Ronstar
Moderator Emeritus
"On time, Correct, and under budget". I wish I had a dollar for every time the boss came out with those encouraging words to the staff.
Memories of Workplace Philosophy Theories Past
- Thread starter Pellice
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iloveyoga
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Quality Circles....Franklin Planners...a whole series about "The Customer". We did do some professional image public speaking stuff that was pretty good. I just has some flashbacks!
prudent_one
Recycles dryer sheets
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I can see I wasn't one of the only people who choked back bile when one of these "initiatives" would be deployed. You had to play along until the bloom was off the rose and you could go back to your effective methods. But while it was rolling, oh, life was miserable. I wonder how many binders of consultant-generated crap I've handled over the years.
I still remember the one consultant's money phrase: "Carve out your breakthrough goal!" <puke>
Two big memories. One was the sweatshop company I worked for in my early 20's that was run by a lunatic owner. He would make the most insane decisions and if you dared question anything, well, you were branded as a moron and not a team player. One year he said we were going to go after the Baldridge award. The few of us who knew what it was were incredulous at the very notion. No processes. Everything done by reflex and intuition and rank decided everything. No collaboration. I bet a coworker $10 in 3 months we'd never hear another word about it, I won.
The other was when the Agile thing arrived at a different job. That company worked in world were it was mostly construction with a little software mixed in. A handful of Agile zealots were hired on to "fix" the software culture. They insisted you just sit down with the customer and figure out what you could do within the customer's budget. We collaborate! You give the customer little bits of software as you go. In real life, the customer would say, you agreed to this specification, go do it - we're not negotiating it again. And don't bother my people with little bits of software, I can't afford to keep retraining them all the time and when you have it all done, let me know. Well, the zealots didn't like that because it didn't fit their world. Eventually some got the boot and some left on their own because their one trick didn't work in that environment. But it was painful as heck while it lasted - the zealots telling upper management how beautiful the world was going to be, while all we heard from customers was "Make those people stop calling me to 'collaborate with my field team' because who has time for that. I'm running a business here."
Oh, and the off-site workshops that were just pie-in-the-sky dreaming of utopian bliss in a world where all the nagging problems of real life would not exist. As if you could just issue orders and the entire workforce would respond unfailingly and without error and nothing bad ever happened.
I still remember the one consultant's money phrase: "Carve out your breakthrough goal!" <puke>
Two big memories. One was the sweatshop company I worked for in my early 20's that was run by a lunatic owner. He would make the most insane decisions and if you dared question anything, well, you were branded as a moron and not a team player. One year he said we were going to go after the Baldridge award. The few of us who knew what it was were incredulous at the very notion. No processes. Everything done by reflex and intuition and rank decided everything. No collaboration. I bet a coworker $10 in 3 months we'd never hear another word about it, I won.
The other was when the Agile thing arrived at a different job. That company worked in world were it was mostly construction with a little software mixed in. A handful of Agile zealots were hired on to "fix" the software culture. They insisted you just sit down with the customer and figure out what you could do within the customer's budget. We collaborate! You give the customer little bits of software as you go. In real life, the customer would say, you agreed to this specification, go do it - we're not negotiating it again. And don't bother my people with little bits of software, I can't afford to keep retraining them all the time and when you have it all done, let me know. Well, the zealots didn't like that because it didn't fit their world. Eventually some got the boot and some left on their own because their one trick didn't work in that environment. But it was painful as heck while it lasted - the zealots telling upper management how beautiful the world was going to be, while all we heard from customers was "Make those people stop calling me to 'collaborate with my field team' because who has time for that. I'm running a business here."
Oh, and the off-site workshops that were just pie-in-the-sky dreaming of utopian bliss in a world where all the nagging problems of real life would not exist. As if you could just issue orders and the entire workforce would respond unfailingly and without error and nothing bad ever happened.
jollystomper
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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I do not miss the forced march to social media (everyone on my organization had to have a twitter account), the forced retweeting of information (some managers and executives would literally send out 3-4 emails a day with instructions to "cut and paste the following information into a tweet"), and the expected "like-ing" of the executive tweets and LinkedIn posts, all in the name of "we need to build the Megacorp Brand and your our Brand".
