Butterfly Effect in the Chaotic Corporate World

The derived game of Indian whisper? Or was it seriously sucking snowball? Finally I zeroed down on the chaotic ground reality of the global delivery model and called it the Corporate Butterfly Effect.

Maarten Klassen, Process Management Lead of HMH Bank IT, stopped me as I was on my way to my eight hours of cubicular cerebral sloth. “Simon, you remember we had talked about the Basics of Ethics training? The web based course one had to click one’s way to completion?”

I thought hard, across gigabytes of such ridiculous and redundant compliance trainings. “You mean the one you wanted to share with the offshore vendors some – what – eight months back?”

Maarten smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, eight or nine months back, at that moment it was supposed to be ASAP. Now people have forgotten why it was so important, but it still sits on my todo list. You see, I went on vacation, and when I returned the content designer went on vacation, and when she returned  half the developers were reassigned to the top priority portal, and one of them went to get married ...  you know how it works. But, now it’s finally complete and available online, and so could you dash it off to your company folks in Bangalore and ask whoever is working on the HMH account to complete it within, say, a couple of months or may be a quarter or, may be, six months ...?”

Chaos and the game of Indian Whisper

That’s how it started. You can perhaps say that working in Axiom Consulting for a couple of years, I should have been prepared and mentally armed to my teeth to withstand what followed, but then, as our company promises, it continues to innovate and surprise.

After a quick mail to Prakash at Bangalore providing the link to the training and the approximate date for completion, I was blissfully tinkering with a spreadsheet with some associated alt-tabs to get the latest on the Euro Cup, when a mail brandishing the red exclamation mark of importance thudded into my Inbox. It is quite revealing that importance has to be denoted by exclamation marks in this industry.

Prakash had responded with a deluge of questions, “Simon, what is this all about? What sort of reports do we need to provide?  What is the SLA – two months or a quarter or six months? How are we to ensure that people complete the training? Could we get into a call?”

Having  somehow managed to read the substance between the interrogation marks, I wrote back, “Relax. 

Not that important. Pass the links and ask the folks to complete within two months. Leave the rest to them, on trust. After all, trust and openness is all that we hear in corporate updates nowadays. Delay of a few days won’t really matter, trust me.”

Within half an hour, Prakash was stuttering in an edgy tone on the telephone, my handset almost vibrating with his nervous twitches.

“Ramya, the Project Lead, wanted to know how we are to ensure that the people complete the compliance trainings.”

“Did you tell her about trusting people?”

“She says no one will complete unless we follow up and chase them.”

I sighed. “Then go ahead and chase them, but believe me, it’s not that serious.”

“Is there a tool that tells us how many have completed?”

“Er, not that I know of ...”

“Then can we ask the client for specifications and database details so that we can create an in-house tool? Ramya and her co-manager Srini want to know.”

“There you go. Does one need to look further for in-house tools?”

He called back after another half an hour.

“Ramya asks if you can get into a conference call.”

“Why on earth?”

“She wants to understand the requirements – what we need to send to the client.”

“There is nothing you need to send to the client. You need to complete the training and that’s all there is to it. There are about 20 slides. Everyone needs to click their way to the end, to the point where there is a pop up saying ‘Congratulations. You have completed the Basic Ethics course.’ It will take five minutes for each, at most.”

Prakash’s voice still crudely crisscrossed my eardrum with its edgy tension. “Ramya says if people don’t do it, and the client asks for completion figures, we can get into trouble, and the buck will come back to me.”

“Why you?”

“Because you told me to ensure that it is done, and she doesn’t want to take ownership.”

“Jesus ...”

“She wants to know what sort of reports of completion you want.”

“I just want to be left in peace.”

“Weekly percentage figures  ... or a dashboard showing projections of next week ...”

“Prakash, this is almost an afterthought on the part of the client, and they may or may not even be interested to know whether ...”

“Simon, Ramya has already talked to her boss, Narayanan, the Senior Manager, and the two of them want a breakfast meeting with me tomorrow. It seems they are taking it seriously. Tell me, is there any way that I can generate the completion figures...”

“Erm ... Prakash, did I mention mountains and molehills?”

“Eh?”

“ Believe me, it is not high priority. And there is no way that I am getting into a call over this.”

