English Manglage

[silentC]

One can never have an excess of lacquer on one's knackers.

[keith53]

Excellent! Then we can caucus their output with the other stakeholders and get consensus to implement a timeframe. At the end of the day, we should be able to deliver on a bottom-line outcome, going forward. Excuse me, I'll just answer my mobile.

What's even more scary is that most of these wankers believe this crap. Those who want to be seen as "switched on" pay lip service to it without realising how bloody stupid they look and sound. Or maybe they are prepared to wear it to be "accepted". I have to deal with this nonsense on a daily basis so forgive me for being a bit touchy. My better half tells me I should be more diplomatic & think of my career, but as the old saying goes, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, its a f***ing duck... So dont blame me if I point this obvious fact out.

Its reflections like this that make me appreciative of my shed and all the distracting goodies within.

[TassieKiwi]

A.D.I.S.
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.....Don't die of dyslexia!

Old, but still funny .

[silentC]

What's even more scary is that most of these wankers believe this crap.

I'm ashamed to say there was a time in my career, albeit short, when I thought that all that crap was what it took to get anywhere in a company.

I was good at my job as a programmer and I did a few things above and beyond, so they 'rewarded' me by sticking me into a leadership development program and started telling me that my 'career path' was management. There's no future in being a techo.

Then they put me on a management development program but a month or two later, I was promoted in a technical position that had an equivalent management level job description. They booted me out of the MDP (sorry, I graduated from it) having learned nothing - but I was now considered a manager. I rebelled against all the crap and it got rather messy in the end.

Shortly after that, I left that company (after 9 years) and took up a contract with another financial institution. I worked on project there for 3 years with a certain US Management Consulting company and it was here that I developed my true loathing for management-speak and brown-nosing ladder climbers. These guys have to be seen to be believed and at >$200 per hour for junior staff, it's sickening.

They changed their name a few years ago but a new name doesn't hide the stink. The project was 2 years behind schedule and several million dollars over budget when I left. I heard it was canned shortly after and the project scrapped.

[Driver]

A few years ago, I presented a proposal to a government department. Actually, it was so long ago that my presentation didn't involve Powerpoint! How quaint!

Anyway, I was going through the detail with the review team. The senior bureaucrat stopped me and said

"This is good. I like this!'

"What's that?" quoth I.

"What you say here," he said. This passage says: '...deployment of resources...'. Very good. I like that. 'Deployment... deploy'. Good word, that."

"Ah," says I. "OK. Glad you approve."

We moved on.

As it turned out, we won the bid and started to do some work for the government department concerned. Consequently, I had a bit of contact with the senior bureaucrat. Oh boy, did he ever like the word 'deploy'!

Every single memo I saw that he wrote for a period of about three months (and this boy was the King Of The Memo, believe me), made at least one reference to 'deploy' or 'deployment'. As I recall, the assets subjected to his deployment ranged from canteen crockery to earth-moving equipment. He deployed everything, man!

And it was all my fault! :eek:

[AlexS]

.... we should be able to deliver on a bottom-line outcome, ....

Shouldn't that be a triple bottom-line outcome?

[zenwood]

Here's a recent memo from a manager:

In my first [memo] I proclaimed “making a profound difference by an order of magnitude” to be the mantra for the newly created [division]. I now realise how much this is necessary for [the Department] as a whole.

Yes, time has jettisoned us into a new world order with an ever-changing strategic environment where ‘unpredictability’ is the order of the day!! This demands leadership with a profound difference to not only confront this unpredictable strategic environment, but also to continue to deliver . . . outcomes that make a difference . . ..

In this article, I would like to discuss that magic ‘leadership’ hidden in you all, because [the division] needs it now more than ever before.

[C]hallenges

Besides the changing strategic environment, [we] face new challenges such as:

• Support to [new departmental plan],

• [Our] new role in the —— Process and support to ——,

• [Our] relationship with the —— agency,

• [Our] engagement with other . . . Agencies,

• [the departmental] Review and its implementation, and

• [Our] declining budget.

In my view, these challenges are really opportunities in disguise - opportunities for all of us to demonstrate our organisational responsiveness, flexibility, . . . excellence and our ability to deliver more for less.

Your leadership

To transform challenges into opportunities requires true ‘leadership’ in its broadest sense. Leadership is about understanding people and their feelings, showing and leading the way into the future, and producing results that benefit all.

