Category: slice of life

The CEO is very inventive on how to defer avoiding taking any decisions.  I have been seeing  this from the beginning itself. Of late, his indecisiveness has reached peak proportions.

On one particular deal, he tested my endurance so much by being unreasonably rigid about extending a small credit terms to a good customer. I was convinced that this customer is credit-worthy.

When I had almost given up on the deal, the customer came down a bit and offered to pay on delivery of goods. It was late in the night when customer spoke to me. So I decided to email about it to CEO.

Next day morning, CEO called me to his chamber promptly. I thought he would be happy with the progress made with this particular client. But he said this was not acceptable and now wanted 100% pre-payment before the goods leave the factory. Inside me, there is upsurge of anger and was about to erupt outside as words any time.  Luckily, his phone rang at that time.  As he was about to pick that phone up, he said I will call you later. I came out quickly. I must thank the phone call, lest I would have really brought out the anger outside.  Althought I did not let out the anger, the anger persisted inside and I was able to sense the losing of energy from inside.

After a couple of hours, he again called me to his chamber. This time, he wanted to discuss the language of my email which I sent to him the previous night.  I found it really silly when he mentioned some fullstop, comma errors in my English.

He wondered aloud – “While emailing is convenient, the quality of the correspondence goes down. In a speed, we just type whatever that comes to mind. We do not think and write. In my younger days, I used to dictate the letter to our secretaries, then we will read the draft, make more changes after careful thought and then only the letter will be finalized. In this SMS era, there is hardly any quality in communications”.

While he was about continue his intellectual musings further, my phone rang. I excused myself and came out to talk on phone. I did not go back to his chamber later. Phones are a boon!

Negativity that we undergo from time to time is like a Theatre Screen. It obstructs the show while preparations are on in the other side. If the viewer gets impatient or restless about the closed screen and leaves the theatre mid-way, then he will miss the joyous show ahead.

The internal mood during negativity can be very tumultuous. It might force us to do something impulsive, or stupid. In fact, few of my previous job shifts were the results of becoming impatient about seeing the closed stage screen. So, while we observe the negativity from inside as it floats around, we should stay clinging to our deep-seated faith that the screen will be lifted soon and the show will start.

I have been wooing a potentially a large volume customer for quite sometime. Finally, the time came for us to send our best prices. When I emailed him the rate, there was complete silence. Then I spoke to him over phone ; did not sound enthusiastic. We agreed to meet each other personally.

Prior to the quotation process, this particular customer had sampled his current product and wanted us to match or better that. The technical team had no practical point of view while submitting the product sample to the client. They took a very ideal view and submitted A-grade sample which, as expected, was approved by the customer. Our technical team, in its enthusiasm, exceeded the quality of sample submitted by the client. I infer that the customer’s sample may have been B-grade.

In our exuberance to impress, the market reality was ignored. We did not realize that the client is used to certain price level and the quality can be commensurately lower than our premium quality A-grade sample. It may also be possible that the VP must have influenced the QA manager to send A-grade sample to this client (despite knowing market conditions!) to sabotage my efforts.

When the customer saw our price, he was taken aback. It was too steep. As we being a new supplier and trying to get entry as a supplier into that large company, we did not do any favour to ourselves by quoting unreasonably high price, ignoring market realities.

My minutes of the meeting subsequent to my personal meeting with the customer triggered a dialogue process, which in itself a positive development.

I was aware that we do not have regular buyers for our B grade product. Infrequently, we are able to sell B grade at price far less than what indicated by this particular customer.

Now, the moot point is – should we re-sample the product or not? My answer was – no need. It was because that the customer himself will not use the product that we will be supplying and it will be distributed to various franchisee restaurants for consumption. I was proposing to ship a trial consignment of B grade only without informing them so. If the trial supply goes through smoothly, we can safely enter into annual contract with them.

The CEO as usual was non-committal and did not want to take any decisions himself. This was evident from his saying that he would be discussing with the factory guys when he visits there in about ten days from now.

