Dude , you are kinda naked!

Origin of my concept story today runs way back to 7 April 1837, where it was first published with "The Little Mermaid" in Copenhagen by Hans Christian Anderson (if you do not know him , my deepest sympathies, go Google right now) as “The Emperor’s New Clothes"

Long story short for those who do not know the original story,  "The Emperor's New Clothes" is a short tale about two weavers who take a shit load of gold & money and promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that are invisible ONLY to those unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent.

Finally when the Emperor parades before his countrymen showing off in his new clothes, a child cries out, "But he isn't wearing anything at all!"  (yeah, OMG situation)

 
Doesn’t this sound so familiar to you? For me “HELL YEAH”. Henchmen who keep feeding in information to the corporate emperors officially and mostly unofficially (over a social drinking session at a “private place”) AND not surprisingly those end up being the MOST credible source for decision making? (I heard you just whispering HELL YEAH)

And when hiring and promoting, the amount of jazz plays about the teamwork, technical know-how, inter-personal , analytical , leadership skills or  self driven personality crap that are just cute clichés that everybody LOVES to talks about but in most cases what makes the “modern weavers” successful is just by being POLITICALLY CORRECT. That’s right, just politically correct.

And I say don’t bitch about those who perform well being politically correct. They are politically correct because the “opinion driven modern emperors” wanna hear things that are politically correct and pleasing.

And do not bitch with weavers that the emperors are naked. Unless you have the balls to be that child replica and say “dude, you are NAKED” (make sure you have a good rapport / reputation in the job market so that you can find another job as you are gonna get fired for sure, unless you sound “politically correct “ at the last minute again)

And don’t try to be a smartass and tell “dude , the treasury is empty and weavers have taken all the gold away”, coz then the next question is from emperor ,“what the hell have you been doing without highlighting it to the emperors?”  (Gotcha! , your fault AGAIN)
And another smartass go and tell “dude emperor, don’t shoot the messenger” and probably that was his last few words in that kingdom!!

Morale of the story guys, Nobody talks but everybody knows that being POLITICALLY correct can do wonders! And if you expected me to mention the way out of this chaos. Sorry, I don’t give solutions here, I'm just trying to show how relevant an ancient story can get in modern corporate world.
Its been 174 years since this story came in to children’s story books in many different languages. And I say its now time that this comes as a management crash course. For the corporate children.

Cheers

PramoD