. As the HODs were entering his conference room, he signaled them to sit down while he was totally engrossed in a telephonic conversation, “Chairman sir, you know that as secretary of executives’ ladies club, my wife works very closely with the madam chairman. Madam chairman need not bother about the arrangements at all. All she will have to do as the president of the ladies club is to cut the ribbon inaugurating the new premises of ladies club. Rest my wife has already taken care of. Good day sir.”

While this conversation was on, one of the HODs walked out of the conference room to fetch some papers and walked past Harman’s personal secretary and casually remarked, “Hey, boss seems to be talking to the chairman. I say, he and his wife seem pretty intimate with chairman and his family. Impressive!!”

The personal secretary was quite puzzled, “Why, the telephone is idle. There is no one speaking into it.” He lifted the phone and let the HOD hear into it.

Now, this HOD was real curious to know a few more things. He asked the personal secretary, “And the boss was speaking with the minister yesterday- seems as if the boss has connections in high places in government too.”

Again the personal secretary looked quite puzzled, “No, yesterday, I spoke with the personal assistant to the minister to convey thanks to the minister for his invitation to our boss. Boss did not speak with the minister- in fact he does not know this minister at all. The invitation must have been a routine affair.”

The HOD kept wondering, “Then what was the boss doing on the past two days? Faking the telephonic conversations? To impress us?”

For everything you wanted to know on building leadership and management, refer Shyam Bhatawdekar’s website: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com/

(Also, refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/)

For “out of box thinking” articles by Shyam Bhatawdekar, refer: (Out of Box Ideas) http://wow-idea.blogspot.com/

Read other blogs and knols of Shyam Bhatawdekar at: (Home Page for Writings of Shyam Bhatawdekar) http://writings-of-shyam.blogspot.com/

Funny (and Not So Funny) Short Stories: Leadership Means Making Ordinary People Do Extraordinary Things

You may like to read the stories for children at http://stories-children.blogspot.com/ and tell them to your or other children.

Leadership Means Making Ordinary People Do Extraordinary Things

The receptionist rang me as I was taking charge of the dual responsibility of HR department in addition to my already being the head of industrial engineering department. This was my first day in my new second office. I already had one more office with its contingent staff.

I was a bit surprised to get the receptionist’s call at the beginning of the day and that too in my new office. She said, “Mr Bhatkar, have you seen today’s local news papers? You are all over the place. Please accept my heartiest congratulations. Will catch up with you later.”

I asked my new personal assistant Mr Kartik to bring all the local newspapers to my desk. He did so promptly.

I settled in my chair and started shuffling the pages. In every newspaper, right on the front page, I could see my photograph along with corresponding news column that read as follows:

“This is the first time in the history of Universal High Tech Products Ltd that someone has broken all the management conventions. Mr Bhatkar has been once again promoted superseding all the first four senior batches of management trainees. He is the youngest head of the department at the age of 27, not of just one department but two very important departments (and simultaneously reporting to two different bosses). It’s a spectacular achievement of Mr Bhatkar, his exemplary leadership qualities have been truly recognized by the company……………” and the news went on.

I became kind of a hero. Many youngsters in the organization started seeking my appointment for a meeting with me to try to understand the secrets of my out of turn promotions at such a young age. One of such youngsters was my own personal assistant Kartik; he was couple of years older than me.

One day, after having completed the business with me, Kartik kept sitting in front of me and won’t leave my office. I asked, “What’s the matter Kartik?” He hesitated. Obviously, he was a bit apprehensive about what he wished to communicate. I encouraged him to speak.

Finally, he spoke, “Sir, I want to become like you. Please guide me, sir.”

I said, “What do you mean by saying that you want to become like me?”

Kartik’s innocence could be gauged by his reply, “I want to sit in a big chamber like yours at the earliest, that’s my dream.”

“But, you do not possess even a graduate degree; forget about any professional degree or diploma.”

“If you think that it is required in order to get into an office like yours, I will do everything you say. Please guide me.”

And that became the starting point of mentoring my new protégé.

I started by telling him to take interest in every single job that he undertook and learn more and more from it. He took it quite seriously and soon came to me requesting him to allow taking dictations from the other officers of my department after he finished my work. Not only was he improving in his skill of taking dictation but was learning more and more aspects of what was going on in the department since he was closely interacting with many officers of my department.

In my second session of mentoring him, I asked him to enroll himself in a distance learning graduation course of some university. Soon he looked around, collected information and joined a course that suited him.

