A Masterclass in Corporate Glibglarp-speak


I’ve worked for too many corporatist shitbags to have any instinct but “RUN!” when I hear the sound of corpocrat. That’s why mayor Pete made my flesh crawl – he deployed the same technique, which deflects responsibility, takes credit, and obscures the speaker’s agenda. It makes them (they think) sound smart, which means they think you’re a dumb sucker who’s going to fall for substanceless style.

My “go to” parody is “pro-actively leveraging our synergies” which means I don’t really know what, but I heard it from the mouth of a senior consultant from Perot Systems back in the late 90s. I immediately concluded that the Perot team didn’t know what they were doing and were trying to sound smart in front of the customer and they planned to stall while I solved the problem and they did write-ups about it, hogging all the glory. Naturally, I told my client that that was what was going to happen, so when it did, well – they didn’t really care: their problem was solved. And I didn’t really care: I got a pretty substantial payment for the project. But my antennae tend to tingle when I hear the sound of glibglarp and I start parsing it extra hard listening for double negatives, i.e: “We will not allow you to be left unhanging in this situation.” Usually, though, it’s “we have a focus committee doubling down on this and are going to positively have analysis to present next monday.” Got to work “positively” in there; it’s a good way of saying “we know nothing.” Mayor Pete had that trick down pretty well.

This appears to be saying “we, at corporate, are doing a good job of taking care of ourselves.”

The art is to talk around the problem, firmly and resolutely with a hint of positivity, and to leave vast tracts of things unsaid because they are unpleasant.

It starts:

Hello global McFamily.

If that’s not enough to make your hands twitch as though they were holding a pitchfork, nothing will.

How we act and what we do as a system directly translates into how we take care of our people.

When you say “we” what do you mean?

Last week we announced a dedicated team, led by Ed Lee at MHQ, to coordinate our response and ensure that all markets receive the necessary support.

That sounds a lot to me like “we don’t know but we’ve assigned Ed Lee to figure this out.” Ed Lee is the stunt double who’s going to swing through the air on a burning rope and maybe fall screaming into the pit of snakes or maybe land safely on the other side. I’m vaguely reminded of another one of my consulting clients, a large oil company, which developed an outbreak response plan that was probably sitting on the shelf until last week. What I believe Mr McDonaldsface is saying is “we were blindsided by this and I’ve been running around a lot the last week wondering what happens to all of the executive team’s stock options.”

We also restricted travel to business essential only and encouraged our corporate employees to work from home, in addition to fundamental changes to gatherings like world-wide conventions.

In other words, “we didn’t trust you to work from home before, but now that we’ve got to, we’re willing to enjoy the cost savings we’ll experience as well as the productivity increase.”

In the markets, our managing directors are working closely with operator leadership to make the decisions most appropriate for their situation.

That means: “the management team are talking to the people who actually do things.” So much for that productivity increase. I believe that he said that he’s going to expect middle management to figure things out and be smart about it. By the way, that is an excellent emergency response plan: “hey everyone do what you’ve already been doing only more so.” It’s exactly not why naval vessels’ “battle stations” don’t work that way: everyone is expected to fight their part of the ship and assume everyone else is doing the right thing. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Ships are disposable.

I’m truly in awe of our system’s ability to come together in times of need to support our communities. It’s that special ability that makes us unlike any other company on Earth.

Roughly that translates to “damn you guys sure work hard. I’m reading this video off a teleprompter; you can see I’m doing my part.” It’s that hierarchical organization that makes you just like any other top-down, bottom-up responsibility-driven chain of command. That sounded pretty good, huh? It’s corporate-speak for “do your fucking job.”

We’re continuing to meet with business leaders in all our global markets along with our global functional leaders.

Mega-corporations like McDonald’s must become top-down, bottom-up because otherwise they’re too much to manage. It’s not possible for someone to understand the big picture because it’s too big. What he just said is, “as far as I can tell everyone is doing their job.” I’m sure it’s fascinating and fractally detailed. Is there a director of buns? Let’s imagine that there is. Then perhaps the bun director has subordinate, regional bun directors that are responsible for ensuring the inflow of buns into the system. Naturally, each of those positions will be experiencing interesting and unique challenges in their area. But meeting and overcoming those challenges is what an executive gets paid the big bucks for.

I have reiterated that managing directors in each market, along with the operator leadership, are empowered to make the necessary decisions to protect their people and our buisiness.

