Category: Management

Schadenfreude- a pleasure derived from the misfortune of others …

Dance of the Blessed Spirits
Dance of the Blessed Spirits (Photo credit: code poet)

We wait with glee in expectation of the other person to trip.

We know he is going all wrong. We could correct him.We could  point out to him his mistake.

We may have the ability to influence him ; to hold him back from the path downhill.

We could perhaps even issue a ‘cease and desist’

Yet we choose not to so do.

It is a ‘ set up to fail’ syndrome.

We realize that he is about to make a fool of himself.

Internally, we are proud of ourselves, of our superior intellect. We know.

We sit back and relax as he presents himself before an audience.

We desire eagerly that others come to know that he does not know.

Then we see him stumble, then tumble. That is a delectable spectacle.

Quietly, to oneself, it is victory time for  us.

Celebrations of the avertable adversity befalling an adversary.

The demonstration of demonic prowess within us.

This is but a pyrrhic win. For we have lost the moral right.

All that we gained we lost to ourselves even as we won.

That is an irrational, inhumane  triumph of deceit.

This post is part of Prompts for the Promptless – Ep. 3 – Schadenfreude over at Rarasaur’s blog

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The Climb up in Life

Barefoot climb.
Steep plane vertical.
Holding onto slippery rails.
Hills Blue and Black.
Dark, deep forests swaying wild.
Hot rocks smouldering.
Stones simmering in noon heat.
Lone companion on a long trudge .
Looking for the crest.
Elusive with every step.
Yet higher the ascend.
Hear the irregularity of breath.
The blaze of a fire.
Then the Sight of the Invisible.

A Security Guard’s Story

I am a security guard at the Debit and Credit Bank.
I earn a decent , minimal salary in these times of recession.
My monthly pay packet is fair enough to take home after tax deductions.
I pay taxes so that the bank where I work can be sustained through Government funding.
I am told that as a taxpayer I own quite a substantial number of shares in this DC Bank.
So I sit through the night and guard the bank which I own as a taxpayer. I guard so that external brigands do not plunder.
Everyday, I watch in awe as these blue suited, dignified looking, learned but taciturn bankers move out in hordes in the evenings.
I stay behind television screens and read newspapers ( I read as I am lonely in the darker hours of night as I struggle to keep awake)… read that my bank is paying its investment bankers $ 250 million as bonuses…It is about performance related pay… (PRP)
It is paying $ 400 million as fines for rigging the ‘Libor’…
It is creating a reserve of $ 1 billion to protect the bank from mis-sellings in insurance and swaps… ( I do not understand these words…so these might be very technical terms to understand and implement… that is why these bonuses are paid) ; banks are ambiguous; banks are complex.. they mis- sell; I mis-read!.

An Author and his work…

Is it vanity? Or is it creativity? This urge to write…
Even if it is vanity, (my friend Patrick feels it is so) , it keeps my mind active.
I am compelled to think. I am compelled to think as I type.
To blog , I have to read too. So I end up reading and writing.
That is a good thing to do in a swift transforming world.
This is the age of discontinuity as Toffler said.
So I try to change myself.
I want to change from a mundane being to an intellectual tortoise.
I cannot change others.
I can change myself.

Time Barred : Humility

As I realize that my pride has slipped,
Down the ravines of vanity dropped,
I look around in helplessness-
At achievement carcasses!
Strewn around me in defiance,
Reminding me of chance and mischance,
Of death, I had dictated yester year
Now beckons me and I shrink in fear,
Hollow roars of my forgotten brags-
Echoes of avenged ghosts now in rags,
Stare at bottomless abyss of despair,
I can look back at a muddy arrogant pyre,
Storms – of shrieks, of stills, of pangs
The futility- of frills, of frivolous, of fangs.

My Friend’s Entreaties

Recession: When will you reverse to return my lost job?
Head hunters: Do not fold up as yet as I would have no more doors to knock.
Tele interviewers: do not be insincere and pretend that I am good and yet not offer me.,.
Friends: Do not whisper at my incompetence.
Parents: Do not grieve as a quarter of a centum are unemployed.
Trade : will ships and containers move?
Car Dealers: will you sell more for the confidence factor?
Purchase Managers: At least say you will buy more.
Fed: please ease quantities of hopes.
Cliff hangers: please do not fling us on…
to the abyss of uncertainty.

No herd to follow: i stand at cross roads.

A banker: between education and instinct

My boss went to Harvard for an executive development programme. for maybe a month and a half. On return, he would make it a point to drive home that he was now well trained and even better equipped to enhance efficiency in the bank. He informed us that Harvard stood above rankings- in other words, he had no peers for efficiency. In about seventeen meetings which he convened over the next two months , he would discreetly speak about his Harvard approach to the management as dynamic solutions to extant problems.

In several of these meetings, his pet theme was the need to bring down the ratio of bad loans at the bank : the non performing loans(NPL). During one such occasion, there was a’ Harvard driven’ harangue addressed to me specifically (my region had a high percentage of bad loans) to improve performance ; other peers enjoyed the public upbraid with amusement. He suggested that I needed to be effective; and gave me a target for a reduced ratio of non performing loans over a short time frame. He said my annual appraisal would depend on my KPI of reducing bad loans. There sounded to be a threat in his tone.

As I came back to my office, with the complex of a relatively(or vastly) incompetent man (who had not been trained in Boston) …there was this frail small man, Antony waiting for me. He was one of my borrower defaulters on whom I had served notice as a part of my recovery efforts at bringing down the ratio of non performing loans… (I had anticipated the boss’ harangue and was sincerely trying to bring NPL down to manageable levels). Antony stood hesitantly outside my cabin… “my son is unemployed, and i have a family to support , Sir, please do not press this legal notice. Please do not destroy my small family. I shall pay at the earliest.” There was a tremor in his voice that reached my heartbeats. Antony had borrowed quite a sum beyond repayable means to educate his kids at the University and to treat a sick spouse. i had given him long months of grace, rescheduled the loan several times. over … now it was approaching the statute of limitation and i had to proceed… i knew that he did not have the means to pay…

Did my boss have a strategic, dynamic solution taught at his University?