The Potato Harvest

This email just landed in my Inbox. It's from the head of HR.

"Dear Huong, Kien, Hung, and Thanh

"As anh Tam say, the next one year ahead of you will not only be excitement, pride and joy, but will aslo be hard work, going extra miles, and very strong will power. I am sure though your sweat will harvest you great crop.

She's certainly strong out of the blocks; I'll give her that. But I have my reservations. This quote is clearly a fake. anh Tam is our CEO and he does not use such stirring words. Never. He also does not even have any farming experience. Piracy is rampant in Vietnam and emails from HR Leaders are no exception.

"The next step in our LIV programme is working in teams on stretch assignments. These stretch assignments are real business challenges we are facing in our company. Your task is to analyse the problem, identify the issues, develop an actionable execution plan and follow up on the actions.

The next step? The next step after what? You haven't told us the first step. What was the first step? Are you talking about the harvest? Is the harvest the first step? What does all this mean?

And what is an LIV programme?

Look at the difference in grammar, structure, style and pace between the first paragraph and the second.

It's a completely different author.

This paragraph was obviously air-lifted out of some PowerPoint presentation during some emergency operation.

Things start to crystallise in my head. It's starting to make sense. The LIV Programme is part of some global initiative, mandated by HQ in the US. Hang on though. American's spell it like "program" and in our company most of the Australians have given up. All of the non-English countries write Program. It's a very common word in my company. Only the English have remained stubborn enough to use the "correct" spelling, unless they have lived in the US for a while and it's beaten out of them. I think the email has still been issued out of the US, but it was by a recently-arrived English person. This is her first initiative since being posted to HQ in a Global role. This was written by an English person. It's a woman because it's HR. Also because English men don't get as many global roles in our company as women; probably because they are more stubborn about adjusting to new cultures.

I start to get distracted. "I wonder if she's going back home for Xmas?", I ask myself. I wonder whether anyone invited her to a Thanksgiving dinner. I'll bet her hair is really dry, maybe because she has not found the right conditioner in the US but probably because she just doesn't care enough. She takes shortcuts in the shower and doesn't leave it in.

She must have told Vietnam months ago on a conference call that it needed to initiate a local version of her LIV Initiative. It's a but like the Idol franchise, except that every judge is mean.

Our HR Leader still doesn't know what the LIV programme is, though. No one does. She does know that it the English woman has started putting it into her fortnightly Status Report and she needs to demonstrate that Vietnam is making progress.

The final warning from HQ would have come via a machine generated email. Our HR Leader would have still read it with alarm and called an emergency meeting with her team to walk them through the Global LIV Initiative Presentation Deck.

Her team would have sat around a large table. No one would be paying any attention to the presentation, except for the secretary assigned to take minutes. The others would be doing emails on their laptops or sending sms's on Blackberries. This is completely acceptable behaviour in Vietnam. I once a presentation in our boardroom to about 25 people around the table, and all of them were typing on their laptop. No one even bothered wasting time to feign interest.

I'm sure the above sentence is the intro to some very important and relevant Global HR initiative which aims to develop talented people within our organisation. Taken out of context, as it is in this email, it makes no fucking sense at all.

"I am happy to advise you that your team: Huong of Marketing, Kien of Technology, Hung of Sales, and Thanh of MIS, is assigned the following project, which is really a very practical issue for us to solve:

Given the nature of these loose instructions, I feel sorry for Huong, et al. Not too sorry because I don't know these people. On the whole though, I am relieved that I'm not part of the team and hoping it stays that way.

Anyway though ... what is this "practical issue" she speaks of?

"Marketing strategy/programmes to effectively promote services in Vietnam market"

This of course makes no sense. It's English, sure, but not as I know it.

It is not a practical issue. It is a broad, sweeping statement. It could pretty much describe the challenges of any current (or potential) company in Vietnam.

"This challenge is raised by Khue. You might want to ask her for further clarification if needed.

Ahh. Got it. Here's what happened.

At the end of the emergency meeting, our Leader asked some questions to the group about possible next steps. No one said anything for a while. The silence became a bit awkward, so Khue said "What about marketing? We always need marketing.". This would have been followed by a mexican wave of relieved nodding.

There is no way that Khue has any idea about this. If she did, she would have helped write the email. Khue knows nothing.

By now I am 100% very fucking glad that I'm not on this poor team with their ill-described, pointless assignment.

Then this.

Anthony, our BD Manager will supervise you on this assignment. Please note that the assignment shall be completed by March 2010 and the presentation of assignment outcomes to the Country Leadershhip Team will be in mid March.

He ... who ... I ... wh ... umm ... WA WHA WHAT????

You-I-You-I-You're-fucking-kidding-what-the-fucking-WHAT??

"Anthony: thank you.

Many responses come to mind. "You're welcome" is not one of them.

"Anthony please help schedule the first meeting with your team and work out the plan.

Anthony Anthony Anthony ... sure sure sure.

I am now sure how their emergency meeting ended. Once Khue had trotted out the fantastic platitude about Marketing, the next issue was to decide who should be responsible for it. To put it bluntly: who are we going to blame?

More blank stares into the laptop screens. This time they are feigning interest ... in their emails ... in their shoes ... anything to not be noticed.

Then the penny would have dropped. I mean really. It's obvious.

Who do you call when there is a silly, impossible task that no one understands? Who do you call when failure is looming? When the job is doomed, who is the best man for it?

"The Potato"

I'm sure this part of the meeting was unanimous. Possibly even in unison.

So now I get to start calling some meetings. Firstly, a few questions. What is my meeting about? What am I supposed to be saying? Will anyone tell me what I am supposed to do? Who can give me some direction? Will I be sent any background material?

My questions are of course rhetorical.

I hold out absolutely no hope for any positive experience from this little hospital pass I've been given. I will not make new friends or learn new things. I will not be invigorated by teaming or personal growth or professional development. We will not achieve any tangible results. I'll bet the Status Report starts looking pretty healthy, while the rest of us still struggle to work our what LIV stands for. These are not statements of pessimism, these are statements based on experience and probability.

My charges are not idiots. They know it's doomed and they're just relieved that my name is on the top of the pile. I can already see them roll their eyes as they read our final report in March. But they won't have turned up to any of my meetings. When I say that "we" will complete this project, I mean that "I" will complete it. This is going to be the worst harvest ever.