The next call was from Ramya herself. It was quite a surprise, since I was about to leave office in Amsterdam while she seemed very much working her way to the middle of a busy day at Bangalore.

“Simon, good afternoon. I had a question.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Can we get into a call now?”

“I am confused. What exactly are we into now?”

“I mean Narayanan wanted to join, and as the local SME I would keep Prakash in the call as well.”

“SME? Are you still talking about the compliance training?”

“Yes, and Prakash is the only one who seems to know the specs.”

“Specs? We are not talking about a project here, for God’s sake.”

“We have opened a new sub project in the Project Management System and allocated Prakash as the lead. It is non-billable, but Narayanan wants a status report every week – and it has to be shared with the client to show our weekly progress. As partners, we need to project ourselves as sensitive to the client’s requirements”

“Sensitive? You are already more sensitive than an exposed dental nerve ...”

 “I am connecting Narayanan and Prakash as well.”

As several beeps announced the arrival of the waiting team members on the company sponsored conference bridge, I put my fingers on the bridge of my own nose and squeezed hard, “Ramya, this is not even a serious initiative. There is only one guy in the entire client organisation who is interested in this because he has suddenly discovered this on his to-do list, possibly from an archived action item list and he will go on vacation again soon and  everything will be forgotten.”

Narayanan’s important disembodied voice floated in, out-decibling my protests. “In that case you need to position yourself as the deputy to ensure this is completed – you can be the onsite lead of us, the partner organisation.”

“Huh ...”

“As partners, we need to take up whatever the customer thinks is important – even if they don’t think of it as important, we need to coach them into seeing the value-adds. That is the way we can build trust.”

“Trust? That’s rich. A while back we were unable to trust our own people to complete the training by themselves and now ... “

There was an uncomfortable silence, before the Senior Manager demonstrated his exemplary thought-leadership.

“It is not that we don’t trust them. We wanted to track the completions so that we can publish lists of members as an appreciation of those who worked hard and completed the course. And also, we can prepare dashboards to share the completion statistics with the client and have these weekly calls in which we can discuss any issues and risks and mitigation actions necessary. In the meantime, Prakash, with Simon’s guidance you can prepare a comprehensive presentation of the initiative, with client situation, requirement, our solution, differentiators, learnings, innovations and all that ... I think it would be a very good case study for our Best Practice event. It can be the Assignment of the Annum.”

There was silence as the important words echoed along the transcontinental cables. I thought I heard a couple of muted exclamations from Prakash, the entrapped professional in him – an offshore vendor at that – trying to voice his insignificant logical arguments in a vain effort to invoke rationality in a world where the threat of rationalisation rules in a reign of terror. Soon, however, all such minor noises of reason were drowned in the steady hum of action plans.

The only thing left for me to do was to use my privilege of being Dutch and excuse myself for the day, as life called from beyond the cubicles – a call that is also muted in the distant shores of a mysterious land.

Corporate Butterfly Effect

I spent the evening at the De Duif, where an ensemble of art forms influenced by Chaos Theory was on display.   The write-up in the introductory leaflet spoke of the classical questions asked by Chaos, “If a butterfly flaps its wings in China will it result in a Tornado in San Francisco?”

As I was looking at some exquisite paintings and computer images celebrating the vision of Benoit Mandelbrot, it dawned on me. The day had just demonstrated to me the Chaotic world of Corporate Circus of the modern day.

A customer clearing his throat in Amsterdam does result in a tornado of managerial brain farts in Bangalore.  

And the truckload of resulting crap is splattered across numerous charts, graphs and reports.

Finally, in a country where bullshit is traditionally considered sacred, these packaged excrements are often revisited, rejoiced, revered and rewarded.

  

Sherlock Holmes explains the Corporate Game of Shadows

Another day when the cubicle had to withstand the relentless barrage of insanity, another day when the mind clouded with confusion – resulting in outbursts of thunder and lightning.

And one had to bring in Sherlock Holmes to make sense of the madness, explain the curious incidents.

Let me begin by recounting what happened during the day.
...

The interview had reached an impasse.

The resume on my Lenovo screen was sparkling, almost gilt edged. The mere sight of the listed research papers on computational theory and algorithmic analysis; many of them registered for patent, and some co-authored with veritable pioneers in the field; whipped shut my recruiter’s instinctive snoopiness with the sheer weight of erudition. The stereotypical questions I could think of to throw at the earnest Hungarian at the other end of the line suddenly seemed lame, cripple and grotesquely deformed.