We are not 1:20 into the video and he’s found several ways of saying that everyone is expected to do their job. “England expects that every man will do his duty.” [wik] Nelson’s flag-signal at Trafalgar had the virtue of clarity and brevity.

At the same time, however, I have outlined 5 key principles that I expect all markets to adhere to. This will provide consistency in our approach and ensure that our system emerges stronger than ever from this crisis. I want to share those 5 key principles with you and ask for your endorsement, to use these in your own decisions to help guide our collective response. Our first principle: We’re all in this together.

He noticed that? This guy’s like Sun Tzu or maybe Sun Tzu’s masseur.

We’ve got eachother’s backs, because that’s what makes us so strong. As your franchisor, that means we’re going to do whatever is necessary to help every owner/operator and partner survive this crisis. We will not let you fail. And managing directors have the necessary tools and authority to work with each owner/operator and partner to address your unique financial situation.

To our suppliers: you’re part of McFamily and while most of you have many other customers beyond McDonald’s you can count on us to do our part to help you and your organization through this pandemic.

As all three legs of the stool, let’s also recognize our collective responsibility to help our people. Again, we’re all in this together. That means we need to support our people who are infected by COVID-19 and embrace them when they return to health. Leave no one behind.

“Embrace” is probably not the best choice of words.

Notice that so far he has said nothing about the guy who flips the burgers? What if that guy – who is probably living paycheck to paycheck on the edge of disaster – doesn’t have resources to take 2 weeks off and heal? So, instead, they come in to flip those burgers while they’re expressing virus all over the place. Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m sure Mister Animatronic Talking Head is going to talk about that, something like: “to our burger flippers: stay home and heal and our massively profitable company has got your back while you’re on it.” Right?

Second Principle: Think and act with a long-term mindset. It might be hard to imagine today but one day we will be on the other side of this. Life will normalize again. Communities will be back to normal and that’s where we need to keep our focus. The decisions we do or don’t make in the coming weeks are going to reverberate for years.

As I told you, McDonalds is going to make certain that our owner/operators emerge from this pandemic and so there’s no reason to think anything other than long-term. It took us 65 years to build the brand that we have today, let’s make certain the next 65 years are even better.

The burger flipper’s rent is due next week.

The third principle: Be transparent with eachother and our stakeholders. If any one of us has a problem, we all have a problem.

Ah, now he’s going to get to the part about the burger flippers.

You can count on me and our leaders to give it to you straight. I tell it like it is because that’s what I’d ask of anyone in the system.

You’ll notice that, by broadcasting this glibglarp in an outbound-only medium, he’s “giving it straight” in the sense that his communications are one-way. Nobody can ask him “what about the burger flippers?” The video is almost over and I can’t count the things he’s actually said on the index finger of one hand.

You’ll be hearing from me regularly – weekly – with updates on the actions we’re taking and the impact we’re seeing.

Fourth Principle: Lead by example. We will never ask our customers or our people to go where we wouldn’t go or work where we wouldn’t work.

Our decisions on operations will continue to be guided by expert local and global health authority guidance. We will be pragmatic in our approach. And perhaps most important is what we stand to do in the world. Well before I became CEO it was clear to me that fostering community is the most powerful thing we do here at McDonald’s – and that’s why the 5th principle is: Stay true to our purpose.

Fostering community? Now it sounds like he’s gonna talk about his downstream brother, the burger-flipper. Right?

We serve community. Our system has over 40,000 community touchpoints. These are spaces where we feed and foster the community we serve.

In some instances that will mean going the extra mile to keep restaurants open. We’ll need to make sure we’re making safe – and caring – decisions. We’ll need to stay laser-focused on the local person-to-person level.

God, I hate it when someone says “laser focus” – it just means they understand neither lasers nor focus. Just one time I want to hear some dipshit say “we’re going to stay collimated.” Just. Once.

That’s how we’ve always operated, and it’s the key to our success.

I’m so proud to be the CEO of McDonald’s.

I’m proud of you. I care about you. (points at the camera) You worked around the clock to support our customers and crew and it makes a world of difference. And a difference in the world.

As your CEO but also a colleague, husband, and father, you can count on me. I’m committed to doing the right thing for you, for our customers and crew, and for the communities that are counting on us. Please remember you have the full support of the McDonald’s system behind you and I’ll be back in touch in the coming days.

