Management Contradictionary: task-orientated to zero-based budgeting

by Rodney Marks | Jan 10, 2017 | Business, Comedian, Comedy, Corporate, Entertainment, Events, Hoax, Keynote, Speaker, Speaking

We continue another extended blog (web blog) 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.

…   …   …   …   …

task-orientated

Facing the task.

task-oriented

Facing the East.

taste

Lip-service to culture.

tautology

Repeating the same thing twice.

tax accounting

That set of accounts which shows the smallest possible profit, and preferably a loss. There are completely different sets of accounts to show your staff, your partners and yourself – the latter including any untraceable cash receipts.

taxation

Differs from other theft only insofar as it is generally misunderstood to be just.

team player

Person lacking initiative.

temperature of an organisation

Cheeky medical metaphor measuring managerial anal-retentiveness, manifested as the manager’s belief that he is a thermostat rather than a thermometer.

(see cranial-rectal extraction and climate)

temptation

Manage us not into temperance.

test market

Market.

testamur

Written proof that you’ve wasted your time seeking institutional approval from a college or university, or from society, when you could have been seeking approval from a real live person, for money.

Theory X

Employees are lazy.

Theory Y

No they’re not.

thinking

Talking to a better class of person.

thou shalt not

Serious sanctions-supported suggestions.

threats

Indirect incentives.

thrift

1. Drinking Australian champagne.
2. Naming it so.

throughput

1. Transformation, often on a transcendental level.
2. What you put through something.
3. The process between input and output.
4. What actually happens in the process of creating a service or product. Senior managers do not know how things are manufactured or created, so this useful wastepaper basket word can be applied to make them look knowledgeable.

time

Either a denominator or a numerator, depending on where you did your math. Or in a pluralistic society, maths.

time and motion study

A method to test whether employees move intertemporally.

time in lieu

The organisational cost of irritable bowel syndrome, brought on by indigestible management decisions.

time management

Management.

Times New Roman

This is a formal font enhanced by curly bits and is the style of choice for snail mail. When it is crucial to say things that can be retracted, Times New Roman is your tool.

to-do list

Something else to remember.

tolerance

Absence of principle (except for that one), which knows no limit (except for that).

totalitarian

Holistic manager.

toxic managers

A waste of office space.

TQM (Total Quality Management)

Continuous self-flagellation.

traction

A word used to describe the uptake of ideas, as in ‘Getting traction leads to action’. Similar to ‘Hitting the ground running’.

trade association (also industry association)

A group of employers claiming special needs over those dictated by the marketplace.

trade unionists (also labor unionists)

1. Economic illiterates who falsely believe that they can increase wages they don’t pay by advocating the punishment of those who wish to accept deals the union does not endorse.
2. A group sensitive to criticism.

tradition

Dancing with the dead.

trainee

Chairman of the Board.

training

Education that has a purpose.

trance

State induced by attending an AGM.

transference

Psychiatrists telling clients they are mad.

transformation

The belief that you are not yourself but that you will be one day.

transitioning

A person or service or product on the way out.

transparency

1. Accountability adopted after the PR budget is spent.
2. Something that you can read from while maintaining eye contact with the audience.

trend analysis

Codifying the past; fashionable tool for measuring how quickly history will continue to set theory.

tried and tested

Wearing a tie.

trust

1. Management naivety.
2. Management naiveté.

truth

A debased concept that used to mean ‘in accordance with the facts’, but now means ‘it works for me’. In management, subordinated to power.

turnover

Because it’s best that you don’t see it.

Type A managers

1. Taiwanese capital executives.
2. Cause themselves heart-attacks.

Type B managers

B-grade managers who spend all day alphabetising their tasks.

Type C managers

1. Cause heart-attacks in others.
2. Create growth – in themselves.

unconscious

That which is unknowable but psychoanalysts assume and managers fall into. Final resting place of the conscience.

undent

To move to the left what had been moved to the right.

(see Liberal Party of Australia)

underling

1. A New Age person.
2. A bed of couscous at a pesco-vegetarian restaurant.

undesirables

Principled board members.

unity of command

A claim that all the organisation’s leaders have the same values, vision and mission, and that they are familiar with the latest justifications for implementing any necessary draconian measures.

unity of purpose

Fire!

universal

Something that applies equally to everyone and everything – like management theory, McDonald’s and democracy.

university of life

1. Cultivated ignorance.
2. If you graduate from the university of life, you die.
3. Graduate from the school of hard knocks.
4. Excuse for having failed high school.
5. A person qualified by a degree of chip-on-the-shoulder.

unskilled workers

Managers with pre-career MBAs.

upmarket

A position attractive to brand-conscious consumers.

user-friendly

Self-explanatory.

