Playing Buzkashi in office.

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)" . Now the moment you get some result, just download the column and forward it to Head-Strategy and Head-HR with a copy to Executive Assistant of the CEO, just say "Must Read". And, yes no need to read it yourself.

And finally when in doubt, just forward the email saying “fyi , please”.

Tweet