Shall we do a Corporatespeak thing?

Did they use ChatGT to generate that?

Lots of words that don't actually mean what they are being used for to form sentences that do not make sense logicallly or grammatically.

Excellent example

What planet are they on that has three horizons?
Truly out of this world!

"Deliver at pace" = we need to do it quicker than is really possible, so we're going to cut some corners.

Are there redundancies on the way?

Shall we do a Corporatespeak thing hackathon?

Are there redundancies on the way?

We don't do redundancies. We do 'change programmes'.

I get annoyed with "deliver at pace". What pace? A slow pace? A fast pace? A moderate pace? The Civil Service is shocking for double-speak

That's generic enough to be applied to almost any organisation, while simultaneously actually meaning almost nothing. Do you have to be part of special club to figure out what it actually means?

I never want a job where people speak like that. I'd rather live in a cave. Has the writer been on the receiving end of a frontal lobotomy?. "Delivering against member value" seems to imply that they aim to sabotage the company from the inside, which they will achieve through their ineloquence.

@IHN,

Do you work for a bank? I do.

Sound's like the nonsense my employer comes out with!

@IHN,

Do you work for a bank? I do.

I don't (technically...), but recently a lot of people who previously ran banks have joined in very senior positions, and stuff like this is becoming more prevalent than before.

I get annoyed with “deliver at pace”. What pace? A slow pace? A fast pace? A moderate pace? The Civil Service is shocking for double-speak

I feel your pain. Every chuffing job spec...🤬

with our first horizon focussing on how we streamline for execution

Half of you are ****ed 🤣

I was always quite relaxed about most of the management speak as it usually aided communication with those in the know.

But "we eat our own dogfood" was a step too far for me.

It sounds like there are headwinds impacting the wider commercial landscape.

Can you leverage your position as a trusted advisor to lead the discovery phase, identifying the synergies across the three verticals to cross-pollinate the holistic enterprise focused recovery yielding actionable insights?

Do you work for a bank? I do.

I used to. That sort of shite was prevalent. Of course they didn't appreciate responses such as "that's shite".

We don’t do redundancies. We do ‘change programmes’.

I once indirectly worked for a large tech company whose dotcom crash redundancies were called the Workforce Management Program, which felt like a fairly desperate euphemism.

I was watching a keynote speech from Penny Mordaunt just now at an Institute for Government thing and she said "old people feel like they have been [i]Amazonked[/i]".

Vomit. I'm sure she thought her speechwriter was very witty for coming up with it.

I put the blame on this sort of thing squarely at the door of people with MBAs. My old boss had an MBA and used to come out with this crap all the time, and yet if went down the pub with him he spoke like a normal human. It's almost like a switch flips in their head when they go through the security barrier into the office. I reckon it's even hindered my career progression as I have been told many times by managers with MBAs that I should be 'more professional'.

We don’t do redundancies. We do ‘change programmes’.

I remember back to the previous round of redundancies during covid and a conversation with my manager about it went something along the lines of:

him: We need to talk to the team about the consultation on staff numbers.

me: You mean the redundancies?

him: No, the consultation.

me: Yes, the redundancies.

him: No, we can't describe it like that as it might scare people, especially the more junior team members.

me: They're not idiots, they know 'consultation' means redundancies.

him: Well we still can't call it that.

First question by a junior member of staff following the meeting was 'so how many people are they making redundant and are we at risk?'.

That is incomprehensible

I never got anything as bad as that at work but when I got gobbledegook memos I used to return them with " Sorry I cannot understand this.  could you please explain in plain language" which means either management have to explain in plain language or i can safely ignore it

I get annoyed with “deliver at pace”. What pace? A slow pace? A fast pace? A moderate pace?

Bit off-topic, but see also "delivering a quality service".

I remember back to the previous round of redundancies during covid and a conversation with my manager about it went something along the lines of:

him: We need to talk to the team about the consultation on staff numbers.

me: You mean the redundancies?

him: No, the consultation.

To be fair, legally you can't prejudge the redundancy process. They can have all the survey, scoring etc ready to go on day 1 so they know the answer on day 2 of however many months they have to do, but that's assuming no ones challenges the scoring criteria etc.

