Notorious G.N.P.

My previous post reminded me of something that happened at work recently. A different person just joined the finance team with the first name as me. This presented the obvious dilemma of how to direct a question at one of us when the other is present. Many alternatives were bantered about including using our last names, G1 / G2, etc. Ultimately the folks in our HR department settled on calling me “Buddy”.

Now, there's nothing wrong with "Buddy". I actually like it. But I decided to have some fun with this so I explored hip-hop alternatives. If Sean Combs can go by “Puffy”, “Puff Daddy”, “Diddy”, “P. Diddy”, etc, I figured there must be plenty of options for me too. Here are but a few that came to mind (that I sent around via email for others to vote on):

• OG – either Original Gangsta or Original [first name] depending on your preference


• Finance Gangsta


• P&L Hustla


• Notorious G.N.P.


• Phat Margins


• G Unit


• Ice G

To complete this "hip hop transformation", some members of my crew (department) generously offered to purchase this essential hip hop fashion accessory for me. It arrived two days ago but the belt is still missing so I haven't premiered it at work yet. To the extent you're in the market for an LED belt buckle, please note that this one is incredibly hard to program.

With all the votes in, Notorious G.N.P. was the most popular hip-hop name followed by Phat Margins. Most people agreed, though, that Notorious G.N.P. is a mouthful so some folks said they'd use OG or Buddy for short. One person even suggested Piggie (since Notorious B.I.G. went by Biggie).

Believe it or not, there is a reason I'm sharing this with you (aside from the fact that I find it personally amusing). It relates back to my comment about being worried about being judged by others and about being worried about what other people think of me. Especially at work, I've found that I've been reluctant sometimes to be myself. I feel like I need to live up to some image of how business people do or don't act - or at least some image that others have of me. And that doesn't, for example, include listening to hip-hop music on the radio or having a nickname patterned after a rapper.

For those of you really into business, this reminded me of an interview I read on diversity. In it, the HBS professor said:

Whether you have ten employees or ten thousand employees, all of those people must feel comfortable bringing forward their unique perspective on a problem and explaining to others where that perspective comes from instead of hiding their true feelings. Their perspective could be grounded in something as simple as being from a certain community and realizing that people in that community will think about the company's product in a certain way. But if they have to hide that aspect of their background, the company can not be effective.

My whole point here is that I'm slowly becoming more comfortable being myself and letting my true personality shine through. It's actually quite liberating. The next time you see me, feel free to say "wuz up Piggie?" and, if you ask nicely, I might even let you borrow my new belt buckle.