Meaningless management drivel
 

I think that we should have a thread celebrating the use of meaningless drivel much loved by those who wish to sound like "management". You know the stuff, the RAF is full of it these days, but my starter for ten comes from Flight Magazine quoting Lawrence Bryant, the MOD's MFTS IPT leader;

"...says that air force, army and navy training has become too fragmented preventing the realisation of the full benefits of the synergies that we could leverage through the coherent management of the whole"

So- all of you in the flying training world, remember to leverage your synergies.

To which I would respond, "WTF?"

SVK-:ok::ok::ok:


Or

"Who gives a sh!t?"

"With the business going FORWARD"

What, you've got a f*ucking time machine so it goes backwards?

And since when did using your imagination become "thinking out of the box". I suppose from when it frightened the little grey men in their big grey BMW's with their little brains swelled with their large ego's.

Anyway "CHOW"

PS "Lets run it up the flagpole and see who salutes it" bwhhaaaaaaaaaaaa:yuk:

Presumably leveraging the synergies will become the underpinning architecture to the overarching policy structure that governs the IPT to ensure that a global solution is provided to meet the increasingly demanding needs of the system in a world where change is the only constant.

or would that be making sure that there is always a QFI to teach the new bloke in the new hawk (cos that was always the answer anyway):E

Its no good just asking for examples - in these days of nu-gordon you have to run this as a project. Once you have completed the Prince2 Foundation Course and achieved practitioners' certification you can then receive a mandate from the PPrunE Mods and initiate the project.....

:ugh:My brain hurts. Perhaps I should mitigate the risk of a headache by asking for some ad hoc direction from Cinc Home. Must go - I'm managing the stage boundary between coffee and a drop of red. :yuk:

= We can't afford to do it ourselves and they're going to put up a new shed or two.

WTF is 'holistic'? Does it mean that the idea comes out of some civil serpent's 'hole'? 'cos 'tis what it sounds like, foresooth.

And is this new Wonderbus 'network centric', whatever that means?

Holistic. I looked it up on t'internet.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/holistic

But I'm still none the wiser

WTF......:eek::eek:

One I heard recently:

The speaker was from the upper echelons of the light blue.

I complained about an aircraft arriving in Afghanistan carrying snags. An exchange at evening prayers back home was later reported to me:-

Q. If it has snags, why are they continuing to carry them?

A. Because they have a Different Risk Appetite

NB. Notice 'different' not 'higher'.....

Because that would be a 'Value Judgement'

My Flight Commander regularly ' interfaces ' with us.

I heard the same flight commander on the phone saying " I am sorry but I am temporarily unsighted re that particular communication ".

What he meant was that he couldn't see the yellow sticky with the reminder message on it !!

Great isn't it.

Gosh Tonker,
it's spelled 'ciao' -
look, get your people to interface with my people, and we'll see if we can't get all stakeholders to agree on which bits of Italian verbalisation to go forward with. You know it'll be worth doing, after all, Italian is the new black.

I'm sure it's done the rounds before, but it bears repeating...

"I think we need to hit the ground running, keep our eye on the ball, and make sure that we are singing off the same song-sheet. At the end of the day it is not a level playing field and the goalposts may move; if they do, someone may have to pick it up and run with it. We therefore must have a golf bag of options hot-to-trot from the word "go". It is your train set but we cannot afford to leave it on the back-burner; we've got a lot of irons in the fire right now.

We will need to un-stick a few potential poo traps but it all depends on the flash-to bang time and fudge factor allowed. Things may end up slipping to the left and, if they do, we will need to run a tight ship. I don't want to reinvent the wheel but we must get right into the weeds on this one. If push comes to shove, we may have to up-stumps and then we'll be in a whole new ball game.

I suggest we test the water with a few warmers in the bank. If we can produce the goods then we are cooking with gas. If not, then we are in a world of hurt. I don't want to die in a ditch over it but we could easily end up in a flat spin if people start getting twitchy.

To that end, I want to get around the bazaars and make sure the movers and shakers are on-side from day one. If you can hit me with your shopping list I can take it to the head honchos and start the ball rolling. I know you're not the sharpest tool in the box and may be a few sandwiches short of a picnic, but together we'll be the best thing since sliced bread.

There is light at the end of the tunnel and I think we have backed a winner here. If it gets blown out of the water, however, I will be throwing a track. So get your feet into my in-tray and give me chapter and verse as to how you see things panning out. As long as our ducks are in a row I think the ball will stay in play and we can come up smelling of roses.

