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

[TheGreenGoblin]

We have all been there... some idiot talking gibberish in a management meeting and all you want to do is throttle him/her or sit there wishing one's own intestine would rise up and kill one in an act of ultimate mercy lest one waste another second in such a meeting.

What are the worst moments people here can remember?

[probes]

A stress management 3 day (!!!) seminar. The memory that still rises my blood pressure to the ceiling.
Starting from the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, as a suitable beginning for 'fighting workplace stress issues'.

Couldn't leave, as my boss was my best friend and the rest would have said 'she can, of course'.

[Capetonian]

A memo I sent out years ago in the company I worked for. Only a handful worked out that it was a total piss-take.

To all colleagues

It will have been brought to your attention through normal channels of communication that a fundamental and far-reaching restructuring of our organisation is currently at this point in time under way.

Basically this concerns each and every employee and it is important that we all understand the new game plan and are seen to be singing from the same hymn book, in order to reinforce our global vision as a quality driven organisation.

It is essential that we run this by each and every single one of you in order that nobody should feel that they are out of the loop at any point in time, and I myself, as managing director, in terms of my remit, will make a point of touching base with you individually within the foreseeable future. In terms of timescale, whilst it is not at this stage possible to quantify a precise time lapse, as a ball park figure, you can expect these meetings to be on the agenda within the upcoming month.

We have undertaken an in-depth gap analysis, in keeping with our strategy as a result-driven client focused global player, on our business model, from which we have highlighted number of items which have been benchmarked to carry us on a fast track to a win-win situation. In terms of our best practice, we need to revisit our vision of employee empowerment to ensure a strategic fit which will, whilst we grow our business, ensure total commitment to value added service levels and a leverage towards an unprecedented bottom line in which you as shareholders will all participate.

A paradigm shift is envisaged whereby our mindset becomes more and more focussed in respect of our knowledge base and the enhancement that this will bring to our global vision through best use of available bandwidth.

It is only by thinking proactively outside the box that we can develop synergies which will allow us to mature to global leadership in our industry. Reflected in our mission statement, our enactment of this vision of the future will be the dynamo that at the end of the day drives us forward into the 21st. century.

Thank you for the continuation of your journey with us, and for giving me the opportunity to reach out to you at this time.

I once attended a 'conflict management' course run by a spotty little oik who wouldn't have been able to resolve his way out of a wet paper bag, he was about 18 and as full of 'management speak' clichés out of books as he was full of brown stuff.
I doubt whether he'd ever had any conflict with anyone in his lifetime except perhaps with his Mummy over his bedtime.

So a couple of my colleagues and I decided to set him up, and we got another colleague to come along and pretend that he had booked the conference room we were using, and that there'd been a clash, and our 'tutor' and the group had to clear out, and fast.

To say that he was out of his comfort zone was the understatement of the year. I think the first thing he did when he got home to Mummy was to change his underpants.

[TheGreenGoblin]

A stress management 3 day (!!!) seminar. The memory that still rises my blood pressure to the ceiling.
Starting from the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, as a suitable beginning for 'fighting workplace stress issues'.

Couldn't leave, as my boss was my best friend and the rest would have said 'she can, of course'.

Aaagh...

Something oxymoronic about that!

[probes]

isn't it. That.
'onestly, too.

[TheGreenGoblin]

@ Capetonian...

reach out...

There is a special place in hell for people that say that (along with pretty much everything else spoofed in that mail)...

[Smeagol]

In the 1980's I spent a year working in Kuwait as 'Industrial Contracts Manager' for a subsidiary company of Kuwait Oil Co. The company was a complete shambles with various departments fighting against each other and the 'support functions' like Personnel, Finance etc seemed to exist to obstruct the functioning of the departments that actually earned money, like the one I managed. To say the company was overstaffed would be a considerable understatement.
Management Consultants were brought in from a major Uk company (cannot actually remember which one but it was one of the 'biggies') to perform an audit and suggest ways of improving efficiency. Their fee was suitably large I believe.
I did offer our General Manager an alternative to reduce staff and hence overhead costs and improve efficiency with a far cheaper option. My suggestion was to ask each department head to produce a plan for improving efficiency, reducing staff etc. Review the plans submitted and take the worst one (probably the one that said that the department was fine and that staff could not be reduced - there would likely have been several of those to choose from!) and fire that department Manager. Then go back to to the remaining managers for a rethink! I suggested that there would be many reductions offered after that exercise. My offer was not taken up, but I did not notice any great insights or improvements from the much more expensive management consultants.
I left the company after my first year as I felt I was wasting my time there. Kuwait was a sh!t hole as well!