utilitarianism

The theory that goodness is good.

utility

A really small unit of measure, so tiny that even the concepts of management theory can be quantified using it.

utopia

Workplace without managers.

value judgement

1. A good thing.
2. Good in some situations.
3. They exist, for better or for worse, and sometimes for neither.
4. A bad thing – science must be value-free.

values

Something to fall back on when the cashflow doesn’t.

variable costs

Expenditure items that you can’t do a darn thing about, but at least you can get them off the balance sheet.

veil of ignorance

Deaf ear, blind eye, transparent résumé.

venture capital

1. Capital you’d almost venture to use if it were your own.
2. Money you don’t need to return.

vertical integration

Popular among firms with CEOs who are control freaks – such as former CFOs – who like owning all elements of the production and distribution chain, irrespective of profitability.

very good

A balanced scorecard in search of excellent.

vice versa

Versa vice.

virtual knowledge

Knowing knowledge and ideas related thereto.

virtuous organisation

Good and service replacing goods and services.

vision

1. The management retreat at a beautiful resort, number two in the sequence: values, vision, mission. Don’t forget the butcher’s paper, whiteboard and PowerPoint
2. A representation of how the organisation would look without debt, cash flow challenges or shareholders to report to.
3. A perfect response when you don’t understand the detail of a problem: ‘Is this congruent with our vision?’
4. Something that the CEO has at a management retreat, after too much alcohol and caffeine, followed by too little sleep.

wage or wages

Payment dispensed to dispensable employees. The plural makes it seem like more money.

wait

Time between milestones.

walking the talk

Tap-dancing and fire-walking with the masses.

war

1. Destructive crater of management metaphors.
2. Failed crisis management.
3. Successful issues management.

warehouse

Palatable location for placing over-ordered stock in orderly lines.

watch

Used for measuring the economic worth of an MBA subject.

way forward, the

Useful to employ when asked about plans for the future, as it gives you time to think of an answer.

weaknesses

Always denied by mentioning strengths.

wealth

A financial state rarely felt by the wealthy, as the human appetite for security is insatiable.

weasel words

Words deliberately designed to avoid meaning or commitment: the impactful behavior of demystifying  cultural embedment.

website

(Currently under construction. Please bookmark this page and visit us again soon)

what works

Thinking that feelings are more important than thoughts.

whistle-blower

1. Someone who publicly announces his retirement.
2. Referee.
3. Arbiter.
4. Judge.
5. Adjudicator.
6. Mediator.
7. Conciliator.
8. Umpire.
9. High priest.
10. Moraliser.

(see martyr)

white-collar

The uniform of the clerical class, worn so that they will not inadvertently be required to do useful work, which would be embarrassing all round.

white-collar crime

1. Crime that pays.
2. Getting away with it.
3. Not getting away with it.

winners

White-collar criminals.

win-win

One of the four quadrants of a particularly useful negotiation theory matrix. The others are: win-lose, lose-win and lose-lose.

wisdom

Rational self-interest, which, if enacted, would eliminate war, religion and management.

wit

1. Someone who says that management is a joke.
2. Management (adjective) jokes (noun).
3. Management (noun) jokes (verb).
4. managementjokes.com

witness

Also known as a fool, because his testimony will be discounted.

work

Something managers get done through other people.

work experience

1. Anthropology for the young.
2. Sociology for the youngish.
3. Psychology for the young at heart.
4. Zoology for the not-so-young.

workaholic

Successful senior executive with a chauffeur, driven to work.

workaphile

A workplace romance without a partner.

work-life balance

A see-sawing, pendulous arc of a continuum, always as wrong as it is right.

world class

We’ve been on the internet and have copied the very best.

world first

As far as we can tell, if you buy this, you’ll be going where no one has gone before.

wrong-clicking

Clicking the right-hand button on a computer mouse, or the right button on a notebook computer touchpad, which reveals uncertainties. Also known as right-clicking.

WTO

World Trade Organisation; not Well Thought Of.

www (wise weasel words)

A random compilation of malicious gossip and unsubstantiated anecdotes, as useful as a clock to a pig.

ex-spouse

Someone who would correct your spelling and alphabetisation when you are out of line. Or alignment.

young

Those who undermine the old.

youth

A growing market.

penultimate

1. One after the antepenultimate.
2. Two after the preantepenultimate.
3. This.
4. Given that there are a range of options and opportunities and possibilities to discuss just before the final point, it would seem to us – and this is something from which we, the authors, would find it hard if not impossible to resile – that, at this point in time, in the development of management language, there is a need to set clear boundaries and say, ‘This far, and no further’. But maybe just one last thing.

zero-based budgeting

Budgeting for zeros.

