Managerialeseorama

[ORAC]

I know it's about doctors/NUS, but as he says, "Medical managers are not, of course, the unique victims of this malady. It is pretty widespread in the public service"......

Managerialeseorama (http://takimag.com/article/managerialeseorama_theodore_dalrymple/print#axzz3Vs5zmfbT)

All doctors have noticed that when one of their colleagues, goes over to the other side – Management, I mean – he soon begins to speak a kind of language that is neither colloquial nor technical nor philosophical nor literary nor precise nor poetic nor even quite human, howsoever clearheaded and lucid he may have been beforehand. The transformation usually takes about two weeks, but is then complete. A man becomes a talking robot.

A puzzle attaches to this. Do such a man’s utterances correspond to what is going through his mind, or does he have to translate his thoughts into this simulacrum of language? Or has some kind of virus entered his brain that has disarranged its language centres, rather as a stroke does, though in a rather more subtle way? (Has anyone performed post-mortem examinations on the brains of such people as a separate class?) And if his words correspond to his thoughts, how can he, as a man of education and feeling, bear the tedium of it?

Medical managers are not, of course, the unique victims of this malady. It is pretty widespread in the public service and for all I know (and suspect) in the commercial sector as well, at least in companies large enough to function as bureaucracies. Indeed, it is quite probable that the ultimate source of the malady was those companies, and perhaps the business schools that trained their managers, as primates in the forests of Central Africa were the source of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. Infection often escapes its original nidus to infect the surrounding population of the susceptible, in this case (managers in and of the public service) made susceptible by Mrs Thatcher’s ill-fated notion that the public service could be some kind of replica of private business..........

[Bigbux]

Talking bollox and talking in bollox are both symptoms of poor managers.

To be fair, you can't blame the Business Schools; to study and understand the concepts they teach, you inevitably develop a specialised vocabulary, especially when referencing research. This is no different from medicine, law, aviation or military matters. It just gets funny when you hear people using the jargon without an understanding of its meaning.

The problem with managementese is that it is often used by amateur managers - and amateur managers, like amateur project managers are in widespread use around us.

My favourite was to hear people make commitments that their budgets could not stretch to. "We'll take that at risk", they would parrot to each other. Risk is a possible variation from a predicted trajectory or outcome. When you know you don't have the money, and you know you will make the commitment - there is no risk - it's a certainty, and one with a downside.

There must be loads of similar examples out there.

[Martin the Martian]

Certainly prevalent in the NHS. I saw more than one of my nursing colleagues become totally different in attitude when they went from being ward staff to being managers. One very busy shift, following a 'meeting' on the ward concerning not enough beds/too many patients etc with a former workmate who had taken up wandering from ward to ward with a clipboard and a pager I looked at the back of her neck and asked her where had the alien symbiote entered as I couldn't see the scar.

She didn't see the funny side, oddly. I like to think it proved my point.

[vmv2]

Have we discovered a new disease - testiculosis, or talking bollocks?:O

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

I have not yet met a spouter of jargonese who was actually any good at their job. MBAs are the worst.

[Haraka]

Totally agreed Fox,
Having done some time on the ground for U.K. in defence industry internationally , I looked at the Open University MBA syllabus to see if I could further myself by getting on board .

I felt ill upon reading the "syllabus",

Then I had the delights of listening to HR "professionals" who had no useful track record in supporting those getting contracts for any organisation, snarling up management meetings with irrelevant gobbledygook. Most merely seemed to try to impress and "snow" us with their perceived relevance to side issues of the business at hand, whilst being oblivious to the greater management burden of actually keeping the company alive...

[CoffmanStarter]

Haraka ... 100% agree with your views on so called HR 'professionals'.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Had a friend of mine do an M.Ed. She asked me to help with the management and leadership bit. I ploughed bravely into the stuff, but after 4 pages I gave up.
"This is all bolleaux" says I. Here's why. Now, what are your assignments?
She got a top grade for those, and is now a Head. All I did was give her the gist of Officer training.