While he was pursuing his studies this way, an opportunity came when my general manager was looking out for an efficient personal secretary. I called Kartik and told him to apply for the position. Initially, he was quite nervous. Then I reminded him about his ambition and advised that if he was serious about fulfilling his ambition, he must be ready to take up the new challenges. I promised him to give a good letter of recommendation since he deserved it because of his excellent progress in the jobs he was doing for me.

And he was promoted to the post of personal secretary to the general manager after being screened through formal interviews. My recommendation letter helped.

Then I lost touch with him for quite some time. In the mean time, I was invited by another company to join it and I changed the job. I more or less forgot about Kartik.

After about fifteen years or so of this incident, on a day while I was waiting for my flight at Mumbai airport, a gentleman who was sitting opposite me, got up from his chair and rushed towards me. He stopped right in front of me and touched my feet- this is the Indian way of showing the respect to a person to whom one feels highly obliged. I was taken aback by his act. I moved my feet away from his hands and said, “Gentleman, please do not touch my feet. Who are you, I don’t know you.”

In reply, he handed over his visiting card to me that read his name “Kartik” followed by his designation “Director- Human Resources” followed by the name of my previous company.

Then in flashback, Kartik narrated his story, “Sir, I became a graduate within three years of enrolling myself in the distance learning program. Alongside I went on taking more and more interest in whatever I was doing plus went on accepting and even grabbing new challenges and opportunities. I needed a professional degree badly. So, I took up part time MBA course with HR as major. Also, I added a law degree to my resume. Once I had an MBA and the degree in law, I requested my boss to transfer me to HR department as an assistant manager. He had already developed confidence in me and was looking out for a suitable person who could take up this responsible position in HR department. Within couple of years I picked up the ropes in HR function and soon was ready to take up the number one position in HR as soon as the current incumbent retired. And sir, finally I entered the same chamber where you used to have your office. If you recall, I once told you about my ambition of having my office in a chamber. But, let me admit that without your leadership and guidance, it was not possible- perhaps I would have retired only as a clerk.”

Funny (and Not So Funny) Short Stories: Massacre of Customer Service

You may like to read the stories for children at http://stories-children.blogspot.com/ and tell them to your or other children.

Massacre of Customer Service

Did you ever experience good customer service any where, by any one, any time?

Who so ever says "yes" to this question must be hallucinating. Frankly, I always desired for it but was hopelessly searching for it till lately.

And yesterday, there was the final blow- the customer service was finally murdered and died a glorious death. For me, at least.

I was to cancel my credit card with one of the credit card companies. I decided about doing so, because the (useless) credit card company charges me credit card renewal annual fees. I now believe that in fact, rather than charging me fee for that plastic piece, they should pay me annually because I make money for them. So, I got philosophically aroused yesterday, finally. I picked up my land line phone (I still trust the land line phone since I get a dial tone there, it works without need to charge it at all unlike it's younger brother "cell" who just stops working and becomes useless if I forget to charge, it works without electricity or power, it does not send me prompts like "network is not available", the voice still sounds like that of a human being on both sides of phone- does not break or does not feel like that of robots or ET etc).

It was one most nightmarish experience, telephoning that credit card company's Help Line or BPO or Call Center or Customer Care Center (is there any other nomenclature?)- what so ever fancy names they give these days for "not providing the customer service" from the real service professionals of the company. The companies have ganged against us poor customers and have totally stopped us from directly dealing with the company's own customer service experts. However, when the company wanted to sell me it's goods and services, every Tom, Dick and Harry of the company was talking to me personally to palm off their products to me at a huge price, as always. Every one from CEO of the company to the salesman of the company directly talked to me, was so sweet, entertained me and finally fooled me in buying things from them with lots of talk of customer service also. In the excitement of buying, I forgot to ask them as to whom to contact for after sales service and they never told.

Well, let me get back to this horrendous telephonic experience with that call center. First, it took me several hours to figure out which telephone number to call for getting in touch with the customer service guys. Once I got the number, I dialled it again and again but it was engaged. It took me another half hour to finally get a ring on the other side. I thought that some one would warmly welcome me personally. But all I got was a recorded human voice, painfully professional in style and accent. I would have been happier being greeted by a live human being, howsoever plain. It totally put me off. Then, it (the recorded voice) rattled out some 8 or 9 options on what am I supposed to do as the next step- like it said, "press button 1 for this, press 2 for that and press 3 for something else and 5 for............and 9 for customer service executive". Since I forgot everything that was rattled out by the time I came to know about the use of number 9, I decided to press 9 in desperation.

