Body language of Satyam Board Members

Body language of Satyam Board Members

Of late, I've seriously switched over from the tear-jerkers, mega-serials, Kollywood / Bollywood films, etc. to the plethora of news channels (both General and Business news channels).

They seem to provide a far better quality of comedy, satire, melodrama, sex and violence, shocking twists & turns, commercial breaks at just the right moment, repeated replays to ensure that one doesn't feel that one has missed anything even if one skips the news for an hour, a day, a week or a month!

This has prompted me to start posting a few comments based on the news items that I see from time to time.

Here goes one such:

After a pretty long wait, Satyam (Mahindra Satyam) declared its ancient results (pertaining to the last couple of years or thereabouts) today. Watching all the news channels, a person from Neptune or Jupiter would have thought that this must probably be the largest corporate entity in this part of the Universe! However, let that pass.

Channel after channel, commentator after expert commentator, repeatedly emphasised that:

• The body language of the Satyam Board members appears to be "confident"!

Believe it or not, when I heard it the first time, I almost fell off my chair rolling in laughter. After all, when board members of any little company (leave alone a company with a few thousand crores of revenues) comes out to meet the press, you certainly don't expect them to:

• Be shivering with nervousness
• Show explicitly their lack of confidence, if any
• Clearly hang their heads down in shame at the extent of losses even if the figures were far lower than their own internal expectations
• Be completely honest about their fears and anxiety about
• the future performance of the company
• their real anxiety about the negative prospects of all the pending law suits
• their concerns about such live and real problems like eroding margins, labour turnover, loss of brand equity, disappearing clientele, etc.

For heaven's sake, the media folks ought to be aware that:

• Most of these board members are much richer than the anchors and reporters and have an entire army of PR experts (both real and self-proclaimed) who will obviously guide them on Body Language
• Most of these board members have certainly gone to the same bunch of B-schools, read the same books and articles on Body Language, etc. as the media folks.
• Due to both the above reasons, most likely, the board members are also likely to be much smarter (at least much more street-smart) than the media folks.

Wonder when the media would learn!

Regards,

N

---