Games People Play by VINAY KANCHAN: Picking up your boss and other perilous IPL habits

vinayTHE HANGOVER OF THE IPL still lingers over the working day of corporate India. It leaves footprints on the psyche of modern-day white-collar managers, seeking to infuse a sense of dynamism in their own lives. But whilst cheerleaders get paid for exhibiting a false enthusiasm when a boundary is hit, your cause might not be as well served in letting the IPL influence excessively intrude the working day.

Here is why….

Pick your boss, drop your resignation 

When the most famous spinner of the Mumbai Indians picked up the owner of his franchise, it was perhaps a subtle endorsement of her diet program and exercise regime. But copying that same stunt at the office might be tantamount to delivering a googly to your prospects at that organization. Your logic of being ‘truly hands on when working with your superiors’, is sure to fall on deaf ears. In the end you pay the price for the greatest of cardinal sins; of publicly displaying that you have a ‘lightweight’ boss.

 

The semi abandonment of station during work

AB De Villiers strutted around the crease like the three sticks behind him are non-existent, almost in a Mumbai street cricket like manner. This worked to his advantage by putting the bowlers off. However, trying to do the same at your workstation is likely to prove a headache for everyone else in the company. Clients and team mates are likely to start tearing out their hair first, and yours later, when they never find you either at your workstation, or on your designated phone lines. To compound their irritation, you could choose to visibly and wildly prance around the area, and then quickly dart back to your seat just when they enter your room. As always, the cardio involved in this is likely to leave you utterly breathless and unable to respond coherently in the first few minutes of the ensuing conversation. It’s usually all downhill post that.

Indulging in the blatant reiteration of the obvious

This year’s telecast of the IPL should have come with the statutory warning, ‘the use of sunglasses is mandated at all times’. This was because there were such blinding flashes of the obvious courtesy the commentary team. Case in point: when the match was in a tight situation, one expert regularly used to quip, ‘I think something is going to give’. Unfortunately these tactics don’t work in pressure-laden conference rooms, where true insight is the expectation. Citing on viewing a data -laden pie chart, that it has ‘such nice curves’ or ‘it eventually all adds up’, is likely to be met with polite indifference at first, and violent vituperation later. Completing your boss’s statements also might have unexpected consequences, especially when all he was espousing was a request for you to leave the room.

The in performance appraisal call, for a strategic timeout

Strategic timeouts have been a valuable addition to IPL cricket. The request for a moment to take stock and review strategy, proved to be decisive many times. Fortunes did turn around, often dramatically, once the game was resumed. Alas asking for one such in the midst of a tumultuous performance appraisal might not get you over the line. For one, bosses like to work up a head of steam when it comes to criticizing their employees and any interruption, especially when signaled for with a ridiculous hand gesture, is sure to get their goat. Secondly, if you are known to seek counsel from a peer of your boss, often recognized as his prime rival, chances are stumps are going to fly once play resumes in your game. This is then likely to be followed by many on-the-job personal timeouts, if only to update your resume.

-------------

The IPL is finally over. And while the Mumbai Indians found the desire to be self-reliant eventually to party beyond, the rest of the nation still staggers back to work, like an inebriated boxer, after one too many bad refereeing decisions.  It is perhaps vital that one switches channels and resumes focus on the challenges at hand. It is time to take guard all over again.

The writer is a creative thinking trainer and an independent brand consultant. He is the author of the book, 'Lessons from the Playground' and also the patron saint of a footballing movement called Juhu Beach United, that celebrates ‘the unfit, out of breath working professional of today’.

Category