Surprisingly, the tea-drinking director took sudden interest in this business. So he called me into his chamber, where as usual CEO was already sitting there. Inescapably, I was served with Black tea as usual. The director did not approve of my idea. He said that what I am proposing is not ethical. He felt that we should somehow make them to approve our B-grade sample and then go ahead with trial order. My practical approach had to give in to his holistic cum authoritative approach.

The Director’s and the CEO’s apparent apathy to diagnose the deeper ill – lack of business perspective by the factory team and its leaders – did disturb me a little. I chose to over-look that and concentrate on further process ahead.

I decided to go by what the Director told and started thinking ways to propose re-sampling of our product again by the customer. Do not know if their Vendor Management / QA Systems will permit this. CEO had asked B to re-do the costing of B-grade product and inform me. I think I would propose the revised quote with a provision to re-submit the samples. Let me see what their response will be.

Just staying in the process without expecting any one particular outcome is very soothing. It helps enormously to stay centred and to keep negativity at bay. Under present environment that I find myself in, it may be the only suitable way as the variables and actors are too many. Why to rush out hurriedly on seeing the closed screen or be under the spell of negativity? The wait for a glorious play to begin may not be long.

Mostly people start invariably from the bottom – except for a blessed few!  From my own experiences so far, I have seen and observed that the concept of respect keeps changing at various levels.

Twenty years back, I started working with an ice-cream brand. I used to address everyone “sir” – the immediate supervisor (who at the every opportunity will go out of office at any pretext to be with his brother to aid him in Auditing assignments), the drunkard Junior accounts executive (whom I later came to know as a school drop out), the Fatty Cashier (  who will keep on counting more than ten times even if it is Rs 300 that he is disbursing ) and an angry assistant production manager (who threw his weight around by shouting at everyone for no reason – Later, I came to know that GM production did not rate him highly and because of this, this assistant production manager was suffering from low self-esteem. His throwing weight around must have served him therapeutically).

The demonstration of too much respect helps one initially. When one starts without any working experience, there is no pre-conceived notion of superiority in one self. It is easy to get along with people at any level then, by demonstrating a lot of respect externally. As one grows in the career, some sort of expertise is acquired in whatever function one focuses on. By that time, one’s individual value systems decide how he shows his respect towards the senior and junior colleagues.

If one is a practical career-oriented person and an insecure one in heart, then he gives the superiors too much respect and over-does it to the point of embarrassment to others. One of my ex-colleagues (with whom I am still maintaining contact) went to the extent that he used to carry the GM Marketing’s personal luggage when he accompanied on any official tours. He is now a GM in a tea exports company. I feel sorry for the guys who would be working under him now. They must be carrying his weight – both figuratively and literally!

In some industries such as advertising, IT etc, I have heard that the environment is very informal. So the employees are encouraged to call any colleague on a first name basis, irrespective of the hierarchy. I have not had the opportunity of working is any such organizations, except on one occasion when I was working for a Foreign company. It was about ten years back. I had a few Indian colleagues working with me. We used to find it very difficult to address our Chairman plainly as Lee (His full name was Stanley Lee). My colleague and friend – Dhiraj Bansal – who is from Delhi – forgetfully addressed him as “Lee Saab” once. Mr. Lee said – “I don’t own a Saab, Dhiraj. I drive Mercedes”.

In my present organization, I see that all managers are called sir by everyone. I find this too strange considering that Indian corporate scene had undergone so much cultural change in the recent times.

Many times the garb of respect is worn when one is low on competency and confidence. The VP (who is almost 5 levels senior to me in hierarchy) always addresses me as Mr. Raman in his emails. Ditto while talking over phone also. I told him a few times that he can call me without adding Mr as prefix.  He replied – “I am always trained to give respect to all people who I work with”…..hmm….immediately after saying this, he called B for something – not as Mr., but on B’s first name. So VP has communicated something to me through this – “Do not expect me to be friendly with you, Mr. Raman.” So respect also acts as a tool of disdain – if one does not want to become informal and to keep colleagues at a distance.

