Corporate Methane

 

I’ve been working in Silicon Valley for 40 years now. I’ve worked at three startups, two major corporations, consulted, and been on the board of a couple startups.  For the most part, I’m a worker bee.  Over the years, I’ve noticed a prolific use of cliché terms used by people in the industry. Mostly managers and drones. Drones being the members of any company that nobody can figure out what their real use is to the company or hive. You know them, the people that drone on in meetings spewing lots of corporate speak cliché terms trying hide the fact they don’t have the slightest idea how to make the companies honey. Sometimes they drone on so much our mind wanders and we soon aren’t paying attention. You need to pay attention though, drones seem to hold a special place in the hive, which interests the queen quite a bit. For some reason, the queen will always put drones in charge of stuff, while we wait for the next big inception. While the worker bees often find drones annoying as they interfere with honey production more than they contribute, these seeming useless individuals are actually communicating in a language of hidden meanings. After 40 years of study I have figured out the real meaning of what they are saying.  The following is a worker bee’s guide to corporate drone speak.

Methodology –A ridiculous term coined by non-technical people who like to add letters and adjectives to everyday terms so they sound smart or important. “Ology” being the study of a subject.  (Biology – from the Latin “Bios” meaning life, Biology the study of life.)  Use “Methodology” whenever “Method” will do in a sentence. It makes it sound like you studied various methods or the method being discussed when you have not.

Agile Development Methods –Let’s face it, nobody likes to document what there are doing, what they want or really plan out logistics, so let’s name the cyclical ignore everything to the last minute method of getting shit done, and call it a methodology.

SOX – (a.k.a Sarbanes-Oxley) - Mindless button clicking to continuously reapprove access to systems inside my company my employees need to do their most basic duties.  Thank you Paul Sarbanes for your jobs program.

Break Glass – I haven’t got the slightest idea, what I am doing or what you do, or what we collectively might have to do to meet our goals. - And I have little or no intention of bothering to figure it out. I expect you to do that, and I will take credit for my innovativeness.

We can’t do business as usual – you seem to want to bother me with details. This would require me to develop a deep understanding and actually do work myself. I basically delegated those tasks to other people.  See Break Glass for greater detail on you part. I’m done discussing this subject.

Divide and Conquer –if you keep trying to get me to solve or just pay attention to legitimate project issues, which I would like to ignore, if you can’t handle them, I’ll get someone else to do your job.

Bifurcated – To divide in half, split. See Methodology for why you would use such a term. My first experience hearing this term in conversation was when a friend of mine Bill Schafer, “VP of Marketing” for Quokka one of the more spectacular San Francisco dot.com failures of the 90s. He used the term to describe a picture in a coffee table book he once owned dedicated to the subject of tattoos and piercings. It contained the picture of a tattooed man who had surgically split his penis and pierce the two halves. The penis had attached chains through Prince Albert’s on each half running to nipple rings.  Bill just referred to the publication as “The book with the bifurcated penis.”  Get a little high end Napa Valley wine in him and he relished talking about the book.   It had be consumed in the Oakland Hill firestorm of 1992 with the rest of his sentiments.  A lost possession dedicated to excesses in life he loved to revel in, it was his way of remembering.  Being connected to the movers and shakers of the tech world like he was, I can’t help but think Bill’s main contribution to tech lingo was the introduction of the “bifurcated” term to the tech vernacular.  Right around the dot.com the term started popping up in my company. Soon after I heard it at conferences and is sales presentations.  The term was most exclusively used by individuals who have difficulty actually doing much of substance.  Bifurcated in modern technical terms has come to mean: split and conduct non-value added activities mostly for the purpose of adornment thus hiding the lack of functionality created by the bifurcation. “The best way to solve this problem is to bifurcate the activity.”  Now doesn’t that sound smarter than “Divide and Conquer?”

Partner with me – regardless of my own personal incompetence, which by definition I don’t recognize, you are not doing what I want. I have discounted your concerns.  If you don’t do it my way, when blame determination for failure comes, you will be on my list of assignees. Actually, I have preloaded all blame to you, and this is notice I have started to figure out how to remove you from the project in advance of its failure. This is your only warning.

Our partners – the guys I’m going to try and replace you with cause you question me. How dare you.

Parallel Pipelines – An abstract concept I like to bring up to divert attention from the reality that there is insufficient time to accomplish hard dependent tasks in the project. I don’t really care if a hole needs to be dug first to lay a concrete foundation. Dig the hole, while at the same time pouring the foundation offsite, and transport the new foundation to the hole when you are finished and lower it into the hole. Do I have solve everything for you? I suppose you want me to figure out where to get oversized hauling truck, cranes, and an alternate sites for you too? Partner with me on this and stay on budget. I’ve given you the methodology to do this: parallel pipelines. Now get to it.

Business as usual (a.k.a BAU) – Oh good, I don’t have to do much. But I am going to take credit for doing a lot.

Your jobs are on the line – Ah, I have run out of ways to motivate you, so I’ve resorted to idle threats, I can neither carry out nor justify. I am taking the weekend off to go wine tasting in Napa CA. I expect you and your team to work 24x7 while I’m intoxicated on wine and power.