In the mean time, I was dreaming that with within next two to three minutes I would be finishing my business with them and could concentrate on my own business. But that was not to be.

I heard another recorded voice saying that I should punch the credit card number using telephone keys. These days I get terribly confused with numbers. There are hundred of numbers with me: telephone numbers, credit card numbers, debit card numbers, passport number, income tax card number, bank account numbers, id card numbers, ATM card numbers, zip codes, complaints registration numbers and more numbers and yet more numbers. And all of them are miles long. Yet, with great difficulty I carefully pulled out the right credit card and punched its mile long number into the phone.

That was not sufficient. Another recorded voice asked me to punch my date of birth and zip code. I always tend to forget these two things. I did punch those two numbers too, after referring to my ready reckoner of numbers, which I always keep on my person these days.

Now having done this Himalayan task of punching endless numbers, I was looking forward to meet my dear customer service executive (of that call center, surely not of the original company that sold me the credit card so sweetly). To my shock, the next recorded voice announced that all of their customer service executives were busy with other calls (this is because they recruit lots less people than are really required to provide prompt reply over the phones and the technology is dismally inadequate and incompetent too). The recorded voice also said, "It will take 16 minutes 23 seconds before a customer service executive comes on line for you". I almost started admiring the exact prediction about the wait period. What technology!! But soon reminded myself, "Don't get drifted away from your original mission of sorting out your own problem".

During this 16 minutes and 23 seconds wait, I was compulsorily bombarded into my ear all sorts of advertisements and announcements of the company shamelessly. We make out so much about the spams on the Internet unnecessarily when here I was receiving spams after spams into my ear (same things happens to me on the 150 channels of television every five minutes when I am showered mercilessly all spam ads and same thing happens in the news papers and through the postal direct mailers etc). The recoded voices also suggested, "Why don't you send an email to us about your complaint etc". I thought that if I take the course of email to get my problem addressed, I would end up not solving my problem sine die. So I hanged on.

Finally, 16 minutes 23 seconds elapsed. That to me, looked like a few years literally. Now came the voice of my dear customer service executive, "I am so & so and what can I do for you sir?" I knew that it was her fake name and she was faking on her courtesies too. It felt as if she was reading directly from the manual that was given to her. Any way, that is none of my business.

So I explained to her that no other credit card company charges the annual renewal fees for credit cards and so, you should not do it too. I am your customer for past many years and I would appreciate if you fall in line with the current practices. I was expecting that she would reply, "Let me check up what can I do for you in this respect" and was expecting to hear, "It's OK, we won't charge you that fee here onwards. Thanks for being our customer". On the contrary, I heard her saying, "Sorry, that's our company policy. you will have to pay the renewal fees". I was not expecting this and so got a bit worked up and threatened to cancel my account with them and she happily replied, "OK, will cancel your credit card account with us. But I need your wife to talk to me since yours is only an add-on card and your wife is the first card holder". I assured her that it is perfectly OK with her to cancel the card. She has already instructed about it to me and she has her concurrence. The customer service executive won't buzz and demanded that my wife be brought on the phone.

I just could not bring my wife over the phone that time since she had gone out of home for some work and so was not present there, then. I explained the customer service executive about this and requested to cancel the account; after all it's the same thing whether my wife tells her or I tell her. Additionally, my credentials were also already checked by making me punch so many endless numbers on the phone machine. And I told her about my plight in getting through to her after crossing few thousand hurdles over the phone. She showed no pity on me. She was not willing to listen to me any more and in absolute finality declared , "If you have to cancel this account, ask your wife to speak with us."

Now, I shudder at the thought of my wife going through the same appalling experience that I had just gone through.

That day I mourned the demise of customer service.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Funny (and Not So Funny) Short Stories: Johari Window in Action

You may like to read the stories for children at http://stories-children.blogspot.com/ and tell them to your or other children.

Johari Window in Action

My wife and I are management consultants and are often invited by many organizations in the corporate sector to conduct various kinds of management development and personal development training programs for their employees at different levels, right from shop floor workers to directors of companies.

This incident relates to one such program we conducted for a factory site of an Indian corporate conglomerate located in a remote interior village of India. The training program was meant for the factory’s workers who were never exposed to any kind of formal training earlier. So, they were quite excited about it and equally awed.

One session of the program was devoted to the well known management concept called “Johari Window”. My wife’s treatment to this particular topic is a treat to the audience. So, I always request her to teach the “Johari Window” sessions.