…   …   …   …   …

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.

Management Contradictionary: public relations to task force

by Rodney Marks | Jan 8, 2017 | Business, Comedian, Comedy, Corporate, Entertainment, Events, Hoax, Keynote, Speaker, Speaking

This is a super-duper edition 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.

…   …   …   …   …

public relations

When your relations with your public go badly, hiring a PR firm won’t help.

public sector

A bite out of the private sector.

public service

An oxymoron that describes the self-sustaining, amoral bureaucracy that supports the political party or coalition of the day – and its politicians.

public transport

Arriving late.

purchasing power

The blackmailing of suppliers into squeezing margins and taking all the risk, by demanding loyalty, then threatening to withdraw their orders.

purpose

If there is light at the end of the tunnel, it could be glaucoma.

‘put steps in place’

Outcome avoidance strategy.

quack

Pseudo-expert whose ducks are not all in a row and who is not even a duck.

quadrant

Consultants feel comfortable with four of anything, which is two more than managers feel comfortable with.

qualification

The experience of the inexperienced; the skill of the unskilled; the education of the uneducable.

qualitative

Incomprehensible word-heavy analysis.

quality

A standard that is temporarily satisfactory. Later on, you’ll be ashamed of what you deemed quality. And so on it goes. Continual improvement leads to self-hate.

quality control

The quality quota allocation process, through which it is determined how much quality is necessary for a product or service to be deemed to have the quality of quality.

quality of life

If there’s a heartbeat, you’re working.

quantitative

Incomprehensible number-heavy analysis.

question

1. A place to use my answer.
2. Often begins with ‘who’, ‘why’, ‘where’, ‘when’ ‘what’ or ‘how’, and ends in a metaphorical interrogative, which, if you’re literate, or even numerate, will be perceived as a question mark: ‘?’

racism

The belief that all races are the same – even in their differences.

radical

Management academic with tenure.

raise

An increase in an employee’s wage or salary, based on their negotiation ability.

raison d’être

The reason for our debt.

rational

You agree with us.

rationalisation

Turning your whine into sour grape juice.

reactive

Normal management practice: to respond to real situations as they arise.

reality

Putting the ‘I’ into realty.

reasoning

Valuable technical skill, reasonably discarded when promoted to management.

reasoning, circular

(see circular reasoning)

reassessment

Doing a personality test for the second time after failing the first one.

rebrand

To brand again after branding failed the first time.

recognition

Rethinking someone’s achievements out loud.

recycling

Reverse garbage and vice versa.

red tape

The bloody ties that bind: something bureaucrats unwind in and everyone else gets wound up in.

redundancy

What happens when your boss finds out what you actually do.

re-engineer

Engineer again to redesign you out of your job.

reference

Fictional praising of underperforming employees in order to remove them from your payroll without a redundancy package.

reform

Correct.

refund

Getting your money’s worth.

regression

1. A demotion.
2. Output over(-)time [and cost {and so on}].

reinforcement

Incentivisation of managers so that they behave like rats.

reinventing the wheel

Reinventing the wheel.

relationships

Temporary alliances between individuals, groups or organisations, which last as long as their interests are overlapping.

relativism

1. It all depends …
2. A form of nepotism.

relativity

The notion that all issues are merely part of larger ones.

relevance

The standard by which all education is judged irrelevant.

remuneration

Renumeration.

repeat business

Business.

repeat customer

Customer.

reporting mechanism

Managers burying feedback through the use of a mobile phone, gossip, a suggestion box or physical assault.

repositioning

Changing potential buyers’ perceptions of a product or service by taking it upmarket or downmarket or varying its consumer context vis-à-vis its competitors,              without altering it in any substantial way.

repression

Smiling at interviewers you would like to murder.

repurposing

Finding a new reason for an organisation to exist. Often a useful distraction if things are going badly. For a business, acquisitions are effective on this front. For a government, war will work a treat.

reputation

Suffers when one is promoted; destroyed when one becomes CEO.

research

Tantamount to the approximate verisimilitude of shared subjectivity masquerading as objectivity.

research and development (R&D)

A twin organisational function with its own inbuilt scapegoat subgroup. Research can blame development, and vice versa. A self-destructive loss centre used as window-dressing to quell criticism that the organisation is doing the same old things all the time.

reserves

A balance sheet item with a zero next to it. This shows that the organisation is aware and responsible. Where did the obscene amount go? To the managers themselves, for being so prudent.

resignation

Career limiting move, and perhaps employment suicide. Not recommended, as the victim forfeits redundancy and other payouts. Wait for them to sack you. Either way, your résumé is diminished.

resources

Consumable process inputs.

responsibility

(anachronism) Entailed by the freedom to choose to deny that we are free to             choose.

rest

A cover for lack of passion, direction or incentive that serves as an excuse of last resort.

