The Diary of a Reluctant Management Consultant

Another year, another list of unachievable New Year's Resolutions

Intoxicated with the assurance of a fresh start to the year, I too make New Year’s resolutions. It’s a great time of year and before you know it, you’re caught up in the rush of making promises you can’t keep, setting goals that are ambiguous, immeasurable, unattainable, unrealistic and unbound by any measure of time in our known universe and of course, swearing to go to the gym more often… starting next week.

So, after much thought and careful consideration in Woolworths queue, I’ve come up my Top Ten New Year’s Resolutions for 2010:

10.	Stop making fun of fat pople who’ve just joined the gym as a result of making a New Year’s resolution. At least they’ve made the effort to join the gym. But there’s a lot working against them, including heart palpitations, shortness of breath and the cupcake shop just outside the gym I go to.
9.	Remove my “Cancer – Death on an Instalment Plan” poster from inside the smoking room, not because of the complaints but because the poster’s now yellow.
8.	Stop pointing at midgets and giggling.
7.	Always ask lazy asses why they’re taking the lift up or down just one floor.
6.	Be nice to auditors – not all of us are as passionate as they are for ticking things with different coloured pens.
5.	Stop asking work-shy lazy bastards (WLBs) reading newspapers in the client’s library for their employee numbers. It freaks them out and disturbs the other people legitimately using the library.
4.	Stop laughing out loud when people reach for a calculator to make basic calculations like trying to work out 10% on a restaurant bill. Stop making it worse by inviting other people in the restaurant to come and witness this grand display of stupidity.
3.	Stop dancing like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction while on a teleconference with colleagues in London.
2.	Stop using Excel for shopping lists and PowerPoint for break-ups. Agenda usually includes: The Current Relationship Context Why It’s Not You, It’s Me Why It’s You Graph demonstrating the “We’ve Just Grown Apart” Differential Outstanding Issues (including friends to be claimed, CDs to be returned and stalking ground rules) Q&A
1.	Return to sending retrenchment notices by letter instead of last year’s novel approach of using bulk SMSs (U R Fired! C U L8ER). People don’t seem to appreciate the cost savings (25c per SMS versus R1.83 per printed page and envelope, assuming hand delivery, in case you’re wondering).