[Ex-Ascot]

No Cape you have missed out many key phrases there. For MBA exams I memorised the lot and just slotted them in.

Had a sandal wearing hippy type HR tutor once blabbing on about equal opportunities. A mate told him he would employ black, white, yellow, male or female but never a woofter.. The guy went crazy and said there could be people in the tutorial upset by that comment as they could be homosexual. He stormed out when I said, 'hands up all the woofters'. Got reported to the head of the Seminar who happened to be my personal tutor from Oxford. She just said 'what the hell have you said now'.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Any so -called "offsite" run by consultants that includes among many other things:

Myers-Briggs personality tests
Juggling
Brain storming with yellow post it notes
Lunch with one's colleagues...
Break out sessions...

There are so many more items but I feel my will to live leaving me...

[Ex-Ascot]

A module in my MBA was creative management. What a load of *****. They left my syndicate in a room in a Cambridge college to solve a problem. One of the teachings was to find a comfortable environment. Tutor rocked by to see how we were progressing. AWOL at a pub by the river. Only following advice. Can't remember whose idea it was.

[barkingmad]

The phrase “going forward” pushes the mercury in my blood pressure monitor out of the top!

Recommended reading for anyone suffering low BP;



But “The Little Book of Management Bollocks” is the perfect antidote. Alas THEY haven’t read it, otherwise the system would become extinct.

[probes]

When in trouble with a ... well, youknowwhat translation a couple of years back, Slash suggested these:

***** generator

Corporate BS Generator

Very helpful. There are some more according to the 'specific field' .

[Dunbar]

[ian16th]

Two full weeks of the SPIN Sales School.

[Rwy in Sight]

Almost every seminar I have attended you ask how to handle a difficult customer and they say oh don't worry it is a small percentage just concentrate on the remaining ones.

[probes]

But, Cape - isn't it interesting that some people actually DO speak like that, with ease and without any visible discomfort?

[TheGreenGoblin]

Superb...

[Hydromet]

The last business meeting I attended, I walked out of and enrolled for the following year in a full-time course that I'd planned to do when I retired. Took a fair bit of the following year off as a mix of paid & unpaid leave. Went back for a couple of years, but never went to another meeting. They didn't miss me, and I didn't miss them.

Also hated useless "staff development" courses that we were told to attend, as, at that time, employers were required to spend a percentage of their budget on training. Below is a memo I circulated anonymously. Some people took it seriously, but although I was a suspect in the following witch hunt, I was never convicted.

COURSEMANSHIP FOR BEGINNERS

Staff Development Section is presently conducting a series of Basic Management courses. During these courses, it has become apparent that for a variety of reasons, some staff are not able to gain the full benefits of the course.
In some cases, it is many years since participants last attended a course, and their skills require refreshment. In other cases, participants are not sure what to expect from the course, and are therefore not fully receptive.
This course aims to prepare officers who propose to attend courses, either on an intermittent or regular basis, and will provide a good foundation for those who wish to become full-time course goers. The course will be of three days duration, and will cover the following topics:
Horses for courses – selecting the best course for you.
Success through suction – the importance of selecting the right partner in team exercises.
Note taking – how to attend to your private correspondence while appearing attentive.
Creative latecoming – 1001 excuses for a long lunch.
An introduction to MEGO* techniques – how to appear to be awake.
Examination technique – a guide to non-examinable courses.

*My Eyes Glaze Over

Officers who are interested in attending this course should, in the first instance, approach their unit head, who will make arrangements with the staff development officer.

[Cpt_Pugwash]

Re. the above, I must find my old recruitment flyer for the Institute of Meetings Engineers.

Also recall being sent on a course in 1985 for people newly promoted into a post with staff management duties, or as a refresher. "Getting the best from your staff" it was called, a week at a seafront hotel in Eastbourne, one attendee from the Met Office is still appearing on TV weather reports.
Anyway, first morning, round robin introduce yourself and say what you want from the course. When it gets to his turn, one disheveled character announces that he would have no truck with this sort of management bollocks, and that he was only there because his line manager had said he could not avoid it for the third time, and he wanted the week to be over as quickly as possible so he could get back to clearing up the mess his clueless staff would have made in his absence.
He was on his way back to his office that morning, presumably to an interview with his line manager.

[Slasher]

Bloody weekly destructor meetings in my old mob. One of the reasons I gave up sim/line instructing with ‘em. Haven’t heard so much ***** being bandied about a table in me life. I only ever spoke up when I had to answer something. Never proffered any idea or suggestion as it would:

a) go over their heads
b) never be acted on, or
c) be ignored or,
d) thrown in the too hard basket if it made sense.

Just an excuse to have an arab coffee and dates while blindly ticking boxes with lots of nodding.