The account manager, at the third node of our conference call, was silent for a long, long time. I could sense him trying to bury the crushing feeling of inadequacy under a mountain of mundane mails which he was rummaging through importantly on his laptop, deluding himself into believing that his responsibilities as a business leader in Europe, right now rendered puny by the academic credentials of Laszlo Kovacs, granted him the status of superiority by default. The title Dr. in front of the Slavic name, in Heading 1 font at the top of the curriculum vitae, strategically placed to penetrate the protracted viewing zone of even the most myopic recruiting manager, did not help matters. Our combined qualifications were dwarfed. No follow up question was forthcoming once the man had gone over his career details.

The uncomfortable silence was interrupted with the connection disturbed by high pitched electronic interference. An sms filtered into my cell phone. It was from Ajay Yadav, the account manager at the third node.

“Carry on asking questions!” it commanded.

It was perhaps the exclamation mark which clinched the battle with professional patience.

“Laszlo, could you please excuse us for a minute?” I put the phone on mute and pressed the call button on my handset.

The account manager started without preamble, “Ask him some questions … you know I can only pitch in at the end…”

“Ajay, this guy is more qualified and educated than the rest of the team put together, you and me included. You want me to ask him how to create project dashboards with red, amber, green signals for half-witted managers?”

I assure you, I am not always like this. Right through The Best Seller, you have seen my innermost thoughts bubbling up only in the confessional confines of this blog. But, the maniacal mismatch between the interviewee and interviewer made me lose it totally. For a moment, it seemed that the spirit of my buddy had floated into me, and poor Ajay was once again being launched into the unchartered territories of truth.

“But, he has applied for this job …” he mumbled.

“Then ask him why he wants to rot in these cubicles, manufacturing data and preparing graphs, tracking so called project progress – charts that are to be discussed by a room full of confused senior managers treating them like patterns of tea leaves which foretell doomsday or coming of the messiah – Why does he want this life when he can sit in Hungary and do something which involves thought, makes sense and is of actual use to the world.”

“I agree that he is a little over-qualified ... ” Ajay admitted.

“A little?”

“May I interrupt?” a heavily accented Slavonic voice interjected, throwing us off balance. “It seems to me that you two are in conference, and one of you forgot to put the call on mute …”

“Eh?”

“Oh, man … Ajay…!”

The cascading effects of delegation had reached chronic levels. Ajay Yadav had allowed our candidate to hear everything that we said … at least everything that he said. I was filled with genuine remorse. Of all people, I, who had been withstanding an atmosphere tinged with this imbecile for over three years now, should have seen it coming. Expecting him to put the phone on mute on his own had been an unpardonable mistake in my management of expectation from senior management.

“We’re terribly sorry, Laszlo …”

“Pardon me for having heard what you said,” the gentle voice continued. “But, I think it is good that I can make out your apprehension. I only heard one side of the dialogue …”

“Thank God for that.”

“No … I mean, I am only too happy to explain. You find it surprising that I want to go to The Netherlands and work at a largely clerical job as a Project Management Office, umm, worker …”

I could make out he had scoured his vocabulary to come up with the last word. Specialist and expert would have sounded ridiculous anyway, oxymoron of the highest order. A social levelling could have been served with comrade, but it had remained politically incorrect and probably still induced nightmares in the country from where he hailed. Worker was a close enough approximation.

“Ah, yes, Lasozo, you see we are afraid that if you keep doing something you don’t want to, you might end up not wanting to do it any more … and leave us soon,” Ajay Yadav had as usual made a hash of the Hungarian name, but at least he had managed to step into the conversation with something approaching sense.

“It’s Laszlo. I understand you are not familiar with Hungarian names. Also, it can be a bit confusing if you are not familiar with the conditions. I can write algorithm after algorithm here, revolutionise computing theory, but I will get paid only a third of what I can make there – if paid at all. And believe me, with a wife and a kid to support, you need no more motivation. Most often craving for cerebral challenges is vetoed by far more basic demands of the stomach.”

Ajay called me back once we had managed to hobble through the stumbling blocks of truth during the remaining duration of the interview.