HR are the spawn of the Devil. If one were able to gather them all together, I would reverse my opinion on open air nuclear testing. I would go as far as saying that HR is the single biggest problem with Western economies. People are not resources.

[Fatnfast]

Gents,

I also find Project Managers more than capable of talking utter bollox too.:ugh::ugh::ugh:

[Wensleydale]

How to pass the time during those interminable PT meetings with the "Business Improvement Team": Bullsh*t Bingo!


http://www.actiontracker.org.uk/public/files/actions/00/300x300/87.jpg

[Shaft109]

Had a friend of mine do an M.Ed. She asked me to help with the management and leadership bit. I ploughed bravely into the stuff, but after 4 pages I gave up.
"This is all bolleaux" says I. Here's why. Now, what are your assignments?
She got a top grade for those, and is now a Head. All I did was give her the gist of Officer training.

HR are the spawn of the Devil. If one were able to gather them all together, I would reverse my opinion on open air nuclear testing. I would go as far as saying that HR is the single biggest problem with Western economies. People are not resources.

Don't sit on the fence Fox😀

[Flash2001]

If it were thermonuclear you could get the economists in as well.

After an excellent landing etc...

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

OK, no more fence sitting. ;)

Human Resources really are about to cause the destruction of Western democracy. Here's why.

They fundamentally haven't a clue what they are doing. Their own priorities of job security, a routine schedule and neat (not good, just neat) organisation are very much at odds with the innovative and/or work-all-hours and/or technical roles they are largely recruiting for. They cover their lack of knowledge and unwillingness to exercise judgement (judgement calls can be questioned - job security types avoid it) by generating vast quantities of spurious metrics and pointless courses and online training. In their roles of advertising and shortlisting, they generate a bunch of largely irrelevant metrics and then reject everyone who doesn't meet them. The standard of talent is now set on a downward spiral.
Pointing out the gaping flaws in their organisation sends them into a panic. They do not know how to fix the problem,and daren't admit error (job security fear). They are dependent on top management for cover. Top management requires a lower bottom line. HR will now deliberately pull every dirty trick in the book to get this. Employees are treated worse than the spares. The knock-on effects for society (people working 3 zero-hours jobs, immigrants, black market) are of no interest to them whatsoever. The aim is to break the law as much as possible without it actually being worthwhile for any employee to take them to court.

The fundamental for all HR departments is now to only recruit people who won't complain. As a result, no problems within the business are ever fixed. This descent into inefficiency is irrecoverable.


You could put the blame on Top Management, but the Devil wouldn't be anywhere near success if he didn't have an army of little Beelzebubs to crack the whips.

[Ali Qadoo]

From what I've seen, all HR departments fall into one of the 3 following categories:

1. Evil
2. Incompetent
3. Incompetent AND evil

[Dan Winterland]

Have we discovered a new disease - testiculosis, or talking bollocks?

Roger's Profanosaurus defines 'Testiculcating' as 'the act of waving your arms around while talking bollocks'.

[tartare]

MBA's are usually only mocked by those who haven't got one.
Best 2 years investment I ever made.
Organisational psychology was fascinating.
Best insight of all, confirmation of what we'd already suspected from the nice lady who used to run Barclay's Private Wealth in UK.
Spoken in cut-glass accent, "Boys and girls, don't for a minute believe all that bull**** about reorganisations being motivated by teams wanting to be more efficient - they just use them to get rid of people they don't like."
I agree on HR though.
The only thing needed when managing large groups of people is the admin side - payroll, leave balances, remuneration.
All the organisational development fluffy stuff, values and mission statements is just unmitigated crap.
Re-organise them all out of the business I say - I don't like them.

[tucumseh]

Well said Fox 3. Every word a gem.

[snippy]

Recently did business with an ex RAF guy I knew. He was describing the "dual functionality and practicality of the device"........think it annoyed him when I kept on referring to the "two easy things" the device could do:O

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

OK Tartare, I'm prepared to believe there are MBAs who don't spout jargon and are good.

