Sunday, July 02, 2006

Strategies to successful... ehhh... career?

At the end of the day, 'Communication', they say is what differentiates good from average, exceptional from just about okay, average from pathetic! The way 'raw facts' or in most cases 'no facts' are 'positioned' can tilt the balance of perception to any of the grades ranging from pathetic to average to good to exceptional!

I am a big believer of 'making this world a better place' and thereby, I wish to make my contribution public today. Please do remember to take a leaf out of this post - trust me, it is useful in every sphere of professional life - for a junior trying to defend his work (or lack of it) at office, someone looking for guidance on presenting to top management or to 'work around' with tough questions from the client! Without any further adieu, ladies and gentlemen, let me present the statements that can make our dull careers successful.

Disclaimer: If you are one of those backed by the relentless desire to be sincere in doing work, then please stay away!! For rest of us, these are very useful statements - in more ways than one, these are 'platform independent' - you can use them in almost any context!

Situation 1: When you have done some work, but it is far from complete

"This piece of analysis is interesting..." take a pause, count 1,2,3 internally and then repeat "it is interesting..." with a nod of head, this time!

"I agree with what Mark has said, my analysis shows similar leading trends..." now, with a look to Mark that conveys "well done mate!"

"I lost all my project files last night. Since then, I have managed to get to this stage of work... I am quick, I know! But the work I had done till yesterday evening had all possible details.. lost it all, Jeeezuz...!"

Situation 2: When you have absolutely no clue to what Mr. Boss is talking about.

"...that, in my view is dot on... I would have guessed the same..."

"...my workstream is so exciting, there are multiple ways of looking at this and I am in process of getting to the answer, looking at different dimensions in a situation that is changing dynamically... let me get back to you by tomorrow afternoon..."

"... the data is inconsistent..."

"I have actually managed to speed up on this... does tomorrow afternoon sound like a plan to discuss this?"

Situation 3: High level client/top management meetings!

"There is a huge potential to create value, unleash synergies and move up the value chain..."

"We did a lot of ground work, this presentation is only to discuss steps that would impact the project most..."

Now, two words that can be like 'wow':

"I think", well it has to be said in a different way "Aaai thiiieenk..." followed by a pause of 3 seconds, look at everyone around and people would react back with "I get that... amazing stuff"

.........

Hope this was useful! Please do experiment and let me know if it works! However, I wish you luck! :-)

4 comments:

Rohini said...

:D Quite a funny post but must say a practical one, lemme try some of the fundas here at ms... if there is some gochi that happens as an aftermath na.. then you see.....
Haan one more thing, in the first couple of paras if you make long sentences little short, it will be more grasping.

Maharaj said...

dont listen to ninja about the making long sentences short...it goes with the spirit of this post...to confuse junta (your boss in this case) with vibes... ;) congrats on the gyan.

Epiphany said...

got here from sidin's blog....looks like you have done a M.B.A :)
nice post btw....

Anonymous said...

It took me long years to master such responses...you got great value out of your MBA !!