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.
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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)
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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.