1. How do the idiots get through? Is it a bad business school, or what?
2. How many people get failed on an MBA course?
(for that matter, how many people fail any course these days)

Please outline a solution to the HR problem. Give the western world some hope.

[staircase]

The HR problem?

Rename them the ‘Chief Executive Officer’s Enforcers’.

That way we would all know where we stand with them.

Then put a notice up in the entrance to all board rooms;

‘Meetings are held by people who can’t do, to decide that nothing can be done’

[tartare]

Fox,
the solution to the HR problem requires quite a bit of insight and courage by the CEO.
It's become `the done thing' to have an HR department, and to be seen to want to develop and continuously improve your people, make the working environment the best it possibly can be and force organisational values over the top of the individual values that people bring to work; among the other nonsense that HR are responsible for these days.
In fact a large enterprise can be perfectly successful without all this malarkey.
People bring their own values to work.
Organisations are living things - despite HR's best efforts - they will form their own culture, all senior management can do is nudge it along the way.
Continuous improvement as a management concept is incredibly outdated; it focuses on trying to improve what you are not good at, rather than building on your strengths.
Our last head of HR who sat on the Executive committee was as useless as mammary glands on a male of the bovine species.
Shortly after she left, our CEO and Chairman made the decision not to replace her, and to fold HR, legal and a couple of other functions up under one head of business services.
We still have an HR Dept per se, but their ability to clog up operations with all the crap above has been substantially diminished, and we are no worse off.
I know of a couple of other large organisations who simply have payroll and benefits departments - no HR function at all.
People are responsible for their own professional development, and their line managers pick up the soft stuff that HR might manage.
As to idiots getting through business schools - my sense is that it's more a case of the less percpetive newly minted MBAs arriving at an organisation with the mindset "if I can measure it, I can manage it."
Big mistake.
Example - an air force can be viewed in one sense as running like a business; it has inputs, processes, outputs, fixed costs, variable costs, objectives to achieve etc.
Does that mean I could effectively manage it, or understand it's ethos and culture by simply overlaying a cookie cutter MBA approach?
No way.
To your second question, people tend to self select out of MBAs. Too much hard work, or their peers come to the conclusion they're an arse and they find it incredibly hard going!

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Thanks!
I think the CEO's courage is the missing factor. The last big organisation I resigned from (as a result of HR) had the CEO saying "I thought HR were supposed to help?" (My ex-Boss passed on this little gem).
CEO sacked Head of HR a few weeks later, as I wasn't the first to have had enough.
But he appointed another Head of HR, and after a year it is back to the usual I'm told.

As you say, you can't measure everything, and in some organisations you can't measure the most important things, but a lot of idiots keep trying to use proxy metrics which don't work.

[treadigraph]

MBA? Means Bugger All... :p

I love our HR contrived Personal Development Reviews. My manager and I carefully concoct mine, review of last year, set objectives for next year, etc, then equally carefully proceed to ignore the objectives and do whatever needs to be done, when it needs to be done. We can't usually forecast the requirements we have to meet, but we can forecast that whatever we think will need to be done, actually won't need to be done because something else will need to be done instead. Clear? I'll still achieve my objectives for this year even thought I probably won't actually perform the tasks... Odd that. WOFT.

Had a phone chat with a girl at the Institute of Civil Engineers (Institution?) the other day. She mentioned "upskilling", my brain whispered "enough!"

[Traffic_Is_Er_Was]

Once had a chat with the HR rep from a mining company that operated in quite a remote location. She used to fly around the country conducting the employment interviews. Her "unwritten" instruction was to "tell/promise them anything which would get them to accept the position and relocate" (this was prior to fly in - fly out being available). The underlying premise was that it would be too difficult/expensive for the successful applicant to return to their previous life once they commenced and found all was not as they had been led to believe. The HR rep seemed to to think this process was a legitimate business tool. To her, people truly were just a resource.