“Well, what do you think?”

I took a deep breath. “We can give him what he wants, Ajay -  a decent income and placement in The Netherlands. And he has what we want, a EU work permit and a salary expectation lower than the commerce graduates from India whom we scrape out from the bottom of the university barrels. We are a perfect match.”

There was something on his mind even after I had broken it down into rudimentary units of demand and supply.

“Er, yes, but his aptitude and intelligence …”

“That is indeed an exception of far more gigantic proportions than we have ever handled, but I guess if we can overlook his smartness, we will soon realise that he is smart enough to keep his mental faculties on a leash as he goes about generating graphs and dashboards …”

“I need to think about it. In the meantime could you ask Joost for his feedback regarding the Lasozo’s resume?”

“Laszlo,” I corrected half-heartedly and hung up.

It was some fifteen minutes later that Joost Kuiper walked past my cubicle, lips pressed in a perpetual silent whistle, the rakish hair standing motionless, in the rigid fetters of hair gel.

“Joost, a moment,” I called him.

“Simon, what’s up?”

“I was wondering whether you had a chance to look at the resume we sent you yesterday.”

He pondered.

“The Hungarian guy?” the stress was on the last word.

As I nodded, a nubile form walked by –  on her way back from the coffee machine. Neelam Verma was another Axiom recruit, one of the girls from Bangalore, whose short two month assignment was coming to an end, much to the woe of many a  Dutch and expat heart. Her two months of struggle with data mining had been an unmitigated disaster, but the tee shirts that she wore – the way they accentuated her assets, the amplitude of horizontal oscillations as she made her walk to and back from the coffee machine about two hundred and thirty times a day, all these more than made up for the wasted hours.

“Er…,” Joost hesitated. “Is there really need for you to recruit? Can we not use from your current resource pool?”

I followed his gaze and the hint was not too difficult to grasp. It would perhaps cost the company a little more because the Hungarian would request a much lower rate than the one currently paid to the Bachelor of Commerce (Pass.) from some obscure university in Central India. But, where manpower is sold as commodity, she had attributes that were far more valuable than patented research papers. She rocked in multiple dimensions.

“You want her to stay?” I asked, indicating the retreating, rhythmic swaying of the nymph like hips.

“Er, yes,” Joost seized the opportunity to follow my eyes and ogle the curves before they disappeared into the cruel office chair, “… and could you be explicit about her staying on in my project? She needs to know ...”

I nodded. “Sure.”

It was at the Bijlmer Arena Pathe, watching the newest mutilation of Sherlock Holmes, that I could actually make sense of the upside down microcosm of the corporate world.

In a grotesque mirror image of the corporate world, the commoditisation of one of the most cerebral characters of world literature into an action hero actually allegorised the plight of Dr. Laszlo Kovacs.

I have nothing against Robert Downey Jr., who was just doing what he has to … jumping through the directorial hoops, to be readily palatable to the wii and play-station happy cinema goers. The whirring within the brain, the categorisation and elimination of clues and the zeroing in on the solution by deductive reasoning cannot be projected on screen without stretching the imagination of the digital-dependant minds beyond their short threshold of patience and imagination. For intellectual analysis to be viewed by a current day cinematic audience, one has to attach gizmos which approximate the human brain on dumbed down virtual reality platforms of cheap pseudo technology – much like the innumerable crime scene investigation series that assault us today. No wonder the other Sherlockian avatar of the day is Benedict Cumberhatch, the cutting edge techno savvy manifestation of the sleuth on BBC, who conveniently delegates memory and detection to the external interfaces that look like iPhone apps and super windows.

It is strikingly similar to the patented research work of Dr. Kovacs that is too much of a mental mountain to climb, much more conveniently replaced by zazzy yet over-simplified red, amber, green dashboards of digitised corporate crap.

Jude Law too did his bit as Dr. Watson, the side kick of the action hero. Green Hornet and Kato probably put in more thought behind their action than this detection duo, but one has to dance to the music of time. Other than a couple of feeble attempts to throw some thinking in the foray, the difference between the master sleuth and his often bumbling assistant of the original stories was reduced to almost nothing – the mechanisms of the mind finishing as an also ran in the Game of Shadows. The focus on immediate action, levelling the mental faculties across the horizons of intelligence quotient, is much like the modern world of corporate circus. Brilliant ideas of the genius of Conan Doyle limping in a poor second to the demand for instantaneous pyrotechnics – a carbon copy of the way organisational and process management theories are applied on demand, catering to the results of the next quarter, in the cubicular world.

