Business meetings, management speak, management consultants and sundry idiots...

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Re: Business meetings, management speak, management consultants and sundry idiots...

#21 Post by Pontius Navigator » Sat Jan 18, 2020 12:05 pm

We had an Annual meeting at a suitable venue round the country. Good opportunity to meet our scattered colleagues.

Taken over by Army, annual became 2-3 a year, then also a 'local' meeting every 6 weeks. These took a day including travel. The brief 'bring me solutions not problems '.

We that had been shot gunned into these Army meetings had nothing to report - problem, solution, implementation, no problem - so we kept quiet.

On a report the Colonel said my job was not particularly demanding. "As I have been doing it for 5 years, if I can't make it look easy something is wrong."

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Re: Business meetings, management speak, management consultants and sundry idiots...

#22 Post by 1DC » Sat Jan 18, 2020 10:15 pm

Used to take great delight in waiting until some young whizkid had finished trying to confuse everyone with his latest buzzwords by asking him if he knew how to make his presentation in simple words that could be understood and if he could would he do it.
When i retired the boss asked me if i had any advice for him that would make him a better manager. I suggested he stopped the weekly management meetings that only passed on the latest company ***** and gave the other managers a couple of days work trying to implement useless improvements and collecting statistics that would never be required.
Give him his due he cut the weekly meeting to monthly and stopped the *****..

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Re: Business meetings, management speak, management consultants and sundry idiots...

#23 Post by ian16th » Sat Jan 18, 2020 11:23 pm

Attended a Time Management course once.
The 1st item was; Time Cannot Be Managed! It happens.
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Re: Business meetings, management speak, management consultants and sundry idiots...

#24 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Jan 19, 2020 6:36 am

Apart from technically orientated courses or those with a definable and empirically verifiable outcome, like an examination or a completed artifact or something like that, the only life management course or school that I have ever heard about or seen that made a modicum of sense was this one...



"Hard cheese" indeed! :))
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Re: Business meetings, management speak, management consultants and sundry idiots...

#25 Post by Slasher » Mon Jan 20, 2020 5:54 am

Coupla years back one hot-tempered capt I knew in my last mob was advised to attend Anger Management sessions or risk getting the arse at Contract renewal time (which was coming up).

Thing is, a bit like me, he manages his anger quite well by blowing the sh!t out of those who fully deserve it. Still he attended one in town at his own cost...and ended up blowing the living shi!t out of the counselor something fierce! =))

He got his contract renewed though with some assisting input from his mates.

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Re: Business meetings, management speak, management consultants and sundry idiots...

#26 Post by Ex-Ascot » Mon Jan 20, 2020 6:09 am

I have been trying to find the clip of Only Fools and Horses where Cassandra invites her boss to dinner. Del invites himself. Her boss drops in all the crap business speak. Can't find it on YouTube. It' s the one where they play Trivial Pursuit after dinner. I have it on portable HD but clipping it and posting it here is way beyond my pay grade.
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Re: Business meetings, management speak, management consultants and sundry idiots...

#27 Post by Slasher » Mon Jan 20, 2020 6:17 am

Ex-Ascot wrote:
Mon Jan 20, 2020 6:09 am
.
That reminds me sah - forgot to mention I watched a few episodes of Only Fools and Horses. Damn funny! :))

It’s not up there with Fawlty Towers IMO but akin to Steptoe & Son in humourality level - so it didn’t cause me to bust a gut like Basil always did - but provided a few good belly laughs nonetheless.

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Re: Business meetings, management speak, management consultants and sundry idiots...

#28 Post by OFSO » Mon Jan 20, 2020 9:28 am

We used to have a WORM every week in the Briefing Room. Weekly Operations Review Meeting, attendance mandatory for OFSO. Utterly boring. One German, who loved his own voice, which never changed in pitch or inflection, would send us all to sleep. Then the OFD, the Operations Flight Director, would pick on someone, usually me, to answer some spurious question, the answer to which everyone already knew and didn't give a toss about. I used to get a member of my staff to come and rescue me from the meeting "as there is an urgent query to be dealt with" but couldn't do that every week.

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Re: Business meetings, management speak, management consultants and sundry idiots...

#29 Post by ian16th » Mon Jan 20, 2020 11:35 am

Shouldn't have 'Weekly Meetings', people only invent things for the agenda or to make them look active/important.

You should only have meetings when there is a need.
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Re: Business meetings, management speak, management consultants and sundry idiots...