Thank you.

Damn, he forgot to mention the burger flippers.

Wouldn’t it have been an amazing thing if he’d said, “we know some of you are going to get sick. What we can’t have is you helping spread the virus to our customers. If you get sick – stay home. I’ve directed all the franchisees and line managers to keep your job for you, so when you’re back on your feet you’ll have a place to come back to. I’ve directed all the franchisees and line managers to do whatever they need to, to support you and – in order to create a fund of cash for helping community members in need, I’ve put my annual bonus in a pool that will help keep you from having to worry about anything other than just getting better. I’ve asked the other executives to do likewise.”

Nah. Actual content? Zero.

Comments

  1. aquietvoice says

    I’m sorry, but I completely disagree. Which is fascinating, given how often I agree with what I find here.
    I don’t agree, at all, that the speaker was trying to talk around the problem without saying anything.

    I think the propaganda-weasel was using entirely different lines, phrases and construction than you were focusing on, with the clear and single goal of directing and applying intense pressure to be sociopathically apathetic to the lives of others under a thin veneer of plausible deniability, and unfortunately I think it was very well constructed.

    To me, it had three main components:
    – Setup a context of ‘mutual help’ without making concrete promises
    – Say a series of true statements that contextually *but not legally* mean good things
    – Use the contextual meaning to apply pressure for evil, but the legal meaning to avoid responsibility.

    This is the main method of evil-doing these days as far as I can tell – the law’s reliance on logic means it cannot process context properly so it’s the easiest and least risky way to ratchet-choke people to death.
    Simple apathy is not profitable enough and it’s not evil enough for someone like this. Let’s have a look at how this was achieved:

    Context setting was done with the many, many phrases about team, family and community. That’s why so many unnecessary statements are there – they aren’t an accident and they aren’t waffle. They are a weapon, and they are being used well.
    Even though everyone knows it’s bullshit, it’s here because it is designed to be *repeated* by operatives face to face, where the interpersonal relationship and power dynamic can be fully leveraged.

    Contextual-legal difference is achieved by statements like “In the markets, our managing directors are working closely with operator leadership to make the decisions most appropriate for their situation”.
    Here’s the setup for the real evil – this is a neutral statement, now contextually read as a good one (support), but it’s going to be enforced as an evil one (oops! The most appropriate decision was for you to run your employees through a juicer). It’s kind of impressive that the speaker didn’t show any clue about the decisions that they had prepared and how awful they were. Practice makes perfect, I guess.

    Half the point of the message is that it needs to be identifiable as coming from the top to really put pressure on those below, but not legally traceable to them.
    That’s why there are so many statements like that. This isn’t waffle, it’s repeating a message to make that identifiable association.

    The point is to get people to buy in so they can imagine themselves saying “oh I can’t keep my store open, top management says its bad”, but then confront them with a ‘managing director’ that says “they say its safe, open your store, aren’t you part of the McGlobalFamilyTeamCommunity?” plus some other phrases from the message.

    It’s the same phrase and meaning that was repeated to them in the message, so defying it feels like defying those at the top. It’s also why they repeatedly linked {managing directors}, {operator leadership}, and {empowered}.

    Whoever the “operator leadership” is, they are so fucked. They will be pressured beyond belief to do evil, fired if they do not comply, and get the full legal responsibility of whatever they do wrong while the profits keep moving up above them.

    Whoever that was speaking, they know a lot about generating compliance, about making people into delegated sub-predators while also treating them as prey.

    Don’t believe me? Re-watch the video with that I’ve said in mind – there is only one sentence off-topic from what I said. (The one about their suppliers)

  2. says

    I would be surprised if that video was meant to be viewed by the burger flippers. He seems to be talking to his customers, the franchise owners. The burger flippers don’t work for McDonald’s Inc., they work for the franchise owners, and it’s up to the franchise owners to communicate with the burger flippers.

  3. says

    chigau – “Our people” are the burger flippers, sure, but note that isn’t the same as “us.” Same with “crew,” but they are mentioned in the same breath with “customers,” who, again, are someone else, not the audience. “Partner” is on a level with “owner/operator,” and there’s no way that means burger flippers.

  4. xohjoh2n says

    Last Friday/Saturday McDonalds UK announced complete closure as of yesterday. (They had already closed seating areas, but remained open for takeaway/drivethrough.)