(see holiday)

restructure

A way to fire people you don’t like. Favoured by management consultants because it is a project that requires no facts, logic or evidence to support it, and thus guarantees more employment for consultants.

results

Should be hidden until things improve.

résumé

Lying in acute chronological order.

retiree

1. Someone who chose the wrong job.
2. Someone at the stage before death.
3. Subject of your jealousy.

retrospectroscope

Device used by CEOs to predict the past.

return on investment (ROI)

How much you expect to receive in exchange for your investment. Usually you would hope for more than you put in, but as deals progress, many investors settle for a break-even result, making much commerce merely occupational therapy.

reverse engineering

1. Using the solution to retrofit the problem.
2. An engineer going off the reserve.

rights

1. Ritual, self-serving incantation of ‘What do we want … when do we want it?’
2. What lazy people go out of their way for.

risk

The uncertainty that there isn’t any.

rituals

Management conference where the important issues are resolved at the bar.

robotics

Replacing squeaky wheels with well-greased ones.

role model

1. When your biography is hagiography.
2. Female executive with a low-cut dress.

roles

The masks we hide behind to make us look like we know what we’re doing.

rule of thumb

That people see things differently. If you make a fist and extend your thumb, some people will think that you are saying ‘OK’, and others are offended that you are asking them to ‘sit on it and rotate’.

rules of the game

Machiavelli’s The Prince.

sack

Something organisations give people who spend too much time in it.

safe

Receptacle used by managers in which to store such precious items as subordinates’ psychological test results.

salary

Payment in exchange for work, to employees who believe that they are indispensable.

salary packaging

That happy state in which pre-tax and after-tax earnings coincide.

sales

1. An individual or group who or which creates the need to buy when, if that need had been inherently present, the sale would have gone through already.

2. The process by which people are turned into customers, creating in them an awareness that they need something that they didn’t even want before the sales process began.

scandal

1. PR failure.
2. PR success.

schadenfreude

Taking pleasure in a competitor’s troubles, even though their problems do not help you. One of many unattractive human attributes. So it’s not your fault: enjoy!

science

Body of knowledge based on logical reasoning discovered by dead white males; under constant attack by those who find it difficult and suspect it might be true.

secret fund

Entrepreneur’s answer to government, spouse, ex-spouses and other creditors.

segment

Making a pizza of marketing.

self-centred

Being into yourself rather than beside yourself.

self-control

Emotional unintelligence.

self-esteem

Liking the person you love most.

self-help

1. Insourcing.
2. People helping themselves to help themselves.

selfishness

Living alone.

self-leadership

Telling oneself to follow oneself and refusing to do it.

semi-autonomous work group

A collection of co-workers looking for direction.

seminar

1. A forum where the lecturer asks the questions.
2. Turning a conference into a seminary.

senior management team

Oligarchy that thinks it is an aristocracy.

service

1. (noun) The value-add that differentiates products; missing from most sales processes.
2. (verb) To repair or maintain a product that should not need repairing or maintaining.

sex discrimination

1. Taste.
2. Being able to tell the sexes apart.
3. Chastity or celibacy.

sexism

The belief that the sexes are the same – even in their differences.

sexual harassment

When a co-worker makes you think that harass is two words.

shared values

When there aren’t enough values to go around.

shareholders

1. People with a legitimate interest in a firm.
2. Suckers like us who believe that we can overcome share-trading transactions costs.

(see stakeholders)

short-term

As far as you can see.

simile

Like a metaphor.

simulation

A game just like the real thing, except that it isn’t, and everyone playing knows it and plays accordingly.

skill

1. The missing link in management.
2. Dyslexic assassin.

slavery

Industrial democracy.

social construction

The Pacific Ocean, until you are dropped in it.

society

What remains when individuals disappear.

sociocultural

The social and cultural layering of organised life, helpful in stratifying employees, suppliers and customers, so you know who – or whom – to send to the opera, who to send to the football, and who is going to be unimpressed by either or both.

spam

For more copies of this excellent book, please use the order form in the back.

span of control

The unbridgeable distance between top management and the people at the bottom who do the real work, measured in strata titles.

specialist

Opposite of manager; hence lowly paid.

speculation

An articulate punt, just shy of an educated guess.

spelling

Irrelevant pedantry.

