Corporate Jadugar: Illusion of Approval

It's been almost 6 years since I have first ventured into corporate world. Although all these years I have worked in only one company, my job role allowed me to interact with a lot of people from different parts of business within and outside our organization. These people have different ways of approaching any situation depending on the position and business vertical they are in. Some of these people have been really special in their ways of dealing with their responsibilities. I have recently started calling such people Corporate Jadugar. In due course you will understand the reason I have chosen this term.



In my attempt to put forward some of the common illusions these magicians pull off during their today life, I am starting this series. Here is my first post among a series of posts I intend to write in future.



Illusion of Approval

One of the very first thing I learned after entering to corporate world, was that you require approvals to perform any significantly important tasks. Sometimes you may even require approvals for not so important tasks as well. Dictionary meaning of the word says "The action of officially agreeing to something or accepting something as satisfactory." So the person who is approving anything takes over the responsibility of anything that particular action will result into. If the result is desirable, nobody has any problem but in case of undesirable and harmful outcome the approver might get into trouble.



To save themselves from such troubles in case of an undesired outcome our Corporate Jadugar have come up with this magic trick called "illusion of approval". In this case you will get the approval from the CJ but in case of any mishap the approval will suddenly disappear.



Here I describe the curious case of disappearing approval. It is very simple but effective trick.



Lets assume I need an approval from a Function Head for some action I am going to perform, which I believe is going to benefit the organization. In such a scenario I write to the person at my level in the respective function. The communication would be something like this:



"Dear X, I intend to do this action which will result into certain benefits for the organization without adding to any risk."



Mr X here is very smart and is trainee Jadugar. He will send following communication to his Unit Head.



"Dear UH, Gaurav says this particular action is beneficial for the organization and also does not involve any additional risk, hence based on Gaurav's recommendation please recommend this."



Now point to be noted here is that Mr X himself has not made any recommendation. He is asking is boss to act on my recommendation. Now Unit Head, who is a Jadugar himself will write the following mail to his Function Head.



"Dear FH, Mr X says this is good, hence request your approval for this based on X's recommendation."



To this our senior Jadugar will revert.



"Dear UH, based on your recommendation I am approving the following."



At this point you will believe that you have received the Function Head approval and proceed. Now in case of any mishap you will be asked to reproduce the approval. When you reproduce this conversation, you yourself will realize that the approval has suddenly disappeared. When you read the entire conversation again you will know that the approval you received was based on X's recommendation you actually did not make any recommendation in the first place. So if anyone is to be blamed for the mishap is you.



This reminded me of an old joke I heard very long ago. The joke goes something like this:

One guy walks in to a sweets shop and asks, "aadha kilo jalebi dena."

When shopkeeper starts packing the jalebi's the guy says, "ek kaam karo, jalebi rahne do. uske badle mein aadha kilo rasgulle de do."

When shopkeeper starts packing rasgulla's the guy changes his mind again and says, "accha rasgulle bhi rahne hi do. uske badle mein aadha kilo gulab jamun de do."

Shopkeeper packs the gulab jamun and hands over to the guy. When shopkeeper asks for the money the guy says, "kis baat ke paise?"

Shopkeeper replies, "gulab jamun ke"

The guy responds, "lekin wo to rasgulle ke badle mein liye."

Shopkeeper, "to theek hai rasgulle ke hi paise de do."

The guy, "lekin wo to jalebi ke badle liye the."

Shopkeeper, "haan to jalebi ke hi de do."

The guy, "lekin jalebi to maine li hi nahi to uske paise kyon dun."

Messenger from God

Today morning while driving to work, it was wonderful weather and I had my windows rolled down. While most of the distance I covered without any special event when I was about to reach office, would be almost one Km away I realized something came inside the car through the open window. My first reaction was, it would be some leaf. I decided to check what was it and looked down. As I look down I see an ugly, grey about 3 inches big lizard sitting at the edge of the driving seat. I was driving at around 60 KMPH then. Whatever I am going to tell you happened really fast within a minute.



My first reaction after looking at the lizard was; well, I don't know what the first reaction was. Fraction of a second after discovering the presence of an alive lizard on my seat, only half inches away from my knee, I was thinking, if this lizard is little patient and can stay in this position for a little while I will get rid of it after I reach office and park my car there. With my seat belts tied and no scope of movement, that was the best I could come up with. But that lizard was an impatient one, without loosing any time it jumped on my knee. I felt a weird sensation flow across my entire body. I now had to get rid of her and could not wait for reaching office because now I was thinking if it falls off my leg in the car somewhere, it would be a really difficult task to get rid of it. I was hoping it stays on my leg for a moment while I get my card on the side and manage to get it off.



