Office-Office: Sloth

(Picture source: www.dilbert.com)

I am not talking about the bears in Dalal Street or the native Himalayan variety found in most zoos. I am talking about the corporate sub-culture.

Crudely defined as an invisible force (rather the absence of it) where no one does any meaningful work, sloth is best explained through the situation below:

Day T-15 (15 days before event): Non Conformist writes to The Butterfly: “What activities are we planning for publicizing T0, T+15 and T+30?”

Day T-7: Butterfly writes an email to everyone involved (yes, suddenly everyone is involved) post office hours on a Friday evening: “Please share suggestions on how to publicise event”.

Day T-4: Non-conformist sends communication plan to Butterfly asking feedback and action steps.

Day T-3: Butterfly replies “we should discuss this” without specifying time and date.

Day T-2: Super Boss responds: “we should do blah and blah”. Small problem – Blah and blah are not part of the plan.

Day T-1: Everybody waits for ACTION.

What happened? Sloth happened.

Sloth is identified by inaction, lack of meaningful communication (suitable excuses) and is notoriously prevalent upwards of the middle management levels. The more senior you are, the more slothful you become.

Business moves on speed. While deliberation helps, it cannot go on indefinitely. Results of sloth in the above case:

 The company doesn’t get the desired publicity.
 Non-conformist loses drive to work and his/ her perception of the Butterfly now touches -20 on the IQ scale.
 Every one gives lip sympathy (perhaps we should use other body parts for better impact) on what could have been done.

For the intelligentsia who feel this is not a result of sloth, but lack of planning, I have the next post - Project Management.