Management bulls**t phrases
Discussion
three five five said:
A 'brown bag meeting' is one where you meet whilst taking your sandwich/lunch in with you and eat whilst boring each other with varied bulls
t bingo techniques.... 
Company I worked for in a previous life used to have these. They were held in an auditorium with a no food/drink policy...t bingo techniques.... This thread brings back lots of bad memories.
Shaolin said:
That's just reminded me. There's a company round here that has a number of vans, with everyone of them painted with "Demonstrating a more excellent way of doing business" on the back in a place where you can't not-read it when sat behind one. What a pretentious prissy fking phrase, as far as I can tell the company look after what used to be council houses.
I know the company in question as I went there a few years ago for an interview. One of the questions was "Our mission is "Demonstrating a more excellent way of doing business", what does that mean to you?" I had to bite my tongue and avoid saying "It means that you have had a bunch of consultants in."king phrase, as far as I can tell the company look after what used to be council houses.Luckily, I didn't get offered the job as I'm not sure I could have stood working there.
sebhaque said:
Just heard a new one today – been invited to a daily meeting to discuss issues/actions blah blah. In the past these have been called “morning stand-up meetings” or “daily brief” etc. We’ve now moved on to “daily scrum”.
What I found particularly amusing was within the meeting invite was this line:
“The team meets daily for the Scrum (Daily Stand-up),”
Why not just call it a fking daily stand-up in the first place instead of trying to act hip and trendy by calling a meeting a scrum?!
Because "Scrum" is the correct name for it under the Agile Process. What I found particularly amusing was within the meeting invite was this line:
“The team meets daily for the Scrum (Daily Stand-up),”
Why not just call it a f
king daily stand-up in the first place instead of trying to act hip and trendy by calling a meeting a scrum?!
Dr Jekyll said:
But the same problem happens with Waterfall methods.
Careful. You'll have sebhaque accusing you of being 'hip and trendy' making up words like that. 
Some cobblers I found when clearing out some drawers a couple of weeks ago in preparation for an office move. This was just one sheet of many, and is 100% as written, including the Variable Capitalisation. Genuinely, I'd find it hard to make this up.
Principles of Fierce Conversations
Principles of Fierce Conversations
- Master the Courage to Interrogate Reality
- Come out from Behind yourself into the Conversation to Make It Real
- Be here, Prepared to be Nowhere else
- Tackle Your Toughest Challenge Today
- Take Responsibility for your Emotional Wake
- Let Silence do the Heavy Lifting
sebhaque said:
If you invited some of the stuck-in-their-ways machinists you'd probably end up with those too.
I did google scrum meetings earlier and read the Wiki page. It's essentially this thread in a nutshell. I appreciate some folks on here may be more clued up in Japanese quality principles than me, but this essentially reads as an overly self-important project team.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_dev...
There's a bit of a clue in the title of the Wiki article you quoted - it's called "Scrum (software development)" which, funnily enough, is to do with the development of computer software. So not really appropriate for machinists anyway. I did google scrum meetings earlier and read the Wiki page. It's essentially this thread in a nutshell. I appreciate some folks on here may be more clued up in Japanese quality principles than me, but this essentially reads as an overly self-important project team.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_dev...
And far from being some sort of "Japanese quality principle" as your cursory glance at the article led you to believe, it's a software development methodology still very much in use in the UK and USA, amongst others. I'm using it myself at my current client and they are by no means the only client I've worked at who use the methodology.
Just because you're ignorant of something that has been around for almost 20 years doesn't mean that those who *are* familiar with it are being "hip and trendy" by using the words and phrases that describe it.
longblackcoat said:
Some cobblers I found when clearing out some drawers a couple of weeks ago in preparation for an office move. This was just one sheet of many, and is 100% as written, including the Variable Capitalisation. Genuinely, I'd find it hard to make this up.
Principles of Fierce Conversations
I'm impressed that one of the seven principles has been missed ... "Obey your instincts". Because, presumably, a room full of people saying "This sounds like bPrinciples of Fierce Conversations
- Master the Courage to Interrogate Reality
- Come out from Behind yourself into the Conversation to Make It Real
- Be here, Prepared to be Nowhere else
- Tackle Your Toughest Challenge Today
- Take Responsibility for your Emotional Wake
- Let Silence do the Heavy Lifting
ks" is a bit off-putting.toon10 said:
Out of interest, do people use these techniques outside of the software development arena? I've recently done a Scrum Master Agile course which was geared towards software but we don't actually use it properly where I work. I'm just wondering if the principals are transferable to other forms of projects.
I don't work in the software industry, so yes they do. The Agile approach replaced the previous waterfall approach ( at great expense ). I presume that it can me used in any industry as a PM tool. BritishRacinGrin said:
'Low hanging fruit' was the first one I came across, since then there have been many. The current buzzword seems to be 'expedite', which seems like an unnecessarily long way of saying 'do'.
Or if you want to convey urgency just say 'expede', since it's roughly the opposite of 'impede'.Dr Jekyll said:
Or if you want to convey urgency just say 'expede', since it's roughly the opposite of 'impede'.