In the particular training program that we conducted for the workers of this factory, the topic rolled out like this. My wife said:

“The human actions are guided by the mind and therefore, knowing about our mind is very crucial. It’s difficult to visualize the mind but “Johari Window” describes the mind in a very simple to understand manner. Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham gave a pictorial definition of mind through their “Johari Window”. They mentioned that mind is like a window with four partitions; each partition with different kinds of glass panes- one transparent, other two allowing one way vision (like through a tinted glass) and fourth partition has opaque glass.

The first one with transparent glass is called “open self (or arena)” of the mind, being transparent to self as well as to others. Whatever is contained in this portion of the mind is a common knowledge to all. For example, my published bio-data gives some specific information about me and that information is known to me and to all those who have seen my bio-data. Certain of the strengths and the weaknesses of a person come out into the open and while these strengths can be used, the weaknesses can be reduced.

Second portion of the window depicting the mind, with the tinted glass, is from where you can peep outside but you cannot look into it from outside. This partition is called the “hidden self (facade)”. Hidden means that certain aspects of strengths and weaknesses are known to me alone, I am hiding them but they cannot be seen by others. Therefore, for me to be wiser on the knowledge of myself, I, on my own initiative, must start using my strengths by bringing them into the “open self (arena)” and reduce my weaknesses. This method is called “disclosure”.

Third portion of the window depicting the mind, again with the tinted glass, is where you can peep inside but from where you cannot look outside. This partition is called the “blind self (blind spot)”. Blind means that certain aspects of my strengths and weaknesses are known only to others but I am totally unaware of them, I am blind to them. Therefore, for me to be wiser on the knowledge of myself, I must get the feedback from others on such strengths and weaknesses of mine which are unknown to me. This method is called “feedback”.

Fourth portion with opaque glass is called “dark self (unknown)”. Large degrees of strengths and weaknesses are neither known to me nor to the others. We are, kind of, totally in dark about them. And apparently, I and others have no way of tapping them.

While “dark self” is a very large portion of mind (80%, 90% or even 95%), there are no solutions readily available on the platter to tap it. So what can be done immediately is to start using the strengths that are already available in “hidden self” and “blind self” and bringing more and more of them into “open self” by ways of “disclosure” and “feedback” explained earlier. More you use your “hidden” and “blind” strengths, more capable and effective you become. The “open self” should become larger and larger and “hidden self’ and “blind self” should become smaller and smaller.”

And the topic kept rolling like this.

The participants listened to all of this in a spell bound manner and asked many questions. The training program concluded pretty decently.

Then, my wife and I got busy with other assignments. Also, we used to visit this factory often.

In one of our later visits to this factory, say around six to seven months after we had conducted the training program for the batch of workers mentioned above, one of the workers from that batch came to the company’s guesthouse, where we were residing, in the evening. The factory, as we told you, was situated in an interior village and the company had built up a nice township there. Other than this township, no civilization could be found as far as 30 to 40 kilometers from there. The township dwellers had to go all the way to the nearest town 30 to 40 kilometers away to buy their grocery, vegetables etc.

This worker came to us in the guesthouse, introduced himself and told us some very interesting things he did after he learnt about “Johari Window” in our training program that he had attended.

He said, “Madam and sir, when madam told that normally, we don’t use even 2% to 3% of our mind since most of it is taken up in our “dark self”, I started thinking about it seriously. Madam also told that if we could use our mind even a little bit more, we could achieve a lot more in life. Plus I remembered her saying that we keep hiding lots of our talent, knowledge and skills in our “hidden self” and do not use them and what we don’t use, we lose. I gave it lots of thought.”

He continued further, “So, that day onwards, I kept thinking and understanding it more and more. I found that I while away lots of mind and time. I don’t have any family here in the township. So, I laze around all of my evenings. But since I am from a farmer’s family, I know a lot about growing vegetables etc. And from my childhood I have been very fond of gardening. I realized that this skill of growing vegetables etc had got deposited in my “hidden self” and it was rusting. I thought why not bring it in the “open self” and start growing the vegetables in the township itself in my free time and then sell those vegetables in the township thus reducing the hardship of going all the way to the far away town. But I needed some land where I could grow these vegetables.”

My wife asked, “Do you have a piece of land nearby?”

