The World Inc. has its own world to thrive in and the Corporate glitterati takes pride in defining its own ‘work’ culture which sometimes defies any known professional boundaries while at times borders on downright slapstick absurdity! But come what may, everyone who belongs to the Corporate echelon is confined to following these unspoken ‘rules’ and ‘laws’ lest they run the risk of offending the Corporate elite!! In my un-eventful career spanning more than a decade and half, I have become a partner in crime while embracing this ‘imposed’ culture and would like to recount and enumerate few of these Corporate tenets which have come to symbolize the white collared civilization and its idiosyncrasies. Here you go, my top 10 countdown –
10) While a normal homo sapiens would ‘start’ his day, a Corporate manager always looks ‘at the end of the day’. So while you have a meeting at 9AM on a dull Monday morning when your breakfast tea hasn’t even got settled down properly, you have your boss yelling at you when comes the most abused term from him - “…so team, no matter what you do or how you do it but at the end of the day, I want to see the result!!” and it goes on and on. I sometimes wonder, why wouldn’t a boss want the same results ‘at the middle of the day’ or ‘at the beginning of the next day’!! Seems it’s just a weapon in their huge armory to implant a psychological terror that if it doesn’t get delivered by the end of the day, it would be the end of the world for you, period.
9) Screaming at someone takes a whole new dimension in the eccentric Corporate world. Consider this – if you write a single word in CAPS in your mail (capital letters for the uninitiated), you are assumed to be screaming at the mail recipient. If the whole line is written in CAPS, you are assumed to be literally yelling at the recipient. I witnessed this screaming business being taken to a whole new level when I saw one particular mail (not directed at me) written in CAPS with red color font. I hope the recipient survived the mail and didn’t suffer a heart stroke!
8) You must have copied someone on your usual mails without much thought, right? Well, copying someone on your mail has its implicit connotations in this world. If you copy your boss while writing a mail to someone, you are trying to cover yourself. If you copy recipient’s boss, it means you are trying to escalate things. If you copy your direct report in your mail, you are delegating the work. If you copy no one in the mail, you are trying to ‘settle’ things with the recipient. Such is the power of carbon copy functionality while following the mail etiquette.
7) When is the last time you were ‘on the same page’ with your friend or your spouse or your parents? I am sure you haven’t exactly got that sentence per se and you are not to be blamed for that either. This ‘same page’ business is a must condition in the Corporate jungle. That’s right – you need to be on same page with everyone else while working with sundry and all. In plain language, it just means that there is a common understanding between you and the audience you are speaking to. Infact this is the most banal phrase dropped most often by the speaker in any regular meeting – “so gentlemen, are we all on the same page? “. It beats me to death to think why we always need to be same page? It smacks of herd mentality – if you are not on same page, you may be the odd one out. Someone was overheard blurting out in frustration “No - I am NOT on the same page with you, infact I am not even on the same paragraph, same chapter OR same book with you !!”
6) Acronyms play an important role on the Corporate planet. If you need to succeed in here, you got to be champion in mastering the short hand! When I first heard a top manager extolling the success the company has achieved, he went something like this “Team, FYI – our PAT for Q1 is $XYZ MM which is a jump of 10% YoY and 12% QoQ!! The GCCIT LoB has lauded our efforts and will be recognizing 5 FTEs in Q2 R&R”. In short, you need to master the art of the abbreviation (The word abbreviation itself needs an abbreviation!!)
5) “If you don’t improve your visibility, I am afraid I wouldn’t be able to elevate you” – there comes another term which is used by the wannabe managers to beat you up whenever they feel like. The term ‘Visibility’ in Corporate jargon signifies the impact of your performance on others (ideally, everyone in the organization). In other words, how famous you are in your office circuit determines how ‘Visible’ you are. Initially when I came across this term, I thought it was being referred to my ‘not so fair’ complexion – “Deven, you are not quite visible off late” – I took it as “Deven, you have darkened off late – or - are you into tanning business or something?” Now as I understand this term better, it has an added connotation – your visibility is directly proportional to the amount of 'shoulder rubbing' you have with the high and mighty in the organization. Well, if you ask me honestly - I am not 'visible' to even my wife yet!!
4) When it comes to having a telephonic meeting, the mention of ‘Mute’ business can’t be missed out. Put simply, every phone instrument has a ‘Mute’ button. Typically in an official telephonic meeting, everyone keeps himself on mute (hence inaudible) while the speaker of the meeting speaks up. One of the most common scene is when one of the attendants starts speaking up but without ‘un-muting’ himself. If there is a prolonged silence in the call, in all probability its due to someone speaking up while on mute. Someone from the audience has to then check with the team if anyone is speaking on ‘mute’. This business reached its height once when in one such meeting, there was a prolonged silence. Then there was some further prolonged silence. Suddenly a voice was heard “ Sorry guys I was checking if anyone speaking up while in mute but I realized I myself was on mute” !
3) OOO – if you have got good with abbreviations by now, then you should be able to get this one. OOO refers to ‘Out of Office’ and refers to an automatic email reply when someone switches on this functionality in his mail (while being not available in office). In my prolific experience dealing with mail etiquette, I have come to realize that the OOO message reflects the personality of the sender. Shorter the OOO message, higher in the hierarchy that person is – “On business trip, reachable on cell” indicates the sender is a heavy weight. If the OOO message runs in 10 lines, the sender is from some operation support team (for A, contact X; for B, contact Y and so on). If the OOO message is somewhat risqué, the person belongs to the HR department. If the OOO message has the minutest details such as what time and second the sender will be back in office, mostly that guy is from Finance team. One of the most ‘effective’ OOO message I came across recently – “I am out of office for this whole week. My replies will be delayed OR may not be replied at all” !!
2) A couple of talking points which are extremely common in Corporate meetings and I can’t miss mentioning them here – 1) Weather talk – yes, that’s right. The easiest way to break ice in a meeting with others or to start the conversation in an informal way is to talk about weather. This is more prominent when the callers (in a telephonic meeting) are in different countries – that makes it much more meaningful than when the 1st caller in 'Ramnagar' is asking about weather condition to the 2nd caller who is in 'Lakshman Nagar', if you know what I mean. 2) Weekend plan – this is another point of discussion more pronounced especially if you speaking with someone from the West. I am amazed to see that some people have an elaborate answer to offer when asked about their weekend plan. It’s as if they live just for the weekends!
1) Most oft repeated phrases or words –
a) I really appreciate your help here
b) My calendar is up-to-date
c) Placeholder for a meeting
d)Leadership (everyone is supposed to be a leader), team spirit/synergy/motivation (nothing can move without the ‘team’)
e) Customer/client comes first
f) ASAP, +1, w.r.t, PFA, PFB, EoD, TBD, IMO, AFIK, URGENT (in subject line), TL;DR
g) and the deadliest – “Boss is always right”
Long live the Corporatti!!
