Business Bullsh!t

Good article!

Al Yankovic sang it well......

 
That's a good one Meadbh. We touched all of those bases in government, except maybe monetizing our assets although, at my agency, which was funded through charges to other agencies for services delivered, we even talked a bit of that talk.
 
At the end of each project, I had to schedule a "post mortem." I always thought that a phrase describing an investigation of death was an apt description of a successful project deployment.

I often wrapped up the meeting by thanking local management for their consistent state of hypoxia. After that, I dashed to the rental car and headed to the airport before the idiots had time to Google hypoxia. :nonono:
 
I have mixed feelings about "flavor of the month" BS programs. It's always good to step away from the details of daily routine and take some time to see things from a different perspective.

Creating a catchy dialect gives workers a certain amount of power. A grunt can say a word or two to a manager, and convey a whole body of meaning. Using the "approved" company jargon not only lends credibility, but it's a defense against being seen as a malcontent when offering a different opinion or perspective.
 
I found a lot that resonated. Here's some:
the average US employee now spends 45% of their working day doing their real job. The other 55% is spent doing things such as wading through endless emails or attending pointless meetings.

Today, bureaucracy comes cloaked in the language of change. Organisations are full of people whose job is to create change for no real reason.

Manufacturing hollow change requires a constant supply of new management fads and fashions.
Click to expand...

But the most disturbing observation was:
One teacher recalled how a seven-year-old described her day at school: “Well, when we get to class, we get out our books and start on our non-negotiables.”
Click to expand...
 
In retrospect I think it would probably be fair to say that most of us as young pups in the business world ate these kind of new programs up. Drank the Kool-aide, swallowed the company pill and pretty much went along with the program in hopes of climbing the ladder. Then when we hit the prime earning years and realize we hit the top rung but on the wrong ladder we become a bit jaded or more realistic and could see through most of the BS soup de jour programs but found that it is easier to go with the flow as opposed to fighting the system.
 
frayne said:
In retrospect I think it would probably be fair to say that most of us as young pups in the business world ate these kind of new programs up. Drank the Kool-aide, swallowed the company pill and pretty much went along with the program in hopes of climbing the ladder. Then when we hit the prime earning years and realize we hit the top rung but on the wrong ladder we become a bit jaded or more realistic and could see through most of the BS soup de jour programs but found that it is easier to go with the flow as opposed to fighting the system.
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+1.
Spot on.
 
Yes salute the corporate flag and then get on with doing the job at hand. Maybe sprinkle some of the latest buzz words on stuff we were doing anyway.
 
When I switched from working full-time to part-time in 2001, one good thing about it was getting stripped of a lot of the crummy, mindless BS work I never liked. And being in the office so little kept me away from many, but not all, of the time-wasting meetings and other corporate BS.
 
Meetings hell yes so much thankless BS . Once a week meeting to go over metrics ! Mega Corp. brought all of the whizzes in from Boston to teach us cowboys how to run a business like Pratt Whitney .

The only bad thing is like it has been said none of this produced any profit, productivity or cost savings.

Today the Mega Corp is running around , stock down 11% begging to be bought out . Yepper took a 28B company to 16B.

But the metrics are working , they just can't get jobs ?

The thankless jobs and meetings seem like Communism , don't fix anything till you have a meeting or a review . I will quit ranting !
 
frayne said:
In retrospect I think it would probably be fair to say that most of us as young pups in the business world ate these kind of new programs up. Drank the Kool-aide, swallowed the company pill and pretty much went along with the program in hopes of climbing the ladder. Then when we hit the prime earning years and realize we hit the top rung but on the wrong ladder we become a bit jaded or more realistic and could see through most of the BS soup de jour programs but found that it is easier to go with the flow as opposed to fighting the system.
Click to expand...

Seriously? I guess I don't like Kool-aide. I always saw these programs as BS, and wasn't afraid to say so, which may not have been the wisest career choice. I used to call it management by magazine cover. Whenever a new buzzword generator (TQM, Six Sigma, ISO 9000, etc.) would appear on a magazine cover like Forbes my Mega would be all over it. We also had a number of corporate specific versions. Each and every one had some decent ideas built in, but since upper management never changed their way of doing things the good aspects couldn't make any inroads. Also, I noticed very early on that the people that would give up their tech careers to become Quality Managers or whatever they were called (basically program coordinators for the buzzword generating program), would appear to be on an upward glide path but after awhile they'd become useless and eventually disappear. So I'd take the course (grumping all the way), then get back to my job and pretty much ignore what they were pushing. In a very short time all mention of the program would disappear (along with the coordinators) until the next one came along.
 
Remember SIG Sigma , get that black belt ! or when we got the people from the Jack Welch institute . Who said every year we must lay off 10% of the workforce and bring in new people for new ideas . They never understood what we ever did but could hold meetings and show all kinds of graphs. Once again tough for us Cowboys.


I remember dragging my laptop home every night and having a boss to check band width to see if we were actually logging in !
 
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You are correct it was Six Sigma , all I ever got was a green belt . Left it to the young kids . Talking about this is driving my BP up .
 
kcowan said:
I think we called it Sick Sigma, but it was really Six Sigma. God help you if you only achieved Five Sigma!
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We just called it BS.

Oh man, those 6 sigma meetings were slivers jammed under the fingernails. Thanks goodness we moved onto the next shiny object the following year. I don't remember what it was, but it wasn't as painful.
 
Remember when they would install new computer systems . Uhhhh. From Oracle to SAP . Everyone asked why we changed and one of the consultants told a few of us that SAP to the CEO is like having the best car in the world he will never learn how to drive .


I was so sick of reporting metrics that I never knew what my job was at the end .
 
Ah, I do love these posts. Reminds me of the days where I had to listen to the latest bull squeeze...and since Uncle Sugar is *always* late to the party, they were 10 years behind the mega-corps. I should come up with some FIRE buzzowords...and NO, not the crap that some "early-retirees" spout about on their money-making blogs, either...they are just as bad.
 
This thread shows there is too much group think. What you need is a paradigm shift to think outside the box. Let’s get some buy in to take it to the next level and use a holistic approach to empower yourselves and achieve a six sigma outcome.

Going forward, we need to reach out proactively and build strong fleet dynamism. A synergistic sea change would give us the disruptive innovation we need to break through the clutter, push past the pain points, get across the event horizon to drill down and rightshore our core competencies and make it pop.

And keep this in your headlights - focus, not buzzwords.
 
My ask to you Mr. mod MichaelB, is to throttle that kind of talk. Do I need to reach out to you?
 
While I was hoping to contribute to this discussion, I reached out to Google for information about strategizing my synergies. This suggestion leaped out to me, from LinkedIn:

When it comes to authoritatively maintaining visionary storage, we often take the approach of compellingly fashioning maintainable partnerships.

Holistically re-intermediating impactful networks through a cohesive marketing strategy will dynamically maximize cutting-edge testing procedures.

It makes sense because synergistically maximizing innovative e-business strategies requires a company that continually fashions exceptional innovation. We know this because intrinsically delivering business total linkage will result in resource-maximizing internal or "organic" sources. Now, that’s not to say this always works. Sometimes, globally enhancing state of the art e-business will continually unleash interactive content. Sometimes it won’t.
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Please, somebody- Call the pig & close this thread!
 
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