[tucumseh]

Surely the most useless MBA is the one Shrivenham do in Defence Administration?

[Evalu8ter]

Tuc,
Maybe - but the guys I knew that have done it were pretty good. The problem was it was seen as a 'consolation prize' for not attending ACSC and, invariably, they never achieved the rank to bring their knowledge to bear. Uninformed, rapidly moving careerists who cannot grasp the intricacies of Procurement (and have no desire to do so, lest they be stovepiped and considered not broad enough) make the majority of the decisions .......

[tucumseh]

Evalu8ter

Point taken. Your guys (I think) will have had an excellent grounding to fall back on. I was thinking of civilians who did it. It was bad enough skipping 5 or 6 grades as a direct entrant and being parachuted in to run a project (think Chinook Mk3) but at least there were experienced people around you to catch some of the mistakes. My experience of those who did the MBA was they lost out on both. And of course neither are required to retrospectively acquire the competences others attain in the previous 6 grades; which in the aircraft world in MoD is what you draw on every single day.

[ORAC]

http://chandramohanm.weebly.com/uploads/2/8/3/1/2831170/7347088_orig.jpg

[DGAC]

"MBW" - Management By Walkabout (on the shop floor) far better than any "MBA"

[pulse1]

I once suffered a boss who had an MBA. I put an important memo on his desk and, later that day, I asked him for his reaction. He claimed that he hadn't seen it so I went to his desk and pointed it out to him.

Apparently I had placed it on the wrong end of the desk and he wouldn't read it. He treated me as if any fool should know which end of the desk to put incoming mail:ugh:.

Fortunately I outlasted him in the job.

[Martin the Martian]

ORAC: you, sir, owe me a new keyboard. This one has coffee all over it.

I was always under the impression that HR was payroll and sifting out job application forms. But then, that was when we used to call it 'personnel' and didn't think of people merely as 'resources'.

[Dan Winterland]

"I know what I'm doing. I have a MBA".

The most fatuous statement I have ever heard from a manager. To me it means all theory and no experience.

[tucumseh]

But then, that was when we used to call it 'personnel' and didn't think of people merely as 'resources'.
At one point, in AbbeyWood, we moved from being "resources" to "accounts". It was around that time they started presiding over selection interviews. One time a lady, at least 2 grades below me (think about it), asked me what action I'd take if one of my staff falsified aircraft documentation. (A topical question of the day). My reply was deemed wrong. She told me I should say nothing, just let it go to avoid upsetting the person. They tell you never to argue at an interview, but my reply was that the consequences of her policy could have a quite upsetting effect on aircrew whose aircraft, unlike her car, tend not to slow to a graceful halt if something goes very wrong. Apparently this "attitude" was not what they were after. How wonderful to be away from all that. :ok:

[staircase]

I once flew our head of HR on holiday. At after the landing she came to the flight deck to see the 'troops'. She looked at me and asked;

‘tell me captain, how do you see your career moving on from here?’

I pointed out what I was earning, that I was in charge of £60,000,000 of intricate machine, responsible for the (temporary) welling being and safety of 240 passengers and crew. That I only had to make a major error of judgement and the airline would, in all probability, go broke.

All this and 3 years to go to a nice comfortable final salary pension.

I then asked her if perhaps she thought that I may have ‘arrived’ at where I wanted to go?

No answer!

[ExAscoteer]

I'm not sure 'Personnel Management' was ever any better than 'HR'.

ISTR that Innsworth were very adapt at putting 'ticks in boxes' but had bugger all concept that they were dealing with people.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

According to Gallup's latest survey, what percentage of managers have 'high talent'?


Just 18%

Managers With High Talent Twice as Likely to Be Engaged (http://www.gallup.com/poll/182225/managers-high-talent-twice-likely-engaged.aspx?utm_source=Economy&utm_medium=newsfeed&utm_campaign=tiles)

So...HR are wrong 82% of the time - 7 of 9 :E

But that doesn't surprise anyone here does it? ;)