B is little weirder. B communicates minimally with me, thereby not allowing me to know him clearly. However I do get glimpses to his “real” personality at times. Whenever I call him on phone for official matters, he starts the conversation with a predictable sentence – “Raman Saab, hukm kariye” which roughly means “Mr. Raman, I am at your command”. This sounds so shallow. Such phrases hide people’s real faces and intentions. No, actually they give out the signals which we can decode – “Please do not come close to me. Tell me only what you want me to do. I shall do it if it is convenient”.

Last time I spoke to B, the conversation started with the customary I am at your command. I asked if I could get an action plan for one of the projects which we were working on. He said I cannot get it, as the computer systems at the factory is down and is not expected to be in order for several hours. After I had put the receiver down, I immediately received an e-mail from B – a forward mail which he had sent to all his contacts (it seems that he had included me also in his mailing lists…..I am lucky!).  His forward mail contained the image of some saint whose Samadhi is located somewhere near Rishikesh. The mail instructed its recipients to forward the image to at least 8 people. I acted as if I am at B’s command and immediately forwarded the mail to 8 of my contacts.

I had had a minor tiff with Mala for some 2-3 days. Actually, the issue was very petty. The kids’ annual leave had started. So the family wanted to go to some hill station.

I would love to take them on a vacation, but getting my leave sanctioned is going to be next to impossible. So I have avoided the topic with Mala. One day, she started nagging about it so much that I lost my cool and shouted her back.She did not speak to me for two days. The silence was uneasy. It really made me very uncomfortable.

Things became normal only because we had a visitor from Chennai. My friend wanted to stay with us for a night, as he had to catch the early morning flight back the next day. The friend was received by Mala with her usual warmth and hospitality. The dust settled at the home front.

One morning, I got up grumpy. It was a Friday…oops…two more days of work before Sunday. The thought itself tired me. So I decided to take off, calling office sick (“Viral fever”). Viral fever usually lasts two-three days. So to make it look realistic, I decided to skip the office on Saturday also.

Absence from work is a sign – that the work is becoming unenjoyable. What was my reason for skipping work? Is it Laziness? Or avoiding the office or avoiding the superiors? I stopped searching for reasons. On Saturday evening, my elder daughter wanted to go to a Children’s movie. By the time the movie ended, my mood had become lightened.

On Monday, I resumed work. Surprisingly, no one asked me about my viral fever…strange….CEO did not call me throughout the day….very strange….is he avoiding me? Why should I start caring for the CEO now? Am I walking on the familiar path of insecurity? So decided not to contemplate about or to worry about why CEO did not call me. I must stay centered!

Few issues came up. VP was over active now. He started chasing me for new orders as the plant had nothing to produce in May. I only wish his approach was more positive. The VP’s email was instructing me that I should email “the Purchase Orders” of the clients for May production. It sounded strange. VP did not worry about zero support, very slow response, poor technical expertise and complete lack of team-spirit. But he wanted my POs for un-booked businesses very quickly. Great commitment!

I must confess the VP’s strange instruction made me nervous. So I decided to attack the unresolved customer leads. One issue was with a new customer.  Our team already had this particular customer’s buying specs. The Cartel as usual was in its elements and wanted to escape responsibility. So I was asked to get the product samples for us to match.The customer was acting pricey and did not give an answer to my repeated requests for having their product samples (which, I explained to him, would help us understand their product requirements clearly).

After reading VP’s mail, I became desperate. So called up this particular customer and pleaded with him passionately. He finally yielded and agreed to show the samples to us, on the condition that one of us should visit their factory and see the samples there itself. The ten days’ stalemate was broken with this. I informed the VP so.

VP was happy to get a chance like this, now that I worked hard to reach up to this stage. He sent a one-liner email – “We cannot depute any one to visit the customer’s factory. Please ask the customer to email us the product photographs”. I did not like this. After ten days, he has changed the goal post even further. I sent him the following reply – “Will try to get the photographs. We should remember that he is a potential customer and not a supplier or service provider to us”.

My reply angered the VP. He called me on phone and started blasting. I was keeping cool in the first half of the in-coherent conversation. The VP said that I should not write discourteous language to him. I asked him where was I impolite to him.