Spillane

A management term redefined to reveal its true meaning.

spin doctoring

1. Doctoring the truth.
2. Sugaring bitter pills.
3. The second best medicine.

spiritual intelligence

1. Praying for a higher intelligence.
2. When spooks come visiting.
3. Praying to a higher intelligence.
4. Preying on the foolish.

spy

Human resource manager.

stable workforce

Suggestive of a lack of other job opportunities.

staff

Disempowered junior employee, several strata below someone with authority.

stakeholder

1. A Dracula-like figure ready to drive a pole into the very lifeblood of the organisation, for its own good and for the good of the industry. (Stake holder)
2. A horticulturalist. (i.e., ditto)
3. In the broadest sense, anyone at all.
4. A dyslexic short-order chef. (Steak holder)
5. A plea to not ‘stay hotter’. (Stay colder)

standards

Raising the bar and then leaning against it.

standing in the shoes of others

1. Footing the bill.
2. Where one of you is redundant.
3. Getting in the way.
4. Being orthotic.
5. Empathy with soul.
6. Being rapport cousin.
7. Being a foot soldier.
8. Being a shoe thief.
9. Being brought to heel by toeing the line.
10. Justification for putting on socks.

statement

Announcing a sentence.

statistical significance

A result that is significant statistically but not in any other way.

statistics

Originally this meant data that support the State and its leaders, but this deceitful, selective application of quantitative information is now entrenched in organisational life with the same purpose. Three out of four people make up 75 percent of the population. 86.43 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.

status

Suits.

step up

Something managers are inclined to do in an escalating manner.

stereotype

1. Double trouble.
2. An understudy.
3. An HR profile.

stoic

Whatever.

strategic management

Thinking about having someone else somehow doing something sometime.

strategic planning

Thinking about somehow doing something sometime.

strategy

What we’re doing next week.

streamline

Fishing for efficiency.

strengths

Qualities managers own up to.

stress

1. Quasi-medical condition used to avoid work.
2. Overstressed feature of managerial life, but only in the sense that managers impose it on others; the absence of which in humans is found only in cemeteries.

strike

When workers prove their worth by not working.

structure

The concept of converging and diverging parallel lines connecting the interfaces of the vertices of the dovetailing of the nexus of the organisation’s scaffolding.

(see Marksism, or at least look for it)

subordinate

Someone lower than you in the hierarchy, whom you are happy to remind of this fact.

success

Failing a course in organisational behaviour.

succession plan

Will.

suggestion box

1. Recycling bin.
2. Safety valve for disgruntled employees.
3. Safe deposit box.
4. Lost property storage.

suicide

A goal pursued by half the human race. The other half pursue homicide. The balance are to decide on deicide.

superego

A very big ego.

supervisor

A very little ego.

support activities

Bottomless pit of demand for resources, often best left underfunded.

suppression

Choosing to repress.

surplus

An accidental profit hidden from government.

survey

A research tool demonstrably invalidated by asking people what they want instead of what they do.

sustainability

Ability to exploit in the future.

Swiss cheese

The management metaphor alluding to many small failures lining up to cause a catastrophe. Turning a big block of Swiss cheese will sometimes reveal a series of interconnected hollows all the way through.

(see ‘all your ducks are in a row’)

SWOT analysis

Key strategic planning session tool, illegibly handwritten in multi-colours on butchers’ paper. Emphasises strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats as the road to the Holy Grail, without which there’s nothing to do but adjourn to the bar.

synergy

1. Venture capitalists + mergers and acquisitions (M&A) lawyers + firms with which they have no relationship = money for venture capitalists + M&A lawyers.
2. Marketing + finance = operations.
3. 2 + 2 = 5.
4. Organisation A + Organisation B = you lose your job.
5. Coal + solar = wind.

system

Something with inputs, throughputs, transformations and outputs, the outcome from which should add value to the organisation.

systems thinking

Not so much the circuitous, annular, radial or circumlocutory process of creating a thinking system as a cyclic practice.

tactics

What we’re doing tomorrow.

tangible asset

Something valued because of an expected intangible benefit beyond its ephemeral tangibility.

target market

Market.

task completion syndrome

task force

A committee that gets things 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.

Management Contradictionary: PA to public policy

by Rodney Marks | Jan 8, 2017 | Business, Comedian, Comedy, Corporate, Entertainment, Events, Hoax, Keynote, Speaker, Speaking

In this bumper edition, 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.

