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.
