by Rodney Marks | Dec 25, 2016 | Business, Comedian, Comedy, Corporate, Events, Hoax, Keynote, Speaker, Speaking
Here are some more original management jokes that constitute the episodic publication of The Management Contradictionary (Benjamin Marks, Rodney Marks, and Robert Spillane. Michelle Anderson Publishing: Melbourne).
It’s available in all good libraries, and quite a few bad ones, too. The book is in alphabetical order, so feel free to keep reading the blog posts – past, present and future – from eh? to zzz.
The Management Contradictionary defines the real meaning behind management terms.
… … … … …
demystification
The belief that all beliefs are better if explained, except the belief in demystification.
denial
Hair-trigger response to media enquiries.
departmentalisation
Reorganising failed groupings in the hope that shuffling the card deck will produce a better hand. Promoted by managers incapable of improving profits or efficiencies, in order to put their stamp on an organisation and so move up the ladder.
depreciate
What happens to your money as a result of inflation, itself caused by governments printing money, so that whilst there is more of it about, each unit is worth less.
depression
An economic term for a recession that hits you personally. Also a psychological term for what happens to you after you’re hit by the economic effect.
deregulation
Government allowing business to make its own mistakes.
deviant
Heretic who questions the religion of management.
devotee
(See deviant above, and antonymise)
dialogue
Listen to me and nod if you agree.
dilemma
Deciding whether to use decision theory.
dilettante
A male manager who subscribes to the opera, and sometimes even goes with his own wife.
diploma
Certification of continuous improvement along a continuum of graduated degrees, which shows nothing but proof of payment.
diplomacy
- The ability to smile while saying nothing at length, in several languages, to people you detest.
- A sea of diplomas.
direction
- Something that you give, but never receive.
- Where we’re heading, as determined by the straight line from where we’ve been, through where we are now and into the infinite future.
- An excuse for a conference ever since some Roman asked: Quo vadis?
disambiguate
- To systematise conjointly and coequally, using converging and diverging parallel lines.
- To categorise.
- To cloud.
- To clarify.
- To classify.
disciple
- Someone who believes that the originator of the latest management fad is a guru.
- A junior manager with ambition.
discipline
The power that a guru has over a disciple to suspend thinking and engage in whimsical rule-following.
disclosure
In contradistinction to full disclosure, this is the selective revealing of self-serving data.
discounted cash flow
The sum of money received over time, after it has been ravaged by ongoing devaluation.
discrimination
- The subversive acknowledgement of differences.
- A quality that allows for the recognition of quality.
disequilibrium
A word best left in the dictionary.
disintermediation
A work relationship with no intermediaries, such as when manufacturers deal directly with customers. The nature of this concept is disconcerting to managers managing to manage managerial management practices, as it exposes their role for what it is: not an expeditor, facilitator or even catalyst, but rather a hindrance, obstruction and impediment to serving the organisation and customer.
distribution
An allocation that you receive in order to head off retribution.
distrust
Due diligence.
dividend
- An amount of money just large enough to stop you from selling your shares.
- The end of the divide.
divine plan
A plan of which you’re unaware.
division of labour
Workflow arrangement designed by top management to ensure that an inverse relationship exists between the value of work done and remuneration for it.
… … … … …
Rodney Marks
I’m an Australian corporate comedian, performing comic hoaxes at business events. If you like these blogs, you’ll like my live comedy. If you don’t like these blogs, you still might like my live comedy.
Add comedian.com.au to your bookmarks, and one day: book Marks. I don’t do cheap jokes, and I’m freer than you think. I’m comical not anatomical, economical not astronomical.
For more info – and to contact me directly – see my LinkedIn profile, and website: www.comedian.com.au. I’m based in Sydney and travel widely.
by Rodney Marks | Dec 24, 2016 | Business, Comedian, Comedy, Corporate, Events, Hoax, Keynote, Speaker, Speaking
We continue with even more of the episodic publication of The Management Contradictionary (Benjamin Marks, Rodney Marks, and Robert Spillane. Michelle Anderson Publishing: Melbourne).
It’s available in all good libraries, and quite a few bad ones, too. The book is in alphabetical order, so feel free to keep reading the blog posts – past, present and future – from eh? to zzz.
The Management Contradictionary defines the real meaning behind management terms.
… … … … …
debt
(See bad debt)
decentralisation
The road to anarchy.
(See centralisation and weep)
deception
Authentic lying.
decision
- What happens when you are stuck with alternatives.
- A choice made some time in the future or in the past, by someone else, based on false assumptions.
decision-making
Choosing management activities on the basis of power rather than expertise.
decision theory
The theory that theory can help decision-making in practice. Experts are undecided.
defamation
Honesty.
defenestration
The false axiom, held as true by Apple users, that without Microsoft everything would be better.
deficit
An optimistic loss.
definition
Found in dictionaries and contradictionaries, where it serves this purpose.
deflation
Pricking the bubble of pretention of inflated economists. It is the proper antidote to inflation, and all arguments against deflation are wrong.
delegation
Getting other people to do your leg work.
de-merger
- Waking up.
