Emporer's Clothes

Disclaimer this post is purely for entertainment purposes. It is not meant to insult or belittle anyone in anyway. Any names or references which might seemed familiar is purely by chance.

I never thought such stories would come alive. Yet it was fun that in times like this where children believes that trendy fashions and mindless jokes are 'in' and adults don't believe in Santa Claus or angels, such stories could actually embarked itselves in our lifes.

Once a upon a time, not too long ago, there was one director who were put incharge of the York Marketing team in Netherland Research Company. He was a kind man. And his subordinates were a bunch of hardworking, introverts who seemed to want to please the CEO of the company more. The director would once in a while have a conference meeting with the rest of the directors to discuss on how the company could run its researches in a more creative and effective way. At times the CEO himself would attend the meeting and motivates anyone who attends that meeting.

Yet it was a funny thing that could honestly happen to any director who can't seem to expressed himself well among his subordinates. Still he is confident that his subordinates will be able to ride on the motto which the CEO himself put forth. Time and time again, the director would have small discussions with his subordinates to inform how a project should be running and so forth. Sometimes his people would be able to catch his words. Sometimes not. Most often times not, well, at least in this story it is not.

His subordinates were one highly self-discussed group of people. One would be fortunate to have such high thinkers who evaluates and analysed a project and would be able to form a proper step by step procedure to obtain the best possible results on that particular research. One of the hidden problem that might result in such group of people were there would be multiple excellent procedures towards one research that there would not be a proper measurable result that may come out from it. Yet being introvert as they are, at times they would keep it to themselves and put up a brave face saying that everything is a OK, eventhough its basic formula may be crumbling apart.

Such petty things would not be expressed to the director himself because he would be handling too many things. Being ambitious as he is, the director himselves hold one too many portfolios in the department. With things on top of his head, his subordinates would just tell him that everything is OK whenever he holds a small review over the project. There might be times where one or two of his subordinates would bring up some issues, yet they would be 'tamed' down for not being on the same objectives as the rest of them or the director himself.

There was once project however that the director placed before his subordinates. He handed down a memo to his subordinates to complete the procedure, management planning and expected results without proper briefing to what it is all about. How would a research be done without clear guidelines and tools? One would be too timid to even ask what the objective was for. But knowing past happenings, the subordinates would want to just leave it under the table. The director himself must have felt pretty good about the whole thing because in his mind something was going to happen, some mighty results from that research may change the world. Thus when the memo was put up on the research board, his other subordinates would nod and agree and confidently ask when that project needed to be hand over to the client and assure that client would be outmost satisfied over the end product.

Sheepishly and quite embarrased for being imbecile of any kind, one subordinate just do not understand what was happening. Quietly that she asked the director - "What in the world are you talking about?" The director was pretty pissed off with such behaviour. Yet being a nice man as he wanted to be, calmly and with a controlled voice, he explained the principles and the reason behind the whole project, as well as what the client is expecting. "It will be a world changing experiment if we are to be able to carry this out with excellence" Nodding mindlessly, she backed out from his room, heart trembling and still unsure of what to do. "Would the rest know what to do? Oh my, they were doing it individually. Now how am I to come up with the plan?"

There was one subordinate however speaks his mind whenever there was a need. Not abashed at anything, he voiced out, asking loud and clear, "Mr Director, what exactly is this project for? What is the objective to this research?" Shocked, she marvelled at his courage. Speaking and questioning directly to the director to her naive mind is a no-no. Yet here comes one who speaks. To her amazement, before the director himself could even address him, one by one his other subordinates raised their hands and confessed that they too do not understand what the director have in mind.

.....and we all know the ending of the story.