…   …   …   …   …

PA (personal assistant)

1. Someone to give your work to.
2. Someone to talk to.
3. Someone who keeps your gate.
4. Someone who makes your long list short.
5. A masculine Ma.

pain

What you feel when your PA is not IN.

paperless office

1. Evidence of off-site storage.
2. Office you haven’t moved into yet.

paradox

When a lawyer says: ‘All lawyers are liars’.

parameter

Something that is bound to border on constraint.

parent company

Archaic organisational entity which implies subsidiary/head office rivalry and internecine warfare based on the centralisation of power.

participative management

A common hallucination, two drinks short of a shared vision.

partnership

A coalition of equals that uses the democratic decision-making process of majority rule. If it is a partnership of two, then one partner is redundant.

part-time

A way for organisations to cut down on their wages costs whilst attracting goodwill from a hoodwinked public. A part-time job structure is given to people with things other than work in their lives. Let us assume that two part-time workers are notionally half-time. They would usually work 60 percent of a full-time role each, due to changeover debriefings, felt guilt, and dedication, giving the organisation a 20 percent productivity bonus. This scandal must be exposed.

pathfinders

Managers who can find the way to the executive washroom.

patience

What you need in order to hang out for the next anti-climax.

payback period

The length of time that it takes to be back where you started from, before you risked what you did. If you had been risk averse, you’d be there already by doing nothing.

payment by results

Fiction; never happens.

pedant

1. Internal auditor with a penchant for purple.
2. A self-censor.

peer group

Mutual excuse for conformity.

pending

Purgatory

per capita

A numerator for any productivity measure that requires humanisation.

perfect knowledge

The only thing we’re certain we don’t have.

performance

1. Sometimes used to denote positive achievement, but generally ignored in favour of personality.
2. Acting as if you’re working.

performance appraisal

Personality appraisal.

personality

What poorly motivated people have to fall back on.

personnel appraisal

A politically correct from of verbal abuse.

pessimism

1. Expecting everything to come out as expected.
2. Excuse for laziness.

(see optimism)

philanthropy

Advertising targeted at the poor.

philosophy

Traditionally the love of wisdom, superseded by the love of power.

plagiarism

1. Applauding the illiteracy of internet scribblers by stealing.
2. A tribute without attribution.
3. Finding intellectual property before it is lost.

planned obsolescence

1. The state of redundancy in which something needs replacing as soon as it’s paid for. Excellent for IT gurus and marketers.
2. The only successful evidence of planning.

planning

A game plan to avoid work by prognosticating; variations include: strategic planning, business planning, financial planning, scenario planning, contingency planning, as well as Plan B and planned obsolescence.

plant

Along with the other physical resources of an organisation – property and equipment – plant constitutes the genuine asset base available to be frittered away by strategists, financiers and marketers.

‘please wait, your call is important to us’

Fuck off.

pleonasm

Half of the management profession. Truncated tautology – any management phrase beginning with ‘strategic’.

plot

Under the boardroom table.

police

Management consultants with guns.

policy

The answer to why we do what we do around here when there’s no reason for it.

politeness

Insincere form of address used by gatekeepers and other frustrated actors.

political correctness

Opinions one may express without receiving a slap to the head.

postmodernism

Nihilistic anti-philosophy and undergraduate fetish that claims that nothing is important except itself, and equates a pair of boots with Shakespeare. The triumph of bullshit over science. The standard by which nothing is judged, including itself.

postmodernist

Someone who believes that it is true that there are no truths and that it is a fact that there are no facts.

potential

What you, yourself, had before you were actualised.

poverty

The absence of wealth creation programs.

The presence of wealth creation programs.

power                    

The central concept in management, as the disinclination to talk about it suggests.

practice

1. Something managers correctly profess to do but which still doesn’t make management a profession.
2. What’s left of management after the recognition that it is neither science nor art.

pragmatic

Doing what the boss wants.

pragmatism

American philosophy of self-indulgence based on the assumption that truth is what works; much favoured by managers to legitimate their feelings and contradictory ideas: ‘Does it work for you?’

precision

An incisive précis that cuts to the quick.

predatory pricing

Being so competitive as to force the competition to resort to name-calling, having crippled their production, marketing and financing processes.

pre-preparing

1. To prepare on someone else’s time.
2. Foreplay without the post-play. Or the play.

presenteeism

The syndrome of having people take a day off without drawing on sick pay.

press conference

A meeting between various in-house and external media people, at which agreement is sought on which version of the truth to tell their audiences.

press release

Periodic escape of information.

presupposition

Something that you were supposed to have supposed already, supposedly.

price

The maximum the seller can sell it for and the minimum the buyer can buy it for.

price cutting

Sacrificing profit for turnover, sales and market share, in the hope that being busy will make those you report to think that you are effective.

price fixing

Sensible agreement not to confuse consumers with too much choice.

price sensitivity

The falling off of demand at the slightest whiff of news of a price increase. Best to conceal the real price by bundling products and services, making price comparisons impossible. This technique is widely used in the IT and health insurance industries, among others.

price war

Just like a real war, but just.

principals

In schools or professional partnerships, leaders with responsibility but no authority, continually struggling with impossibly competing priorities.