Before you bomb-burst and throw smoke it is imperative we nail our colours to the mast and look at the big picture. We've got to march to the beat of the drum. We are on a sticky wicket, we'll need to play with a straight bat and watch out for fast balls.

I've been on permanent send for long enough and I've had my ten pence worth. I don't want to rock the boat or teach anyone to suck eggs. We must keep this firmly in our sight picture and not under our hats or it will fall between the cracks. If the cap fits, wear it, but it may seem like pushing fog uphill with a sharp stick. Did you all get that?"

(And I doubt that I'm the only ex Eng(CE) for whom a certain former OC TCW springs to mind on reading that...)

erm...I used the phrase "stakeholders" today - sorry

Trouble is that the RAF sponsors Offs to study MBAs; They then bring this new found knowledge back to the RAF (which is clearly NOT a profit making busniess) and then try to enforce crappy said management speak unto unsuspecting victims. Other Offs then think that this 'geezer' a la Alan Sugar must know what he's on about and then start copying his hollow, useless phrases at XX's meetings, and so the virus spreads!

We need to remember that the Forces have been in the business of 'management' and l'eadership' for many moons and we are probably the SMEs in the matter; not some **** of a manager who runs a company selling washers to the nuts and bolts supplier! The RAF is a publicly owned and run defence asset not a fecking PLC listed on LSE/AIM. The quicker they realise that the better.

Kill 'em all; let God sort 'em out!

At least he didn’t “integrate” with you, or did that come later in a private meeting?






MoD commercial practice is to stiff Small/Medium Enterprises and drive them out of business; folks like us wonder why they treat Subject Matter Experts like that. This one causes lots of consternation, especially when the SME is the SME. It explains a lot.

I used to interface with one of our Cabin Crew - until my wife found out! :eek:

I always though " Holistic " was to do with Holograms, ie " Dirk Gently's Holistic detective Agency " by Douglas Adams......Meaning looks good, but it aint real, and costs a fortune.....sounds about right :E

I propose CaRAFE - which, ironically, will appeal to buzz-worders too:

Campaign [for] Real Air Force English

So instead of glassing one of these management speak knobs, you can CaRAFE them - seems much more officer-like.

Gentlemen, you (in the military) are amatuers at this stuff. You should hear the drivel spoken around here in the bungling barron's empire. And all done with Lancashire accent.

Maybe none the wiser Taxydual but much better informed!

I don't think anyone has mentioned the 'tallest pole in the tent' or 'wriggle room' yet.:ok:

What you have all failed to internalise is that there has been a paradigm shift. As a result you are all now behind the curve when it comes to the multi-lateral interoperability needed to realise the supra-organisational mission statement”.

(For the luddites this translates as “Things have changed. You can’t understand us when we…um… talk crap. “)

Wensleydale,

In a fit of stupidity, I elected to do the Prince 2 course in preparation for civvy street. It was an enema with a fire hose - a week of constant drivel! Much to my surprise I passed the exam and am now a qualified practioner (with a certificate and everthing). Having listened to the various other military people on the course and their ambitions, I despaired and got a real job teaching what I knew. The only useful phrase I heard at a certain Lincolnshire College was "It is not what A says, but what B understands A to have said" How true in today's climate of burying the real meaning under a smoke screen in case anyone works out that teflon political appointees don't know what they're talking about.

Alison

35 years ago at SORF RAF Manby we had a "Sqn Cdr" who had been on an Exchange Tour with the USAF. He used to hold Sqn meetings and exhort us to "keep our ducks in a row" and "keep it tight in the air and slack in the Crewroom" etc.

We would then have a Sqn meeting in the Bar to try to work out what he meant. We rarely succeeded - but it was worth the try!!

That example in Srl One is so "off message"! Not once does it include the words "deliver" or "delivery". The worrying thing is, when you see it day in and day out from all quarters, it starts to look normal.

Although in the Maritime Environment, can I join the CaRAFE please?

Lancspeak
 

'Appen tha'll be embracing change up theer?
Just as long as it's robust like.

Two of my favourites.

On arrival at a post-leaned unit the Gp Capt came out with a whole load a babble at my arrival interview and told me it was my job to translate such crap into terms that the erks would understand. When I asked him to translate it into terms that I could :mad: understand the interview came to a rather abrupt end!

Oh! The joy of being a WO;)

It seems that most of the management speak comes from the thrusting SO2s and SO1s who are trying to impress their superiors and contemporaries whilst at the same time trying to bamboozle their subordinates.