I managed to slow down the car and bring it at the side of the road, yet I could not just open the door because of moving traffic. I could also not let my eyes off the lizard because I had to know about its movements to get rid of it. It was moving downward on my leg while I was waiting for the signal behind to stop the flow of traffic. I was hoping to get an opportunity asap to open the door and get the lizard out because had it managed to reach my foot, the possibilities I did not want to even imagine.



At the first opportunity of opening the door I took my leg out and stamped my foot on the ground till that ugly creature got off my leg. I looked at it lying on the road, very much alive for a moment, closed the door shaken my entire body and slowly drove off.



Later when I posted this incident on my FB wall, following conversation followed:

what would you do when you are driving at 60 Kmph in traffic and an ugly lizard falls on your lap through the open window?

Akash Dongre: Thats a sign of good luck!
Gaurav Tiwari: It must be better than good since the messenger from god took the trouble of jumping inside a moving vehicle through a vertical window.
Akash Dongre: ‎:)
Amit Baranwal: curious... what did you do?
Gaurav Tiwari: I had shown tremendous courage and calmness. Slowed down the car and stopped at a corner. Let the traffic pass and wait for the signal. Let the lizard move to a position my leg so as it is easy to let it fall with little force. Opened the door, took my leg out stamped it on the ground till that lizard fell off. And then drove to office to tell the tale.
Anshu Bhatia: lizard n apka pichle janam ka koi nata hai :P
Gaurav Tripathi: so now lizards r in love with you :P
Gaurav Tiwari: ‎@GT yeah so much so that they jumping in the moving car through window.

X-Men is First Class

In between raining sequels, Marvel came up with the prequel to their four movies old successful franchisee. It is more difficult than it sounds, coming up with prequel to a story which has already made a mark in people's mind. The creators of the movie have done a very fine job to make this movie an entertaining watch for people who have seen earlier movies and even for those who have no idea of X-Men series. However you enjoy more if you are familiar with the franchisee.



The first scene of the movie is the first scene of X-Men (first movie), where a young Erik in a Nazi concentration camp bends to iron door using his mutation (ability to control metal). This is being watched by a doctor Sebastian Shaw, who dreams of experimenting with Erik and using his ability to fulfill his motive of world domination. To make Erik show his ability the evil doctor shoots his mother in front of his eyes. This leaves a permanent scar in young Erik's memory, whose only motive in life now is to avenge his mother's killing.



On the other hand there is young Charles Xavier, who can read other people's mind and finds another of his kind in Raven. Charles grows up to become an expert in mutation and when he is not working on his thesis, he uses his extraordinary ability to charm women.



The action shifts to 1960s and an evil Sebastian Shaw with his army of mutants a telepath diamond skinned Emma Frost, teleporter Azazel and tornedo spinning Riptide wants to start world war with objective of near human extinction establishing mutant superiority over humans and eventually rule the world. An enthusiastic CIA agent Moira recruits Charles to fight Shaw, who subsequently meets Erik and instantly become fast friends. With a common motive of stopping Shaw they recruit other mutants extraordinarily intelligent Hank, screamer Sean, fire blasting Alex, adopting to survive Armando. Although it's Erik and Charles show, there mutants impress in their special appearances.



What follows is so convincing and well directed that you actually seem to believe that it was evil energy absorbing mutant Shaw who plotted the Cuban missile crisis and had it not been for Charles and Erik and their army of mutants world would have almost ended after world war three. Yes, that's how wonderfully the movie is made that it almost makes you believe on this outrageous idea.



Kudos to the writers for writing the screenplay keeping the previous movies in mind and ensuring connection. There is Wolverine also in an special bad-ass appearance. You actually can relate the relationship between Charles and Erik with the relationship shown between Prof X and Magneto in other three X-Men movies. Kevin Bacon is in top form as evil Shaw and James McAvoy makes a wonderful and believable Charles but the show belongs to Michael Fassbender as Erik aka Magneto. He is so awesome that despite shifting to the opposite side to humans by the end, he makes you sympathize with him and believe in his ideology. Also two of the best scenes in the movie belongs to his awesomeness (you will know which scenes, when you watch the movie).



I was watching this movie with a friend who has not watched either X-Men movies before and after the movie his reaction was, "baki ki bhi ab dekhni padengi." That more or less summarizes the effect this movie has on you when you go out of the theater. In one sentence; X-Men is first class, Magneto is awesome and I want Mystique as my girlfriend. Go watch it, if you haven't already.