The Diary of a Reluctant Management Consultant

I love getting gifts, especially when they’re unexpected. I love getting gifts even more when they’re unexpected and they’re things I want. Knowing that you’re going to get something that you don’t want is clearly dismal and disappointing, like malaria. Explaining the permutations is best achieved using that ubiquitous old consulting technique: the two-by-two matrix. Many a problem has been misinterpreted, over-simplified and completely avoided by merely using a two-by-two matrix.

The Gift Two-by-two Matrix

The two-by-two matrix is fairly self-explanatory, but for the purposes of increased billing, the management consultant must explain the obvious. Thus… we all know how bankers, especially of the investment kind, expect those highly desirable bonuses, even if they’ve actually destroyed wealth (refer to global credit crunch). Management consultants on the other hand, desire large bonuses from clients but don’t expect to get them because they’ve already factored them into their hourly rates. We all expect a desk calendar at the end of the year, but who really gives a toss? The last quadrant is a little more difficult to explain: you don’t expect to get it and you don’t give a toss. The best example of this that I recently received is a “How Are You Feeling?” chart that’s meant to allow you to specify your current stress level. Based on your selection, you can then choose to call the Employee Assistance Program. Why you’d want one of these, I have no idea. You should be working, not contemplating how you’re feeling! The chart does have a tone of pessimism as there are nine negative emotions and only three positive ones to choose from!

I raise the issue of receiving gifts because I mentioned quite clearly in one of my recent posts “Extreme Makeover: Cubicle Edition” that I would like a pot plant for my cubicle that I would name John Kenneth Galbraith. A very simple request, I thought. One that’s very difficult to misinterpret. John Kenneth Galbraith might be easy to misinterpret, but not a pot plant named John Kenneth Galbraith… surely. I also mentioned that you should refrain from bringing your children’s predictable and amateurish drawing’s to work.

So you can imagine how completely unexpected it was when one of my colleagues presented me with a gift for my cubicle: one of her kid’s drawings! In a frame too! Smarty pants!

A geniune Nicole Trofimczyk (age approximately 18 months to 5 years; it's so difficult to tell)

Now without wanting to offend and of course to maintain cordial office relations, I’ve been “forced” to display this work of “art” (note how the teacher has stuck pictures to enhance its otherwise childlike qualities) in my cubicle. People are now asking “why the change of heart, Jeetesh?”, “we didn’t know you have children, Jeetesh?” and “your drawing has improved tremendously, Jeetesh!” According to the “How Are you Feeling” chart, I’m Anxious, Frustrated, Disappointed and Stressed!

What can you do? I know I’m not getting a banker’s bonus and a management consultant bonus is unlikely, so I guess I’ll just have to hold out for that desk calendar!

Received any weird gifts at work? Let me know at diary@jeetesh.net

A greyer shade of grey...

A great deal of time and money is spent decorating our homes. A trip to Fourways (the Johannesburg suburb that has more Tuscan villas than Tuscany!) on a Saturday morning is evidence enough. With the property market still in the doldrums, renovating your house is also proving to be quite popular. Now you have to fight your way through traffic jams outside Builders’ Warehouse on Saturday morning! And that’s assuming you make it past the army of builders, tilers, painters and plumbers looking for odd jobs over the weekend, all holding up signs misspelling the word ‘electrician’, which can’t be positive.

Judging from the various places I’ve worked, it seems that people have taken this decorating streak with them to work, which is quite unfortunate. Expressing your creativity using candles and potpourri really should remain in the home and not in the office. There should be a rule against having lavender scented candles on your desk, particularly if you’re planning a hostile takeover later that week. Change Management perhaps, but certainly not Mergers and Acquisitions!

But given how dreary some cube farms are, it’s not surprising employees feel the need to decorate them. I’ve seen some cubicle dividers that are so grey, the accounting firm they were meant for sent them back. You know it’s bad when even the accountants are complaining that the colour’s dull! One company went the opposite route and chose dividers that are all the colours of the rainbow! Every meeting you have there feels like you’re at a Gay Pride parade, but without the “air kisses” and the denim shorts.