His raw anger towards me came out as unclear words, which I could not decipher. Adding to his anger was his poor English. Purposefully, I was speaking to him in English. The English language did not give the flexibility to him to show his anger fully. He was fumbling for apt words….at one point, he asked me a strange question in Anger – “are you a woman or what?” I failed to understand why this basic question has to suddenly feature in this angry exchange. It appeared that VP might have said this intentionally to provoke me to react strongly. Expressing one’s anger effectively is a fine-art and not many can do that to the maximum effect. I am not too sure of my skill in this area. So my response was more of a shocked response than of a true anger – “Shut up now…mind your language. Speak like a gentleman!”…He put down the phone with a bang…

Anger saps the life energy. I really did not want to fight. This fight was thrust upon me. I was trying to collect my calmness after having this unpleasant conversation.

The Intercom buzzed. CEO called me to his chamber. As expected, the VP had spoken to the CEO over phone in the meanwhile. CEO was calm throughout the conversation and patiently had listened to me out, which is a rarity. It did not matter to me whatever was his reaction. The CEO at the best can play only political games with the VP. VP is not going to mend his ways because of CEO. That’s for sure.

Many times, we find it convenient to do or to move restlessly rather than contemplating. If one does not want to be responsible, one can just be on the move or go without any deep thought or questioning one’s action consciously. Thinking or contemplation involves assuming responsibility for the situation one finds himself in ; it is purely a voluntary internal process.

Habitual action without thinking is irresponsible. Action based on too much thinking may be defensive.  Action based on clear contemplation with the inner, loving awareness will be the right action. Conscious action is action based on loving awareness (…need to contemplate on what this loving awareness is!).  Isn’t it called conscious living?

The initial days in this organisation were spent wondering if it was right to join this company. Then I found myself in the thick of things. My inner-self prodded me to go about contacting as many customers as possible. The quality of initial leads that came in – made CEO and the Director to notice me. My sustained efforts have brought in more inquiries. This consistency has obliterated my self-doubt and diffidence.

As on date, no major deals have been struck though. But no one pushes me for that either. My seniors are happy about the efforts itself.

Let us return to three obstacles.

CEO still continues avoiding taking any decisions. This will imply – if I take decisions, he would not object. This also implies that the CEO will not be of support when the decision goes awry. As long as I am on the firing line, the CEO will not mind me taking decisions.

VP’s intransigency is becoming more and more irrelevant. It is obvious that his competency levels are far less than what he tries to project. Only the official position has given some authority to him. Some days back one of the Cartel Member – The finance manager- visited the office. From the interactions, I understood he too is allergic towards VP’s behaviour and personality. On a particular administrative matter, the VP seemed to have behaved in a very arrogant fashion with him. In this regard, the Cartel Member complained to the (tea-drinking) Director. The director seems to have re-assured the Finance Manager of his secured place in the organisation and also gave out the impression that VP is being kept under watch.

The CEO is repeatedly asking me about any potential candidate who can be head-hunted from the industry for filling the VP’s post. So all is not well with VP’s own position in the company.

The Cartel – 3rd obstacle – is slowly but surely responding better nowadays. The finance Manager’s visit to the office and the time spent with him have broken ice with him to some extent. These days, the Production Manager keeps calling me on phone and voluntarily discussing pending things. He of course keeps mentioning that the conversations are off the record; he would still want me to come through VP for any official requests. At least, the unofficial avenue of communication is open.  QA Manager is still indifferent. B hardly communicates with me.

The slow response is something I may have to live with for ever, I think. Both the Cartel and the VP are lethargic. They need to pushed, cajoled and pressurised to elicit responses. This is not my preferred way of working. I normally expect voluntary and prompt responses from the team members. If it is not happening, it is better to accept the reality and adapt.

So do the 3 obstacles still exist? It may exist, but I sense it has now become diluted in its form now. This could become possible only because of my constant efforts to bring in more and more business inquiries without getting frustrated over the lack of response or the desired results. So if one accepts the reality instead of resisting it and goes about acting based on deep inner thinking (or Loving Awareness – what is this? I really should try to answer this), the reality could be changed. Is it changing for me?

