If you came here looking for some Monday morning motivation, I am afraid you are not going to get it.
But that doesn’t mean, you won’t take away anything from this post. After all, it’s Monday. The big honchos will be all geared up to crush the customary Monday morning meeting. The little guys – the minnows – can certainly glean some tactics to sound smart and escape unharmed:
#1. Looking to thwart allegations for slacking off on a project. Deploy ‘Analysis Paralysis‘. It’s a powerful defense system and easily shifts blame to intangible, unseen forces.
#2. Want to blame people working in other functions who badmouth about you as much as you do about them, tell your boss, “those slackers do not have their skin in the game“.
#3. Soon as your boss starts talking about a project you know is as doomed as an overfed turkey the weekend before Thanksgiving, get up and excuse yourself for an urgent client call. When you are back, someone else may have been assigned the project already. Don’t forget to declare how the project could be a ‘game-changer‘ afterward.
#4. Talk about looking at the big picture, or the ‘helicopter view‘. Lean back into the chair and wait for others to react.
#5. Want to throw a spanner in the rhythm of your smartass colleague’s presentation? Shout, “Stop, stop! Go back to the previous slide, no the one before…” Roll your eyes, scratch your chin, tilt your head, do a little hmm… and ask them to carry on.
#6. Looking to deflect the blame for zero headway in a project. Blame it on “the juxtaposition of two teams and lack of cross-pollination of ideas thereof“. Before everyone gets the spellings right, the day would have moved on.
#7. Throw in bizarre acronyms like ITIGABTMDYT. Since no one wants to look stupid amongst their peers and bosses, you will easily get away.
#8. Make it a habit to use lingo like ‘moving the goalposts‘, ‘seamless integration‘, ‘low hanging fruits‘, ‘strategic staircase‘ in every meeting. You will gain everyone’s respect even if you don’t make an iota of sense.
#9. Finally, if you get caught in the crossfire, just say, “Let’s touch base offline.”
Oh, in case you are wondering what that stupid acronym ITIGABTMDYT means – I think it’s getting a bit too much, don’t you think?