I believe each and every one of us has ‘leadership’ ability within us that we may or may not recognise. Buried within us is an inner depth with untapped vast intelligence to guide us in our leadership role.

During the . . . break, I read an interesting book entitled Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle. This book had a profound impact on me and struck a chord with some of my own beliefs and understandings of leadership.

Eckhart Tolle observes “when you lose touch with your inner-self, you lose touch with yourself; when you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world”.

Having read the book a couple of times, I realise how closely ‘leadership’ is connected with our inner-self. I am not sure how one can really understand people and their feelings and lead them effectively, without having that ‘touch’ of our own inner-self.

A great many leaders in history have touched people’s hearts through their compassion and at the same time led their country very successfully. The secret behind such leaders, in my thinking, is that they all had some degree of conscious awareness of their inner-self and their ability to tap into that inner dimension for leadership.

We all have that inner dimension and hence, as I said earlier, every one of us is a potential leader. The future is yours! Together, we will be able to confront the challenges I listed above and transform them into opportunities, as each and every one of us has that inner dimension that we can access.

I am passionate about you and I want your hidden leadership potential to come out to benefit [the department] and Australia. As you may know, [we] in concert with [the human resources department have] already taken a major strategic initiative in Workforce/Succession Planning to help you advance your leadership potential. You will soon see further initiatives focused to unleash that hidden leadership in you!

[Jack E]

I'm glad I don't work where you do
Probably took him a day to write that crap

[silentC]

Yes, same crap I got 10 years ago. At the end of the day, some people have it in them and most don't. The world is full of lousy managers and no amount of brainwashing will make them change.

The most pathetic thing I ever saw was one of the execs from the 'old school'. When the change came through, he was left looking around at his world slowly falling apart. In his world, he could yell and rant and rave and generally intimidate people. Everyone hated him but he got things done.

He came to the realisation that if he was going to keep his job in the 'new' world, he would have to adopt this 'leadership' guff that was coming out of the US. It was like watching a farmer wearing a suit to a wedding. His heart just wasn't in it and it was probably as uncomfortable for us to watch him tip-toeing about as it was for him to be doing it. He was made redundant shortly after. Probably the best thing that could've happened under the circumstances.

[Driver]

Shouldn't that be a triple bottom-line outcome?

Quite right, Alex. Curses! I'd forgotten about the triple bottom line.

[keith53]

Here's a recent memo from a manager:

Zen,



Do you know if the penis on this guy's head was fitted to the front or the side?

[Driver]

Here's a recent memo from a manager:

Zen

It's possible that this bloke is not utterly incompetent. In an earlier post to this thread I mentioned that I had met many quite successful managers who were guilty of management-speak (or quacking). Consequently, I believe that quacking is not an infallible indicator of dick-headedness. It is, however, a not insignificant factor and quacking on the scale exhibited by this bloke demands constant vigilance.

I also think that anyone who declares: "I am passionate about you...." either doesn't understand what he is saying or has designs upon your person not dissimilar to those of Seaman Staines. In other words, he's a bit of a worry!

[keith53]

I also think that anyone who declares: "I am passionate about you...." either doesn't understand what he is saying or has designs upon your person not dissimilar to those of Seaman Staines. In other words, he's a bit of a worry!

Stop this!!! I'm laughing so much I'll have to change my jocks soon...

[Gingermick]

I'm good at my job too, but have an uncanny ability to make myself misunderstood. Particularly when there's contentious or complex issues, .... or even simple ones that need to be communicated to people that irk me, or in any way cause me stress.
Those levels have been up recently as I have been too stressed to go and turn some wood.
Luckily I dont want to be upper, middle or lower echelon management.

[Auld Bassoon]

I don't know, I see a bit of synergy here that we could leverage. Let's take that offline and we'll get our people to workshop it for a few weeks.

Which roughly tranlates as "let's make this someone else's problem, because we don't know cr*p about the issue, and so that we'll know who to blame, going forward"

I'm a middlingly senior manager at a large corporate, and it grieves me as to how much absolute twaddle is spoken, often in all seriousness, by colleagues and peers.

Has anyone here ever seen any of the "Yes, Minister" programmes broadcast by the BBC a few years ago? So very, painfully, frighteningly true!

Cheers!