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A year from now, your life may hinge on your RAM, or random access memory. So far, it’s been a key parameter to determine the functionality of a computer, but soon it may be applied to you and me.

But why use RAM to assess intelligence? In a laptop, RAM allows a user to access and activate diverse functions, such as Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Media Player, FrontPage, Outlook, etc. In essence, RAM is quick memory while the hard-disk is long-term memory. But, in our normal 24/7 lives, we have to depend on just RAM, the cerebral quick-fix for our highly competitive careers.

So, are you a person with 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5RAM? A person with 1RAM, for instance, is range-focused: he does his job well between 9 to 5, spends enough time with his kids, and takes his wife for a holiday every month. A person with 2RAM does all the 1RAM activities, besides spending 70 hours every week in the office. People with RAM capacities of 3 and 4 have bad family lives but phenomenal careers, since they are permanently wedded to PowerPoints, KRAs and ROIs.

But it’s really the person with 5RAM who is making all the difference to our careers. It’s all about the evolution of the organisation man, from a single-minded executive to a multi-minded dude. Like James Bond, the fictional character who’s closest to the new urban truism. James RAM makes love even as he’s passionately involved in other tasks: messaging boss M, flirting with Moneypenny, playing with Q’s toys, spearing Spectre’s man, and a host of other things that don’t deplete his RAM.

Higher-RAM projects have been tried successfully on the shopfloor before. Cutting-edge auto companies increase their senior executives’ RAM by assigning them to newer tasks. For instance, when inventories are hard to empty during a recession, these companies ask their designers and engineers to beef up sales by making house-to-house calls. It helps engineers get a 360 degree view of the business, upgrading their RAMs and careers.

But how does all this play out in the office of 2007? Here’s a sample of questions a fresh MBA is likely to face from a corporate interviewer: “So, you can work 24/7, but can you function without a team and a boss? In short, will you be able to run this 100-people outfit, and mop up enough business, if nobody turns up one day?” To emphasise the ethos of the organisation, the interviewer may also take the recruit through a presentation about the organisation’s values on his PDA.

Does this sound ridiculous? Hardly. Just imagine our plight at home. Each one of us has gold, titanium or platinum credit cards, multiple savings accounts, investments in stocks from Infosys to DLF and MFs that we can’t even remember, several EMIs on loans taken during the housing explosion, quite a few phones and memberships of several exotic clubs and resorts. You would require at least five Moneypennys, plus your wife, to sort out that financial mess.

Indeed, both booms and recessions require higher-RAM people. But not everyone agrees with the logic of a higher RAM. US researchers Joshua Rubinstein, David Meyer and Jeffrey Evans, who probed the new multitasking trend, found that “subjects lost time when they had to switch from one task to another, and time costs increased with the complexity of the tasks.” But, despite such studies, switchers have learnt to make hay while the economy shines.

But RAM has had its fallout. Multi-tasking, work-related stress, and newer urban lifestyles are worrying people. In many cases, they wonder whether work is creating information overload and, hence, memory loss. Says Dr SV Khadilkar, consultant neurologist, Bombay Hospital: “We do get a large number of younger people coming to us with memory-related problems. They believe they have Alzheimer’s or other some serious memory ailment, but the truth lies somewhere else. With increased multitasking in our lives, people are facing a memory overload.”

So, if your wondering whether the New Indian Corporate Renaissance will roll out Leonardo da Vincis, please remember: the best way to succeed, and retain your cubicle, is to start your day on a clean slate. So, build up your RAM, and forget
the rest.

Email: vinaykamat@dnaindia.net