- Re-acquisition.
democracy
- A mate and me singling you out, making you the minority, and doing whatever we want to you, writ large and thought to be just.
- Some entities which pay tax but do not vote – g. foreign corporations, or individual non-voters – can influence politicians and their parties’ policies.
- No government is better than democracy.
- The reality is that even those who are not party to a decision can vote; e., voters who do not pay tax have an equal say to those who do.
- The assertion that all parties to a decision have an equal vote, irrespective of ability, knowledge, relevance, intention, vested interest or belief in democracy.
- Votes do not have equal weight in a democracy. If you vote for a losing candidate, then your vote is worth nothing. If you vote for a winning candidate and the candidate wins by more than one vote, then your vote is worth nothing. If your vote is the decider in a one-vote victory, then you become a dictator.
democrat
The type of manager – the darling of the HR departments – who includes HR departments in all strategic decisions, verifying and validating the HR department and the concept of HR itself.
demographics
Endless dissections of the market requiring continuing finessing, advocated by researchers paid hourly, as a way of predicting which products will sell where, instead of just marketing to the general population and letting them sort it out for themselves.
… … … … …
Rodney Marks
I’m an Australian corporate comedian, performing comic hoaxes at business events. If you like these blogs, you’ll like my live comedy. If you don’t like these blogs, you still might like my live comedy.
Add comedian.com.au to your bookmarks, and one day: book Marks. I don’t do cheap jokes, and I’m freer than you think. I’m comical not anatomical, economical not astronomical.
For more info – and to contact me directly – see my LinkedIn profile, and website: www.comedian.com.au. I’m based in Sydney and travel widely.
by Rodney Marks | Dec 23, 2016 | Business, Comedian, Comedy, Corporate, Events, Hoax, Keynote, Speaker, Speaking
But wait! There’s more … in the episodic publication of The Management Contradictionary (Benjamin Marks, Rodney Marks, and Robert Spillane. Michelle Anderson Publishing: Melbourne).
It’s available in all good libraries, and quite a few bad ones, too. The book is in alphabetical order, so feel free to keep reading the blog posts – past, present and future – from eh? to zzz.
The Management Contradictionary defines the real meaning behind management terms.
… … … … …
critical path analysis
Like those who sloppily use the terms ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’, adherents to this way of constructing services and products are captured by the metaphor of ‘business is war’, and think that the manufacture of a can of baked beans is similar to building a Polaris submarine.
criticism
Management is an illegitimate profession.
cubicle
- A cubicle with a door could also be a workstation in an en-suite.
- A cubicle with a door could be an office.
- A workstation designed to turn eggheads into blockheads.
curiosity
- Child-like quality of wonder destroyed by bureaucracies.
- Active ignorance, because you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.
- ?
customer
- A consumer with ambition.
- An annoying individual or group whose sole aim is to interfere with perfectly good processes, systems, products and services.
cut-rate
Surgery for inflamed prices.
CV
- The most creative work of fiction that a manager is ever likely to write, revealing himself to be a team player, a bushwalker, Rotarian, dubiously educated, and a good family man every Wednesday night and on alternate weekends.
- Check Value.
- Control Value.
- Computer Virus.
- Cardio-Vascular.
- Control Volume.
- Cost Variance.
- Controlled Vocabulary.
- Command Vehicle.
- Cache Verification.
- Authored by a cut-rate cynic.
cynic
Someone who sees not only that the emperor has no clothes, but also that there is, in fact, no emperor.
data
Information that is useless until contextualised by more data, as two data points make a trend. More than two is overkill.
data-mining
- Drilling down.
- Using the vertical to make sense of the horizontal.
(See core values)
data-processing
Warehousing irrelevant information.
deadline
- Something you miss, like nostalgia.
- Something to die for.
deal
- Something to do with the cards you’ve been dealt.
- Something to cut.
- Something you can agree to today, and renege on tomorrow.
- An ideal ordeal.
death wish
Desire to be CEO.
debit
Money to be repaid if and when possible.
debriefing
- Like detoxing, deconstructing and dismantling, debriefing assists stressed employees to forget their original brief.
- Making things longer.
… … … … …
Rodney Marks
I’m an Australian corporate comedian, performing comic hoaxes at business events. If you like these blogs, you’ll like my live comedy. If you don’t like these blogs, you still might like my live comedy.
Add comedian.com.au to your bookmarks, and one day: book Marks. I don’t do cheap jokes, and I’m freer than you think. I’m comical not anatomical, economical not astronomical.
For more info – and to contact me directly – see my LinkedIn profile, and website: www.comedian.com.au. I’m based in Sydney and travel widely.
by Rodney Marks | Dec 22, 2016 | Business, Comedian, Comedy, Corporate, Events, Hoax, Keynote, Speaker, Speaking
Here we go again, with another post in the episodic publication of The Management Contradictionary (Benjamin Marks, Rodney Marks, and Robert Spillane. Michelle Anderson Publishing: Melbourne).
It’s available in all good libraries, and quite a few bad ones, too. The book is in alphabetical order, so feel free to keep reading the blog posts – past, present and future – from eh? to zzz.
