WFH — and not WTF as you were heard calling the 10 pm con call — requires Strategic Restructuring of your Ecosystem . Of course, Interesting Times , which is what your boss says 21 times an hour, have interesting Takeouts . Pulling the Plug is what you need to do to the electric kettle when it starts whistling as the HR lady speaks. 360 Degree Reviews include accidental camera angles on video calls that show Mission-Critical tasks like clipping toenails, raiding fridges, flushing loos, and occasionally someone Peeling It Down to the Basics without realising the video is on.
Your Core Competency soon becomes watching TV on mute with your laptop in front of it; Multi-tasking your way through Netflix, news and serials. Anything that requires you to move even a toe is a Paradigm Shift you cannot afford.
Every time you see a slide with a Pie Chart , you go eat a slice. To avoid too much Disruption , you stock a few Mars Bars near you, so you can Raise the Bar every once in a while. Exemplary employee that you are!
Moving the Needle is what you do best now. In fact, that needle on your weighing scale moves on its own. All because… the Low-hanging Fruit is something you never touch… When there are chips and murruku around. So that Downsizing has become impossible now. You’re upsizing so fast, your trousers and you won’t agree on a Strategic Fit once you start attending office again.
Pencil In is what your toddler does to his nose, while locked into a room his bigger sister has performed a Key Takeaway on. And lost the key. When Crisis Management 101 is over, you gain Traction on separating the kids from their Daily Kick-Off , and suggest a Game-Changer . You Incentivise them to Synergise with the other Senior Stakeholder , their mother, who of course is conducting her WFH role alongside cooking, cleaning and Throwing the Rulebook (and other heavy items) at you. The kids Circle Back every few minutes to complain about Resource Allocation of jam biscuits, alleging gross Competitive Malpractices . They then Escalate into Cutting-Edge practices involving chasing each other around with paper scissors. You in turn, with your Helicopter View , raise a Red Flag to a colleague that her kid, visible behind her, is drinking up the water from the fishbowl, the fish being Achievable Targets . A crash later, another colleague has to rush to her kid’s bottleneck crisis, involving Bleeding-edge Technology .
Meanwhile, your own Strategic Alliance is rapidly breaking down, following the lockdown your wife is on, after reminding you six times to... um... what was it now? This leads to her Radio Silence ending in a Hostile Takeover of the quilt. And you being Off-Sited to the sofa.
Where Jane De Suza, author of Flyaway Boy , pokes her nose into our perfect lives.