Irene Adler, one of the most enigmatic female characters ever to grace pages of fiction, whose powers of thinking toppled even the great Sherlock Holmes from the pinnacle of the analytical world, is reduced to a ravishing bimbo with scarcely a line but lots of curves, appearance limited to the first reel. Rachel McAdams hastens to die during the first action sequence, but not before creating enough impression on the audience with every attribute in her possession sans the mental. The female character who takes her place is Noomi Rapace, as the gypsy woman with enough mystery to be unravelled in the distant lands of her origin mingled with the wrappings of cloth around her ample bosom, to make up for all the brains that died with Irene. The Neelam Verma of the modern day Holmes world.

And as the final blow to sensibilities, even Mycroft Holmes has to prance around naked to penetrate the mind of the movie lover of today. To think of Stephen Frey reduced to enacting a topless scene is a fair summary of the grotesque world we live in today, the most sublime of brains traded for the most bizarre of bodies – inside the cubicles and beyond.

Sir Arthur would have been prophetic if he had exchanged names with his Professor Challenger novel and called the Sherlock Holmes canon – The Lost World. That is how it stands today.



The Lost World?



Deming's First Principle, the Red Light District and Management Truths

As I have often noted in the pages of this blog, I am the Dutch interface of the organization. (I have also voiced this same opinion in the now famed The Best Seller - which as of today ranks in Amazon as one of the leading Financial Crisis Best Sellers).

At least that was the intention with which I was hired - to provide the Indian firm a local liaison while dealing with the Dutch bankers, as well as an internal window with an excellent view into the culture and traditions of life in Netherlands. Ever since joining, however, I have been preparing dashboards and reports by the celebrated EOD, seldom venturing beyond a smile and a handshake with the important Dutch clients. And in spite of the new insights into the culture I have supposedly brought in, the company continues to prepare new employees from India for the surprises of Holland with the same seven slide power point presentation crammed with windmills, clogs, cycles, canals and tulips.

Well, one reason for this apparent discord between intent and eventuality can be detected in the perennially increasing number of status reports that always seem to be in demand accentuated with the self delusional refusal to acknowledge the need of hiring additional people.

For managers, Status Reports seem to be the be all and end all of management. The other day I ran into an Indian professional visiting Amsterdam on business who lamented, “Will the speed of the Earth ever change if we appoint somebody to monitor it and give regular status updates? ... Now who will explain that to the corporate managers, his managers and his up-lines?” Mr. Suman Dasgupta, if only we had more people with your worldly wisdom.

Once or twice, during the bilateral sessions with my line manager, I have brought this up, but my arguments have been brushed aside with a carefree wave of high positioned hand, softened by a smile of assurance.
“Simon, the Dutch speak very good English and we don’t feel your language skills are required in our interactions. But, we appreciate your suggestions and will look for opportunities to use your expertise. Right now, your presence itself is an asset – and we really need those reports you are preparing. You are good at it."

Well, if I continue to analyse the events leading to my joining the firm, I detect yet another reason for this strange derailment of my role. The manager who had conducted my interview and had processed the hiring formalities had been relocated to Zurich within a week of my joining. The Dutch connection related to my hiring had probably left the country with him. It demonstrates a definite lack of constancy of purpose in the management, in direct conflict with the first principle of Dr. Edward Deming. And in this industry that totters and survives by banking on knee jerk reactions, this principle is often kicked away with ignorant disdain.

Let me illustrate this with the point made by the Line Manager. The Dutch clients speak decent English, and hence the Indians can carry on the business without undesirable hiccups.

First of all, I don’t subscribe to this line of reasoning.  Not all the people working in the bank are that comfortable with English, especially some of the important people who are in their fifties.Even a stuttering dialogue in their mother tongue will definitely go a long way towards winning their heart and thereby encroaching into their pockets. If not the entire workforce of the firm working in the Netherlands, the few super important people known as the account managers, who are entrusted with growing business, would be much better off by working their way to simple Dutch, even mastering a pidgin variety.  However, I witness none of these eminent employees garnering the time or inclination to pick up even a few basic sentences of the language.

