Sunday, May 11, 2008

Survival guide for the corporate jungle

It’s a rat race out there. Dog eat dog world. The survival of the bitchiest. And all sorts of other animalistic and atavistic analogies one can cite. So for the new and not so new professionals on the threshold of a career;

Presenting the Cynic's 7C-GUIDE to Surviving the Corporate Jungle (CCC for Short) *Tadaaaaa*

Rule #1: CHANNEL the power of FUKITOL!!!
Are you living the lifestyle? Start your weekday with 1000 mg of Fukitol tablet. On Mondays, don’t stint – have two. The super powerful Fukitol tablet releases endorphins such as
“Illegitimi non Carbodium” (don’t let the b****** get you down),
“Every dog has his day and so will you”

And all other such delightful adages to help you stay fortified through the working day.

Rule #2: CALL a friend.
Telemarketers are extremely annoying specimens of humanity who WILL call and irk one in the midst of professional chaos – right? Wrong! Telemarketers can be your friends. All you need to do know is how to use them well. When a telemarketer calls, one does not snap “Busy – not interested.” Instead, one says:
"Oh thank you so much for calling. For xyz reasons I cannot afford your credit- card/housing loan/ personal loan – however I know a person who has been searching DESPERATELY for it - Please DO call him up – his name is Mr. X (Mr. X is the particular not-so-gentleman who might have pissed you off on that particular day) – oh and also, you have got my name wrong – its not Cynic but Cynelle – just so that he doesn’t get confused in case you give him my reference”

Rule #3: See the CC
Have you looked at your outlook or Lotus Notes carefully? There is a very useful invention called the CC. its not there for decorative purposes. USE IT. Use it wisely and use it WELL. CC everyone – don’t stint. CC bosses, colleagues, their wives, their pet dogs. Don’t underestimate the power of CC in another very important C in your life – the CYA.

Rule #4: The CoCo principle
And you thought CoCo meant CoCo Jambo or CoCo Chanel (depending on your gender or musical affiliations)? The CoCo principle has its genesis in advertising industry – where there is a great deal of interaction which takes place with fairly clueless but stubborn-as-hell clients. This useful principle can be adapted to all corporates as well and can be used judiciously on colleagues and senior management. The underlying principle of this is if you can’t CONVINCE, Confuse. Use multi coloured graphs. Use hyperlinks. Use cross tabs. Use arrows and the other entire useful thingummy which Power point has specifically made for this purpose. Wow them with the designs – overload them with numbers - annotate their heads with bullet points- and sock them with English which is open to various interpretations. Confuse the s*** out of ‘em until their eyes glaze over and their heads start drooping from fatigue.


Rule #5: CHUCK De Work
Have you ever played beach volleyball? Well it has some very interesting features that MUST be appropriated into your workplace viz. the art of lobbying! One can’t underestimate the role of lobbying in the workplace – it is CRITICAL. Whether it’s lobbying insults with moronic colleagues, or lobbying bills from one department to another or lobbying work to others.
Master this art until you are a professional lobbyer – especially lobbying work to the boss.
If uneasy voices protest, tell them to shut up and remind them that the boss is paid five times your salary. And remember, when in doubt ALWAYS UPWARDLY DELEGATE.

Rule #6: CLASS Participation
Did you know that your promotion and growth in an organization is directly linked to the amount you can gas fluently? Therefore, meetings provide a wonderful vehicle for growth and prosperity. ALWAYS state at least thing with a great deal of passion and vehemence and conviction at every meeting you attend. It does not have to be relevant to the topic on hand – it can be anything. On the state of the economy or the weather or what nail polish the CMD’s wife is wearing. This has often been referred to as the rule of CLASS participation.


Rule #7: CALCULATIONS for Success.
And the unfailing formula for success? Here is one which works every single time. Take your monthly gross salary amount – a nice round figure with lots of zeroes (hopefully). Divide it by 30. And every time you can feel your hair whitening and ulcers mushrooming, - chant the following mantra 1001 times.
“For every F****** day I spend here, I get these many (the daily figure) nice, green notes in my bank account .Some weekends I get this for NOT working!”
The day, and week will magically seem brighter!

To be continued: Cynic’s Tools for the Corporate Trade

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh My God. Totally needed this. Thengyu.

