Management Speak

[motco]

WJNB said:

Does anybody here work for or volunteer within the NHS?
The cobblers that gets into the monthly communications from the Trust head honcho's is pathetic. Will copy & post some extracts the next time I receive my copy.
What REALLY disappointed & disillusioned me is that something similar gets circulated by the management at a hospice I work at. My 'lead' ( for Gods sake she is my 'manager' !!! ) is always off to a Focus Group or Strategy Meeting or just 'a meeting'. In 5 years I have NEVER EVER got a clue or witnessed any evidence as to the outcomes.

My Good Lady and I were visiting care homes for my now-deceased mother-in-law a few years ago, and in a home near Maidenhead I happened to say that I couldn't abide mission statements as they were usually meaningless and often cost money in fees to a
management consultancy. "Oh!" the manageress said "We're just waiting for our mission statement from head office - it's so exciting, I can hardly wait!" We went elsewhere...

[Jeenyus161]

Today in a meeting, someone actually suggested that we diarized an upcoming topic to pick the low hanging fruit.

Diarize.

[Taylor James]

Baby steps

Grrrr

[anonymous-user]

bakerstreet said:

AstonZagato said:

When I managed a 50 person team, it used to enrage me how often people would come to me with problems without having thought for a millisecond how that issue could be resolved. Most of the time, the solution was obvious and they could work it out themselves. I began to use the phrase "Bring me solutions, not problems" to try to get them to at least think about what they were bringing into my office.

I've made a long career out of "under-promising and over-delivering". It's a fine concept.

I'm a project manager and I'm also striving to achieve the 'bring me solutions, not problems' culture and I struggle. It's phrase I quite like and I think it was originally from Maggie Thatcher.

I admit that that I haven't been a full time project manager for very long, but I'm enjoying it and it's better than an unhappy 10 years in sales ??

There are no problems, only solutions was a Cap Scientific strap line in the late 70s early 79s. Don't think Thatcher had anything to do with it.

Underpromising and overdelivering I agree is also a great approach to dealing with clients who want everything yesterday but don't want to pay for it

[anonymous-user]

WJNB said:

Does anybody here work for or volunteer within the NHS?
The cobblers that gets into the monthly communications from the Trust head honcho's is pathetic. Will copy & post some extracts the next time I receive my copy.
What REALLY disappointed & disillusioned me is that something similar gets circulated by the management at a hospice I work at. My 'lead' ( for Gods sake she is my 'manager' !!! ) is always off to a Focus Group or Strategy Meeting or just 'a meeting'. In 5 years I have NEVER EVER got a clue or witnessed any evidence as to the outcomes.

I worked in the NHS in various consulting roles. You aren't wrong.

The NHS is generally run for the benefit of senior managers and their PAs.

Patients are generally an inconvenience they leave to the medics, as they haven't found a way of doing without them yet

[drdino]

Jeenyus161 said:

Today in a meeting, someone actually suggested that we diarized an upcoming topic to pick the low hanging fruit.

Diarize.

That's a good one, haven't heard that before I'll try and use it next time I'm in a meeting, maybe throw in some granular synergies to top it off

[bucksmanuk]

I was told “longer the mission statement, the less clue what’s happening”
I’ve found this rule to be useful in prejudging a company and never been proved wrong yet.

Fuji’s mission statement used to be “kill Kodak”

At work, we have “optioneering” - this really bugs me…. creating another design basically…

[Dr Doofenshmirtz]

WJNB said:

Does anybody here work for or volunteer within the NHS?
The cobblers that gets into the monthly communications from the Trust head honcho's is pathetic. Will copy & post some extracts the next time I receive my copy.
What REALLY disappointed & disillusioned me is that something similar gets circulated by the management at a hospice I work at. My 'lead' ( for Gods sake she is my 'manager' !!! ) is always off to a Focus Group or Strategy Meeting or just 'a meeting'. In 5 years I have NEVER EVER got a clue or witnessed any evidence as to the outcomes.

