Management Contradictionary: bold to built-to-last

by Rodney Marks | Dec 16, 2016 | Business, Comedian, Comedy, Corporate, Events, Hoax, Keynote, Speaker, Speaking

Here are some more business jokes from 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.

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bold

1. What fortune favours: making a fortune out of favouritism.
2. Somewhere between CAPITALISATION and italicisation in the continuum of screaming messages.

bonus

1. Salary that you have to work for.
2. Salary that you have to retire for.

book

1. Bound text-and-paper compilation used as reading material before being replaced by film, television and the Internet.
2. Portable graffiti.
3. Educational instrument unfamiliar to managers.
4. Place to hide confidential information.
5. Interim summary of work-in-progress.

(See The Book, which is something to throw at disruptors, to no effect)

bookish

1. Manager bound up in his words.
2. Manager bound by his words.

boom-bust cycle

Standard justification for doing badly after doing well.

boredom

If a kingdom is rule by a king, then boredom is rule by a bore.

borrow

To obtain money or something else of value (such as a cup of sugar or a lawnmower) by saying that it will be paid back sometime, often with interest in the form of more money, sugar or grass clippings.

bottom line

The only real way to find out what actually happens.

brainstorming

1. Lightning rod for a team thundering under the effects of electroshock therapy.
2. Clouding the mind.

brand

Emblem, symbol, icon or wording that assists consumers and potential consumers to ignore intrinsic merits or lack thereof.

brand awareness

1. Making awareness a brand.
2. Making a new brand brand new.
3. Making an old brand brand new
4. People knowing the above.

brand loyalty

1. Loyalty irrespective of reciprocity.
2. What producers demand of consumers when features and benefits are not persuasive.

break-even point

The point on the timeline of a project’s lifecycle where it stops haemorrhaging money.

bribery

Incentive payment.

briefing

Pre-preparing by backgrounding.

broker of hope

Pawning IQ for EQ.

BS

Bloated Syntax; doubletalk; CEO-speak; spin; government policies; corporate policies; election promises; annual reports; start-ups’ pitch documents; social entrepreneurs’ claims; secular ethics centres’ preaching; religions’ promises of immortality; a nonsensical and subliminal PS, where the PS is the whole point of the message.

budget

A fable chronicled in columns and rows, without a moral.

budget allocation

What you spend as leverage for more.

built-to-last

A product that will work perfectly well until you’re promoted.

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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.

I don’t do cheap jokes, and I’m freer than you think. I’m comical not anatomical, economical not astronomical. Add comedian.com.au to your bookmarks, and one day: book Marks.

I’m based in Sydney and travel widely. For more info – and to contact me directly – see my LinkedIn profile, and website: www.comedian.com.au.

Management Contradictionary: audit to bank

by Rodney Marks | Dec 13, 2016 | Business, Comedian, Comedy, Corporate, Events, Hoax, Keynote, Speaker, Speaking

Here we go from a to b 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. 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.

audit

A waste of time only the paranoid prepare for – and they’re right.

auditorium

A place to audit.

auditor

1. A heartless ticker whose role it is to add green or purple to black and red.
2. A hard of hearing earwig who wants a hearing.
3. An impurist who mistakes finance for mathematics.

authoritarian

Directive management style, in which the leader leads.

authority

1. Those in a state of needless leaderlessness, as there is no-one higher to refer to.
2. A fictitious quality of managers, by which power over others can be enforced.

autocrat

A manager who gets things done, even if the organisation is destroyed in the process.

automation

The recognition that because subordinates are automatons, we may as well have robots doing the work.

autonomy

The authority, in the afterlife, to work independently.

average

1. Means mean.
2. A safe place for managers to be.
3. Dividing the sum of the whole by the number of its parts will yield the average, but will not show how the sum of the whole can be greater than the whole when reconstituted. Translated into management terms, a group made up of people with average ability will only ever be average.

back-of-the-envelope calculation

A handwritten recommendation, short on research, rationale, comparisons of alternatives, consultation, planning, number-crunching, data-mining and theory, which often represents a better option.

backgrounding

History of the idea of the theoretical premise of the day.

bad debt

Debt that hasn’t been paid yet.

bads

Unwanted goods, like and including government services, because they have no (voluntary) customers.

ballpark

Close enough to be acceptable to you.

balls

Needed to be grasped by female managers to control pricks.

bandit

(See banker)

banker

(See bandit)

bankrupt

The inability to pay for past losses with future cash.

bank

Den of inequity in which you lose interest through buying money.