38Chevy454
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Thought of another: stretch goals
Not enough to meet the regular goal, must have stretch goals that corp mgmt can berate you for not meeting.
Edit to add, not really a philosophy but rather a source of many corporate failings - the all powerful "not invented here"
Not enough to meet the regular goal, must have stretch goals that corp mgmt can berate you for not meeting.
Edit to add, not really a philosophy but rather a source of many corporate failings - the all powerful "not invented here"
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In my state based workplace, the goal was to show that we valued diversity in the obvious way. Yet there was no tolerance for diversity of ideas. Sad, because most of our diversity hires did not stay long. Neither did independent thinkers. I stayed too long and am glad to be done.
Calico
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Every change in management brings a new "flavor of the month"
S.M.A.R.T goals
Lean Six Sigma
360 Evaluations
And the latest - a huge, time-sucking, company wide "workplace culture initiative" wherein we are all expected to share all our little feelings about each other constantly, in an attempt to "improve the culture" (what could possibly go wrong?); wherein we are expected to care deeply about everyone's little personal problems (newsflash: I DON'T care about your personal problems); wherein we have already spent two full days at offsite "retreats" playing games (I kid you not) to bring more "fun" into the culture. Next up was going to be spending time in little groups doing exercises to teach us how to "deeply trust each other" on a personal level.
Mercifully, it appears that the lockdown/quarantine/stay-at-home situation has put all of that on hold indefinitely.
Apparently they realize that expecting us to play these little games remotely, while also dealing with a pandemic on a daily basis, scrounging for groceries etc. might just be a bridge too far.
8 more months.....8 more months.....
S.M.A.R.T goals
Lean Six Sigma
360 Evaluations
And the latest - a huge, time-sucking, company wide "workplace culture initiative" wherein we are all expected to share all our little feelings about each other constantly, in an attempt to "improve the culture" (what could possibly go wrong?); wherein we are expected to care deeply about everyone's little personal problems (newsflash: I DON'T care about your personal problems); wherein we have already spent two full days at offsite "retreats" playing games (I kid you not) to bring more "fun" into the culture. Next up was going to be spending time in little groups doing exercises to teach us how to "deeply trust each other" on a personal level.
Mercifully, it appears that the lockdown/quarantine/stay-at-home situation has put all of that on hold indefinitely.
Apparently they realize that expecting us to play these little games remotely, while also dealing with a pandemic on a daily basis, scrounging for groceries etc. might just be a bridge too far.
8 more months.....8 more months.....
Masquernom
Full time employment: Posting here.
When I first started work as a young engineer in manufacturing, my megacorp would roll out some new stupid idea. Of course being new, I didn't know it was stupid. I'd talk to the old operators about this great new idea. Their response? "I've heard the wind blow before". Took me a few years and a move to corporate to really understand what they meant.
Calico
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Yup, the young'uns at w#rk have been throwing themselves into this whole "culture" thing 1000%. They'll learn in time.
How about pendulum swings? We went back and forth between centralized control and empowering local business units. The latter was called "The 3M Model" at one time.
In my experience, empowering local control always lead to improvements, but the powers-that-be at the home office always won in the end, and pulled all the power back to their ivory tower. Then some executive would read a new book or attend a seminar, and we'd go off down the decentralizing path again, but this time with a new name.
In my experience, empowering local control always lead to improvements, but the powers-that-be at the home office always won in the end, and pulled all the power back to their ivory tower. Then some executive would read a new book or attend a seminar, and we'd go off down the decentralizing path again, but this time with a new name.
OK, related questions:
1) Do you think the consultants "delivering" these programs believed them? Or were they just as cynical over drinks after work as the seminar participants?
2) Did management believe these programs would deliver happier employees, customers, profits? Did anyone ever attend an "after-action" report on "what went wrong?" and "what lessons have we learned?"