The Management Contradictionary defines the real meaning behind management terms.
… … … … …
corporate governance
A useful and focused way to blame the board of directors for management mistakes. Much discussed when companies fail; something to do with people who are meant to reign in out-of-control CEOs, except when those executives are doing well and not getting caught.
corporate language
(See buzz words, jargon and weasel words)
corporate social responsibility
- Insurance against unknown future risks, paid by corporations to the broader community, so that an adverse impact upon any section of society can be reduced due to a base level of goodwill towards the firm.
- Supplementary subliminal advertising to groups sceptical – or even skeptical – of mainstream media
(See philanthropy)
corporation
An amoral, unelected entity, accountable to changing and changeable stakeholders, whose aim is to maximise shareholder value at all costs. If it was an animal, it would be a Rottweiler, and you’d shoot it as a genetically violent threat to society.
cost
Production at pains to be profitable.
cost accountant
A reverse prophet.
cost-benefit analysis
The cost of analysing benefits divided by the benefits of analysing costs.
cost centre
Any strategic organisational unit not directly involved in bottom-line activities; all are expendable.
cost effectiveness
A feeble attempt to justify poor purchasing decisions on the basis that the benefits will be seen down the track.
cost of capital
The real price of money.
counselling
The selling and buying of unwanted advice.
coward
- A manager who sabotages performance with personality.
- A polite leader.
(See moral courage)
crackdown
Cocaine up.
creativity
- The ability to think outside the square.
- The capacity to invent the square.
- The propensity to play with the sides of the square, thereby eliminating its squareness.
- The ability to think outside the square.
- An obsession with all sorts of quasi-geometric iterations while avoiding work.
credit
Money available to spend, which if you had it you wouldn’t, because when you did you did, and you don’t want to go down that path again.
crisis
A insufficiency of excuses.
crisis management
Management.
critic
- Stakeholder.
- Shareholder.
- Opinion holder.
- Funded retiree.
- Politician, especially at election time.
… … … … …
Rodney Marks
I’m an Australian corporate comedian, performing comic hoaxes at business events. If you like these blogs, you’ll like my live comedy. If you don’t like these blogs, you still might like my live comedy.
Add comedian.com.au to your bookmarks, and one day: book Marks. I don’t do cheap jokes, and I’m freer than you think. I’m comical not anatomical, economical not astronomical.
For more info – and to contact me directly – see my LinkedIn profile, and website: www.comedian.com.au. I’m based in Sydney and travel widely.
by Rodney Marks | Dec 21, 2016 | Business, Comedian, Comedy, Corporate, Events, Hoax, Keynote, Speaker, Speaking
We continue the episodic publication of The Management Contradictionary (Benjamin Marks, Rodney Marks, and Robert Spillane. Michelle Anderson Publishing: Melbourne).
It’s available in all good libraries, and quite a few bad ones, too. The book is in alphabetical order, so feel free to keep reading the blog posts – past, present and future – from eh? to zzz.
The Management Contradictionary defines the real meaning behind management terms.
… … … … …
consumer
- An anonymous customer.
- An individual who, when aggregated into the general population mass, becomes responsible for buying everything.
- The boss.
- An all-consuming client.
consumerism
An ism that you can buy into.
consumption
What should happen to production.
contemplation
We’re still thinking about this.
contra deal
Bartering to evade tax and other transaction costs.
contradictionary
- Adding definite meaning to words.
- A dictionary with an annotated self-referential index in the back.
- Numerous defining moments, alphabetised.
control
(verb) To exercise power over people or organisations who agree to be subjugated.
(noun) Those organisational functions that tell you what happens when.
convention
A convened meeting in which participants pretend to be in a convent.
convergence
The coming together of resources such as people or technology or ideas – yes, intellectual capital is a resource – so that they are no longer parallel, in metaphorical silos or drainpipes, nor are they diverging. Convergence is more serendipitous than the result of change management processes, consultancies, or leadership.
conversation
Murdered by postmodernists.
cooperation
(See conspiracy)
coordinate
To administer chaos in a focused way.
copyright
The right to copy.
core values
- Values that must be adhered to, compared with non-sticky values in the values statement.
- Values worth laminating.
corporate comedy
- Corporate
- The twenty-first-century equivalent to the court jester: the only person allowed to tell the truth to the modern day feudal lord, namely, the CEO.
corporate communication
Messianic messaging process whereby the views of the corporate godhead are evangelised to the unfaithful at the acolytes’ expense.
corporate culture
That unchangeable, intangible organisational feel, the result of history, people, objectives and production, which must be denigrated and decimated by an organisation’s leadership if they are to get anything done.
… … … … …
Rodney Marks
I’m an Australian corporate comedian, performing comic hoaxes at business events. If you like these blogs, you’ll like my live comedy. If you don’t like these blogs, you still might like my live comedy.
Add comedian.com.au to your bookmarks, and one day: book Marks. I don’t do cheap jokes, and I’m freer than you think. I’m comical not anatomical, economical not astronomical.
For more info – and to contact me directly – see my LinkedIn profile, and website: www.comedian.com.au. I’m based in Sydney and travel widely.