My wife works in an NHS Hospice as an Admin. The stuff she says goes on there is just inducing.
Meetings, focus groups, Women with 'the mental' running the place, wrong orders that just get binned etc. The rest of the NHS is the same of course, just keep pouring the money in whilst simultaneously writing it off as a completely lost cause.

[HappySilver]

Back in the 90s I was in a meeting in Chicago with a senior executive of the business I was working at then, he started referring to his plan for a restructuring which would result in redundancies. The only problem was that he didn’t call it that or anything normal. His description:

Decruitment exercise!

[Guvernator]

Dr Doofenshmirtz said:

My wife works in an NHS Hospice as an Admin. The stuff she says goes on there is just inducing.
Meetings, focus groups, Women with 'the mental' running the place, wrong orders that just get binned etc. The rest of the NHS is the same of course, just keep pouring the money in whilst simultaneously writing it off as a completely lost cause.

You could apply this to pretty much to any central or local government run organisation tbh. I did a gig for a local council a while back. You'd have thought they'd rounded up all the wk word bingo tts and put them in the same building! Boy did they love a meeting too. I think half my time there was spent sat in meetings.

[TIGA84]

Just come out of a Agile Retro, where we were given the opportunity to "put our foot on the ball for reflection".

I have no idea what an Agile Retro is, or where the football was.

[Never you mind]

TIGA84 said:

Just come out of a Agile Retro, where we were given the opportunity to "put our foot on the ball for reflection".

I have no idea what an Agile Retro is, or where the football was.

A retro is where you go over the previous sprint and discuss where you could have done better.

Foot on the ball I have no fking idea about.

[Mr E]

Retrospectives (when done properly) can be really useful. How else do you improve if you don’t look at what you’ve done?

Bullst bingo in the retrospective is less useful. In fact, you could bring it up at your next retrospective.

[AndyAudi]

SAS Tom said:

We recently had an email to round asking us not to park in front of a gate because they wanted to test the “operational functionality” of it. Basically see if it opens.

I like that one

[can't remember]

Our new Warehouse Manager was struggling to get a package within a set of dimensions today. I took great delight in unpacking his cardboard cubic container and telling him he had to 'think outside the box'.

[xjay1337]

HappySilver said:

Back in the 90s I was in a meeting in Chicago with a senior executive of the business I was working at then, he started referring to his plan for a restructuring which would result in redundancies. The only problem was that he didn’t call it that or anything normal. His description:

Decruitment exercise!

I saw someone's linkedIN job title as something like "Business streamliner" .

Similar role - just to sack people off.

[Herbs]

Never you mind said:

TIGA84 said:

Just come out of a Agile Retro, where we were given the opportunity to "put our foot on the ball for reflection".

I have no idea what an Agile Retro is, or where the football was.

A retro is where you go over the previous sprint and discuss where you could have done better.

Foot on the ball I have no fking idea about.

I'm guessing means stop and pause in order to pick out the best route forward.

[sideways sid]

"Morning hotshots. Are we cooking with napalm? You bet."
"We've got to downsize our sloppiness overload."
"Morning talent base. Are the afterburners on full thrust? You bet."
"Yes, well, publicity-wise this is a rather regrettable gonads-in-the-guillotine situation."

Gus Hedges, Drop the Dead Donkey c.1990

Also, why does everybody today (particularly aspirational middle-managers) exclaim "Absolutely!" when they actually mean "yes"?

[tleefox]

Here's one which appeared on my linkedin the other week, in response to a post a colleague of mine had put up about us taking on some apprentices on a site:

"Excellent steps in engaging the local community and using the re-generation of the built environment to enhance social inclusion and empower ownership on all cohorts within the geographical area."

[KarlMac]

The problem seems to be junior managers exposed to things like Six Sigma/Prince 2/CIPS etc... pick up a few buzzwords and repeat them to give a veneer of intelligence.

Laughing at management speak and TLAs is one of my favourites so consider me fully onboard with this thread.