So you have to have the discussions on which rolls are being made redundant, then put people at risk, then do the scoring, then tell those affected. If you just announced numbers on day 1 you'd be in a whole world of pain.

So you have to have the discussions on which rolls are being made redundant

They'll end up on the breadline.

If that was me I'd get a right cob on.

Don't understand?

Use your loaf.

I don’t (technically…), but recently a lot of people who previously ran banks have joined in very senior positions, and stuff like this is becoming more prevalent than before.

Barm-y to do it that way round.

Unions would turn it into a proper bun fight.

Of course it's not redundancies. It's a CTP (Career Transition Programme).

@IHN

I mean, they are all English words but I haven't the foggiest what any of that means.

Our old head of department, who was an utterly useless and awful person at one point began to describe little perks of the job as "our gravy"

he went around a team meeting telling everyone what their "gravy" was.. He wasn't impressed when I said I didn't like gravy...

Starting a new job soon and 9n the whole, it seems a pretty honest down to earth place to work.

However, 8 need to go through the "on boarding" process. 🙄

Onzadog - Is replacing random letters with digits the newest management speak?

Is replacing random letters with digits the newest management speak?

It'5 h0w w3'll g0 f0rw4rd as an 0rg4n154tion to 4ll0w us to d3l1v3r our v4lu3 str34m5 at p4c3

[i]They can have all the survey, scoring etc ready to go on day 1 so they know the answer on day 2 of however many months they have to do[/i]

I was 'right-sized' once with the scoring method. There were only two of us in the team, me and my boss, and the company demanded a minimum 50% reduction. My boss had been with the company 4 years and I had been there 18 months but he set the scoring system.

2 Points for top performance previous year.
Me 2, Manager 0
2 Points for most new clients engaged
Me 4, Manager 0
2 Points for most currently qualified live leads
Me 6, Manager 0
2 Points per full years service
Me 6, Manager 8

Sorry Nick, you are now redundant

If you just announced numbers on day 1 you’d be in a whole world of pain.

Has there ever been a redundancy consultation which resulted in zero redundancies? This is the point, they didn't want to use the word 'redundancy' and instead used 'consultation' because it was a bit fluffier and didn't sound as bad.

The other good one was 'we need to make some tough decisions'. I heard my manager say that once and my reply was 'you mean you're going to have to get rid of some people?'. That was one of the occasions I was told I wasn't being professional enough.

'We need to identify the art of the possible'.

🤮

Bit off-topic, but see also “delivering a quality service”.

I'm going to object to this point,  because there's a whole ISO standard dedicated to this. ISO 9001:2015. You should read it!*

*you shouldn't.

Has there ever been a redundancy consultation which resulted in zero redundancies? This is the point, they didn’t want to use the word ‘redundancy’ and instead used ‘consultation’ because it was a bit fluffier and didn’t sound as bad.

It's the role that is made redundant, not the person. Consultations often end with no one leaving the company.

I've been through a couple of 'proactive organisational transformation programmes' (department restructures) where no one actually lost their job at the end of the consultation. The old job roles were canned and new ones were created which people landed into.

Consultations often end with no one leaving the company

Often? Really?

Process:

1. Decide which people you want to lose.

2. Design scoring scheme to make sure that you get the 'right' people

3. Announce consultation

4. Apply scores

5. Get rid of the people you thought of at 1.

6. Wait a year then goto 1.

And it's HR's job to make sure you can do that every year without being successfully sued too often.

When I (my job) was made redundant from a well known thread manufacturer it was as a result  'recession management' 🙄

We had strategic pillars 3 years ago. Now we positively impacting culture and results and are on a lean journey to true value stream implementation. We are becoming more focused, more defined, and more data-driven, establishing standards and institutionalizing daily processes, whilst facilitating, educating, advocating and consulting, as part of our five year mission to explore strange new words, and seek out new life and new civilizations.

Corporate bullsh*t, how wonderful it is to be retired from this type of crap.

as part of our five year mission to explore strange new words, and seek out new life and new civilizations.

