by Rodney Marks | Dec 20, 2016 | Business, Comedian, Comedy, Corporate, Events, Hoax, Keynote, Speaker, Speaking
Here are more business jokes, masquerading as 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.
… … … … …
company photo day
If you need a photo to remember something, then it’s not worth remembering.
compensation
Inadequate recompense for your time.
competence
Getting away with it.
competitor
Someone whose funeral you’re prepared to attend, and even arrange.
computer
- A device to increase paperwork.
- A machine that timelines the ignorance of IT companies, and is three months out of date as soon as it hits your desk.
computer program
An escalating game played between program developers and program consumers, in which the latter test-market the product at their own expense, making suggestions for improvements that should have been built into the software in the first place.
conditioning
It’s not my fault; society is to blame.
conference
An expensive meeting at which people confer.
conflict
- Two or more individuals or groups of individuals or entities in neither total agreement nor total disagreement over one or more matters of greater or lesser importance in and of themselves.
- Two or more individuals or groups of individuals or entities in total agreement or total disagreement over one or more matters of greater or lesser importance in and of themselves.
conformity
When everyone sings the company song from the same page of the corporate hymn sheet, when all the ducks are in a row, and when the troops – in formation – line up to salute the company logo.
conglomerate
An organisation so diverse that even it doesn’t know what business it is in.
congress
A digressed conference.
conscience
A quality claimed by compliance managers to justify their salaries.
consciousness
- I.
- That which humans use to deny I.
consensus
The authors could not come to an agreement on this definition.
conservative
Someone who prefers the jam we’re in.
conspiracy
Working together.
consultation
Using groupthink to create scapegoats.
… … … … …
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 19, 2016 | Business, Comedian, Comedy, Corporate, Events, Hoax, Keynote, Speaker, Speaking, Uncategorized
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.
… … … … …
climate change
When culture change fails, and change management doesn’t work, contemporary business leaders use climate change to deflect analysis and criticism of internal organisational issues, in much the same way that government leaders use war, poverty, refugees, Third World debt and – climate change.
CLM
- Career Limiting Move
- Customer Lifecycle Management
- Closed Loop Marketing
- Called, Left Message
- Continuous Learning Module
- Common Law Marriage
- Critical thinking
- Thought leadership
- Insubordination
- Resignation.
club
Tribal meeting place where non-members are beaten about the head.
coach
- Out-sorcerer of a manager’s psyche.
- Someone who assists a manager in the dereliction of his duty to delegate one of the few non-delegatable tasks in his job description.
- Management consultant who improves organisations person by person, and charges accordingly.
coercion
Persuasion by your manager.
cognitive intelligence
The ability to conceptualise a profit when one doesn’t exist, in the face of the facts being drawn to your attention by the clearly unintelligent.
cold call
Asking people you don’t know for work, on the basis that people who do know you don’t want to work with you. Good practice for pre‑Alzheimer executives.
collaboration
You doing what I tell you to do, in a timely fashion.
colleague
A competitor known to you by his first name, often working in your organisation and vying with you for promotion and other perks.
collusion
An off-the-record deal, the unremarkable lifeblood of competitive behaviour, which inconveniently becomes public knowledge.
comfort zone
Cosy corner from which managers are required to proactively move forward by thinking laterally, innovatively and creatively, outside the nine dots and beyond the circle.
commerce
Horse-trading by the top end of town.
commitment
Evidence of managerial madness manifested as a consent to accountability; punished by being straight-jacketed in a bureaucracy until cured by a dose of lucidity.
committee
A group of expendable employees whose role is to act as a collective scapegoat.
communication
Me telling you.
community
Chance to get away from yourself.
company car
A vehicle for minimising personal income tax whilst transporting you to another place.
(See salary packaging)
… … … … …
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 19, 2016 | Business, Comedian, Comedy, Corporate, Events, Hoax, Keynote, Speaker, Speaking
We keep rolling through 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. It’s in alphabetical order, so feel free to keep reading the blog posts until you get to z, or zzz.
The Management Contradictionary defines the real meaning behind management terms.
… … … … …
challenges
Problems.
change agent
Someone perennially dissatisfied with their lot – and yours.
change management
Fallacious belief that people want to change their work behaviour or that, even if they want to, they can. A popular way to implement a change management program is to change management.
chaos
What will result if you don’t do it my way.
character
Moral fibre lubricating the organisational irritable bowel syndrome of balanced decision-makers. To say a manager has a good character is like saying that an unattractive teenager has a good personality.
charisma
Gift of grace: possessed by miracle-workers who generally die young. Misapplied to managers and politicians.
chauvinism
The defence of management by managers for security.
cheating
- Disagreement over rules.
- Success by any means.
- A recognition that endemic rule-breaking is central to organisational survival.
children
- Liabilities.
- Expensive and unreliable couriers for passing messages between former spouses.
- After-hours mistakes.
- Risky investments with a very long pay-off period, or maybe none at all. Not for the faint-hearted.
choice
- Used by managers to abrogate responsibility.
- What people select to deny that they have options.
circular
(noun) A circumlocutory memo sent on a circuitous route in a roundabout manner.
circular reasoning
(See reasoning, circular)
civilisation
The concealment of avarice with jealousy.
clarity
Management communication created under the influence of claret.
classics
- Your most recent corporate annual report update, memo, proposal, performance evaluation, and job application.
- Writings of management gurus, now remaindered, published before you were a manager, containing the collective fads of a fashionable profession.
cleaners
- Employees who work without making a mess.
