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.
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.
… … … … …
bold
- What fortune favours: making a fortune out of favouritism.
- Somewhere between CAPITALISATION and italicisation in the continuum of screaming messages.
bonus
- Salary that you have to work for.
- Salary that you have to retire for.
book
- Bound text-and-paper compilation used as reading material before being replaced by film, television and the Internet.
- Portable graffiti.
- Educational instrument unfamiliar to managers.
- Place to hide confidential information.
- Interim summary of work-in-progress.
(See The Book, which is something to throw at disruptors, to no effect)
bookish
- Manager bound up in his words.
- 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
- Lightning rod for a team thundering under the effects of electroshock therapy.
- Clouding the mind.
brand
Emblem, symbol, icon or wording that assists consumers and potential consumers to ignore intrinsic merits or lack thereof.
brand awareness
- Making awareness a brand.
- Making a new brand brand new.
- Making an old brand brand new
- People knowing the above.
brand loyalty
- Loyalty irrespective of reciprocity.
- 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.
… … … … …
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.
by Rodney Marks | Dec 14, 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. 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.
basic
An entry level standard that can be used as the benchmark for charging more for an acceptable model.
bear market
Environment in which shares are traded on the basis of share-traders not believing the bull received from companies.
behaviourism
In managerial psychology, the view that the mind studies mindless behaviour. The brainchild of a group of American psychologists whose disbelief in the human psyche led them to worship rats and pigeons.
behaviour
What you do before you’re caught at it.
behavioural science
(See misbehavioural science.)
behaviourism
In managerial psychology, the view that the mind studies mindless behavior. The brainchild of a group of American psychologists whose disbelief in the human psyche led them to worship dogs, rats and pigeons.
below-the-line
Paid and unpaid promotion over which you pretend to have control, such as PR, in-store offers and direct selling.
benchmarking
An arbitrary standard, without a bench or marking.
benefit
Something believed to be more valuable than the cost.
best practice
- The quality standard to refer to when you’ve been caught out merely benchmarking.
- The standard asserted when it’s not self-evident.
bias
Rolling towards my centre and away from yours.
big business
Allusion to the fallacy that all large corporations have aligned financial interests and shared views on public policy.
big picture
A larger frame to refer to if the data doesn’t support your vision.
bill
- Invoicing process, especially useful to expedite in advance, as in the accountants’ triple mantra:
- Bill early, pay late
- Buy low, sell high
- Cash is king.
- Gentle reminder by a supplier about money that they believe that you might owe them.
blue-collar
The uniform of the working class, worn so that they will not be inadvertently distracted from making and fixing stuff by being asked to fill in forms, such as tax invoices or receipts.
board of directors
Group of mainly men who went to the same private school last millennium, have shared values and world views, and can easily substitute for each other should golf or sailing or overseas holidays or divorce proceedings interfere with attendance at meetings.
body language
The discourse of dubious, doubtful descriptions posturing as science, and the body of attitudes gesturing towards meaningful symbols.
… … … … … …
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.
