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Saturday 14 October 2017

Eight things to do with a whiteboard ......

The further I get from all the corporate crap, only some of which I pretended to understand in the wind-down year before I took the early bath, the more I wonder why there are people who still take it all so seriously. The risible idiocies coming through my professional body have now surely degenerated into self-parody; surely to God, no-one believes this to be serious?

What next? "Using snazzy sounds and transitions in Powerpoint to give evidence at the Construction Court - how to impress!"

I recall I once shared a complex but very plain spreadsheet with a director who gazed at it unmoved. The following week I resubmitted it to his PA with all the cells coloured in and a 48pt header 'Risk Management Dashboard'. He loved it. After that I found that calling anything a 'dashboard' was an instant way of engaging his attention, until 'agile' came along - when everything had to be 'agile'. Well, I was bloody agile at that point. By about a thousand miles.

8 comments:

Poisonedchalice said...

You and me both Raedwald. January 2011 was my last time in the corporate world of telecoms. I'm still working, still making money, but now as a contractor and well shot of the shit!

BillyMarlene said...

Meaningless verbiage is spreading everywhere.

Even the diesel fume spewing Eddie Stobart behemoth slowvertaking on the A14 was daubed with the tag ‘Delivering Sustainable Distribution’.

Oh yeah!?

Anoneumouse said...

On my last contract job before retirement I held up a screwdriver and asked the project manager it he wanted me to use the screwdriver or write about using it.

anon 2 said...

Yeah.
Franco-German Claptrap is what it is.
They teach it at unis as "Theory," or "Philosophy."

Useful idiots lap it up, think its clever, and are among those who pass it on to the unsuspecting.

Our Commie Masters . . .

Anonymous said...

It's the current version of digging holes and filling them up again. Generating verbiage and cant provides paid employment to lots of people who are in fact useless.

Without it, they would be unemployed, as there are fewer and fewer jobs for the unskilled.

Don Cox

Poisonedchalice said...

Off piste here Raedwald - but I have just read on Google news that Austria goes to the polls today. The press typically call the FPO party "far right". I suspect they are anything but. The FPO are predicted to hold the balance of power in a coalition - what do you think? Will you keep us posted please!

Raedwald said...

Yep - next post

I have a little skin in the game here - my cousin's husband is an OeVP MP for a Vienna constituency, first elected 2011, with a reasonable chance of a job in the new government if (when?) Kurz wins ..

mikebravo said...

Last time I used a whiteboard we used it to list all of the work that we had condemned on site.

As our office was used for site meetings it was great fun to watch client and visitors read it and watch the contractor squirm in embarrassment.

Oh the joy of gloating!