This was his first job. Today was his first day. He wanted to make his presence felt. He wanted to shift paradigms. He wanted to shatter old mindsets and usher in a new era of competitive collaboration. He wanted to align individual objectives with functional objectives, functional objectives with company vision to such an extent that if plotted on a 3-dimensional chart, all three would appear to be the same line heading in the same direction with the same force. And this was just his first planned initiative. His second planned initiative was to align the company objectives with supplier objective, with retailer’/distributors’ objective and all these objectives with the ultimate objective i.e. the Consumers’ objective. Yes, You guessed it! He was a management trainee in Human Resource Department. He had planned many more initiatives. But I will spare you the details.

He showed up at the factory gate with enthusiasm bubbling in his blood. If any GP had bothered to measure his blood pressure and other parameters at that time, he would have been left scratching his head, such was the total transformation of our hero’s blood supply chain. But I am digressing from the narrative. Our hero, with typical drive supposedly attributable to the Young MBAs, had shown up 30 minutes before the scheduled time. He felt that this was the time to interact with the workers, understand their aspirations, their motives, their hopes, their pain, and their sufferings… so as to facilitate the process of assimilating the individual objectives… the first step in his first planned initiative.

He flashed his credentials at the security guard. The guard took one look at the card and shrank back as one who has just seen a ghost. He pointed a shaking finger in the general direction of the factory and sank to his feet.
Hero entered the hot and humid factory and took a look at all the grime, dirt and fumes. Huge machines of different sizes were making noises appropriate to their level of size and complexity. A few steam pipes were letting off their steam so as to be a part of the team. In the midst of all this commotion, workers were scurrying around. Despite all the noise, the entire disturbance, one motivated worker noticed the subtle change in the environment. He sensed the presence of something that was imperceptible, unreachable and yet omnipresent. He immediately knew that this had to be HR. His eyes scanned the surroundings and settled on the unfamiliar sight of our hero. Suddenly his mouth went dry, his strong and able body lost all its vitality. He stood paralyzed on the spot and stared at our hero with the look of one who has lost all hope in the world. The same reaction spread through the entire factory at the speed of light. All around the place, the work came to a halt, the hands stopped moving, and the machines ceased their noise. Everything came to a standstill. Such was the silence reigning in the factory; that a passerby would have mistaken the factory for a government warehouse

Pleased with his first impression, our hero jumped at the nearest worker with the speed that would have put a cheetah (the kind that chases prey and eats it in Serengeti, not the kind that poses for photographs in zoos.) to shame. He whipped out a thick wad of paper from his folder and shook it in front of the worker’s face.

"I have a small questionnaire here that I want you to fill up."

The worker stared at our hero. It took about 10 seconds for the true meaning of the request to sink in. As soon as he realized what was expected of him, he couldn’t take it anymore. He screamed with all the power in his lungs. With tears streaming down his dirty, sweaty face, he looked around and rammed his head into the nearest piece of machine. As he fell to the ground, our hero smiled with unconcealed satisfaction and pleasure, took out his Reynolds with unnecessary flourish and slowly wrote on top of the questionnaire,

 

"Worker no. 12214 requires extensive training on Company’s values, objectives and mission statement so as to align him with company's culture."