colossal waste of everything

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon introduced a number of interesting policies at Amazon. One of the things he said was the two pizza team rule. This is so dam interesting. He said teams must not be greater than what two pizzas cannot feed. So, in many ways the team size is restricted to 5 -7 heads. This is right.

We went to an offsite over the week end. One of the things that I will do when I ever become the head of a business, is that I will ban off sites. First things first, why should we need to go off location to discuss and have ‘strategic’ discussions. In an off site you take half the company along with you. You seat them in a conference room and then sit to discuss some company strategic goals. Half the jokers in the conference room are bored, half don’t understand anything, half don’t want to give opinion, half don’t care, half don’t get it, half only want to give their opinion, half think the world is wrong. In case you are wondering, these are not mutually exclusive and hence you can have so many halves. In the end, no one really does anything big and no real decisions are taken and almost every delivery is forgotten.

My preference for all these decisions are simple. They should be taken in a small room with a small number of people who actually matter and who are smart enough to add value. I just can’t handle an extra bunch of crowd in a room.

I HATE OFF SITES.

The only official off site that I think ever helped was once where we went on a training program which had all of us playing games all day. We went to a simplistic place with basic facilities where they made us play all sorts of games out doors. These were interesting games, obstacle courses and physical and mental games. We were there for two days and thanks to the plethora of games, the teams kept rotating and you got to interact with people from all the departments. That is one off site format that I agree with. What’s the point of being off site, if all you are going to do is be indoors? Strategy can be done within the four walls of the office. Bonding can be better effected outside the confines of office and by doing all sorts of fun games. That’s the fun thing to do. Still there is no guarantee of team play or anything, but at least the team feels nice for a few days afterwards and that is something to build on.

Over the years, I have learnt that my instincts are better than anything else. Too many people do too many things and of all things they are guilty of, is trying too much. Work and office is simple. The principals are simple, you learn from your experience and you try and stop making mistakes that you were subjected to by your bosses.

I remember the first off site I ever went for. This was at Sariska wild life sanctuary. Here my big memory was the sales head, taking the case of the Area Sales Manager while he was making a presentation to everyone. It was designed and pre-decided to publicly humiliate him. The best part of all this is that the ASM was so used to this being a sales system forever, that it did not even hurt him. He was just standing there. Today was his day, next year it would be somebody else’s turn. What a joke.

That’s why the simple wisdom of Jeff Bezos trumps everything else. Small teams solving real problems and taking the firm forward, one problem at a time. Most of the time, we simply get people in an offsite, just so that people don’t feel bad.

At my earlier firm, when the money was good and flowing, I have been to off sites to Turkey, HongKong, Singapore and Srilanka in addition to countless Indian destinations. My best story on this is that I actually flew to London in business class to attend a 2 hour useless meeting on strategy. Like really! I wasn’t complaining. I felt like I had arrived in life. I loved the business clas travel and I loved hanging around in London for a couple of days as if it’s a regular cool thing, I wore my woolen suits and I showered at the Business class lounge at Heathrow on arrival before going for my meeting. Why should I complain?

The best is that all of this came to a sudden halt post 2009 when the financial crisis hit the world and money dried up. Off sites dried up and all useless spend was frowned upon. Forget hotels, now we were staying in guest houses, if we did have to travel. Business class became restricted to only the upper echelons of power and for the rest travel became only on an “if and must” basis.

Now these excesses are going to crop up again. I will try and resist but it’s going to be impossible. One of the reasons it had climbed dizzying heights in my previous company was the simple factor of having a company-wide newsletter. Every group company / division was tasked once a quarter to report some interesting achievements of the business and the only thing that everyone reported was the amazing offsite they had. Everyone would read this and go to their boss and ask for an offsite themselves and since they were doing better than that division, they deserved a better location. Slowly slowly, these locations started going to 5 stars, exotic places and then, they started to reach abroad. Once that happens, all hell breaks loose. The boss is depicted as a loser for not being able to swing something exotic enough and he was forced to get something interesting so as to retain / stamp his authority on the team. What crap. Institutions are full of people; people are full of ego. A multitude of ego combing together create a mad house where anything is possible. I am so done with these jokers. But I also know that my rant is the version of the stove calling the kettle black.

So yes, off sites are still the worst thing in the world and I hate them to the core. They are a waste of money, time and bandwidth. BAN THEM.