#30 Post by Capetonian » Mon Jan 20, 2020 11:49 am

You should only have meetings when there is a need.
Which is just about never, so that would eliminate 99.9% of all meetings, meaning that most people in most organisations would become redundant.
In my last job - and it's clear why it was my last - I either refused to go to meetings or sat and made abrasive remarks until I was asked to leave.
I was asked to write the minutes after one meeting and I wrote as follows :
Please refer to the minutes of department meetings held on the following dates
xx/xxx xx/xxx xx/xxx etc.
It's all in there. At today's meeting nothing was said that we haven't all heard a dozen or more times before.
Nothing was decided or agreed.
For the minutes of next week's department meeting, please refer to this document.

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Re: Business meetings, management speak, management consultants and sundry idiots...

#31 Post by Ex-Ascot » Mon Jan 20, 2020 11:50 am

Slasher wrote:
Mon Jan 20, 2020 6:17 am
Ex-Ascot wrote:
Mon Jan 20, 2020 6:09 am
.
That reminds me sah - forgot to mention I watched a few episodes of Only Fools and Horses. Damn funny! :))



It’s not up there with Fawlty Towers IMO but akin to Steptoe & Son in humourality level - so it didn’t cause me to bust a gut like Basil always did - but provided a few good belly laughs nonetheless.


Capt have you seen 'Men Behaving Badly' You will like that. Just working our way through it again.

We have every single episode of Fawlty Towers and all but a few of Only Fools and Horses. It has probably been posted here before but this is a British TV comedy classic.



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Re: Business meetings, management speak, management consultants and sundry idiots...

#32 Post by Slasher » Mon Jan 20, 2020 1:11 pm

I never even saw Upstairs Downstairs, Rumpole of the Bailey, The Bounder nor The Goon Show. But I understand they were all good English programs.

Benny Hill I liked a lot.

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Re: Business meetings, management speak, management consultants and sundry idiots...

#33 Post by ian16th » Mon Jan 20, 2020 1:40 pm

Rumpole of the Bailey is well worth getting, though it did suffer from series fatigue in its later days.

From what I've picked up about you from your postings, I cannot understand why you would like the Benny Hill Show.

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Re: Business meetings, management speak, management consultants and sundry idiots...

#34 Post by Capetonian » Mon Jan 20, 2020 2:02 pm

My Dad was a huge Benny Hill fan. My mother and I couldn't stand his shows.

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Re: Business meetings, management speak, management consultants and sundry idiots...

#35 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Mon Jan 20, 2020 2:23 pm

Slasher wrote:
Mon Jan 20, 2020 1:11 pm
I never even saw Upstairs Downstairs, Rumpole of the Bailey, The Bounder nor The Goon Show. But I understand they were all good English programs.

Benny Hill I liked a lot.
Captain Slasher has always struck me as a Paul Hogan kind of guy...



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Your destination remains
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Re: Business meetings, management speak, management consultants and sundry idiots...

#36 Post by Pontius Navigator » Mon Jan 20, 2020 5:41 pm

When I took over my last job I was told I was overdue an H&S meeting. Ten years later I had yet to hold one. I said H&S was an on going issue. Guys reported a problem, solution implemented.

However when my site manager was fired I found a man with a dickie ticker, working on his own, on kit for which he wasn't trained, cutting iron bars which dropped in the floor. He was wearing moccasins, no safety glasses or gloves, and the power cable was on the floor where the bars were dropping.

I suggested to the acting site manager, who was not on site, that he should get a grip. Prat argued.


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Re: Business meetings, management speak, management consultants and sundry idiots...

#38 Post by Slasher » Tue Jan 21, 2020 7:40 am

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Mon Jan 20, 2020 2:23 pm
Captain Slasher has always struck me as a Paul Hogan kind of guy...
Nah Gob. I’m more your heroic Leo Wanker type. :D



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Re: Business meetings, management speak, management consultants and sundry idiots...

#39 Post by Pontius Navigator » Tue Jan 21, 2020 8:40 am

Oddly enough there was an article by John Timpson about business meetings in yesterdays Telegraph. Once a month is too often. Try a meeting without chairs. Don't read out the previous minutes!

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Re: Business meetings, management speak, management consultants and sundry idiots...

#40 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Tue Jan 21, 2020 4:52 pm

Sisemen wrote:
Tue Jan 21, 2020 1:46 am
"Let's do away with computers..."
Sums it up perfectly! ;)))

Does anybody remember Colin's sandwich? Same splenetic sense of humour. Irony personified here...

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Your destination remains
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