If that's a typo, it's brilliant, if it's not, it's genius 🙂

Why thank ye, no typo.

Most of the preceding text was lifted from the announcement of one appointment to a managerial role... Even the job title was buzzword bingo.

Process:

1. Decide which people you want to lose.

Exactly. I've been through half a dozen 'consultations' and each time the people who we thought were going to get canned were the people who left and there were very few surprises. I've also been through many restructures, and they were managed entirely differently without a formal consultation. Ironically in the restructures they did a lot more consultation about future roles etc than they did during the formal consultations. Formal consultations are only necessary when they're getting rid of people.

We have just transformed to an 'Agile' business. Now, in principle, I have zero issue with how they want to manage projects to change stuff for the better*, but please, FTLOG, can we find who invented the ridiculous 'language' associated with it (Release Train Engineer (Casey Jones??); Scrum; Scrum Master; Lean Portfolio; Enterprise - I could go on) and punch them in the face every time one of these words/phrases is used.** Oh, and can we please stop being so rabid about the 'correct' use of terminology???????

* there will no doubt be times where this is not the case
** apologies to any Agile coaches; RTEs; Scrum Masters etc.
😛
Oh, whilst I'm ranting, this too:

‘We need to identify the art of the possible’.

🤮

Scrum; Scrum Master; Lean Portfolio; Enterprise – I could go on)

Coming from the dev world the agile speak is my only compromise. At least Srum Master is a defined role which is different to your usual project manager/team leader roles in traditional teams. Having said that developers are way too religious about scrum/kanban/SAFe etc. I usually tell people I follow the GSD methodology and everyone seems to nod in agreement.

I especially like it if managers use the term 'fail fast'. It's a perfect excuse to write off something that's too hard. 'I'm sorry but I've reached what I believe is an unresolvable block (ie my brain) on that task and suggest we try something else'.

Coming from the dev world the agile speak is my only compromise

Oh, in the Dev world I get it. Some of it makes real genuine sense, 'RTE' excepted. Problem is, the vast majority of colleagues in our world/business don't have anything to with dev ops in any way, shape or form. 😂

Edit: maybe this is why my immediate team liken me Victor Meldrew 🤔🤣 (cos I'm the oldest only obvs...)

Double edit:

We had strategic pillars 3 years ago. Now we positively impacting culture and results and are on a lean journey to true value stream implementation. We are becoming more focused, more defined, and more data-drive

For a moment I thought we worked for the same company 😂

In our school we now have "unseen observations" which, having been shot down for asking, are not self evaluations. Although they follow the self evaluation framework.

I reached that age where in yesterday's improvement team meeting I was congratulated on not winding the chair up. It was pointed out that that was only because I said nothing.

Process:

1. Decide which people you want to lose.

In a previous job, a new unneeded department was created consisting of 4 people that were 'promoted sideways' too.
It was very confusing as they were doing work that other departments already had processes for.
All became clear when they were all layed off about 12 months later.

That's right... The department was created purely as a vehicle to get rid of few marked men.

My boss was Eton, Oxford, my boss twice in different companies, now owns half of a county.

It's true, he really spoke like the opening post, I confirm noone understood a word he said we all just nodded in agreement. Emperor's clothes, I m sure his bosses did the same.

We used to do cracking impressions of him.

Those 'horizons' sound like new 'pieces' or 'lenses'.

"the piece around.." or "the ... piece."- something related to a project or a reference to some work
"when seen through a different lens" or "the various lenses we're viewing with" - another way of looking at it / different KPIs
*eye roll*

About the redundancy / consultation terms thing (sorry, piece)

Consultations often end with no one leaving the company.

I have never seen that happen.

We will turn this project into a sprint..

I walked out.

I’ll be honest, I saw this shit coming when the elephants were first mentioned.

If you know, you know.

In our school we now have “unseen observations”

Do they hide in a cupboard?

I'm in the process of being TUPEd. My heart sank a little when I got to the slide that read "Company Values." Not that there was anything wrong with the values themselves so much as, WTF is the point of them as a concept at all? This new place has fewer than 100 employees.

At my current place we've been through several iterations of Values and it's all the same twaddle in different pants.