Like all good, decent & obedient IIM grads, I have come to view life in terms of
2 * 2 matrices. A lot of matrices have whizzed past me over the past one and a half years.
I know a lot about cash cows and stars and dogs and what-not… I fell in love with the beautiful yellows and purples of the Opportunity and threat matrices ( YES, we do have original color print textbooks at IIM I.. HAH ! )…I remember sniffing in a marked manner when I came to know about Ansoff and his penetration ( into markets of course.. :O ) and I almost cried with joy when informed about the Group performance – Group Cohesiveness matrices…
I am amazed at how we are taught to resolve every situation, every relationship and every idea into these beautiful thingies…And I am even more amazed at the fact that we actually start to believe that life and its problems CAN actually be so easily and conveniently classified into 4 boxes( or 9 for that matter..)
…High-high; low-low… We calmly, dispassionately dissect the situation, and classify it into 4 boxes,.. high-high, low-low…. High-low, low –high. And boom ! problem solved. Amazing insight delivered, pat(s) on back accepted, and collars ( pristinely white of course,.. pun intended) turned up .
So here I go with a creation of my own. This baby here explains ‘future prospects in life’ for a typical B- schooler.
I don’t know if this is original ,…but what the heck….
The AMBITION Vs COMPETENCE Matrix for Life Analysis©
( To be used indiscriminately and widely by all )
|
|
Competence -low ( 1) |
Competence -high (2) |
|
Ambition- high (1) |
VERY unhappy |
Never happy |
|
Ambition -low (2) |
unhappy |
indifferent |
Rationale:
If you fall into:
Box 11-( Very Unhappy)- You are an incompetent moron who aims to be a millionaire. Unless your Last name is Gump, you will be firmly entrenched in this box forever.
Box 12- ( Never happy)- This is a poor bastard who keeps getting rich with no time to spend. Classic ‘ no time to stop and stare’ case.. never happy.
Box 21- (Unhappy)- This dumb chum is a vegetable. How on earth will he ever be happy? And how on earth did he get into an IIM anyway? :P
Box-22 ( Indifferent) – Underachiever for life. What charms can life possibly offer to this soul?
Therefore, we see, according to this brilliant matrix and its equally ‘brilliant’ creator , MBA grads can pick and choose a number of templates for their lives. They have all the options… they can actually choose between being ‘very unhappy’ to being merely ‘indifferent’…. A very pretty and encouraging picture. J
So we can finally understand the craze for MBA nowadays.. they all aspire to be unhappy you see. …
For this revealing insight, I should be feeling happy and smug, but I do not…I wonder why…
something feels wrong here…. something feels VERY wrong here. You see, the only ‘thorn in my side’ here is that I met an IIM grad a couple of weeks ago, and he happened to be rich, successful , and ….happy!! ( I know ,I was shocked too ..)
what was more,.. .. he actually told me scary stories about other MBA grads that HE had met all over the world. They too, he told me, were rich, successful and …. Happy.
That doesn’t make sense. The matrix clearly says that MBA grads are not supposed to be happy. something wrong here…. There MUST be something wrong somewhere. The matrix never lies. It never leads us astray. It never lets us jump to stupid, hasty conclusions… or does it?.....
It is rooted in classical theory. WE KNOW for a fact that all human beings can be put into 4 boxes, and their emotions in 9.
WE KNOW for a fact that life can be ‘resolved’ and labor & IR problems can ALWAYS be cleanly and clearly ‘analyzed’ .
Even to think for a moment that perhaps life and people , can be bigger and perhaps too important to classify into 4 boxes is preposterous. That is what uneducated morons think. Not us. J ( smirk)
Crap.. I must rethink…maybe… I think … something’s wrong with the way I have been taught to think ,…or maybe, something’s wrong with our education system… or hey, maybe there is something wrong with life itself.
You figure it out.
:P :P
Peace.
Out.
Mairal>>
( P.S-- I think it is option (c )- something’s wrong with life. It refuses to be classified into 4 boxes. Bitch.)