He mentioned, “I have a very small plot of land in front of my small house allotted by the company. I was not using it till then. But that is not adequate. Then, it occurred to me that there were lots of my friends in the township who had plots of land in front of their house but they were not using them at all. I contacted them and most of them agreed to allow me to grow vegetables in their plots provided they can use the vegetables at concessional price. I agreed to it. And now I have already acquired some 14 plots for this purpose. I have employed couple of local hands and gave them employment as gardeners to look after these kitchen gardens that I have developed. Company has given me a small wooden cabin from where I sell the vegetables and the township residents are very happy about the whole thing. The ladies in the township can now walk up to my shop and buy fresh vegetables at reasonable prices.”

My wife and I congratulated him on his achievements.

But he stopped us in the middle and said, “It’s all because of the training you gave me that I thought about using “Johari Window” in actual practice. I am really thankful to both of you.”

Then, he walked away.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Funny (and Not So Funny) Short Stories: The Corporate Blackmailer

You may like to read the stories for children at http://stories-children.blogspot.com/ and tell them to your or other children.

The Corporate Blackmailer

The traveler sitting by my side in the aircraft was frantic.

Next minute he was buzzing for the air hostess by repeatedly pressing the overhead call button.

Then, he lost all the patience and started yelling, “Stewardess, I am dying, rush up. I am dying.”

On hearing the shout, an air hostess approached him and enquired politely, “Sir, what can I do for you? Do you need anything? Hope, you are enjoying the breakfast. ”

She had served the breakfast to all the passengers just a few minutes ago.

He dismissed what the air hostess was saying and became very arrogant and screamed, “Are you all set to kill me or what? Is that the price I have to pay to travel by your airlines?”

“What is the matter, sir, are you not feeling well?” the air hostess asked.

He retorted, “You are asking me if I am not feeling well knowing fully well what you are doing to me. You know damn well what kind of rotten stuff you are feeding us for the breakfast and not only it is rotten, you are mixing up the insects in it- you are out to kill me.”

And he showed to the air-hostess and to me and to the passenger sitting on the other side of him couple of dead insects (looking like mosquitoes) encased inside the cellophane wrapping over the dessert bowl that was served as part of the breakfast.

He continued, “Gentlemen, this is what they feed us for the meals, the insects, the mosquitoes. Good thing that I noticed this or I would have eaten the stuff and died.” He further added, “I am very careful with the airlines meals these days. Just a couple of days earlier, I was traveling by another reputed international airliner and there too I came across the food infested with the insects. I got the airline staff onboard to sign on a written complaint, also signed by a witness who was my co-passenger and sent the copy of the document along with the infested food to my legal team of my company. They sued the airlines and I got a very hefty compensation from the airlines in an out of court settlement. The airlines did not want an adverse publicity.”

Then, he turned to the air hostess and said, “I have prepared this complaint and please sign on it confirming that you agree that there were insects in the food served to me. I will get this thing now also witnessed by one of these gentlemen who have also noticed this whole affair.”

The air hostess was quite young and inexperienced in such matters; she felt terribly ruffled and excused herself to fetch an elderly and mature looking chief stewardess.

The chief stewardess came and before she could open her mouth, the person holding the bowl of dessert became offensive once again, “Are you all going to kill me or what? Please sign up this complaint which I have made in duplicate. One I will keep and one you will hand over to the appropriate person in your organization. I am going to get these two gentlemen to sign as witnesses.”

The chief stewardess seemed quite an experienced professional, she had some presence of mind and replied with lots of concern for this complaining passenger, “Sir, you will excuse me but I do not have authority to deal with such important matters. Only the pilot is authorized to commit anything on it. I will go to the cockpit and call the pilot. He would come and listen to you.”

And then, she ran to the cockpit showing the urgency towards this matter. She conferred with the pilot who was intelligent enough to understand the overtures of the entire matter that might ultimately blow up into something that might be damaging to the reputation of the airlines. He needed some time to think. He briefed the chief stewardess accordingly and sent her back.

She came to the complainant and said, “The pilot is quite sorry for the entire event and quite concerned about your well being. However, he wishes to be excused right now since the aircraft is about to land in a few minutes time and he cannot come out of the cockpit and attend to you. After landing, kindly meet our ground commercial staff where he will present himself and confer with you. Hope, it’s OK with you.”

To this the reply was, “OK, seems like he is a wise guy. Let him know that if he acts smart, I am going to alert my legal team and they will sue your company for a huge compensation. I will also not hesitate to notify the entire episode to the press. So, ask your pilot to better meet me immediately after landing.”

In the mean time, he got the other co-passenger sign as witness on the papers he had prepared. The aircraft had landed and I deliberately got busy collecting my luggage and got myself physically away from the scene.

