Playing Buzkashi in office.
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| Buzkashi |
I met my friend ,Vencut Balsubbu, Vice President, Synergistic Initiatives, Hefner & Hustler, after a long time . While chatting, I asked him that how he, an adventure sports loving person, passes his time in office. “I play email-email” He added “You should know that “email email” is the most popular, adventurous yet dangerous game ever invented after Buzkashi .
He didn’t wait to give me some of his favorites:
When free and have nothing to do, just pick up an email with some attachment, say something like "Seems fine but doesn't gel with the overall strategy , suggest meeting to discuss in detail . Asok, see if you can make a lucid one pager for all" and do reply all. Don’t forget to add some random recipients. It will just take 2 minutes but will set people back by 2 days. Of course , poor Asok will end up working weekend and many will die figuring out why the email is copied to them.
Whenever you get a forward which is bulky and complex , containing some industry research, all you need to do is to forward to your boss. Add a message like this “don’t agree with all of it but the stats on page 19 are really eye opening” , of course you need not read anything except page 19. If you manage a team , the same document can be sent to them with a message “Let’s discuss sometime next week” , and some of them will take the print home to prepare for the next week.
Whenever you come across any newspaper article on your industry covering a subject like IT or HR which is not your domain, just find the link through google and send it to your peer in IT saying “Came across this piece , speaks about breakthrough in production, in beta though , may be of interest to you” . Of course the message looks benign but the moment you copy it to Head of IT , turns lethal.
Google Alerts, best thing ever happened to an office goer. Everyone creates alerts about your organisation, competitors, but to standout you try this "Strategy+Synergy+(insert name of sector you work)"
Google Alerts, best thing ever happened to an office goer. Everyone creates alerts about your organisation, competitors, but to standout you try this "Strategy+Synergy+(insert name of sector you work)
And finally when in doubt, just forward the email saying “fyi , please”.
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6 comments:
email-email is a very genuine idea.
Dear Vikas,
This email-email game has a lot of nuances, some of which I would like to enumerate here.
1. Don't talk, just email : Even if your colleague sits next to your cabin, there is tendency to talk only by email. Even if it is the most innocuous of messages, which could have been better communicated verbally!
2. Pass the buck : How about planning and writing emails in a way that one can always escape responsibility!
3. Bcc : Want to tell the management that only you work while your colleagues enjoy life? Write emails to your colleagues with a Bcc to the management!
Nice and a relevant post for professionals!
Aman Sharma
Twitter id : @amancool5
Rofl! email-email, I see this happening in colleges too, all directors, hod passing the buck and blame to each other!
New game i heard here,good work email-email.
hey , nice blog , like it ,
won’t be nice if i u can clickover to my blog page too ,
& post some suggestion
Excellent!
I thought I was good but you are a veteran.
Now that (maybe) am moving up the ladder, I need such lessons and I guess this is an ideal place to learn some of em!
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