- Employees who make work of mess, as distinct from other employees – who make a mess of work.
cliché
- Anything following and including the disclaimer: “I know that this is a cliché, but … ”
- In a nutshell, to get to the root of the matter, at this point in time, it is jargon used by someone else to get more bang for their buck.
client
- Moral blackmailer.
- Emotional blackmailer.
- Someone who requires work from you.
- Annoying, intrusive individual or organisation who or which regularly makes unreasonable claims on organisational resources, including (but not limited to) requests for products and services paid for, but not received, or if received, received in a condition inferior to that originally agreed to.
… … … … …
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 17, 2016 | Business, Comedian, Comedy, Corporate, Events, Hoax, Keynote, Speaker, Speaking
I trust that you’re enjoying 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. It’s in alphabetical order, so feel free to keep reading the blog posts until you get to z, or zzz.
The Management Contradictionary defines the real meaning behind management terms.
… … … … …
calling
Delusion.
capital
- What you had before you allocated it.
- The city where your profit went.
career
A life sentence for committing the crime of having a family.
caring
Making loving, giving and sharing believable.
case study
Business war story chosen to support your management philosophy.
cash flow
Key economic indicator of viability. Like sex appeal, you’ve either got or you haven’t, and if you haven’t, claims about potential won’t help.
cash incentive
Cash.
casualise
- The professional inability to commit.
- Making staff unemployed at the end of every shift.
- Making staff fight for every session.
- Making overtime over time.
- The belief in the short-term.
- Workplace dating.
catalyst
Someone who causes change in others whilst remaining completely unaffected.
catharsis
Emotional chunder.
caveat
A warning about a warning that lets you off the hook. In fact, if what has been warned about eventuates, even though it might be your fault, both preparedness and prophecy can be claimed by the caveat communicator.
caveat emptor
Let the buyer beware of the seller, because the seller is untrustworthy, unscrupulous, completely devoid of business ethics and likely to defraud; does not apply when you are the seller. Placing the words ‘caveat emptor: conditions apply’ on all products might prevent litigation.
celebrate
To make someone famous for a moment, merely for doing their job.
celebrity
Prophet in a financial year.
censoring
Filleting your truth for mine, for your own good.
centralisation
- One end of the autonomy-control continuum, popular when independence fails.
- Using circular reasoning instead of business planning.
- Being diametrically opposed to diameters.
CEO
- Chief Expert Obfuscator
- Code Enforcement Officer
- Chief Entertainment Officer
- Casualty Evacuation Officer
- Combine Expensive Operations
- Catholic Education Office.
CFO
- Manager who stops the buck.
- Manager who wears a check shirt so that, if the spreadsheet software crashes, it can be pinned to the wall with all those columns and rows adding up to the total in the bottom right-hand cell.
- Manager who ensures that the profit equals the loss.
chair
Manager who tables emotions, and then tabulates them.
chairperson
The individual responsible for casting the seating around the board table and for couching dissent as consensus.
… … … … …
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 16, 2016 | Business, Comedian, Comedy, Corporate, Events, Hoax, Keynote, Speaker, Speaking
Here is 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. It’s in alphabetical order, so feel free to keep reading the blog posts until you get to z, or zzz.
The Management Contradictionary defines the real meaning behind management terms.
bull market
Environment in which shares are traded on the basis of bull received from companies.
bullshit
What stops managers killing each other.
bureaucracy
Multi-layered black hole into which people, physical resources, money and time are sucked, never to reappear.
bureaucrat
A crat who has fallen from the mantle onto the bureau.
business cycle
Not what it used to be, and never was. Neither caused by business nor a cycle. It is caused by government printing money without backing, and business being defrauded by it.
business ethics
- All manner of good and bad things as good and bad, but not necessarily in that order.
- Moving set of temporary values created by organisations to quash uninformed criticism from government and shareholders.
business expenses
- Items successfully claimed as tax deductions.
- Items bought with government money for private benefit.
business lunch
- A way to accumulate frequent intake incentives
- A way to accumulate frequent imbibe brownie points
- A method to benefit from feeding and watering the cattle class
- Putting the quid into quid pro quo
- A bribe
- Positive reinforcement
- A bargaining chip for extortion
- A bargaining chip for blackmail
- A bonus
- A carrot to an individual in order to stick it to a group
- Wholesaling retail influence peddling
- Extraction of personal gratification from professional negotiations
- Intimacy with legitimacy
- Precursor to a post-prandial nap
- Precursor to cursing.
business model
A reverse-engineered retrofitted abstraction of reality, accurate after the fact, because of the fact.
business objective
The second part of the two-part ubiquitous training program, ‘Business Aims and Objectives’, which has no relationship to what executives think about, talk about or actually do.
business park
- A campus whose premises are based on assumptions.
- An oxymoron, like fun run, petty cash, spend thrift, job security, crisis management and home office.
business plan
Hypothetical and theoretical, tentative and hesitant pathway to the future, measured in various time periods, although no-one has ever seen a five-year plan in its fifth year.
buying-in
The psychological process of requiring employees to agree with bosses.
buzz words
Enthusiastically ambiguous expressions used to assert the status of the speaker whilst promising nothing.
(See above and below)
by-product
Something tangential that might come out of your core business process; especially useful if that process is a dud.
call centre
The home of highly skilled, headset-wearing, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, polyglot human knowledge repositories with nice telephone manners, condescended to by tomorrow’s dole recipients.
… … … … …
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.