Given the transient nature of my contracts, I’ve taken a minimalist approach to decorating my cubicle. My rule of thumb is to ensure that all my personal belongings fit into the upturned lid of the box that the photocopier paper comes in. My cube is adorned with four name tags, which has done very little to prevent slow-learners from stopping to ask where Jeetesh sits. I have two desk calendars – one Production calendar and one for Disaster Recovery (if you find this funny, you’ve been in IT too long; go out and get some sun). I also have a pot plant named Adam Smith. I’ve always wanted to name a plant after the father of modern economics. Sadly, like Adam Smith, I think it’s passed on. If I get another, I think John Kenneth Galbraith will get the nod.

So, taking a decorative feather out the cap of those annoying interior design programs that I’ve often fallen asleep to, here then are some handy Do’s and Don’t for decorating your cubicle.

Do:

• Pin cartoons to your cube’s divider. Not too many though as this perpetuates my Dilbert Law of Employee Happiness: the number of Dilbert cartoons stuck on cubicles is inversely proportional to employee happiness – the more cartoons up on the walls, the lower employee happiness!
• Bring toys or sports equipment to work. Basketballs, cricket bats, Rubik’s Cubes, Star Wars action figures, bring ‘em all! They’re a great distraction, fun to play with and gives us all an excuse to come and visit you, making you seem far more popular than you really are!
• Express your creativity with an exciting and interesting desktop background, downloaded off the Internet during work hours.
• Hang up your Employee of the Month certificate. What else are you going to do with it?

Don’t:

• Litter your cubicle with family/pets/holiday photographs, especially if you’ve used the company’s sole colour copier to print them.
• Bring your children’s drawings to work. Let’s be honest, most of time, they’re rubbish and are very cliché – there’s a sun, some clouds, badly drawn birds, something that might be a dog, a stick person that’s meant to be you and a rectangular car which is actually quite an accurate representation of a Dodge Nitro.
• Grace your desk with wedding photos. Yes, it may have been the happiest day of your life, but we’re constantly amazed at how less attractive you look now.
• Proudly display A3 schematics of the Starship Enterprise. Chicks don’t dig it. (Name withheld to protect the nerdy)

And don’t forget to come and visit me at my delightful cubicle one of these days. As a cubicle-warming present, you can bring a pot plant.

I’ve been working as a management consultant for the last thirteen years. Most people don’t believe me when I tell them that I actually studied Human Resource Management and Marketing at university, but still ended up as an evil management consultant. There are few specific skills that one needs to be a management consultant, apart from maybe being a little analytical, but even this can be faked. You need to be able talk a great game, be clever/nimble/sneaky enough to be consistently 24 hours ahead of the client and be able to work black magic with Excel and PowerPoint.

Thirteen years is a long time… Why, it feels like just yesterday I was walking swiftly through corridors, armed only with a folder and a smirk, scaring poor employees with the threat of retrenchment. Fast forward to 2009 and I still walk really quickly through corridors, but now mostly in fear of being called into a meeting to discuss another meeting. With the economic climate being positively miserable these days, I have no doubt that soon my old colleagues and my oft overlooked “people off payroll” skills will soon be called upon again. There’s only so much cost-cutting you can achieve with squeezing suppliers, squeezing customers and squeezing chubby executives into Economy class seats!

Now that I’ve started working as a speaker, I have a great outlet for sharing my experience, observations and opinions on business, leadership, management, the workplace, our colleagues and why canteen food should be avoided at all costs. And with the advent to blogging, I now have another channel to share my ideas.

Stick around for future entries on my Top Ten Signs that you’re at a Bad Teambuilding Event, on why performance appraisals are like the Cold War and more on why canteen food should be avoided at all costs. As you’ve no doubt gathered, I feel very strongly about the latter.

If you have any comments or suggestions, drop me a line at diary@jeetesh.net

See you next week for the next edition, where I’m bound to use the word ‘stakeholders’ in ludicrously inappropriate ways.