Lt Col Vivek Gupta
Veteran, PCI, CFE, IIM-K Alumni
Vice President (Vigilance and Audit) at the
Sugam Group
That day, it was 7 in the evening when Ravi received a call from his servant saying, “Sir, the dog has gone missing.” Shaken, Ravi stood up from his office chair and asked for details, which his servant provided.
Not just a dog-lover but an animal-lover by nature and a big shot businessman by profession, Ravi left all his pending tasks, grabbed his mobile and wallet, called his driver and went off within a few seconds of receiving the call from his servant. He, along with his driver, searched frantically in the area where the possibility of finding the dog was highest, sometimes on foot and sometimes while driving. Later joined by two of his office staff, the search continued till 11 PM but in vain. Ravi told his office staff, who was a pillion rider on his colleague’s bike, to create a message with a photo of the dog and his mobile number to be sent across all WhatsApp groups and social media platforms.
Ravi realised then that his servant wasn’t a dog lover but was taking care of the animal for his ‘naukri’ and must have been busy watching reels when the dog went missing, a fact which he was vehemently trying to spin.
His staff took out the latest photo of the dog, and with some editing skills that he had learned earlier by seeing a few reels on his mobile (thanks to plenty of free time on the job), engraved the contact details of Ravi’s house manager and his Executive Assistant (EA) and sent it across in all the WhatsApp groups. Ravi’s family too forwarded the same.
After a few “Oh no”, “So sorry to hear that”, “forwarded,” and some similes later, came personal messages of sympathy and ‘understanding.’ Generally, these were from the people who pick up a stone if they see any dog on the street and from those who preach the unholiness of a dog in a man’s life by citing religious textbooks, spinning their interpretation to suit their convenience. Probably, this is the power of money; after all, rich men have many sympathisers.
It was Friday morning when I received this message on my WhatsApp group. Looking out from my small apartment window in Dubai, I realised that this could be the much-awaited God-sent opportunity for me and my small venture. What if I find that dog and personally take it to Ravi? I would then get unrestricted access to him, and my struggling start-up would find a client like Ravi’s company. I had visited Ravi’s company many times in that prime locality of this city, but could not make it past that posh lobby and those contract executives.
“Oh! It’s just a stupid idea and a daydream. How could I find the Dog and hand it over to Ravi? Looks distant………., but what harm in trying? It’s a weekly off today, as it is,” – was my self-talk. Finally, I set out to find the dog in the streets of the city, planning to eat out, walk a bit and try to spot the dog – not just any dog, bro, but Ravi’s dog.
By afternoon, I had walked more miles than I usually do in any average week, and now it was time to meet my girlfriend at that corner café. She laughed her heart out after listening to my day’s engagement.
“So what?” said I.
“You are nuts,” she said.
“Look, it’s not that my product is faulty or my associated services are any substandard, but still the procurement department of Ravi’s company behaves like God’s own. I have been searching for ways to bypass those idiots for a long time, but all my efforts have so far met with silent denials. This could be a game changer,” I explained and continued, “The procurement guys know very well that I am offering much better quality at competitive pricing, but they are too arrogant to acknowledge it. All they care about is their own interests.”
“Isn’t it everywhere?” she asked.
“Ya, it is, and that’s why vendors like me get left out, and substandard suppliers keep providing products and services most of the time at many such companies. It is now, I have a chance to get in touch with the decision maker directly……., no harm in trying.”
She nodded, not clear whether she understood it or not. It was time for me to pay the bill, and after the card swipe, I opened my mobile and that WhatsApp group. It was so disheartening for me to see that someone in the group had tagged the dog’s photo and written just one word – “found.” I thought my half a day’s work had been wasted; the dog has been found. Scrolling a little below, another person tagged – “found” and wrote – “not yet”. I sighed in relief.
So, the one who has written – “found,” had forgotten to put a question mark (?), and I thought it was a declaration (!) that the dog has been found. Communication skills – bloody hell. People have forgotten the grammar and even the spellings, and we seem to have been adjusting with the communication that conveys only half the meaning and the rest is assumed to be understood.
I recalled an incident from my last employment before I ventured into my own business. The CEO had this habit of meeting with each department head for 15 minutes every week, after which he used to tell his EA to type the minutes of his meetings and circulate them to other departments as well to keep them in the loop. To his dismay, after some time, the CEO started noticing that the departments were not executing what he wanted them to and instead, there seems that the departments weren’t aligned and executing things their own way. The following Tuesday, during the weekly meeting with the production head, he called for the HR head to join in.