    They have said that direct employees – including the burger fliippers – will remain on full pay until April 5th, when the UK government’s 80% pay scheme is supposed to kick in.

    Direct employees is about 20% of the UK total, the rest being employed by franchises. Pay policy is one of the areas these separate companies control for themselves, even though they are still subject to the closure order, but they are “expected to follow suit”. I suspect most actually will, but some franchise holders are no doubt just complete bastards even when people are looking at them.

  5. says

    I must apologize; I was really unclear.

    I’m aware that he’s talking to the franchise managers and the channel partners who provide ingredients or components. But what I was thinking is that the burger flippers are going to matter because they’re the tip of the spear and they’re the ones that the media are going to interview if the franchisees are brutal with them. So, I think that he missed an opportunity to pretend to care by giving some advice to the franchisees, a simple “if there’s a depression, we would rather see McDonaldsMcFamily come out the other side with a reputation for having done what it could to take care of its workers. Your franchise will not succeed if you get a reputation for dumping your workers at the first sign of an economic downturn.”

    Different economies are going to play this out differently, but the CEO could say, “hey don’t slaughter your people, it’s bad for long-term business” and let the franchisees figure out what that means.

    My posting wasn’t clear about that. Part of why I am so irritated by his remarks is that they are not just glarpglarpglarp, they miss an opportunity to be more than just glarp.

  6. says

    aquietvoice@#1:
    I’m sorry, but I completely disagree. Which is fascinating, given how often I agree with what I find here.
    I don’t agree, at all, that the speaker was trying to talk around the problem without saying anything.

    It’s OK to disagree. Getting hauled up by the short hairs sometimes makes one level up their game.

    I think the propaganda-weasel was using entirely different lines, phrases and construction than you were focusing on, with the clear and single goal of directing and applying intense pressure to be sociopathically apathetic to the lives of others under a thin veneer of plausible deniability, and unfortunately I think it was very well constructed.

    Whoah. So you think he was speaking to the franchise managers in capitalist-speak, trying to get them to think things through and realize that they need to not follow their normal reaction, which would be to let half the staff go and not make any plans to resume business after the pandemic has passed? It’s possible. But … have you ever talked to a McDonald’s franchise manager? I guess N=2 isn’t enough of a basis to generalize from, but strategic geniuses and profoundly thoughtful people don’t generally seem to wind up in that job.

    Context setting was done with the many, many phrases about team, family and community. That’s why so many unnecessary statements are there – they aren’t an accident and they aren’t waffle. They are a weapon, and they are being used well.
    Even though everyone knows it’s bullshit, it’s here because it is designed to be *repeated* by operatives face to face, where the interpersonal relationship and power dynamic can be fully leveraged.

    That could be. Now, I am on the fence.

    Whoever the “operator leadership” is, they are so fucked. They will be pressured beyond belief to do evil, fired if they do not comply, and get the full legal responsibility of whatever they do wrong while the profits keep moving up above them.

    Whoever that was speaking, they know a lot about generating compliance, about making people into delegated sub-predators while also treating them as prey.

    Ouch. I In other words you’ve caught me being an optimist, which is shocking because I thought that was the last thing I’d be.

  7. Janstince says

    I think I may have to stop reading these kinds of postings. I normally like them, and have adopted your unofficial motto: BE MORE CYNICAL.

    It’s just, working in a hospital, trying to do my job, and hearing about all the horrible shit that continues to go on, the fucking too cats licking their chops like they just swallowed some really expensive moose milk (cum) from a $12M bowl hand-made by a poverty-stricken family in Kazakhstan for 3.7¥ and marked up by some dudebro so he can live the dream of never having to work while getting away with rape and… well, it goes on.

    But dealing with the ins and outs of everyday life right now, the equipment shortages, the price gouging, the influx of sick and weak and needy, the waiting specter of illness in mass quantity, it’s just a little too much.

    Love your work, particularly of the historical and blacksmithing variety. I’ll be back if this nightmare ever ends.

  8. Pierce R. Butler says

    Someone that lean couldn’t possibly eat McBurgers and McFries on any regular basis.

  9. chigau (違う) says

    Martin Veneroso
    When I was working contracts for the Government, in management memos, I was referred as a “partner”. Management-speak for “cheap labour who get no benefits”. The full-timers were called “staff”.