8 hours and 30 minutes – that’s the duration I am required to spend in the office. I have always been curious to know how this duration is spent by all corporate executives on an average – how much percentage of real work, work related thinking, personal chores, reading news papers, browsing entertaining websites, following cricket scores, idle chat with colleagues, etc.,

Admission of not using the working time productively is something rare to come across. Usually the norm is to show off eloquently on shallow things that were accomplished during the day.

Many years ago, I had a colleague who was responsible for Insurance matters and I was sharing work place with him. Before leaving office for the day, he called his superior on intercom and said that he could not do much work that day as he was fully tied up on a circular for an increased demand of premium by a particular Insurance company. He further boastfully suggested to the superior that he was not very clear about the circular received and would like to discuss about it in detail. If he had to seek more clarity with his superior, he could have done on that day itself. May be, Wednesdays are more suitable for such discussions, because on the whole of Tuesday, he just read that particular letter once and filed it into one of his files as if it was insignificant. He was fully busy listening to radio commentary of India – Australia cricket match which India later won.

I had met some superiors who would pretend being busy just to avoid facing some issues. I had once received a big quality claim from one of the clients in Europe. The original email sent by the customer was copied to my superior also. So I was sure that he was aware of this development. When I was about to discuss on this claim, he said over the intercom that he is too busy now and any matter has to wait for the next day. The next day he summoned me briefly on some other subject. Before I could say anything of this quality claim, he said he has to rush for an urgent meeting with the banker and avoided discussing. Actually he went out for the meeting only after spending 3-4 hours in the office. In fact, I had even received copy of some mails which he sent to some other customers on not so important and not so serious issues, before him leaving for the important meeting.

I always wanted to understand the psychology behind this behaviour. Number one could be that it is an unpleasant development, so it can wait. Number two, the boss would have waited for me to respond first and be on the line of fire. After 2-3 days, he would come to this matter and will even call the customer hoping that my holding the fort for first 2-3 days would have cooled off the customer. While I would have been trying my best to avoid paying or lessening the quality claim amount, the boss would agree virtually for everything that the customer would be saying on the quality claim. Bosses are always Heroes.

The time management skills of the Cartel must be very interesting. This is reflected in their variety of excuses over my pressing for some replies or assistance or actions.

“was busy in a funeral last two days and so will reply you tomorrow” (The word “Funeral” made me go silent – usage of a small word to the fullest effect)

‘Costing will have to wait as I am expecting a client visiting us at 4.00 pm” (what will he do until 4.00 PM? That I did not ask)

“did you send the mail? No I did not receive it” (Their email client application seem to have been fitted with invisible sieves to filter out only my messages)

“I called you to tell you that Internet is not working….but I could never get your line” (Blame it on telecommunication company!)

“I am coming to head office on Thursday…let us discuss about it personally” (You will receive personal attention, never mind the time delays!)

More than others, I am more worried about myself losing cool when I hear the above creative excuses and do something drastic. So far, I could keep my emotions under check. Because I see a benefit in this– I will learn how to creatively invent reasons for not attending to things immediately. “See things can wait…who knows, they may sort out themselves without us doing anything?” I am becoming creative!

I have almost given up on CEO doing anything constructively to ease me from this cold-shoulder attitude from the factory team, on whom I depend a great deal to reply to my customers’ enquiries and questions. The moment I open this topic, he would go on a non-stop lecture about how I need to sharpen my inter-personal skills to get close to the Cartel. Wish he follows what he preaches so that his words can command obedience from the Cartel.

I had to travel to Mumbai on a Friday. Did not realize that I can’t go alone! The boss insisted on accompanying me for this visit, as he wanted to use this pretext to visit his family in Mumbai and spend the weekend.

He is living on his own in this city. His wife did not want to re-locate; she has a cosy job with a MNC in Mumbai.

