Russian Culture & Business Etiquette

Yesterday, I presented the PowerPoint below in my Organization Behavior class.  Grab some vodka (or cognac if you prefer) and brush up on some interesting facts about Russian culture and business etiquette.

Russian Culture and Business Etiquette

Stay Warm

I used to freeze in my previous office because the building management blasted the air so high that the climate became arctic. To combat my chattering teeth and blue fingers, I bought a space heater and called him Optimus.

Keeping me nice and toasty, Optimus became my new best friend.  My staple remover soon became jealous as you can see by the way it would glare its fangs at us.

All was well, until I moved buildings.  The new maintenance crew scolded me the minute they set their sight on Optimus.  "Space heaters cause fires, " they chastised.  They insisted that I get rid of Optimus, but of course, I could not boot him out of my life.  Optimus still has a home in my office, but I try to use him only when necessary.  As an alternative, I recently purchased this wrap from Target.

It is not as warm as Optimus, but it is nice for days when I am only mildly chilly and it will not short my circuit.

Bored Boris, Busy Burt, Stapled Stephanie, & Fried Fritz

Even though I'm incredibly optimistic and upbeat, I am delighted by dark writing from Edgar Allan Poe, Edward Gorey, and Tim Burton. The office-themed poems below are inspired by these morbid artists.

Bored Boris
Boris had the audacity to complain that he was bored
While my mountains of work caused me much stress
At my wits end, I strangled him with my mouse cord
And thanked the IT guy who declined my request for wireless

Busy Burt
For days my project was at a haltIt was all Busy Burt's fault
He did not have just 30 seconds to answer my brief email with a simple yes or no
So I dropped an oversized clock on his head from the 7th floor window
Now Burt is not quite so busy and has plenty of time at last
But he still cannot answer my email because he is a little restricted in his full body cast

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Stapled Stephanie
An intern with a low IQ and even lower cleavage took Stephanie's job
For days all Stephanie could do was wail and sob
To stop the tears, she stapled her eyes shut
Her career is still in a rut

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Fried Fritz
The numbers were low and bonuses were at stake
The CFO told Fritz, “Cook the books, do whatever it may take.”
Poor Fritz, being a little dense
Took the order in literal sense
He caught on fire
And a new junior analyst was for hire

SMART Goals

My last company introduced me to the brilliance of SMART goals. Good stuff!  I will not go into details because for the most part a SMART goal is pretty self explanatory.

Non-SMART goal: I will try not to suck anymore.

SMART goal: I will cold call new markets to increase my sales by 8% by the end of the 4th quarter.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

I'm currently taking an Organization Behavior class.  This week we were assigned to watch Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.  It is no wonder this documentary is highly reviewed and was nominated for an Academy Award.  Anyone working in Corporate America needs to watch this film.  You can rent it from Netflix or Blockbuster, or you can download it from freedocumentaries.org. Richard Roeper describes it as "a brilliantly executed, brutally entertaining dissection of what one observer called the greatest corporate fraud in American history." It just amazes me that these choad-bags got away with this stuff for as long as they did.  Crazy...

The Drunken CSR

This is a true story.  It happened a few years ago at a former company of mine.

Once upon a time, a CEO married a young sales rep working in his company. She was promptly promoted to VP of Marketing. A few months later, it was more than obvious that the the CEO’s wife’s used some of her hefty new salary to hire a plastic surgeon.

She proudly unveiled her new assets by donning a scandolous dress at the company Christmas party. The food was delicious, the band was great, and the booze was flowing. Before long, a certain customer service rep was feeling paricularily sauced. Her liquid sweater instilled her the courage to swagger over to the CEO’s wife and strike up a conversation. Cordial banter was volleyed for a few minutes when suddenly the last vodka shot the customer service rep had taken went to her head. “So how are you healing?” she asked nonchalantly.

Bright and early the next morning, the customer service rep received a call from her manager informing her of her termination.

Moral: Do not get drunk and ask your CEO’s wife about her surgical enhancements.

Obey my policy

I’m a pretty regimented person. I am a huge believer in Six Sigma and like rules, policies, and processes.

Recently, I was assigned the responsibility of managing our legal database. I immediately wrote a policy that details proper communication flow for customer contracts. Communication gaps and lost documents were frequent occurrences so my company was in dire need of this policy.

One time, for example, a sales rep received a partially executed customer contract and sent it to a Sales Manager for his review. Months later, the customer frantically called the sales rep looking for the fully executed contract. After talking with  more than 10 people and wasting two hours of valuable time, I gave up on hunting down this docutment and concluded that either the contract got sucked into the black hole or it was eaten by the contract monster.

Needless to say, I was delighted when my CEO approved my new Contract Policy. The policy instructs employees to forward their documents to me so that I can input them into our electronic approval system.  The process is efficient and prevents contracts from "falling throught the cracks."  For the most part, it has been highly effective since its implementation.

However, there are still a few deviants who like to make up their own rules. Just today, for instance, I was forwarded an email where a sales rep sent a message to his customer telling him, “Just send the contract to me. I will handle all internal communication.” I felt better after I took a deep breath, but for a moment I morphed into the Incredible Hulk and wanted to strangle this incompliant dolt with my mouse cord.

This guy knows what I’m talking about.