The Diary of a Reluctant Management Consultant

Imagine all the exciting meetings that can take place in this room?!

Earlier today I spent a precious half hour of my billable time trying to set-up a meeting. Now we all know how much fun meetings can be: they’re a great way to meet new people, indulge in a free cup of coffee, ask irrelevant and often rhetorical questions before leaving early enough not to get any actions assigned to you. However, setting-up a meeting shouldn’t have to be a painful exercise. You get onto Outlook, add invitees, chose a  meeting room, check availability, perhaps tweak the time a bit to suit your internet surfing habits and then you’re done.

But not today. Today, trying to book a meeting was about as difficult as trying to get the French to work a forty hour work week. The year’s only just begun and people’s diaries are already booked out. An hour is all I need and the first opportunity I can find based on their schedules is the 29^th of January! What can these people possibly be doing this early in the year, apart from trying to impress their colleagues at how busy they’re pretending to be and of course, irritating me?

Further investigation (read intimidation), proved that the guilty WLBs’ (Work-shy, Lazy Bastards) schedules were about as empty as a list of interesting things about Gordon Brown. To “catch-up” they’d booked out their diaries with an all-encompassing entry called “Work” starting at 08:30, finishing at 16:30, everyday for the next two weeks. Amateurs! If you’re going to fake your diary entries you’re going to have to be a little more creative than “Work”! There’s always “Strategy Session”, “Project Prioritisation” and the ever reliable “Performance Review” to substitute for goofing off. And 08:30 to 16:30 is so predictable! You’ve got the mix the times up; a two hour workshop here, an hour team meeting there and maybe even forty five minutes for non-existent travel. I leant the latter from an attorney. 99% of attorneys give the other 1% a bad name.

The second challenge that I faced while struggling to set-up my meeting was trying to get a decent meeting room. There are many factors that influence your choice of meeting room, including obvious ones such as the number of people it can accommodate, availability of a screen, projector, flip chart, white board, working white board pens, that sort of thing. But there are other more subtle reasons for choosing a particular meeting room – a nice view, effective air conditioning, comfy chairs and proximity to the flatscreen TVs so you can check the cricket score in moments of boredom. Some organisations have floors dedicated to Executives, which means any meeting on their floor comes with lunch and snacks, which are always a good idea. An old client had a rule that you could ask for tea, coffee and biscuits to be served at your meeting only if an external party was attending. As we were consultants, we deemed ourselves to be external parties which meant biscuits all year round. It’s the little things that count, even if they are tiny, soggy ginger biscuits.

The names that companies give to their meeting rooms offer an interesting glimpse at their corporate culture. The bland (read Swiss) name their rooms efficiently, combining the floor number and the room number, starting in the northwest corner, proceeding regimentally round the building in a clockwise fashion. South African companies are quite keen on using our flora and fauna to christen our meetings rooms, which does raise an eyebrow when you’ve got back-to-backs in Buffalo, Bush Baby and Bougainvillea.

When another client moved into a new building staff were asked to suggest names for the meeting rooms, with the winning suggestions receiving a prize of dinner for two at an average restaurant (any restaurant that has ice-cream and hot chocolate sauce on its menu). I suggested Bart, Homer and Crusty the Clown, but for some unknown reason didn’t win. Other suggestions included Saturn, Jupiter and Mars (I’ve always wanted to go to Mars for a meeting); Silverstone, Monaco and Imola (you guessed it, suggestion from a grand prix nerd) and Sarbanes, Oxley and GAAP (those goofy auditors).

And the winning meeting room names were… and I promise you this is true: Vision, Mission and Values! Go figure.

The best meeting room names I’ve come across are Steam Room, Hotel Room and Leg Room. No surprise here: advertising agency.

Now, if you’ll please excuse me, I have a Performance Review at 09:00.

Employee of the Month

Over an awful lunch in our awful canteen, one of my colleagues was complaining that another valuable “asset” in the company is being rewarded, even though we all know he’s a Work-shy Lazy Bastard (WLB). Despite the fact that the reward is fairly inconsequential, similar to those quality “employee of the month” frames at your local McDonald’s, it does irk a lot of people that the guy who puts the ‘ass’ in ‘asset’ is being acknowledged for his ephemeral hard work. Yes, this is very unfair. Perhaps as unfair as Jethro Tull winning the 1989 Grammy for Best Hard Rock/Metal performance instead of Metallica, but the WLB must be doing something right. Somehow or the other, he must be creating the impression that he’s a hard worker, someone who goes the extra mile, someone who’s a quality employee. Don’t hate the playa, hate the game, as my hip hop lovin’, my pants are hanging below my bum, is Metallica a brand of car polish, 23 year old team member always says.

After careful observation of the WLB in its natural habitat, the cubicle farm, I have discovered some really neat ways for you to create the illusion that you’re the business shizness (I may be spending too much time with the 23 year old). With minimal effort, and I really do mean minimal, you too can soon be the proud owner of an “employee of the month” certificate.

