Hours well spent

To be seated on a railway platform and watching the trains go by

To be seated on the steps at the mall entrance and watch the selfies taken

To be seated in an old idyllic café where nothing and no one changes

To be sipping piping hot coffee and looking around at the other tables

To be walking aimlessly while all around people in cars and autos whizz and honk in impatience

To ramble with a friend and talk absolute nonsense of zero importance – those conversations which are forgotten once uttered, like vapour whose path one can’t trace

To be writing what one wants (like this) instead of tapping away at keyboard on the report that one has to finish

To watch the world go by

Go by in Doing while all along those hours well spent are all about Being.

Corporate Communication - A funny take

Change being the only constant, the way we communicate in the corporate world is changing too.

In the last 10 years, these are the key changes that I feel have happened:

- We Bullet more and more on each slide of the ppt

- We need infographics - even when we have nothing to say. Sorry, especially when we have nothing concrete to state.

- We create more ppts to get points across - what a decade back was done probably by walking across a few workspaces and having a discussion And reaching a decision on next steps to take. Today, that ppt will go across workspaces, with each person adding his/her two bits and finally, someone will lose the trail mail and then, well, we all know the game Passing the Secret. Open Secrets.

- People need the assurance of constant inflow and outflow of mails to feel all’s well with the world. It’s pardonable to miss out something when a colleague shares a few words across a coffee, but put the same thing on an email and send it across, if not acknowledged, it’s not right.

- And finally, my favourite – the terminologies we use when we speak. Here’s a matrix.

How we said it then	How we say it now	Me the cynic
We are meeting in Room 2	We are meeting in ‘Garuda’/’White Petal’/’Grand Canyon’.	All are names given to conference rooms. The Personal Touch. If we can name a cyclone, why not a conference room?
Do you all agree with me on this?	Are we all aligned on the same page on this?	Mere agreement isn’t enough. We need alignment.
It was good 2 hour discussion	We only have 20 minute agile meetings. Which may extend. But only agile, please.	Fitness freaks, here we go!
We need to think more before we come up with a solution.	We need to think out of the box.	Corporate decisions require right shaping, of the mind.
We had to let go of a few workers	We are rightsizing	It hurts to use the word’downsizing’ or ‘firing’. Rightsizing feels Right.
This is very good news	Epic!	Which epic is it now?
We need one brilliant idea that works.	We need ‘Aha’ moments.	Oho. Will work on it. By thinking out of the box.
We want insights.	We go beyond insight – foresight.	Poor eyesight so no vision to comment.
We don’t have much statistics on this now.	We believe it’s all about quality here.	Quality agreed. God or bad?
Can we cut the report short? It’s too lengthy.	Trim this, make it crisper, without losing the essence. Separate the noise from the signals	Are we slicing bread or baking? Or are we on a train? Which case, I see a red future for the report.

Well, as we say goodbye to 2015, I shall vertically align myself and resolve to be more agile, think more out-of-the-box, strive for more ‘Aha’ moments and hail 2016 with a lot more foresight. Everyone aligned on the same page, I hope?