“Two weeks ago, the Production head and I had decided that we should increase one contract labourer each on our 3, 4 and 8 number machines as these are old models and some help is required on these to operate, then why haven’t we done that so far?” he asked the HR head.
“But you told me to look for the feasibility of increasing the labourers, if required, and I know as a policy we don’t hire additional labour beyond what is already approved,” said the HR head.
“Who told you to look for the feasibility when I clearly told you that we must hire three additional labourers?”
“You only mentioned that, sir,” said the HR head, looking confused.
“When?”
“In your MoM.”
The CEO looked at his EA, sitting across, and before she could say a word, he realised that his EA must have ‘personalised’ his message to HR. “Hire three additional labourers for 3, 4, and 8 number machines,” and “look for the feasibility of hiring three additional labourers for 3, 4, and 8 number machines, if required” – must be same as per his EA’s understanding, leading the two men, the production head and the HR head, getting involved in an ‘email duel’ interpreting the message from the CEO in their own justified way.
The CEO called for all the messages his EA has sent to the department heads on his behalf, including MoMs for the last two months, and voila! He found the root cause of the misalignment between the departments.
“Procure a new scrap compression machine,” was sent as “check the availability of a new scrap compression machine,” and the CEO was wondering why there was a delay in procurement.
“Due to other engagements, postpone the POSH training,” was sent as “Postpone the POSH training till further intimation,” and the CEO then realised that the company had hired an EA who is a Post Graduate with her know-how of English as elementary at best. Analysis of the last two months’ messages sent through his EA, since the joining of the CEO, revealed that the departments are not reluctant in execution, they are doing exactly what they have been told to do.
That CEO never trusted his EA again to send messages without approvals, and the EA kept sulking that the new CEO micromanages her work.
Even though the possibility of finding the dog was remote, I still endured the weather and continued my search. My primary target was the nearby locality where Ravi lived, with occasional intelligent guesses where the dog might have wandered.
During a water break, I opened that WhatsApp group again and started scrolling down the messages. One message in particular caught my attention. Someone had tagged the original photo message of the missing dog, and asked, ‘Where?’ and a few messages later, someone else had replied, ‘Defence Colony.’
“What? Defence Colony, Delhi?” I screamed. The dog went missing in Delhi’s Defence Colony, and this message is circulating in Dubai’s expat groups. The one who made the message missed mentioning the place of the incident, and others kept forwarding it. Incomplete information from one end became factually incorrect information for others.
This guy who asked this question – “where,” has probably more common sense than I, and knew that the ‘missing dog’ from any communication can wreak havoc. The messages that float in WhatsApp groups asking for blood donors forget to mention – ‘where?’ and the senders wonder why no help is coming.
By night, I was content that at least the dog had been found, but still, many are missing from our day-to-day official/ unofficial communications, and no one knows how to locate them.
Lessons for the Directors/ Boards and Senior Leaders:
- Every communication is a business risk. Communication should be recognised as an operational risk, not merely an administrative activity. Nobody intends harm, but one missing question mark, one missing location, one modified sentence, one assumption, is how many organisational failures begin.
- Never assume that the receiver knows what the sender knows. Every instruction should answer – What, Why, Who, Where, When, and How? Incomplete communication forces employees to make assumptions. They execute instructions, not intentions.
- Communication Governance should be an integral part of the Board charter. Every governance failure begins with information flowing incorrectly. Boards should periodically review communication protocols, approval hierarchies, crisis communication, external communication, customer communication and internal messaging standards.
- Precision is cheaper than correction. A few extra seconds spent ensuring clarity can save many hours of confusion, effort, and cost. Investing time in precision is less expensive than recovering from avoidable misunderstandings.
- Delegating communication does not delegate accountability. Authority may be delegated, but responsibility can never be.
- A missing dog can eventually be found, but a missing punctuation, context, location, intent, accuracy and accountability may never be. The real asset to protect is not merely information, but the integrity of information.
About the Author:
Lt Col Vivek Gupta, Veteran, PCI, CFE, IIM-K Alumni
He currently serves as Vice President (Vigilance and Audit) at the Sugam Group. He has over 25 years of rich, cross-functional experience shaped by a distinguished tenure in Army Intelligence and corporate leadership. A results-driven professional, he thrives at the intersection of strategy, risk management, vigilance, security, and compliance.
