Tuesday, June 09, 2009

The long and the short of it: D [:D]

Seldom does the precise location of two small Dots have the influence to change the underlying implication as it does in this title phrase - Whether the colon is next to it ("it: D") or next to D (":D") would create entirely different first impressions, from attempting to describe something significant to making outright pun of "it". It makes me wonder if the D in the title has virtually put the two tiny dots in a dualistic predicament of deciding between approbation and contempt (of D itself!). This protagonist in this play of characters is the dreadful D, the 4th letter of the English alphabet and a shorthand for many catchwords including D-Day, Dilbert, Drugs, Drinks, Dance, Drama, Dev D, and of course the Dot, and Deloitte. I worked at Deloitte, at Deloitte D4 for 22 months. This post is to provide the long and the short of it, the gist of my Deloitte Dot experience. The Dot after the Deloitte is very important, for some it is an integral part of the brand itself, for some others the abbreviation DD itself speaks!

Dealing with ambiguity - these were probably the first few words that I heard inside Deloitte Dot, and now this is almost a cliché. While ambiguity has been a recurring theme at Deloitte Dot, other dominant themes include clarity (lack of it), uncertainty, and Duality. Duality here is similar to the wave-particle duality of light - Depending on the observer, the work could very well be described as consulting-like or non-consulting-like, but not both at the same time by the same observer. So the place is divided into two schools of thought, those who believe this is consulting and those who believe this isn’t. Flip it around and the same picture can be described by another two schools of thought, those who believe this is s**t and those who believe this isn’t. As a result, you will find the place filled with the believers and the non-believers, the whys and the why-nots, desis and the pardesis, hypocrites and the not-so-hypocrite-but-not-yet-sincere, the well-networked and the recluse to name a few. The official line, though, is the middle line, on the assumption that such an integrated model (as its often quoted) would drag other managerial influential themes such as ambiguity and confusion into the midst of this dualistic quandary. The integrated model, the solution to this dualistic quandary, is nothing but a supreme art of management rhetoric. Indeed, rhetoric is the therapy just as networking is a way of life at Deloitte Dot.

Something as simple as research gathering and structuring can be expressed in completely contrasting ways as in the below dialogue:

Believer: I understand that Deloitte Dot has provided you with ample opportunities to bring exciting things to the table, like, building intelligence and landscapes?

Me: Well, part of the work involved searching for and collating necessary information via secondary research

Non-believer: Basically, he was asked to do s**t, except that maybe, he is flushing it out rather than flushing it in!!

In short, just as the D in the title had put the tiny dots in a dualistic predicament, so did the D (or the DD) bipolarize this tiny world – two worlds which are mutually incompatible, in terms of what they believe, say or speak.

(While my work at Deloitte Dot has at times caused some dismay, in general, I have had no feelings about it either way. This ambivalence attitude had left me less affected by either of the schools)