The big question is, how many of these people actually understand what they are saying? More importantly do the the words they are using actually fit the context of what they are saying and the meaning they are trying to convey? I am willing to bet that the answer is not many and no.

My biggest bug-bears are the use of the words paradigm, synergy and holistic. Do the people that freely spout these terms actually know what they mean or do they just like to come across as sounding clever? Because quite frankly, at SO3 level, I and probably many others sit there and when we hear these words being used, generally switch off and think 'stop being a pretentious knob, just say what you mean'.

I agree especially with paradigm, which is why I used it somewhere above. Its falling out of favour again now so I guess the drivel-creators are trying to find something new. What really annoys me is that paradigm was/is only used in the context of change (new paradigm, paradigm shift etc). This meant that they can never express what the current "paradigm" is which suited them because lets face it these types don't have a clue whats going on anyway

Synergy and holistic whilst over-complicating nice simple English at least had some meaning...well occasionally...well I think I remember them being used correctly once

From the SMH today....

"Delivery of the first two Wedgetail aircraft and the flight test schedule were delayed because "integration tasks were more complex than we had scoped, but now we have our arms around it,'' Pete Neal, operations manager for Boeing's Early Warning and Control business, told reporters last week in Seattle."

Paradigm actually has no place in military terminology and is almost a contradiction of doctrine.

Paradigm, in its original and correct context, is an accepted way of thinking or doing things in a scientific discipline; in an episemological sense, it relates to a school of philosophy dealing with the scope and nature of knowledge ie what is knowledge, how do people develop it, use it etc.

However, the military seems to have adopted the use of paradigm in the sense as defined in the OED - an exemplar or model. Unfortunately, any attempt by any one other than senior officers and doctrine wallahs at Swindon Tech to change the prevailing paradigm is generally met with resistance ie paradigm paralysis. In that sense, the refusal to take on board new ways of doing things without first experiencing them (a posteriori knowledge) rather than developing new ways of doing things through encouraging independent thought (a priori knowledge) at all levels could well be seen as dogmatic. And surely it was hammered home at Sleaford Tech that dogmatic behaviour was not what was required in today's military.

So there you have it. We have lots of paradigms, but unless officially sanctioned by the high paid help, paradigm shifts do not happen, and therefore we, as an institution, must be guilty of being dogmatic. In short, I think that proves that management speak is actually a load of bollocks and has no place in a fighting force that needs to be flexible.:ok:

I thought that paradigm was an overcomplicated phone card system that allowed us to ring home from the sand pit a few years ago - if you could find a suitable phone that worked.

Effective communication is short, sharp and to the point. Drill instructors set a good example... ;)

My god thats brilliant. If I understood it I'd use it

Now, I understand that bit.

I also suggest that referring to management speakers as 'stovepipers' would help with their eradication.

Bloke 1: "What's the boss like?"

Bloke 2: "He's a stovepiper"

Bloke 1: "a ha"

Isn't a 'stovepiper' merely an inverted dung-funneller?

Then there's 'Sixsigma'. Don't even try to understand that - if you cannot get off to sleep reading the AP&FS Newsletter or one of those non-absorbent Air Power propaganda magazines, try Googling Six Sigma....

Never have I read such utter horse**** which basically says that if you want something to work well, it must have been worked on by a high quality team.

How long before the meaningless management drivellers start adding six sigma crap to their wanqueword lexicons?

Mind you, I doubt whether 't Bungling Baron would have much time for six sigma:

Quote:

---

One of the key innovations of Six Sigma is the professionalizing of quality management functions. Prior to Six Sigma, quality management in practice was largely relegated to the production floor and to statisticians in a separate quality department. Six Sigma borrows martial arts ranking terminology to define a hierarchy (and career path) that cuts across all business functions and a promotion path straight into the executive suite

---

.

"Straight to 't executive suite?", he would likely opine, "Ah'll be booggerred first, 'afore that happens oop here at 't werrks!"

'Opine', that was a staff offiicers favoured wanqueword a few years ago - just before inter alia and 'blue water thinking'...:yuk:

Six Sigma would appear to have confused many who tried to integrate it into the Quality Management System, as it only works by bringing efficiency/savings into a production environment therefore increasing quality of product.

As it is complicated drivel they simplified it and gave it a nice easy to learn name and it became 'Lean' and most quality people stay well away from it all if they get half a chance.

One wonders what we'd all do without Bull S**t Bingo



I'm just off...late for the paradigm shift...