If I contrast this with the oldest profession, there are some striking contrasts. Girls from Bosnia, Slovenia, Chile, Thailand and other exotic and remote places who carry on their variety of body-shopping in the Red Light District of Amsterdam become reasonably fluent in Dutch and English within a very few days. Granted, they have the advantage of Dutch fluids passing into them for every successful business transaction, but looking at it with some twists and turns of angles, the account managers do come just as close to the local Nether-lands during their negotiations.

At the same time, in the time honoured traditions of the industry manure, apart from growing the account, it is the responsibility of the high and mighty members of the local branch of the company to come up with visionary strategy and innovations to enable smarter business with value-adds. While growth is taken care of by cramming in more people at cheaper rates, vintage old wine in jargon cloaked new bottles generally make up the innovative suggestions for improving synergy and continuous improvement. With headquarters in a country that considers bull-shit to be sacred, this ideas generated often constitute an omnibus of corporate crap. During the process, however, someone did point out the necessity of developing Dutch language skills to communicate with the clients. And this is where Deming was stopped ruthlessly in the middle of his first of fourteen principles.

The language development suggestion was indeed taken up as a management goal by the decision makes back home. A defining moment when Deming would have smiled if the purpose had been written down in large letters as follows – EFFECTIVE DUTCH COMMUNICATION SKILLS FOR EMPLOYEES IN AMSTERDAM.

However, when this was passed as a directive to the regional manager in Amsterdam, and he made a new version of the goal – People need to be trained in Dutch, but I can only spare a ridiculously small amount of money for this curious whim of powers that be. Let us call this Purpose version 2.

The ball was passed to the Academy department in Continental Europe, who promptly framed their version of the purpose as – Dutch Language Certifications needed for 20 employees this quarter with the approved budget which is an atrociously stingy budget. Purpose version 3.
Hence, the next step for the Academy was to find out a suitably cheap institute who would teach 20 people at this atrociously small amount – with the added caveat of generating certifications within 3 months. Most of the prominent language schools laughed off the suggestion in the traditional straightforward Dutch way that the Windmill and Clog oriented Academy personnel had been entirely unprepared for. Finally, they zeroed in on a seedy outfit with little or no proven track record, who haggled and asked for more if they were to go with the sham. Hence, the Academy racked their brains to come up with a multiple brownie point winning innovation. The reimbursement rule was modified. The company would now pay 80% of the course including the cost of the books.

A mailer was thus drafted, announcing Dutch lessons for a very economic price which would be largely reimbursed by the Academy Department. Seats were limited, so could managers nominate people as fast as possible?  The mailer was distributed across mailboxes of managers in various accounts of Amsterdam and Utrecht, with graphics and passionate vision statements hinting at commitment to relentless quest of business enhancing knowledge.

The managers had also received the directive which designated Dutch language skill development of their resources as one of their Key Responsibility Areas. They rushed to fill in the seats with the employees reporting to them before seats ran out.
However, who could they spare for two evenings every week? With programs to be written and dashboards to be painted green with metronomic regularity? They handpicked some of the not so important reportees, mostly junior programmers with minimum interaction with the client, many of whom were not fully utilised, on the verge of going back to India. Their goal? Try to send as many guys for the training from my group as possible while not impacting business because of these peculiar directives from some senior manager sitting far far away. Purpose version 4.

Now what about the blokes who were nominated? Most of them would rather spend the evenings sipping beer in a bar, walking along the windows decorated with girls from Bosnia, Slovenia, Chile and Thailand in the Red Light District, a few engaging their services, while a lot would rather be sitting at home surfing porn. Most of them, with an exception here and there, had absolutely no intention of learning a language which was not spoken anywhere outside the Netherlands and some weird places like Surinam and Aruba. Their goal? Try to stay awake and attend just the requisite number of classes to ensure that the certificate is not withheld.  Besides, put the Dutch diploma in the year end appraisal form to gain some brownie points. Purpose version 5. The efficient Academy had already ensured that an exit test was not required for the diploma.

Well, in the end, twenty guys attended two classes a week for three months and nineteen of them got the certificates.

Academy proudly announced that they had met 95% of their goal by making 19 people trained in Dutch Language skills.