principles

1. What you stand on as you disappear into the quicksand of corporate life.
2. Dispensable ethical standards.

priorities

Tasks with varying levels of importance and urgency that you will get around to as soon as you’ve finished your work.

private sector

That part of organised society that is neither nonprofit nor government, but funds both.

proactive

Always thinking about, planning for and resourcing your team to be aware of the myriad possible events that could affect your business, thereby atrophying all spontaneity, innovation and creativity.

probability assessment

Valid about the same proportion of times as tossing a coin will result in its landing on its side.

problem

What managers are paid to solve but actually create.

problem finder

1. Psychiatrist.
2. Management consultant.
3. Perfectionist.

processes

Things to put in place.

procrastination

1. Management style in favour of crastinating.
2. Default management style.

producer

The consumer’s best friend.

product

Unlike a service, something tangible and worthwhile.

product differentiation

Making the bells and whistles more important than the train.

production

The act of creating a product. Production processes are best left to engineers and concealed from the rest of the so-called management team.

productivity

1. Obtaining the same output from reduced input.
2. Obtaining more output from the same input.
3. Doing more or the same with less.
4. The quotient of output over input.
5. None of the above, but something nebulous that can be increased to turn an organisation around.

profession

1. Any occupation that requires pre-career and ongoing training, is accredited or self-regulated, pays its members less frequently than every week or, in the case of some professions such as poets, artists and actors, never.
2. ‘The Professions’, on the other hand, relates to accountants, auditors, actuaries, lawyers, doctors, dentists and the like, as compensation for their being the butt of most good jokes.
3. Not management.

Professional

Anyone other than a professor who professes to belong to a profession. Not a manager.

professional disagreement

A misunderstanding that each party to an agreement is paid for, even if all viewpoints are wrong.

professional relationship

A relationship based on money.

profit

When income is greater than expenditure, the executive salary bonus system needs overhauling.

profit centres

Those parts of an organisation worth keeping.

program

A document that assists you with the plot. Subtitles are better. If policy is the strategy, then a program is a tactic in the implementation of that strategy; if strategy is the ‘why’, a program is the ‘what’.

progress

Moving experience, for which there is no temporal evidence, in which the future is thought to be better than the past.

propaganda

1. Having a good look at something.
2. A press release.

prospectus

Prospect: us.

Protestant work ethic

We’re working on it. Pray for us.

prototype

That test product or service, with at least one fatal flaw, bug, glitch or fault line, which is worth leaking to your competitors.

provision for bad debts

1. Quantified pessimism.
2. Qualified optimism.
3. Marketing’s mistakes transferred to Finance’s problems.
4. Honest assessment of clients’ honesty.
5. Permission for Accounts Receivable to fail.

psychiatrists

Professional drug dealers and the new jailers. Modern witch-doctors. Inventors of imaginary illnesses.

psychoanalysis

Putting the anal into psychology.

psychological determinism

We’re not to blame.

psychological tests

Putting the litmus paper of the psyche into the snake oil of tyrants; widely used by managers to control other managers. A self-destructive enterprise if ever there was one.

psychology

A study of ghosts in the machine; popular with managers who use it to manipulate others, but are its first victim.

psychotic

Unlike the neurotic who upsets himself, the psychotic upsets others, and is thus locked up in the executive suite.

public policy

The general foundation of government practice as generally publicised to the general public. The real basis for government practice is, of course, never released, and always denied, even in the face of Freedom of Information legislation. When confronted with the facts, bureaucrats can happily shift focus, change the face of the issue and recontextualise by saying that the full picture cannot be known due to national security matters. And they can parade a General to verify that assertion.

…   …   …   …   …

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.

Management Contradictionary: money to oxymoron

by Rodney Marks | Jan 6, 2017 | Business, Comedian, Comedy, Corporate, Entertainment, 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.

…   …   …   …   …

money

1. Something to pay taxes with.
2. The buck stops here.

monopoly

1. The category killer that nearly did.
2. Government’s method for coping with competition.

moral courage

Like regular courage, but preceded by a fable.

morale

A happy way of corporatising depression and making it the responsibility of big pharma.

morality

My right to impose my definition of right on you.

motivate

To make the lazy work hard. Never agree to have this impossible task included in your job description.

motivational speaker

Professional with a winning personality, and a fee structure to match.

motivational psychology

The study of moving forward.

moving forward

Used by managers to keep one word ahead of their colleagues, who are merely moving.

multiculturalism

The belief that all cultures are of equal value and therefore of none.

multinational

1. An entity with no legal or ethical responsibilities in any one country.
2. The private sector equivalent of the United Nations, but with a better bureaucracy.

multiskilled

The ability to simultaneously do your job while telling people that you’re doing it.

multisourcing

The recognition that many other organisations are now better than your organisation at what you used to do.

multitasking

1. The disorder that promotes attention deficit hyperactivity.
2. Insourcing.

mythology

The foundation of the management profession, undermined by comparison with real professions, such as banking, gambling and witchcraft.

need

Means necessity when physiological; means nothing when psychological.

negotiation

The shifting mix of cooperation and competition that precedes victory by the least ethical.

nepotism

Making family values pay off.

nervousness

The unpleasant feeling rightly experienced by CEOs at AGMs.

net

Earnings after profit is taken away.

networks

An interconnected, integrated synthesis of an holistic totality.

neurotic

Accepts that 2 + 2 = 4 but can’t stand it.

