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