  10. xohjoh2n says

    Mc15$McMillion a year. If he tried to eat that in burgers

    <ghostbusters>That would be a Big Mac 50 feet wide, 37 feet tall, weighing 2 million pounds.</ghostbusters>

  11. jrkrideau says

    At first, I thought i]the speaker and the speech were parodies.

    I may have missed it but I do not think he actually said one concrete thing. I thought it was pure waffle with some disclaimers of any responsibilitybut but I am leaning towards aquietvoice’s interpretation.

    In either case it kinda made my skin crawl.

  12. aquietvoice says

    @ Marcus Ranum, #7:
    Oh, I don’t think the speaker is a strategic genius, far from it.

    I think the whole cultural idea of leadership in general and business leadership specifically has made this kind of thing so utterly normal that the speaker is merely doing “what CEO’s do”, likely without much of an understanding or explicit teaching on the subject, just the idea that there are exactly three groups “me”, “loyal minions”, “people to be ratched-choked to death”, with significant overlap between the second two groups.

    From there, all someone needs to be CEO and act like this is:
    1) The correct attitudes of hatred-apathy towards outgroups,
    2) a willingness to call that attitude “business sense” and
    3) A very specific, very narrow skill that can either be taught in any of the humanities or supplied person-to-person.

    No strategic genius, or even strategic thought, required. Everything is entirely based on responses to local information, and the consistent attitude is what provides the overall guidance in the place of thought.

    Actually, I have this fascinating idea about the cultural movements that are essentially de-explicitly-racialised inheritors of the older racial supremacy cultural movements – specifically that the “good old boys” club functions not so much via genuine personal connection, but much more via the indoctrination into a set of attitudes, one of which is that only the people with the same attitudes matter.

  13. says

    The thing is these things are super-contextual.

    This could be:

    1. A razor-sharp, on-point, speech telling some people to go murder some other people.
    2. A razor-sharp, on-point, speech telling some people to move heaven and earth to make other people well and whole.
    3. A mess of gibberish meaning nothing whatever.

    It depends on the culture in which it lands, and I don’t know anything about McDonald’s middle-management culture.

    I will note that the fed is offering companies like McDonald’s essentially unlimited free money in these trying times.

  14. publicola says

    This all sounds to me like what the pirate captain says as he walks you out onto the plank: “Don’t worry, I’ve got your back”.

  15. jimmf says

    I had to listen to that glarp for 35 years and in the first few seconds I heard: “The front lines are fucked. First level management, you’re most likely fucked. If it gets worse some of the higher level guys are fucked. Etc… If it gets really bad, I’ve got mine and I feel fine, y’all are on your own.” Then my ears glazed over and all I heard was blah, blah. blah. Oh. Yeah. We care about your data. And Customers are most important.” I’ll go puke now.

  16. billseymour says

    There’s a company in the U.S. called the American Management Association whose gig is to have pseudo-scientific pop psychology classes that actually teach this stuff. One thing you’ll learn in such classes is a cute acronym, WIIFM, pronounced WIF-um: “what’s in it for me”. Although the “instructors” generally lack the vocabulary to express it, what they’re actually teaching is that egoism, as a moral principle, is a Good Thing.

    <aside>
    Richard Carrier actually wrote a book in favor of egoism. Freethought bloggers will probably not be surprised.
    </aside>

    I remember one class in which the “instructor” (a “Human Resources” manager) was suggesting that we should try to write clearly and correctly. OK, good start; but his reason turned out to be that spelling and grammar errors “make me look bad”. I wanted to shake him and say, “Come on, Mr. WIIFM, get a clue! Writing in a readable fashion isn’t something that you do for yourself; it’s something that you do for your reader!” It wouldn’t have done any good, though, since he wouldn’t have understood the concept.

  17. billseymour says

    Here’s a rant that I’ve wanted to get off my chest for a while now:

    The Human Resources paradigm of business management is fundamentally flawed because it denies the moral distinction between people and things. It does make some distinctions:  it recognizes that people are more complicated than “other things”, and it recognizes that people are more “costly” than “other things”, but it asserts that one ought to treat people decently for the same set of reasons that, say, carpenters sharpen their saws.

    It’s that “for the same set of reasons” bit that’s the error, and it’s an error that can’t be fixed. You can’t wash it off and peel the skin; it’s rotten to the core. All you can do is throw it away and hope that the next one isn’t so disgusting.