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Management Contradictionary: application to attitude

by Rodney Marks | Dec 12, 2016 | Business, Comedian, Comedy, Corporate, Events, Hoax, Keynote, Speaker, Speaking

Just for fun, enlightenment, motivation and inspiration, here is 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. 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.

application

Pathetic attempt to fit your background into the selection criteria by writing a self-referential reference.

(See résumé.)

appointment

Pointed reference to a placement in which you no longer control your diary.

appraise

To report on what you feel before the facts are reality tested.

apprentice

A PA with ambition.

aptitude test

Battery of circuitous quizzes designed to assess your endurance, your positives and negatives, and the calibre of your weaponry.

argh

Onomatopoeic sound that computer gurus make when they discover that they aren’t. It means argh.

argument

Argued against.

Arial

This is a clear font unencumbered by curly bits and is the style choice for emails. When being clear it is crucial to say that you are being clear, even if you have several hidden agendas. By merely saying that something is in Arial your audience will suspend disbelief, even if it is in Times New Roman.

aristocrats

People who know they are the best, contrasted with managers, who know they aren’t.

arts, the

When presenting as cultured and part of the culture, the arts are worth sponsoring for networking over nibbles.

assembly line

A sequenced method of manufacturing robots from humans.

assessment centre

An administration established to milk the belief that psychologists understand behaviour.

assets

1. Necessary counterweight for balanced accounts, and accountants.
2. Temporarily valued budget items available to support the career advancement of senior and chief executives.
3. Optimism quantified.
4. Liabilities waiting to happen.

assumption

Well, you have to start somewhere.

attendance

What you’re paid for.

attitude

Mythical entity used by managers to manipulate high performers. Can be singular or plural, but out of many comes one, which in other contexts is quite a good motto.

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Management Contradictionary: aim to appeal

by Rodney Marks | Dec 11, 2016 | Business, Comedian, Comedy, Corporate, Events, Hoax, Keynote, Speaker, Speaking

And now for something completely different … 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.

aim

Off-target archery metaphor, whose misguided objectives are to add more strings to the bow of direction, and to insert more arrows in the quiver of purpose.

alcohol

Liquid in which to dissolve business ethics.

alcoholism

Shot of holism imbibed by managers.

alienation

What successful managers feel.

alignment

An agreeable truce, based on battle exhaustion.

all things being equal (ceteris paribus)

Taking variables away.

all your ducks are in a row

As in “all your stars are aligned”, this business cliché refers to a series of chance events which serendipitously support your argument, strategy or business.

alliance

Working together under your direction.

allocation

Notionally an economic term about choosing where to distribute resources over time. It is the real exercise of power, being the manifestation of favoritism, cronyism, nepotism and incompetence.

alternative

(See below)

altruism

Helping others for your own satisfaction.

ambition

Point of difference in career advancement when your achievements are not enough.

analogy

Something you catch from cross-pollinated ideas.

analysis

Being anal about the banal.

analysis paralysis

Assessing a project initially qualitatively and ultimately quantitatively against a plethora of hierarchies and an aggregation of continua followed by a collection of assessment criteria before feeding the raw data back into the system and up the line with a request for further funding.

analytical

A qualifier used to mask gut-feel.

antique

The antics of a superannuated leader.

antitrust legislation

Proof of government distrust of business.

Thought: If government represents business, but business does not represent government, on what basis is antitrust legislation good and tax evasion bad?

anxiety

Worry brought on by managers contemplating the legitimacy of their profession.

anziety

1. The stress felt by a manager after sending an email to the team leader, prior to spell-checking.
2. Anxiety Down Under.

appeal

1. A cry in the wilderness.
2. A clarion call.

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