1) Do you think the consultants "delivering" these programs believed them? Or were they just as cynical over drinks after work as the seminar participants?
2) Did management believe these programs would deliver happier employees, customers, profits? Did anyone ever attend an "after-action" report on "what went wrong?" and "what lessons have we learned?"
REWahoo
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give
In my Baldrige example above there were no consultants. The CEO created a "department of excellence" and hired a VP and full-time staff to lead the company's effort to obtain the award. These employees believed in the program heart and soul.
Yes to all.
The company made at least two unsuccessful applications for the award and received substantial feedback on where we fell short. This led to major programs and sustained effort to revise and improve processes and behavior. A ton of work for several years.
I prefer to focus more on the big bash we had after the ceremony at the DC hotel when the Pres handed the award to the CEO. The following two or three weeks were some of the best days at work I can recall.
Then it was EOM again and we had to focus on making the numbers...
John Galt III
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For about 5 years at my megacorp, every big wig presentation had to include the words 'perception is reality', meaning the public's perception of the company was just as important (or more?) as the actual reality.
pjm-7
Recycles dryer sheets
One of the last one of these trainings that I want to when I was in financial services was how to work collaboratively and try all ideas. They showed various clips from the movie Apollo 13. A week later when asked by a manager what I thought of the training, I replied "why did everyone keep referring to it as a movie" I got the blank stare look. Some people really just thought it was a movie.
I was too old for the place and moved on.��
I was too old for the place and moved on.��
frayne
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
They don't call them "soup of the day" programs for nothing. I usually came away with a few good nuggets from some of the programs but most of the programs were just downright BS busy work that helped some else achieve their performance target.
mitchjav
Recycles dryer sheets
Remember the TQM (Total Quality Management) phase. Company flew the whole sales organization to Portland, OR for a 2-day TQM training. This was before cellphones were a thing and pay phones in the lobby of this facility were off-limits. Drove the salespeople crazy. At the end of the 2nd day, as we exited the facility, my sales partner took the binder with all the training materials and dropped it in the trash can out front.
I wrote a short story based on the "Who Moved My Cheese" parable. Instead of blaming those lazy workers for being such a bunch of whiners, in my story the skilled, hard-working professional cheese makers had their factory shut down and equipment all shipped to some offshore location where low-wage workers could use it to make Cheeze-Whiz. The skilled cheese makers were out of a job, the customers couldn't get real cheese and the owners got rich.
I was kinda proud of it at the time. But looking back, it was probably WAY too cynical for publication.
EastWest Gal
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
In medicine they call it CQI. Continuous Quality Improvement. It became a requirement to maintain board certification. We are required to do a project twice every five years. Fortunately I was actually involved in two studies which met qualifications. For the third, I was supposed to self-evaluate myself for handwashing. Actually my patients were supposed to evaluate me, but I was supposed have them fill out a questionnaire. Since I was already 100% for handwashing, there was nothing to improve. I ended up making up some numbers, since I was supposed to improve from 100%, I had to pretend like I wasn’t at 100% initially in order to “pass” through “performance improvement”.
I’m giving up board certification at the end of the year. They want another project, plus $1400. Not doing it.
All of this is a money-making racket for the performance improvement consultants. You know. Those are the folks that don’t actually do anything, but are handsomely paid to tell others how to do the thing they themselves are not willing to do. Which is: work.
I’m giving up board certification at the end of the year. They want another project, plus $1400. Not doing it.
All of this is a money-making racket for the performance improvement consultants. You know. Those are the folks that don’t actually do anything, but are handsomely paid to tell others how to do the thing they themselves are not willing to do. Which is: work.
GalaxyBoy
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
But if you retire early what will you do all day!
swakyaby
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Our workplace designated itself as a Center of Excellence and more recently embraced the virtues of “kaizen,” a foreign word meaning “always improving.” I think it ended up making workers feeling underpaid.
Corporateburnout
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MBOs and 360 evaluations
