Corporatese

As I enter the corporate world, I wonder whether I'll learn something, or will there be value addition going forward. In other words, will I resort to Corporate Speak?

I am a fan of Lucy Kellaway for some time now, and her recent Twaddle Awards were particularly hilarious. She is a columnist for FT and reads her columns out loud for the podcast audience as well (that's where I caught her). She is a crusader for sanity in corporate culture and using English instead of Jargonese.

In blogs and in forums, in conversations and mails, we are all aware of people saying things like 'going forward we should drill down, go back to the drawing board and aggressively leverage our deliverables to maximize value addition'. So it was with some relief that I read this post by Maybe MBA, who is from Chicago Booth. In a hilarious comment, Deadhedge said 'I was in a class where the professor said, "We are going to get beyond the cliches here. We are really going to drill down, peel back the onion, and kick the tires here."'

Can we start a new trend, making it uncool to use excessive and unnecessary jargon? I hate to think of myself using such language as a corporate man even though I probably will.

Wild Cats in Bangalore Campus

I came across this story in Times of India (via Indiatime). All headings from "Only in India" to "Education in Wilderness" just write themselves.

There is a leopard in Bangalore University campus. And yes, there IS. Not caught yet, and presumably s/he doesn't want to be caught. The best remark was, 'campus is very vast and it is not unlikely to sight a leopard. I think the leopard lives in the campus, but hasn’t harmed anyone so far.' This luminary was the conservator of forest.

Now I know life is not a Wilbur Smith novel, and tracking is easier said than done, but there are so many possible angles to this news. Whether you take wilderness encroaching civilisation as the economy takes a dip, callous officers waiting for a casualty to label a clearly dangerous situation dangerous, or just the visual of a real life leopard on university campus while so-called wildcat Kareena shoots in another campus in the same city, the situation is delicious.

But THE ANGLE for me has to be the invasion of us wild cats, coming to Bangalore and disrupting a staid world. People tracking our footsteps, trying to catch us, but unable to do so. Will we blaze a path? Will we try and create new space? Take our "wild" ideas and transform the staid campus of business?

Who knows?

But we will try hard. Very hard.

Falling asleep, waiting for the dream

I'm going to IIM.

Never thought I'd ever utter these words. Except to meet someone, of course. Come to think of it, I don't even have a friend who has gone to an IIM. All m friends are busy administering harmful substances and making carving marks on sick people.

I am a surgeon, still. For another 50 days. Then I'll be a student doing 1 yr EPGP course at Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. I'm still coming to terms with it, trying not to get carried away by the feeling.

Thankfully there is already a community of admits, and their brilliance keeps me grounded. I was selected in R2, and when I joined the Yahoo group, there was already so much buzz, so many activities, and so much going on that it took me a few days to just get my bearings around the group. The guys and gals have been doing a fantastic job. There are already committees and dedicated committee members doing a lot of legwork (and brain-work) for all our sake. Kudos to them, too many to name here, but they and everyone else know who they are.

Right now the majority of us is going through the process of securing a loan in a risk-averse climate. Through efforts of IIM and the group we have been able to secure a collateral free loan, but it was not easy.

There were a lot of study groups when I joined but I wonder how much people ae studying now. I hope not much, because I'm not. After obsessing over the MBA application process I'm now freaking out with movies. Will watch Slumdog soon, but saw Danny Boyle's Trainspotting recently..... mind blowing. A few scenes are bound to stick with you foreever

I think that's enough rambling for a day, and hope to catch up later.