Let’s build out a racy on this, said the senior boss to me, as we wrapped up for the day.
I vigorously nodded “yes” and raced back to the hotel room to try getting the Internet up and running on my laptop. “Racy matrix”, I typed on google and was greeted by many a NSFW* search result.
I was young and foolish, in equal parts. Young enough to feel guilty that I had forgotten what I had learnt as part of coursework. Foolish enough to worry about forgetting something which I may well have never learnt in the first place.
Anyway, after a few trials and errors and trials again, I got the answer. It wasn’t racy, of course. It was RACI, an abbreviation of Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed.
Slowly the light started glowing in my head. “Ah! Makes sense,” I told myself as I lapped up all that was on that Google page.
Sounds funny in hindsight but it was nothing close to funny as I tried to crack that puzzle, I can assure you.
It’s been a decade and some since then. Many unknown abbreviations, many casually-used-terms I have never heard of.
More importantly, it has taken me many meetings and a ripe old age to ask “Sorry if it sounds silly, but what does that mean?” Yes, I am yet to drop the sorry and silly, but this is way better than frantically Googling while nodding pointlessly.
The world seems to have changed a bit and for the better. Have you noticed that people, both old and young, no longer shy away from saying, “I don’t know this. Can you take a step back and double click please?” (Yes, I am a child of the cliches). There’s so much new stuff happening and at breakneck speed that it is no longer cool to shame and be shamed for not knowing things.
Information, after all, is just a page search away.
Whereas, first principles, application of that information, gleaning meaningful insights, that’s a skill for ever.
* Not Safe For Work
P. S. Views strictly personal. Post doesn’t refer to any organisation that I am currently associated with.