Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Shit Happens

"Anderson and Doig informed me that NZC was into 'Best Practice', one of those nifty corporate terms that on close examination was little more than a statement of the bleeding obvious. It was comforting to know that they weren't into Mediocre Practice or Completely Shithouse Practice."


"Doig's reply referred to what was deemed to be a poor showing on my part in the teleconference interview and stated that NZC's area of great concern was over my ability to apply my cricketing and people skills 'in the team environment over a period of time in order to enhance performance'. I was advised to 'work on strategies' to overcome the impression I gave of being 'indecisive and unspecific'. They would be 'reassured' to hear that I was attending courses to address this 'perceived weakness' and urged me to attend sports and science conferences to develop a 'philosophical approach to practice methods' and 'full familiarity with technology and its ability to support performance enhancement.' I was asked to consider getting involved with the national under-19 and A teams."

- An excerpt from John Wright's book 'Indian Summers'

John Wright has said this more eloquently than I could ever have.The extent of jargon used in corporate world still continues to surprise and frustrate me. All this talk of quality, etc. is bloated. We all know what is said is implied and never needs to be said so feverishly, perhaps the more you say the more it harms the cause. But still it goes on and on. Most of the energy is expended on something which will bear no fruit. It is utterly sick. Because we know it will never end. Every two weeks or so, I get to hear about a new initiative which has been launched and which again turns out to be repetition of what has already been said or done before. Just that it has a new name this time.

Similarly, sycophancy knows no limits. People begin mails saying "I thank so and so for his/her guidance...." when it is crystal clear that there was no guidance involved and the thing went through only because there was no guidance (read interference).

Darn, hail Dilbert!

I was bereft of Internet for two weeks as the adapter was out for repair and what should have taken a mere three to six days somehow took fourteen days. I think I would have gone insane had I not got it back by now.

2 comments:

kaushik said...

how do you get the title of the latest post beneath the link?

kaushik said...

i just read your post now....it does need some sycophancy to keep people happy.

I remember, thanking every prof and staff in my department at a vote-of-thanks for a fest that we organized and which they were completely dead against till the end. I was asked specifically to do it by the HOD

Later though, in some official communication about achievements and all, it was as-if the whole fest was their idea for the overall development of the student. We don't believe that a good person is one with good academics bullshit...