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Ignorance is power

Mirza Ghalib24-Sep-13 5:15

Mirza Ghalib

24-Sep-13 5:15

Francis Bacon was so wrong when he said "knowledge is power", in today's pc and dumb people friendly workplace, ignorance is power. The less you know, the more people bend over backwards trying to explain things to you. More stress you inflict on other people, the stronger your power over them.

I was unaware of this until a few years ago, until my spiritual guru revealed this truth to me and opened the gateway to eternal happiness. This was circa 2003. A new CIO had been appointed. Beefy bloke from Newzealand and blond too. He decided our company was getting stale and needed fresh blood. He brought in a lot of people who had absolutely no background in IT or had any previous experience in our business domain. All of them as project managers and senior business analysts. And the fun started. One day my boss called me in and said "Ghalib you going to help Tiffany with her new project. Show her the ropes. If the project fails I will hold you responsible".

Lady in question was a blonde from Germany and a cat lover to boot. I consulted by spiritual guru "Oh wise one! This woman is going to torture me to death. What do I do". The wise one said "Man, play dumb". So I started off saying things like "What's XML?" at meetings. "You haven't heard of XML?" "Nope! never heard of it". Score me = 1, cat lover = 0.

Predictably, the project collapsed before much money could be spent on it. But, I was on to a good thing. I perfected this to a fine art. I did so well at it that I was soon promoted.

I have often found solutions to perplexing problems in CP, so I love you guys and would like to share this valuable secret with you :- "when nothing works, play dumb" Cool | :cool:

modified 24-Sep-13 12:00pm.

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