Reminds me of the similar contra-word popularised by Terry Pratchett to describe the work that the Assassin’s Guild undertook. They didn't kill people, they "inhumed" them. 
Years ago had this with a boss - loved the talk - could talk the talk but was so bad at doing the walk...
can remember one meeting where it got so bad I actually took it to task - stopped the convo and asked him to look out the window and tell me what he saw - bear in mind there as about 20 people in there - he looked at me and asked me what it was that I was asking - just simply what he saw out the window - Arran he replied - I said what was the bit between Arran and where we were - the sea he said - I said great now what about the bit between the sea and the land - oh thats the beach, and another word for that I asked. The coast he replied. BINGO.
West coast of Scotland - not the flippin west coast of the states and could he speak in a language that was suitable for the people in the room - or as you would like to put it target the dialogue towards meeting with the expectations of the audience.
Cant stand baubble pish. when its going wrong you need peeps that can walk the talk... ;-)
can remember one meeting where it got so bad I actually took it to task - stopped the convo and asked him to look out the window and tell me what he saw - bear in mind there as about 20 people in there - he looked at me and asked me what it was that I was asking - just simply what he saw out the window - Arran he replied - I said what was the bit between Arran and where we were - the sea he said - I said great now what about the bit between the sea and the land - oh thats the beach, and another word for that I asked. The coast he replied. BINGO.
West coast of Scotland - not the flippin west coast of the states and could he speak in a language that was suitable for the people in the room - or as you would like to put it target the dialogue towards meeting with the expectations of the audience.
Cant stand baubble pish. when its going wrong you need peeps that can walk the talk... ;-)
in a officer only military environment, so part of the issue is down to that, however i got a calender invite to a "Mince pie and gluwein frenzy" towards the middle of December, with this in the details:
Dear all,
I recommend, if you are in favour, a gathering for a final chuck up prior to the team bomb bursting after duties 1600hrs Fri 19 Dec 14.
Chuck up = meeting?!
Dear all,
I recommend, if you are in favour, a gathering for a final chuck up prior to the team bomb bursting after duties 1600hrs Fri 19 Dec 14.
Chuck up = meeting?!
10 Pence Short said:
Symbolica said:
dfen5 said:
Good to touch base on this.
I've yet to hear a satisfactory explanation for what "Touch base" means.Bloody consultants
Not quite a phrase but more management bullst.
A friend of mine, my old flatmate at uni, is a really nice, polite, quite shy, quiet mannered fellow and is a software programmer for a government department. He got instructed he had to go to some wky training course on "making things happen". At the end of the day the last task was to write down three things you'd like to happen in the next week because "if you write things down they'll happen". My mate merrily wrote down his three things and was appalled when the tutor collected the bits of paper.
Standing at the front the tutor read out lots of trite crap from the others; "empty my inbox, get on with my colleagues better, be more productive", that kind of ste. Then he got to my mate's bit of paper and read out "win the lottery, be cast as the next James Bond and get a nosh off Nigella Lawson on the picadilly line on the way home" 
t.A friend of mine, my old flatmate at uni, is a really nice, polite, quite shy, quiet mannered fellow and is a software programmer for a government department. He got instructed he had to go to some w
ky training course on "making things happen". At the end of the day the last task was to write down three things you'd like to happen in the next week because "if you write things down they'll happen". My mate merrily wrote down his three things and was appalled when the tutor collected the bits of paper.Standing at the front the tutor read out lots of trite crap from the others; "empty my inbox, get on with my colleagues better, be more productive", that kind of s
te. Then he got to my mate's bit of paper and read out "win the lottery, be cast as the next James Bond and get a nosh off Nigella Lawson on the picadilly line on the way home" One of the Directors I worked for many years ago was a decent enough bloke, but he really didn't have a clue. He'd been promoted to a role where he was pulling in well over £100,000 a year basic on the back of a strong economy, good managers working for him and being in the right place at the right time.
We had our usual monthly managers meeting; instigated by him and designed to increase revenue in what had been a tough few months. When the meeting kicked off it was evident that he had done no preparation whatsoever. I recall him sitting back in his chair and saying something along the lines off "I've no agenda for the meeting today as I thought we'd try something different. Today we are going to 'freestyle'" Magic.
"keep doing what you are doing" was another classic.
We had our usual monthly managers meeting; instigated by him and designed to increase revenue in what had been a tough few months. When the meeting kicked off it was evident that he had done no preparation whatsoever. I recall him sitting back in his chair and saying something along the lines off "I've no agenda for the meeting today as I thought we'd try something different. Today we are going to 'freestyle'" Magic.
"keep doing what you are doing" was another classic.
BritishRacinGrin said:
The current buzzword seems to be 'expedite', which seems like an unnecessarily long way of saying 'do'.
Do = do.Expedite = prioritise it over other things to get it done more quickly.
That's only bulls
t bingo if they're actually using it everywhere they could use "do", as this would be physically impossible, given that you can't prioritise everything.Gassing Station | The Lounge | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff