Continuous Wasting (time) at PGPX Corporation!!!

In May 2007, Biju Kappmeyer, one of the newly minted executives of PGPX Corporation, paused, hand over keyboard, while giving final shape to yet another one of his humungous blogs, even as he was getting ready for the third month of his already overloaded course schedule. Kappemeyer’s hesitation was not a sign of timidness about the massive stress that he was undertaking these days. In fact he had already signed up to spent upwards of 1 million Rupees last year to modernize his faculties, thereby committing to write off one full of year his life to obtain management education at one of the region’s premier management institutes. Rather, Kappmeyer paused only because he knew that PGPX was probably going to be the one last such opportunity of his life, to perform such no holds barred continuous wasting of time. Once PGPX was over, debt clearing economics would force Kappmeyer to do some heavy lifting in the corporate world for several years, before he will be able to roam free again. Given the relatively rapid pace in which time was flying these days, Kappmeyer wanted to convince himself one more time that his stone-bold continuous time wasting commitment at PGPX corporation would in fact assure him of a strong sense of accomplishment in the hotly contested education market for flat, steam rolled management graduates.

BK-ground
Born somewhere in the middle of nowhere during the tumultuous 1970s, Kappameyer or BK as he wanted his friends to call him, spent his early adulthood days building technological solutions for various North American corporations. But upon entering his middle ages, he was lured back into his home town by a flat world, only to be flattened further by a serious swell in the business development of outsourced IT projects that forced him into ‘management’ responsibilities of getting irrelevant work done using clueless people, not to mention at menial salaries. BK responded to this quagmire by coming up with a disruptive strategy of going back to school, hoping to rejoin the rat race later on, as a stud. Little did he know what the D in Disruptive stood for. And now he knows the D-key.

As he was grappling with the current dry state that he was finding himself in, BK realized that some of the recent developments that were happening in the market place were indeed much more disruptive than he ever dreamt of. Things were starting to get topsy-turvy as the hours spent sleeping in the room was reducing and that in the class room was increasing exponentially. With each passing day, the number of pages that had to be read in preparation for the classes was skyrocketing and his market share in the total knowledge space that was up for grabs was dwindling.

Feeling powerless at the onslaught, BK started pondering over the various alternative strategies that were available at his disposal. Should he spend more time with his syndicate group, so that he can free-ride and smooch off their knowledge? Are the relevant costs in procuring black books greater than the money value of time saved, amortized over the period of one year? Should he cut down on all the pushing, pulling and pressing activities that he was currently undertaking and consider wrestling with 200 pound books as the only work out that he needs? Is there an alternative technology available to deliver intravenous caffeine drips to keep oneself awake when classes were going on? Confused as he was, he knew there had to be a better way, other than the highway to ‘busy’ness excellence that he was currently on.

Despite all his concerns and the various alternative approaches that were staring at him in the face, BK also felt that what he really decided to do will have only very less impact on the eventual results that he would end up with. He reflected, “I am here only for the learning and nothing else is important. One can only do so much reading in so little time and for the last half hour I have been strategizing my brains out. Let me unwind by playing some TT on my way to the gym.”

While BK was pondering over his sorry plight and proceeding with his continuous wasting strategies, the glorious uncertainties of business education was plotting his imminent downfall. In a remote corner, not far away from where he was sitting, surprise quizzes were being prepared to test the very learning that BK was claiming that he was here for. And needless to say, they were strong enough to render him insensible, before sending a heart-stopping current through his torso to knock him out cold; with the slicing and dicing not very far behind.