    Having said that, I’ll back off slightly. The Human Resources paradigm does have a certain utility:  it’s an argument that the Mr. and Ms. WIIFMs of the world can comprehend.

  18. says

    billseymour@#20:
    There’s a company in the U.S. called the American Management Association whose gig is to have pseudo-scientific pop psychology classes that actually teach this stuff. One thing you’ll learn in such classes is a cute acronym, WIIFM, pronounced WIF-um: “what’s in it for me”. Although the “instructors” generally lack the vocabulary to express it, what they’re actually teaching is that egoism, as a moral principle, is a Good Thing.

    That sounds more like one of those business management cults than pop psychology. You know, the “SELL SELL SELL!” crowd that were so brilliantly exposed in Glengarry Glenn Ross? (That is a film I could barely manage to watch; Alec Baldwin is so good at being a villain)

    The Human Resources paradigm of business management is fundamentally flawed because it denies the moral distinction between people and things. It does make some distinctions: it recognizes that people are more complicated than “other things”, and it recognizes that people are more “costly” than “other things”, but it asserts that one ought to treat people decently for the same set of reasons that, say, carpenters sharpen their saws.

    Yes. I’m sure you’ve heard people referred to as “resources” – ugh, that is one of the worst ways to manage people that I can conceive of. It makes them want to build guillotines.

  19. says

    publicola@#18:
    This all sounds to me like what the pirate captain says as he walks you out onto the plank: “Don’t worry, I’ve got your back”.

    Exactly!

    We’re here for you! By “here” I mean I’m isolated in my mansion. And “for you” meaning “maybe” if there’s something in it for me.

  20. billseymour says

    “That sounds more like one of those business management cults than pop psychology.”

    I’ve been to a handful of those classes, and it’s fairly common for the instructor to begin a point, “Studies have shown [something something]” (never actually citing any such study, of course), with the expectation that others in the class will believe, immediately and uncritically, anything the instructor says after that. Definitely pseudo-science.

    I tend to use “pop psychology” to include things like self-help books, especially those that contain meaningless jargon that bosses think is deep.

  21. says

    Andrew Molitor@#17:
    The thing is these things are super-contextual.

    This could be:

    1. A razor-sharp, on-point, speech telling some people to go murder some other people.
    2. A razor-sharp, on-point, speech telling some people to move heaven and earth to make other people well and whole.
    3. A mess of gibberish meaning nothing whatever.

    It’s either a mirror or a rorschach blot test.

  22. Curious Digressions says

    To be generous, there’s no way this guy wrote the statement himself. I would put down money that it was written by a team of executives from Marketing, Human Resources, Public Relations, and Communication. Then it was vetted by executives in Legal. It likely took multiple hour-long meetings over the course of a couple of weeks to hammer out the specific phrasing. Considering that people in these jobs make ballpark $200K to $500K salaries (low balled), you’re looking at a statement worth 8K to 10K, plus the cost of administrative staff to support these execs. Of course, that’s negligible. At that price, I would hope they could fill it with as much corporo-babble as possible.

    Ages ago, I worked as an Administrative Technician® at a Major Corporation® in the Organizational Design® department. While ordering post-it notes in 40 different colors and sizes, stuffing presentation binders, and fixing printer jams that the Important People® couldn’t be bothered with, I had the opportunity to witness this nonsense first hand. Since I had access to HR data, I would amuse myself by calculating the cost per hour of various meetings.

    @#1 aquietvoice sounds pretty on target, perhaps even laser-focused. The message comes across as intended for franchise owners as pressure to stay open and NOT intended to be viewed by line-staff. The phrasing is such that franchise owners would hear “we expect you to stay open” but people not familiar with messaging would get a vague idea of “even the important people are thinking about your plight”.

    As an aside, even in a Professional Administrative Position® in a non-garbage industry, I’m no longer invited to policy planning meetings for pointing out when policy changes function as effective pay cuts and disincentives for people who are impacted. The people running the meeting would just look constipated and quietly update the recipient list for the remaining Outlook meeting instances.

    Then they would gasp in shock and surprise as panicked rumors and negative reactions ran through the staff like a crowning forest fire. Three to six months later there would be a spate of high level planning meeting to address the root cause of the spike in “bad turnover”.

  23. says

    Curious Digressions@#26:
    Since I had access to HR data, I would amuse myself by calculating the cost per hour of various meetings.