 The Project Managers could now balance their goals by toting up the number of diplomas won by their respective lionhearted reportees.

The unfortunate attendees, ears ringing with the intricacies of the guttural Dutch g, could now fill their appraisal sheets, proudly showcasing screenshots of their diplomas.

The Regional Manager came to know that 19 people had been trained in Dutch, and patted himself on the back for his enforcement skills which would probably go miles in developing the Netherlands business centre.

The Senior Management sat back in their offshore offices with relaxed smiles, looking proudly at the announcement bearing mail  that popped up, amazed at their own vision and foresight at making this happen. They were the trailblazing innovators who could turn the fortunes of the company and the industry yardsticks on their heads with supreme thought leadership from thousands of miles away. They would soon be visiting the Dutch-land to admire the outcome of their landmark brainchild.

Knowledge of Dutch would soon enter the portfolio of capabilities advertised by the company, the appropriate description of the same changing from 'rudimentary' to 'excellent' in the course of review and approval cycle.

A sizeable representative sample of the nineteen, however, were equally at sea when I asked them, “Hoe gaat het?” or “Hoe is je Nederlands?”


So, obviously the question is what will happen when new customers are swayed into engaging our services based on our excellent Dutch communication skills?

Well, as far as I see it, someone like me will be recruited ASAP ... By the time the new person would join the firm, the customer focus would change rapidly, with visionary synergies quickly traded for penny cringing and fire fighting. Hence, I will soon have a Dutch colleague filling up reports and creating dashboards.

W. Edward Deming talked of his 14 principles and lent his name to the Plan Do Check Act cycle. But the industry has succeeded in tackling him right at the first principle, endorsing its versatility by ignoring the tenet of constancy of purpose, and has created its own vicious cycle.

The Indian Infiltration

A lot of the readers of my blog have asked me for an insider’s view into the changing world. For the ones not aware of this request, it can be surmised as an analysis of why and how the Indians are taking over the world by someone who works with these guys.

There a lot of Indian haters and baiters in the Western world. That is understandable given the way a strange culture has gradually crept in and infiltrated into most of the corporate systems, steadily chipping away at the employed mass of local population. They crop up everywhere across the length and breadth of the hierarchy – from the corporate boardrooms of fortune five hundred companies to the helpdesks who answer my call from Bangalore when my Windows suffers routine crashes.

It is strange, really. I have worked with several people in the PMO of the Operations and IT wing of the Bank and have not yet come across exceptional talent. But then, who needs talent for running a Project Management Office? The question is, why go to the Indians? Is it only cheap labour? Or is there something more?

I won’t really go into the nitty-gritty of the complicated topic, Thomas Friedman explains it adequately in The World is Flat. A million other blogs speak of it. I will try to construct some deductions based on my daily journey from Utrecht to Amsterdam Zuid and back.

The Inter City, crowded with the daily office going passengers, is a defining snapshot of the Indian infiltration. More than half of the professionals on their way to the daily grind are Indians. Headphones plugged to their ears as they converse with colleagues and family at home, with surprisingly equal distribution, or as they tap their feet imperceptibly to Bollywood music – their gadgets are more yuppie than the normal Dutch guy. iPhones and Blackberries seem like fancy toys that a nation deprived of a privileged childhood has suddenly discovered in late youth. Much of their conversations are centred around electronic wonders, the features and the value adds.

I am able to follow most of the dialogue, since a large percentage of them take place in English. Strange it may see, but as Madhu Deb explained to me during another three hour conversation, there are nearly twenty major languages in India and innumerable dialects and English is the common denominator of the urban classes. Sometimes the odd dialogue does take place in other languages, but then too it sounds familiar, being liberally sprinkled with corporate jargon. If two Indians sit near you and bits of the tête-à-tête drift into your ears, it is often difficult to make out whether it is a casual conversation or an interview. They talk shop like people possessed and that underlines the hypothesis in one of my earlier blogs that there is little line of demarcation between their business and personal lives.

I hardly see anyone with a book, and if I do, more often than not, it is either a technical manual or a guide for making quick bucks. The other topics that I sometimes find them discussing are mutual funds, cricket and weekend plans, the last of which boil down to supermarkets, Indian shops and Bollywood movies.