There were only two meetings originally – with a fast food Chain and an off-shore facility management firm. This could have been managed on a single day visit to Mumbai without needing to stay there. But CEO wanted to stay over the weekend, so he wanted me to invent a meeting on Saturday too, which I did – with a prospective distributor for our retail range.

Being a hot summer, the CEO instructed the concerned staff to book the tickets on a plane on a Thursday evening time itself. For a flight that was scheduled to leave at 5.00 PM, we left the office at 1.30 pm. The CEO was too punctual!

On Friday, we went to the first meeting. He was thrilled at the response we got. Actually, it was nothing special. The potential customer shared all his volume details, target pricing and the product specifications. Needlessly, in the midst of the meeting, CEO called up VP on phone as if he would be ready with all the details. In fact, the VP uttered some inaccurate market info just to show off to CEO. The CEO duly passed on this info to the customer’s official who was chairing the meeting. The latter dismissed it curtly, saying he buys that particular ingredient at half the price of “market info” given by VP.

At the end of the meeting, the CEO was so elated that he wanted to have a beer over lunch. Once he started drinking, he forgot the notion of time. He started calling his ex-friends, current friends and to-be friends one by one. I should have brought some cotton to plug my ears. He was busy shamelessly selling himself to some potential targets.

The excerpts :-
To a Medical Doctor who used to study with his son — “You must be over-worked, once in a while you should relax by having dinner with me”
To H (his present secretary) – “You must realize I am not a Hanuman”
To a 45-year-old Lady (his ex-secretary in his previous employment) – “I know today is your Birthday and I was dying to talk to you…….oops …is it next month?…..so what, advanced Happy Birth Day”

The telephonic talk went on for almost one hour. While we were early to the airport on the previous day, we were not so early for the second meeting.

The second customer was a bit irritated at our late reporting for the meeting ( by 60 minutes). I gave some lame excuses. We were told to wait for some time.

The CEO again started talking on phone in the customer’s place also. He sounded pompous during a loud phone conversation with some unknown person (male friend for a change!) – “so bloody busy with hectic work….need to relax…will have to plan a holiday soon…. Have you been to Mauritius?…is it a good place to holiday?” – I was wondering why he is showing off so much in this place….and then found the reason immediately– there was a gorgeous receptionist sitting opposite to the place where we were waiting….as I started thinking why has this guy not started talking to the receptionist as yet, fortunately, we were called in for the meeting.

At the end of the trip, the CEO appeared impressed with my contacts and the presentation. He started speaking motivating words – “Let us make it happen…we should double the turnover in a year…we can be a good team”. I did not know what to reply, simply remained quiet.

Unexpectedly, the CEO asked me – “do you know any good candidate who can replace the VP?” — I wondered why he is asking me this. Before I say anything, he said “Let this be confidential between us….can you recommend any one?”….I said – “Let me see” – sounding non-committal.

Nice opportunity to replace VP, really. I can speak to my friend who is working with another processing company. I am sure he will be interested. I have worked with him before – a good, reliable and knowledgeable guy. He will be a good guy who can support me a great deal, unlike the present VP. But I needed to be sure if the CEO is really so powerful to replace the VP. Or is he just trying to use me as a pawn in his power game? Curiously, he was not willing to share the details on why he wants to replace VP. So let me be also silent and do not initiate anything, at least until the CEO convinces me of his invincibility.

Philosophers say that life operates at two levels, external and internal. Our internal world comprises of our thoughts, perceptions, turbulence, dreams, fears, mind’s dialogues etc. The external world makes up all things physical, titles, political power, possessions, wealth, designation etc

New age guys tell us that it is essentially our internal world that gets extended out as illusory things that we perceive as external to ourselves. One particular school of Buddhism principles states that our environment is part of us only. This means that it is our conscious thinking that constantly creates the external world we experience. There may be time delays between conscious thought and the unfolding reality, actually it does not matter in spiritual world (as the factor of time is non-existent and illusory).