I did not wish to be a part to the corporate blackmailer because of something that I recalled of him towards the end of the entire scene. I recollected from his initial introduction to me that he owned a big company with a corporate office and with proper legal setup. But I also recollected him taking out something from his briefcase and opening up the cellophane wrapper of the dessert bowl of the breakfast and inserting something into it and then re-wrapping the dessert bowl. He had definitely planted the mosquito looking insects into the dessert. And I don’t remember having seen him writing any complaint in front of me. I think that he had perhaps prepared the document even before boarding the aircraft.

He was a thorough professional corporate blackmailer.

Funny (and Not So Funny) Short Stories: The Beard Parade (or The Art of Sticking Close to Power)

You may like to read the stories for children at http://stories-children.blogspot.com/ and tell them to your or other children.

The Beard Parade (or The Art of Sticking Close to Power)

In my job as a management consultant, I get to see the practical demonstration of the various serious and also, seriously funny principles of management in almost all the corporate offices in some form or the other.

Right now I will be talking about the latter types- the seriously funny principles of management and their implicit as well as blatant use in the corporate world.

For instance, there is a famous seriously funny principle that says, “Keep out of trouble.” Who else can be the real trouble but the people with power? Their nuisance value is the highest in any organization. The people in power may not necessarily use their power for your benefit but they surely can use it against you and create trouble for you if you cross their paths wrongly.

So, naturally, some genius invented this great principle: “keep out of trouble.” However, this is a negative way of putting things across. The positive way and perhaps more potent way is to modify this principle to read it as, “Follow the power or stick close to the power.”

The corollary to this principle is, “Do what the boss does and also, feed the boss what he likes.”

I experienced the demonstration of this corollary in action in the production unit of a huge corporation.

The boss from the head office would make occasional visits to this plant. After deplaning, en route to the plant, he would visit a temple or two, being a very religious guy. I was told that all the managers of the plant who were directly reporting to this boss had turned pretty religious too and they would join the boss in these temples to pray. Even a couple of atheists had turned into believers, I was told.

So, that is “do as the boss does” in action for you.

And once this boss used to settle in his office after the prayers but before he actually started conducting his business, some couple of managers who had learnt the art of “feeding the boss what he likes” literally would feed him his favorite eats: the fresh coconut water and paan masala (a tasty mixture of beetle nut, tobacco, mint etc) and also they would feed him with the gossip (the information that he liked to hear and talk about).

I experienced another corollary called “conform” to the main principle, “Follow the power or stick close to the power” that we enunciated earlier.

“Conform” means: pick up all the habits of the boss. Dress the way he dresses. Start drinking if he enjoys drinking. Talk what he wants to talk about, Do it the way he does (for example, pronounce the word “inventory” exactly the way he pronounces etc) and so on.

I was literally in for a shock when this “conform” thing was really enacted in front of me on the first day of my yet another consultancy assignment in a company that is bracketed as a rather very sophisticated and very professional and very elite company. I was in shock because I least expected the need or necessity for application of all the above mentioned seriously funny principles particularly in the company of the description I gave you earlier (very sophisticated and very professional and very elite company).

I was giving a kick start to consultations on the entire human resources systems of this company. So I was scheduled to meet the head of the HR department and all of his senior colleagues from the department.

As per my usual practice (and since I teach “time management” to the corporate managers), I came to the board room of the company few minutes ahead of the scheduled time of the meeting. And as usual, the managers of the client company would invariable be late for the meeting. So, I settled in the chair and was waiting for the HR guys of the company to join in.

After making me wait for around ten minutes, a gentleman entered the room, said good morning, shook hands with me and introduced himself as the head of the HR department. I introduced myself too. He told me that all of his colleagues who were in charge of various functions of HR would join us soon. As we started with some small talk, another person entered the room. The HOD introduced him and told me that the new comer was looking after the training department.

And then one after other, four more people entered the conference room. They were all introduced to me along with their portfolios.

The meeting started forthright. But I was unable to concentrate and I was getting confused and I was mixing up the six persons sitting in front of me. I lost track of who was who and who was heading which function of HR.

The reason, I realized soon, was that all of the six persons looked so very identical. And therefore, I was mistaking one for the other and invariably addressing the wrong person. What was making them so identical? It took me just about a few seconds to put a finger at that.

All the six of them had the beard on their faces- they were all bearded guys with absolutely identical cut of their beards.

I have never seen such “conformity” in action till date.