‘never give up’

Perceived as tenacity by managers, intransigence by workers, stubbornness by spouses and stupidity by psychiatrists.

news

1. Vehicle for the expression of personal feelings.
2. Medium for the listing of possibilities. For instance: ‘Managers with MBAs may be more effective’, the opposite of which is also true.
3. There is no news.

newspaper

1. Something to hit the dog with.
2. Useful at the base of a birdcage.
3. Wards off melanoma at the cricket, when folded into a hat.
4. Justification for lopping unsightly trees.
5. Old-fashioned way to train bloggers.
6. Helpful in the separation of fish from chips.

niche

A rut that you have come to terms with.

nightmare

A smiling politician shaking your hand.

non-executive director

An executive who doesn’t work for the company he’s working for.

non-profit organisation

A profitable business entity that would be unprofitable if subjected to taxes payable by a for-profit organisation.

nonsense

I disagree with you but I don’t know why.

non-viable option

Reducing managers’ salaries.

novels

Books with almost as much pride and prejudice as management reporting.

now

Soon-ish.

numbers

Used by the illiterate to baffle the innumerate.

obedience

Revealing lack of initiative by unquestioningly following orders.

objectives

Something against which to measure your unattained aims.

obligation

Getting into trouble for something that you didn’t do. Or did.

obscenity

Dismissing someone on the grounds of personality, irrespective of performance on or off the field.

obsolete

Manager who doesn’t use consultants, coaches or mentors.

old boys’ network

Proof that life after high school is an anticlimax.

old girls’ network

Proof that life after school is climacteric.

online

An economic reality with virtual income and actual expenditure, resulting in real losses.

open-minded

Empty-headed manager.

operations

The part of the business that actually produces things. If it wasn’t for operations (also known as production) the finance and marketing and leadership teams would have nothing – and be nothing. Yet finance continues to be patronising by requiring operations to submit plans and targets and other irrelevant signs of submission, and marketing says that if the market doesn’t know about the firm’s output, all will be lost. In fact businesses existed for a long time with the financial trivia being done in leaders’ spare time and marketing being carried out by actually serving customers.

opinion

1. Temporary malleable belief, available to be surrendered for one held by a superior.
2. Something a manager gives, but never takes.

opportunities

(see challenges)

opportunity cost

Opportunity lost.

optimal solution

The one where you tell most of the truth and still get to keep your job.

optimism

1. Expecting everything to come out as expected.
2. Excuse for laziness.

(see pessimism)

optimum

1. The number of products or services required to create the largest profit possible using the smallest quantity of available resources.
2. Opting to keep mum.

(see maximum)

orator

Speaker who speaks expertly.

order

1. While there is chaos theory, there is no order theory, so let’s forget it.
2. It’s got form.

organisation

1. A collection of disorganised individuals temporarily occupying permanent roles with transferable titles.
2. An amoral entity responsible to unaccountable stakeholders.

organisation chart

A graphic representation of who is meant to report to whom. Straight lines show formal reporting connections between people who have no chance whatsoever of influencing each other. Dotted lines show multiple or indirect relationships between people who know that have no power over each other and therefore work together with reciprocal respect. Not all dotted lines are on the chart. For instance, the CEO’s personal assistant has more power than senior executives.

organisational behaviour

They don’t behave.

(see success)

organisational climate

Seasonally adjusted work environment that changes from minute to minute and person to person.

organisational culture

People and culture are the essences of organisations, so you must destroy both to make an impact, create a legacy and advance your career.

organization

An American organisation. Just like a normal organisation, but with more buzzwords.

other

Neither this nor that.

output

An input on the way out.

outsource

To reduce fixed costs by increasing variable costs.

out-tray

Someone else’s in-tray.

overwork

1. The fine line between working too hard – and not hard enough.
2. The two-hour executive breakfast; three-hour executive lunch; the four-hour executive dinner.

oxymoron

Self-contradictory, paradoxical two-word phrase, such as entrepreneurial management, lead manager or managerial leadership.

…   …   …   …   …

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.