Businesses that experience resource constraints (short-staffed if you’re in retail) are always talking about cloning their staff. A pipe dream perhaps, until of course genetically modified crops finally work their magic. But this can now be achieved by simply sending e-mails very early in the morning or late at night. People get these sneaky e-mails and think that you’re really putting in a special effort. Meanwhile, you’re just sitting on your couch, sipping a beer while watching illegally downloaded episodes of “House”. It’s remarkably easy to achieve. For Outlook 2007:

• Open a new mail message
• Click on the ‘Options’ tab
• Click on the ‘Delay Delivery’ icon
• Under the ‘Delivery options’ section, select the time when you would like your e-mail to be sent (try not to choose round numbers, go for something like 02:23)
• Click ‘Close’, then ‘Send’

Colleagues will be astonished when they see you’ve been working at 02:23! A hard worker like that is surely deserving of reward.

Another shifty WLB trick is to block book your diary. Simply set-up nondescript sounding meetings with yourself. Things like ‘Budget Meeting, ‘Team Meeting’ or ‘Performance Review’ will all suffice. When people try to book meetings with you, they’ll see how frightfully busy you are. Some will even call to try get a precious hour of your time. Cancel a fake meeting and they’ll love you even more for accommodating their humble meeting in your stressful schedule.

People who have meetings all day are always rushing from place to place. To validate your impenetrable diary, you must do the same. No matter where you are going in the building, even it’s to have a nap in your car, you must get there at pace. Look frustrated if you can, it adds to the effect. If you get stopped by a colleague, tell them that you’d love to chat but you’re running late for a meeting, but he’s more than welcome to book some time in your diary… Another quick tip, leave meetings early, because naturally you have another meeting to rush to!

A quality employee is also a knowledgeable employee. Thus, it’s important for you to demonstrate just how knowledgeable you are. This can be achieved by using a lot of jargon and abbreviations, mentioning random obscurities or by simply making things up. Ask people what they think of the new King III report. Question whether the GL has been updated with the EQTs, the MMs and the NCDs ASAP. Object in meetings because you feel the group just isn’t taking GR58A into account. Wait a week for someone to thank you for raising the important GR58A issue, which thankfully, has now been resolved. Go ahead and start making space for that “employee of the year” award!

Now, if you’ll please excuse me, I have to send a few e-mails this evening…

“Hi, my name’s Mao… and I’m a workaholic”…

All together now, “Hi Mao!”

The problem with work today is that there’s so much of it. Everyone’s getting in early and leaving late, people are working weekends and much to my irritation, some are even working and eating at their desks! I confess it’s the potential for crumbs and the reality of the Stewed Yak Surprise odour that disturbs me.

And let’s not even begin to discuss the Crackberry-addicted workaholics. These people are permanently affixed to their Blackberry devices. They begin to tick nervously if their “productivity tool” doesn’t vibrate with annoying regularity in meetings. “I’m very important, surely someone must have sent me an e-mail in the last thirty seconds”, even if it’s a pointless cc-All announcement, telling the entire company that the Basel II team is having a team lunch and won’t be available for the rest of the afternoon, thus forcing you to put on hold any pressing Basel II issues you may have had. To demonstrate their omnipotence, their inability to focus and to create the impression that they’re working 24/7, they will reply to every e-mail, no matter how trivial or critical, with a brief, but curt I’m-too-busy-to-use-full-sentences message, such as “Thanx”, “FYI” or my favourite, “Yes”. But I digress… back to excessive amounts of work.

There are some signs that you might be overworked… If your mailbox is over the limit, as a result of work-related e-mails and not videos of someone’s pet dog chasing the light from a torch, clips of Paul Potts or Susan Boyle auditioning for Britain’s Got Talent, amusing Australian beer commercials or let’s face it, porn, then you may be working too hard. If your office and cell phone voicemail are full because of work-related queries and not your bunny-boiling ex wanting to get back together again, then you might be a slave to the grind. And, if your calendar in Outlook is fully booked from eight till five every day because of work-related meetings and not because you booked the time out to complete your tax return (for example…), filled your diary with fake meetings to surreptitiously suggest that you’re busy, preventing people from setting-up meetings with you and artificially dousing yourself with work credibility (known in the cube farm as work-cred; it’s like street-cred, but not as cool), then you may be a corporate drone. Even more sinful is if you have and even plan on attending meetings scheduled on a Friday afternoon. Unless of course, these are faux meetings, designed to throw your colleagues off the scent that you’re actually going for Friday afternoon drinks and you don’t want to invite them:

Subject: Doctor’s Appointment

Venue: Their Offices (News Cafe, corner Gwen Lane and Fredman Drive, Sandton)

Attendees: Dr. Beat; Gloria Estefan

When work begins to impact your personal life, then you’ve really got problems. At university, if you got 51% for an exam, you were considered neglecting your friends. If your handicap is now carpal tunnel syndrome and not a -4, then you’re clearly neglecting your golf buddies. If you refer to your children as Resource01, FTE (Full Time Equivalent) or TBA (To Be Announced) then you’re neglecting your family. If you think ‘The Dark Knight’ is Sir Salman Rushdie, you haven’t been to the movies in a while. If you think ‘Ugly Betty’ works in accounting, then despite this being perfectly true, you’re obviously not watching enough TV. If you’re reading this blog on your Blackberry, while waiting to board a flight back home after spending two weeks in Lagos on business, then someone needs to get a life!

Have a great week and don’t work too hard…