Navtej Kohli Business Blog

Real Life Dilbert-Type Managers Memos, By Navtej Kohli

“My boss spent the entire weekend retyping a 25-page proposal that only needed corrections. She claims the disk I gave her was damaged and she couldn’t edit it. The disk I gave her was write-protected.” (CIO of Dell Computers)

Quote from the Boss: “Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say.” (Marketing executive, Citrix Corporation)

My sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday. When I told my Boss, he said she died on purpose so that I would have to miss work on the busiest day of the year. He then asked if we could change her burial to Friday. He said, “That would be better for me.” (Shipping executive, FTD Florists)

“We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees.” (Switching supervisor, AT&T Long Lines Division)

We recently received a memo from senior management saying: “This is to inform you that a memo will be issued today regarding the memo mentioned above.” (Microsoft, Legal Affairs Division)

One day my Boss asked me to submit a status report to him concerning a project I was working on. I asked him if tomorrow would be soon enough. He said, “If I wanted it tomorrow, I would have waited until tomorrow to ask for it!” (New business manager, Hallmark Greeting Cards.)

As director of communications, I was asked to prepare a memo reviewing our company’s training programs and materials. In the body of the memo in one of the sentences I mentioned the “pedagogical approach” used by one of the training manuals. The day after I routed the memo to the executive committee, I was called into the HR director’s office, and told that the executive vice president wanted me out of the building by lunch. When I asked why, I was told that she wouldn’t stand for perverts (pedophiles?) working in her company. Finally, he showed me her copy of the memo, with her demand that I be fired and the word “pedagogical” circled in red. The HR manager was fairly reasonable, and once he looked the word up in his dictionary and made a copy of the definition to send back to her, he told me not to worry. He would take care of it. Two days later, a memo to the entire staff came out directing us that no words which could not be found in the local Sunday newspaper could be used in company memos. A month later, I resigned. In accordance with company policy, I created my resignation memo by pasting words together from the Sunday paper. (Taco Bell Corporation)

-Enjoy!!!!

Every company big or small has to do marketing for their products and services. Well, many have faced a situation that their entire marketing campaign became a joke by going global….

I have shared some cool marketing blunders on my Navtej Kohli busines blog here:

1. Coors put its slogan, “Turn it loose,” into Spanish where it was read as “Suffer from diarrhea.”

2. Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.

3. Clairol introduced the “Mist Stick”, a curling iron, into German only to find out that “mist” is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the “manure stick.”

4. When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the beautiful Caucasian baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the label of what’s inside, since most people can’t read.

5. Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine.

6. An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope’s visit. Instead of “I saw the Pope” (el papa), the shirts read “I saw the potato” (la papa).

7. Pepsi’s “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” translated into “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave”, in Chinese.

8. Frank Perdue’s chicken slogan, “it takes a strong man to make a tender chicken” was translated into Spanish as “it takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate.”

9. The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as “Ke-kou-ke-la”, meaning “Bite the wax tadpole” or “female horse stuffed with wax”, depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 characters to find a phonetic equivalent “ko-kou-ko-le”, translating into “happiness in the mouth.”

10. When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to have read, “it won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you.” Instead, the company thought that the word “embarazar” (to impregnate) meant to embarrass, so the ad read: “It won’t leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.”   

-Navtej Kohli

I stubmled across this intresting story that shows a dim light on the sexual discrimination at work place. I felt that it was something that I should mention on my Navtej Kohli Business Blog.

“God, I’ve been thinking..” says Eve one day.

“What’s on your mind Eve?” says God.

“Well, I know that you created me and this beautiful garden and all of these wonderful creatures, but lately I’ve been feeling that maybe there’s more to life.”

“Go on…” says God.

“Sometimes I get a bit bored - I fancy a bit of fun. And I get a bit fed up with all the heaving lifting and carrying, and warding off the mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers, not to mention that bloody snake. This garden can be dangerous place.”

“I see,” says God, pausing for thought.

“Eve, I have a cunning plan,” says God, “I shall create Man for you.”

“Man?” asks Eve, “What is Man?”

“Man…” says God, “Is a flawed creature. He will have many weaknesses and disgusting habits. Man will lie, cheat and behave like an idiot - in fact mostly he’ll be a complete pain in the backside. But on the plus side he’ll be big and strong, and will be able to protect you, and hunt and kill things, which might be handy sometimes. He will tend to lose control of mind and body when aroused, but with a bit training can reach an acceptable standard in the bedroom department, if you know what I mean.”

“Hmm,” says Eve, “Seems like this Man idea might be worth a try, but tell me God, is there anything else I need to know?”

“Just this,” says God, “Man comes with one condition… In keeping with his arrogant, deluded, self-important character, Man will naturally believe that he was made first, and frankly we all have better things to do than argue, so you must keep all this a secret between us, if that’s okay with you. You know, woman to woman..”

Navtej Kohli Business Blog tells a short story on the effective delegation of work in words of Navtej Kohli himself. Navtej Kohli summarizes the short story followed by its moral in business world below. 

A Wolf had been prowling around a flock of Sheep for a long time, and the Shepherd watched very anxiously to prevent him from carrying off his Lambs. But the Wolf did not try to do any harm. Instead he seemed to be helping the Shepherd take care of the Sheep. At last the Shepherd got so used to seeing the Wolf about that he forgot how wicked he could be.

One day he even went so far as to leave his flock in the Wolf’s care while he went on an errand. But when he came back and saw how many of the flock had been killed and carried off, he knew how foolish to trust a Wolf as he exclaimed. “I have been rightly served; why did I trust my sheep to a Wolf?”

Moral of the Story - It is very important to delegate the tasks wisely and only to the trusted people. Effective and successful managers know that in order to climb the ladder of success it is important to assign tasks to right people only. Trusting everyone blindly always harms in the end.

Navtej Kohli Business Blog brings a short business fable on importance of work experience.

This is adapted from (apparently) a true story. *

An elderly couple retired to the countryside - to a small isolated cottage overlooking some rugged and rocky heathland.

One early morning the woman saw from her window a young man dressed in working clothes walking on the heath, about a hundred yards away. He was carrying a spade and a small case, and he disappeared from view behind a copse of trees.

The woman thought no more about it but around the same time the next day she saw the man again, carrying his spade and a small case, and again he disappeared behind the copse.

The woman mentioned this to her husband, who said he was probably a farmer or gamekeeper setting traps, or performing some other country practice that would be perfectly normal, and so not to worry.

However after several more sightings of the young man with the spade over the next two weeks the woman persuaded her husband to take a stroll - early, before the man tended to arrive - to the copse of trees to investigate what he was doing.

There they found a surprisingly long and deep trench, rough and uneven at one end, becoming much neater and tidier towards the other end.

“How strange,” the old lady said, “Why dig a trench here - and in such difficult rocky ground?” and her husband agreed.

Just then the young man appeared - earlier than his usual time.

“You’re early,” said the old woman, making light of their obvious curiosity, “We wondered what you were doing - and we also wondered what was in the case.”

“I’m digging a trench,” said the man, who continued, realising a bigger explanation was appropriate, “I’m actually learning how to dig a good trench, because the job I’m being interviewed for later today says that experience is essential - so I’m getting the experience. And the case - it’s got my lunch in it.”

He got the job.

*Source: businessballs.com