Everything's eventually... well, strategic!

Of the many things that are starting to irk me with the line of work that I have chosen ( how did I get here anyway?!) is the gratuitous use of jargon - better known as 'constuling'nese' to some. It is hard to go through a single day without hearing one of those powerful bits of erudition being thrown around, either to impress or to digress.  Whether to minimize downstream inconsistencies, zoom in on a blue/white (or whatever colour is in vogue) space opportunity, or even to identify high-value adjacencies, it is always about being 'strategic'. What does that mean anyway?

For us cosultants, the word 'strategic' is a powerful descriptor, often attached to whatever initiatives we have 'carefully analyzed' to turn them from a simple post-midnight ideas into a panacea for what is irking the CEO. Yup, the big guy gets irked, and his anxieties are only alleviated when he sees a number of well polished slides pronouncing that the next 12 months will usher in the cure to all his troubles - all packaged into neatly structured set of strategic initiatives.

Every meeting, every email, and even every cursory conversation by the water coller, will likely include a derivative of the word 'strategy' - as they should ... we are, after all, 'strategy' consultants! Client costs too high? How about 'strategic' cost cutting initiatives. Market share too low? Well, some 'strategic' segmentation of key customer groups may do the trick. International expansion? Then a 'strategic' partnership is what the doctor ordered. Amazing how a simple 8-letter word can turn something as banal as cost cutting into a million dollar idea - quite literally!

Working too late in the office and getting famished? Perhaps a strategic sourcing initiative from McDonald's down the street is just what you are looking for....

How insignificant...

So I came across this poster, an inspirational piece for those cynics amongst us - God bless each and every one of you!

What really drew my attention is, ultimately, its raw truism ! It is as funny as it is versatile: parody of inspirational imagery it might be, but really who amongst us hasn't come across someone who needs to be shown this to put things into perspective?!

Picture this scenario (admittedly based on territory I am familiar with, but equally relevant to your profession of choice/passion): you have spent the previous night with the team trying to put together what you consider to be the opus of the previous 3 weeks of work. The tees have been crossed (with the right fonts, within the right margins, equidistantly positioned across the slide), and the i's have been dotted (to the exacting radius a top tier 'dot' should be, of course).... oh, and the content ain't half bad either! You have packaged this opus, and have sent it to the senior 'thought' leader of the team for feedback. A small rectangular box fades into the lower right hand corner of your screen, announcing the arrival of the much anticipated feedback email:

Dear team,

Thanks for the good work [well, it does happen, sometimes!!]. I have a couple of comments:

• 
  
  The use of the word 'word' is not very intuitive in the context of slide xx - we need to find a better word for 'word' there... what do you guys think?
• 
  
  Shouldn't the boxes on slide xx and slide xx+50 be of equal dimensions, colour, and placement - otherwise the flow would be interrupted.... what do you guys think?
• 
  
  Instead of having an overview section, we should have an introduction section - please make sure that the new section now flows
• 
  
  ......[you get the point]

Thx

BigShot PaidALot

... wouldn't it be GREAT to hit the reply button and in the body of the email paste the above image? That would be the CONCISE way to respond - and yes, I do believe that 'insignifance' would be the right word to describe what we guys think...

Yup, I can picture it now - alas, I can only picture it in my head... but I have a very VERY vivid imagination!!!

Proficient in 10 languages... understand none!!

PA: 'Fast Growing Airline - FGA' would like to welcome you on board our flight to Cairo. Our cabin crew today speak English, Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, French, Spanish,Tagalog, German, Bulgarian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Thai, Malay, and Africaans. Please don't hesitate to reach out to one of our cabin crew for any assistance
.....

Stewardess: Mr. Khayrat, how can I help you?
Me: Can I please have a glass of perrier with a slice of lemon, no ice
Stewardess: Certainly!
...
Stewardess: There you go
Me: ahmm, this isn't perrier, I think this is 7 up
Stewardess: I am sorry, I forgot the ice... I will be right back

!!!!!!!

Fly Fast Growing Airline - we speak a thousand languages, just not on any of our flights!!

If it ain't broke, try re-writing it!!

It is funny how it took me close to 5 months to come back and start writing again. Of course I have a myriad hangers on which I could neatly place the blame, but the truth of the matter is, I just wasn't up for sharing my inner most thoughts with the keyboard of a 2 year-old IBM (sorry, LeNovo) laptop! Sorry, still a novice at the whole i-geek thing.

So on to my thought of the day...

They say that while you exhale your final breath on earth your entire life flashes before you, presumably with all the excitement that accompanies watching a first run hollywood summer hit - or at least you would hope so! And therein lies the thought that has been irking me for the past few days - what kind of a feature will my life sum up to?

If we assume, just for the sake of argument, that this idea of 'personal feature film' - a posthumous blockbuster if you will -  is what's waiting for all of us after a long and fruitful stint this side of hereafter, then how do we make sure it is an contender for a 'divine' academy award? What would make a great posthumous blockbuster? The answer, in my humble opinion, is a good plot of course!! A good plot sewn around a protagonist that is constantly seeking and embracing experiences, without wasting time or energy on defining those experiences in terms of 'good' or 'bad'.

And what if the protagonist gets tired with a slow moving plot? Well... a plot re-write is in order, of course!

How it all it started... (forward looking, but read in retrospect!)

I am, as the title of the blog suggests, one of those poor souls whose minds wonder, constantly in a state of restlessness. I think too much about every little minute detail of the day, and it inadvertently leads to some inordinate levels of frustration. And therein lies the problem... frustration isn't 'good for you', or so I have heard.

My challenge lies in finding ways to vent out this frustration so that I remain a happy, healthy, and productive member of society. So instead of signing up for some self empowerment series of classes where you sing soul fortifying hymns, or putting together my own personal encyclopaedia of self help volumes, I have decided to simply vent. Of course, I am also considering that I may start to lose the small amount of close friends I have painstakingly collected over the years if I continue to bitch incessantly about seemingly (but not really) inconsequential irritants of my day.

A final thought: I am going to disguise the names of people and places in my postings - I am fully expecting this blog to, some day in the very near future, become the basis of a book, and we all know how 'frustrating' people and institutions can be with less than flattering public mentions! Yup, this is going to be the basis of a book alright - I can see it! Better yet, I can feel it! (anyone read the Da Vinci Code-like book 'The Secret'?)

Stay tuned for my first post...