'Con' Call!

The best thing about my job is that I can stroll into office at a convenient time. I attach a significant premium to this luxury and even willing to overlook the fact that I have to often work till the wee hours. Though my wife considers my working late a greater luxury (for her)!

With this background – Imagine what I feel if I have to come into office early. Words fail to capture the extent of my irritation. My agony further increases if I have to attend an early morning breakfast meeting before office. The concept of eating and meeting is paradoxical. I can either devour my double egg omelette with extra cheese, ham and bacon or I can discuss business. Mixing the two is like a really bad cocktail...

Anyway, with all the brouhaha on travel cuts due to the slowdown, technology has been quick to come up with a new irritant...it’s called a con call!

With the entire exaggerated introduction I’m sure all of you know where this is heading...I had a cross country (make it cross continent) con call scheduled at 8 AM. Well perfectly reasonable for someone who gets up at 7:30? Guess Mr. Murphy doesn’t think so...Let me cut to the chase...woke up late (with the phone ringing). The maid didn’t come so no morning coffee and the laptop would refuse to switch on. Maybe it has something to do with the extended late night session of downloading a John Lennon documentary.

Nonetheless – Here I was phone in one hand and completely ill prepared for this call on the other. This was when I decided to put everything I learnt during my halcyon MBA days to good use. When in doubt...Bullshit!

So I started the conversation with my American colleague with the clichéd introduction...Good Evening to you...But Good Morning for me etc etc...Wonder when the time difference jokes will get stale? We then moved onto discussing more serious issues like Obama’s Af Pak policy and Tiger and his 'babe' in the Woods! Now that we were warmed up to discuss business an endless stream of people kept pouring into the call...Joe – Head of Strategy, Martha – Head of Sales, Bob – Head of Business Development, Sam, Pedro, John all head of something or the other. I was tempted to ask if their Head of Housekeeping could also join and help me with my coffee (remember the maid didn’t turn up!)

All of them started introducing themselves and their role...one by one. If there ever was a feeling of being outnumbered, this was it! This was the moment of reckoning. I decided I was going to have some fun. Some real “boyish” fun...I maybe outnumbered but I refuse to be outwitted. I decided every sentence of mine has to be a question...Negative marks if I fail...

Soon I realized converting simple sentences into a question is easy...just add a why, when, how in some form and your job is done (Thank God for Wren and Martin!)

It was time to raise the bar. The new challenge was to ask a question with a name of a book incorporated in it. What started as harmless excitement was now turning into wicked fun. Consider some of these
- Would you say this product concept has reached ‘tipping point’?
- Maybe more demand will be generated through the ‘long tail’ concept?
- We are yet to discuss how to scale up the product from ‘good to great’?
- Its early morning but I’m ok...Are you sure you’re ok? (Fine, the name is split into two)
- My absolute favourite - Are you saying – ‘Tough times don’t last but tough people do’?

By the end of it I could hardly keep a straight face. I’m pretty darn sure Bob, Joe and their tribe understood out what was going on. But, I finally figured why this simple telephonic conversation had a fancy name like “con” call!

I just hope Alexander Graham Bell is not turning in his grave...