It is perhaps dangerous to draw conclusions with my limited knowledge, but my train journey does point out several factors regarding the Indian infiltration – I resist calling it domination.

English language is definitely a very important facet and the years of suffered exploitation as a British colony is now paying off in major proportions. That people from different parts of the country choose to converse with each other in English is something unique in the non-English speaking world.

The other facet is this absolute lack of distinction between work and life. Whereas a common Dutch person stops thinking about work after his weekly thirty six hours, and a non-workaholic American employee does so after four more, for these people work is their life. While one would find a Dutch employee arriving and leaving office almost in the same timebound meticulousness as the GVB Transport Service, the Indians are flexible to stretch office time into a canopy over their lives. And to some extent it is understandable. Maslow all the way.

This being the major differentiator, the work force of the average Indian thrive by putting in their readiness, availability and this round the clock commitment to work to their advantage. Maybe out of Darwinian adaptation, the dimensions of hobby, passion and entertainment have been limited to less time consuming gadgets, Bollywood and shopping malls whereas the endeavours demanding time like outdoor sports, enchantment with Literature and gardening are left to the temporarily more secure Western population. The grand scheme is probably to work on the ulterior motive of the evil corporation to get as much work out of the employees as cheaply as possible, and thus usurp the livelihood of the unsuspecting children of affluent nations who have been brought up to believe that the concept of work life balance is axiomatic.

I read that India is a country of extremes – the mysterious land full of diversity in the spheres of geography, economics, social conventions as well as individuals. That too is apparent from my co-passengers, who range from the well oiled hair with the smear of sandalwood on the forehead to the spiked shock and chic standalone beards.

Similarly, there are extremes in terms of outlook and culture as well.

I was reflecting on these when my cell phone rang three times and stopped. A protocol established between me and my buddy. It was an SOS, and as the system demanded, I picked up my phone and gave him a call. I could hear his phone ringing a few cubicles away and soon he came into my view, carrying on an animated discussion with himself.

“Thanks mate,” he said on joining me. “The kid has just returned from a field trip and you better be on your guard. Have you accrued some leave? I think this is the best time to go on a vacation.” (This will make sense to members of my mailing list.)

I wondered whether I should speak to him about my reflections on the Indian infiltration of the world. He is Indian after all, and if I deviated from the razor’s edge of political correctness, one could not rule out the chance of coming across as offensive. The current day white man’s burden comprises of history of assumed superiority that one now has to play down with an overdose of acceptance and humility.

However, once I had decided in favour of him of his opinion, he threw some characteristically unorthodox light on the discussion.

“You take a look at the bank around you. It is a complicated organisation. It started as a small venture a century back and grew and grew. And soon things got complicated. In most of the big giant corporations across the world, little deltas of change have added up to assume mammoth proportions. Systems have got complicated. Organisations and industries have become too complex for management.”

I agreed. The banks had grown and the systems had become more and more complicated with added services, requirements, changes in business. Hardly anyone had the full picture of any product or line of business.

“It is chaotic. The magic that the Indian brings into the equation is the ability to function in a chaotic world. The institutions back home grooms one for it. The government offices, the traffic, the education system, the hospitals, the parliament – everything is in a strange chaotic equilibrium. People who have been through the experiences back home have been baptised by fire.”

As I considered this profound thought, I asked him whether the knowledge of English played a part as well.

He became even more reflective.

“You know we had been colonised for over two hundred years. That works in multiple ways now for our benefit,” he smiled. I am never able to decipher between seriousness and mockery of this peculiar guy outside the tai chi class. “Colonisation helped us learn English. And along with it, it left a peculiar relationship dynamics with the white man. Most of the Indians are gratified when a white guy from any level of the hierarchy accepts him in his fold. And this is something that has led to levels of motivation that is impossible for a normal workforce to achieve. And it does not stop with the white boss, it peters down to any supervisor. However, at the same time, there is a pent up desire to topple the white – and by induction any – supervisor from the position of power. This can be linked to strategic motivation. It’s not uncommon to find both ends of the spectrum in one psyche.”

I was more than a little confused.

“But, Pritam, these are two opposite things ...”

He smiled one of those maddening smiles of his which pave the way for cryptic wisdom.

“As a learned man preaches, everything comes with its in built opposite.”