    That’s a good way to pass the time, I bet. It probably wouldn’t go over so well if you summarized the meeting cost at the end of the meeting. “This circle jerk was much more expensive than the regular circle jerk they have over in Marketing on monday mornings.”

  24. says

    I worked for a guy once who had a product idea called Meeting Minder. It would be a small electronic box in each conference room. As people arrive for the meeting, they would badge in to the device.

    It would then display a running total, in dollars, of the cost of the meeting. Ever since then I have similarly enjoyed myself estimating that number.

    My pinnacle was at HP, where a team of product management people were rolling out the stupidest idea ever for version numbering, to senior members of basically every product team in our division (big meeting.) We were “discussing” it (no we were not, everyone was bloviating, the new version numbering scheme was a done deal, but people at HP love the sound of their own voice above all else) and I estimated the cost at, I think, more than dollar a second. To talk about *nothing*. It just didn’t matter, and everyone knew that a year from new the New Version Numbering Scheme would be rolled out, and anyways who the fuck cares about version numbers?

    It went on, of course, for hours.

    (they were going to make the version number be the release date, and had clearly already spent a lot of time and energy coming up with that terrible idea)

  25. billseymour says

    Andrew Molitor @28:  meetings where I work tend to go like that, too. People say the same damn thing over and over (in “different words” to make sure that they “get it right”); and sometimes everybody is talking at once because there’s nobody in charge. We can spend six to ten person-hours, sometimes more, and accomplish very little.

    I contrast that with meetings of the ISO standards committee for the C++ programming language. We split up into subgroups, and each group can handle twenty or more papers in four and a half days. Folks raise their hands when they want to speak and the chair puts their names in a queue. Everybody gets to speak, and usually everybody has something interesting to say. Nobody fails to be heard because it’s not a matter of “biggest mouth wins.” The chairs are strong and they enforce the rules. They’ll cut off the discussion if we get into “violent agreement” mode.

    … who the fuck cares about version numbers? It went on, of course, for hours.

    That’s often called “bikeshedding.” Everybody argues about what color to paint the bike shed, and then when they’re about to run out of time, they make horrible decisions in too little time about matters like structural integrity. (That’s an example given in some book about meetings, but I can’t remember which one and so can’t give a proper citation. It’s not original with me, though.)

  26. jrkrideau says

    @ 22 Marcus

    “resources” – ugh,

    People are our greatest assets: Unfortunately we need to liquidate some assets.

  27. aquietvoice says

    @ 26, Curious Digressions:
    Yes! Exactly! That’s something I really didn’t get across well enough.
    The speaker is not there because they are a strategic genius, or because they have had even a strategic thought at all.

    They are there primarily because they are the one who is willing and able to be that particular cog in the machine: Ability granted not by intelligence but by attitude, the attitude that your desires are absolutely above the law morally, and the attitude of absolute hatred-apathy* towards other not in the correct (ie. peer) group.

    It’s because of what these attitudes are and how they are organised that I was talking about the inheritance they have from the racial-supremacy groups of old.

    (Just to be clear, I’m saying that different cultural groups inherited different things from the older racial supremacy groups, with the kick-down mostly going to the modern general-population racists and the hatred-apathy* mostly going toward the corporate oligarchy)

    * hatred apathy is where you look at others with hatred, and consider anything back from them with apathy. It’s a surprisingly useful term, disappointingly.

  28. lochaber says

    I think I agree with a lot of what aquietvoice@1 brought up. Granted, I’m not well versed in corporate-speak, but it sounded to me a lot like they were deliberately leaving out the minimum-wage workers, and focused on the franchise-owners and such.

    Bit of a digression, but I hate that “tip of the spear” bit. I heard it so much whilst enlisted… At some point, I got yelled at for making an audible criticism/complaint about that phrase. A spear is an effective weapon because of the long damned stick behind the spearhead. A spearhead by itself is just a really un-ergonomic dagger. that’s also both more expensive and worse at it’s job.

    and now I’m thinking of all those phrases and such I heard whilst in the military, and wondering what/if the relationship is to corporate speak? I’m guessing a lot of them are just space-fillers, and maybe also have some benefit through being some sort of question/call-and-response type phrase, and I’m sure there is some corporate speak about how getting the audience to engage/react or whatever is some sort of corporatespeaksomething…

    phrases that come to mind: squared away, good to go, it’s on like donkey kong, break it down barney-style…

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