If the above are true, does it mean that the three obstacles that I perceive also are of my making only? B or VP or CEO – are these and their behavior towards me are of my creation on a subtle level?. Have I attracted these people into my life in some unknown way and hence have they assumed the role of my colleagues? If so, these colleagues are needed to be present in my life at this particular point of time to fulfil some purpose (of which I may not be conscious now).

There is a second group who say that the external world operates separately and does not have linkage with the internal world. They further say that it does not matter how we live in the external world. We should live in both the worlds in independent way. While one may be pure and virtuous internally, he can be ruthless in the external world to serve his self-interests.

The three obstacles are my external world at this point of time. Should I spend my time plotting ways to remove these obstacles? This should logically mean that I should make CEO dependant on me, to indulge some power politics to get rid of VP (who according to my logical mind is not very useful to the organization and is wicked to me personally) and to expose the vulnerabilities of the Cartel. As a ruthlessly practical person, this should be fine.

But I shall be belying the first theory that the internal values and the external world should be balanced. According to this, any form of power politics is to opt for external control, which is more a fear-based reaction and not a Love based action. What should be the Love based action in dealing with the three obstacles?

Whether to keep up the equanimity of emotions and act silently? Or to make some noises to be heard? This has been the main question that has dodged me always.

In the past, I have seen that making noises usually does not work. It only puts off people. It does not make the shouter to be one of the team members. But again to be accepted as team member even if one is docile is also sometimes a bit tricky.

We have two bosses who either do not know how to drive the business or just want to maintain the status-quo to make sure that they continue to stay in their respective positions. If that be so, why should I be hired then? The management may genuinely be aiming at increasing the business volume. CEO may have mooted the idea that he needs one more business development manager to contribute more.

What he has not done so far is to make the working smoother by opening the gateways of information. The cartel’s insecurities have kept the gate closed and even if the gate is opened – only slightly. The VP’s presence is causing more confusion. Under these circumstances, getting any type of sales support or directions or decisions from either VP or CEO has become a strenuous effort. I also suspect that the ants are being influenced by the Cartel not to be very free-flowing on my informational needs.

My instruction to M (one of the Ants) to give me the customer-wise pricing data went unheeded. While I kept reminding her politely, she kept saying she was busy and would take out the data as soon as she gets a bit free.

I needed to quote for a particular product to a domestic customer. As no transparent costing were made available, I had to be reliant on B who informs me the price for individual product before I quote to any customer. On this occasion, I was given a US dollar price on Cost and freight basis and was told to work backwards. Accordingly, I quoted Rs 145 for that item. Customer promptly asked if we can agree at Rs 125. I got stuck. B informed me that we sell that item to MNO at more than Rs 160, so further discount to already quoted lower price would not be possible. If it was Rs 160, why was I given a mis-leading basis to work out the price in the first instance? Either B was being casual earlier or he gives me a wrong information now to discourage me in cutting the price and in the process not being able to finalize the business.

VP was causing commotion differently.  A few deals were at the stage of finalization and some operational issues had to be addressed. VP was non-committal and said it can be solved only over a medium-term, so finalizing the business may not be immediately possible. I was not sure if the customer would be ready to wait.

On another potentially large business opportunity, VP kept repeating like a parrot that he would need buyer’s specifications. The buyer was not to be bothered for these paper work, as I know from my experience that he never has any written specs for his products. He had given us only the photo images of the products which I am sure would be adequate for the factory team to start working on it. But VP would not listen and this time he blamed ISO 9000 procedure for insisting on buyer’s specification.

CEO had not time for taking business decisions. He is busy meeting either advertisement sales representatives from a web portal company or home brokers for buying a property for himself, or making H (the secretary) sitting in front  of him to listen to flirt talks. My email reminders to him seeking approval for 7 days credit terms for XYZ Corp remained unreplied. After a few days, I went to his cabin personally to ask him about it. He went on with his usual irrelevancies. When I asked him specifically towards the subject, he admitted that he has sent the mail to the Finance Manager for decision-making.

B’s blocking of smooth flow of information, VP’s intransigency, CEO’s complete refusal to take decisions even if it costs only a rupee…. the three things I am confronting with!