What do you exactly do in one line?

শিক্ষিকা: পিন্টু তোমার আম্মু আব্বু কি করে বল তো?

পিন্টু: আমার আব্বু আম্মু? উমমম......আমার আম্মু বাসায় কাজ করে আর আমার আব্বু চানাচুর বিক্রি করে...

Teacher: Pintu tomar ammu abbu ki kore bolo to?

Pintu: amar abbu ammu? Ummm…amar ammu bashay kaj kore ar amar abbu chanachur bikri kore…

One might wonder that Pintu might be an underprivileged young school boy whose mother must be working as a maid from house to house in the affluent neighbourhoods in Dhaka and whose father must be trying hard to meet his ends by selling crisps and light-bites under the scorching sun in Dhaka city. Where in reality, Pintu’s mom works as a full time housewife taking care of Pintu and his father actually works in Pran Foods in Bangladesh which produces, among other things, tasty and very popular chanachur. Interesting perspectives from a child on how simplicity is applied to describe job descriptions- which might be often misleading and funny too.

Can you say in one line what you do? I mean away from your official designation or the one you use on your visiting cards, can you really explain simply what you do for a living? I keep looking at so many job designations as we get ‘linked-in’ and wonder how we could add a bit of extra information in the space provided to describe what we do other than just saying ‘Chief Executive Officer’ or ‘Senior Accounts Manager’ etc. I have so many friends who have a common story to share that the moment they mention to their relatives that they work in ‘grameen phone’ many times they are faced to deal with direct requests to fix their mobile phones or to deal with their bill related issues – without actually figuring out what exactly the person does in that telecom company in Bangladesh. The moment we hear that such and such works in a telecom company we assume that they deal with fixing handsets and with bills. Same goes for bankers – when we hear someone works in a bank, we either just assume that they must be sitting lifelessly on the other side of the counter counting money or must be sitting in square shaped cubicles pushing papers. Is there really any way to add that extra bit of information to explain in a short space of time and space (both online and offline) what you do?

I have a friend whose visiting card says that he is an SME (Subject Matter Expert) in an IT company. That didn’t tell me anything much really so I asked him what he does there exactly. So he told me in plain jargon free English that he is actually a programmer who codes in C++ to make software for the security industry – that’s it. Its interesting to note here there are thousands like him who must be sharing the same job designation as his – ‘programmer’ – in so many other software companies in Bangladesh – but with that extra but precise piece of information that he provided to me verbally – that he makes software for security industry in C++ made it very clear what he does to earn his bread and butter.

Take the case of someone I really admire – Arild Klokkerhaug of Somewhereinblog – the largest Bangla blog in the world. Plain and simply – he is the CEO of one of the most exciting companies in Bangladesh – but as he puts himself to explain what he does – he is the ‘Head of Opportunities’ – Sure without any context you might not understand what he does but really as a CEO what else you expect one to do? Always on the look out for more opportunities for - growth, more innovation, more profit, more success! So think about it – when you say you are a manager in any company, remember you become ‘just another manager’, just another brick in the wall leaving room for imagination of what you actually do. Also I think our visiting cards are built keeping in view the company only, as if its taken for granted that those outside our companies or simple lay persons will be able to understand or atleast generalize what we do. But we can do surely better than that with some judicious use of space, time and words to say some more things about our work, right?