Epiphany said...

:D I feel I just found the cult I belong to..BTW I pity the person who pissed you off enough to write this...

Also, on receiving a mail with everybody CCed...use reply to all!

Cynic in Wonderland said...

ideasmithy - as promised. dedicated to all the kaam-ke-bhoj-ke-mare people like you and me

epiphany - hehe is it SO obvious i was pissed when i wrote this? yus, yus join the cult. i have another which is a pretending-to-work one. you can join that as well.

Nikhil Narayanan said...

Hi
Was in desperate need of something like this.
Will try and let you know the sucess story.
Hope you don't take a consulting fee ;)

-Nikhil

Anonymous said...

Shouldn't they be teaching this stuff in business school? Do they worry that if people knew exactly what corporate life involves, everyone would opt to become artists or academics?

Rada said...

Cynic,

I have a piece of tried & tested advice on Point No:6.

During meetings, just preface every sentence with the word "Blue Occean" and everybody will assume you have read the book on "uncontested market space" and start looking at you in awe!

And when you get tired of "Blue Occean", try "Red Occean".

In my experience, this also works quite well! :-)

Nirav Kanodra said...

Haha couldnt be truer.
Wish I could have read and implemented this before

Vivek Kumar said...

Nice Atwood reference..

Cynic in Wonderland said...

nikhil - ah darn, i know i should have charged money for this!

lekhini - hmmm ..actually this applies to artists and academics too i suspect. know enough aggressive non corporate type animals who thrive on politics

rada - tell me more, tell me more. is there a violet ocean and a pink ocean as well? sounds very profound.

nirav, never too late!

vivek - hmmmm ?

Anonymous said...

rofl!!!

Anonymous said...

Or better still, drop a "Thinking Hat" and pretend to think...

AmitL said...

ROFL-Cyn,this was great...some of the observations apply everywhere,I guess.Right from the cc(which people do so happily,informing everyone from the MD to the office boy,about something only one person needed to know),to 'Class participation'(something I hate) with an overdose of polysyllabic utterances,these traits are necessary/true at most places.

Rule 7,here,is renamed as 'DGDG'(Din Gin,Dirham Gin),by frustrated souls.
---
There's one golden rule which is not soo humorous,but,applies:
Keep the ball rolling.(As in'passing the parcel')When someone searches for it,it shouldn't be in your table,else you're 'out'.
---
Waiting for more tools for the corporate trade!!

Cynic in Wonderland said...

chandni :)

anon - that figures under "how to pretend you are working" list. i shall post on that as well. i have mastered that art.

amitl- dGdG sounds good. what could we name it in india? roj ka rupaiya? pass the parcel is a subpart of lobbying ( rule number 5) keep on lobbying work to other people!

Nandini Vishwanath said...

LOL. Good one :)

Anonymous said...

Nice list! :)
Though, you should have added in something about DCP (desperate CP)... no meeting is complete without adequate amounts of DCP! :)

Akshay said...

I loved "Cynic's 7C-GUIDE" ..... I have seen enough of this corporate crap....how people backbite, bitch...want to sound important.....See the CC rule: LOL....

Australopithecus said...

Hehe.nice!
..alas no 7 doesn't work for poorly paid govt employees like yours truly...oh wait..im not employed anymore..so i guess none of them apply


speaking of Fucitol...a shameless plug for own blog :P

http://khat-mal.blogspot.com/2005/09/chemsitry-is-phun-after-years-err.html

Cynic in Wonderland said...

nandini - thankeee


ditty - desperate cp ..most of it IS desperate no?

akshay - hehe

austro -how is the road scholarship treating u ? and i HAD read your post ages ago. bah

Anonymous said...

hehehe! that was a master blaster :))

looking for more!

Anonymous said...

hello cynic....
just so you know the call center guys who call you don't dial your number. its done automatically by a random number dialer(ACD) or a dialer querying a database....
sorry...he he....but couldnt help the engineer in me saying "oh man! this guy is so stupid...he actually thinks people dial the numbers...." :P

EggHe/\D said...

Any version of this survival toolkit for frustrated B-School interns ...
Much fun ...

Cynic in Wonderland said...

egghead. there is a part 2 to it which can be appropriated to bschool.