That person is well respected by their peers –That person is an asshole. Nobody wants to deal with their asinine behavior.  We have absolutely no idea why they are still employed by us, but their asshole behavior is a given of this project. Stop complaining about it in an attempt to gain the respect of your peers. I long since gave up on dealing with them.

Let’s look for Synergies – We are looking for common tasks between the two groups. Once discovered, regardless of whether we are correct, you all will be replaced by a cheap outsource company from India. A year later we will replace them with a cheaper company from China, then from a company in….

I need a pros and cons on this –I don’t like what I see.  Probably for personal political reasons, and have already determined I’m going with another option, but I want you to feel like you had input before I reveal my pre-determined solution. Don’t expect me to contribute, I’ll leave the evaluation to you technical experts. Just make sure you can defend the conclusion I want.

Office Hoteling – You should work from home. We have long since realized, through spreadsheet studies, attempts to restack employees in individual offices, cubes, pools of low walled high collaboration cubes, and drop in offices, that they are all equally unproductive or productive depending on which side of the half full – half empty philosophy you identify with.  All office configurations have one common trait:  they cost the company money for space, power, air conditioning, and equipment. Designing employee office hoteling systems which remind you of coach airline seating, minimizes company expenditures and while encouraging employees, at their own expense, to choose and provide their own class of work space accommodations. You think you deserve a C-Level office? Be our guest at our hotel, otherwise feel free to be enabled in your private residence.  

C-Levels –Chief of something. Chief Financial Officer, Chief Information Officer, Chief of Security.  A construct of HR departments who have long since run out of combinations of senior an executive to describe individuals task with managing large organizations. (i.e Senior Executive Vice President of…).  Ambitious startup’s, in an effort to make themselves credible, often appoint C-Levels, CFO, CIO’s etc. prior to receiving funding, to fill up white space in their venture capital business case.

Thank you for your input –Go fuck yourself! –While you are at it, get the crap done like I asked, while I try and find a better partner in this endeavor.

Fail Quickly –Comes from the concept of Agile development methods, basically we screw everything up most of the time when lots of people get involved, so the let’s get on with the screwing up, so I can get promoted.

Fail Smart –Nobody has the slightest idea what this means, but is sounds good. It’s like “Work Smart, not hard.” So why not use it to sound like you care?

Proof of Concept –We’ve figured out what we want to do. This is the first phase of the project we are going to ram down everyone’s throat.  It may not be the best solution, but once I’ve spent money on it, we aren’t stopping because we have investment of time and effort we don’t want to go to waste.

Teaming Event –Any champion team coach will tell you the best way to build a good team is to have talented individuals, goals to work towards, and most of all, play/work together. In the play/work the real teaming comes with time as individuals get to know each other and solve common problems usually with a little stress involved.  I haven’t got the slightest idea of how to coach, organize a team, or push a project through outside of jabbering about random cliché concepts in meetings.  As a result, we are all going to the rock climbing gym Thursday afternoon.   I’m really into it, you should be too. We’ll get down to the elemental points of trust as I belay you. Because of this afternoon of chalk dust and me showing I’m such a great rock climber in a closed gym situation, the team will be able to easily scale any challenge I put before them.

Needs of the business –The excuse catch phrase I’m going to use to defend my latest seemingly uncaring decision or the answer I’m going to give if I don’t really want answer a question.   Examples:

Question: “These new jobs you just talked about in the company sound pretty cool. What is the mechanism to get considered for one of these assignments?” 

Answer: “It will be dictated by needs of the business.” 

Question: “John Saxon, interviewed for a job in another division, and I’m prepared to release him. It’s a good opportunity for him.  Do you concur?”

Thought process inside person being asked the question:  “On Christ, he’s one of our star people. I won’t be able to replace him. He pulls me out of most my jams I get into because of my basic technical weaknesses. Plus, I’d have to fill out tons of paperwork and interview people to replace him.

Answer: “No, I can’t support that. Needs of the business.”

 

Coaching –In my eyes you screwed up, and I’m going to explain why.  I will call it coaching so it doesn’t sound like I am being completely petty. Note:  most coaching occurs by the actual individual who screwed up in an attempt to transfer blame.

Transfer of Blame –The fine art of making sure any issues/screwups don’t stick to your Teflon skin and are successfully nailed to another individual. The most effective manner to accomplish this task is frequent and blatant fabrication of facts. In politics the fabrication around Barack Obamas birthplace and religion are illustration. Make up facts, then use them to explain why someone is ineffective, or should be associated to failure, thus hiding any contribution you could be held accountable for.

Worker Bee – Mildly derogatory term applied by the power point people to group and nominalize the contributions of the individuals actually doing most of the work in the organization.  The men and woman actually building things to be sold.

Foster Creativity –In short, your ideas stink, original or not, because my buddies and I didn’t think of them. The other possibility is that one of my well respected peers needs you to partner with us.  What we really need you to do is think like us. Actually just do what we told you too. We are taking credit anyway. This creative thinking you’ve been doing seems like it would be work for us. First we’d have to figure out what you are talking about, and then actually learn how to use the idea. We basically like ours, get creative and learn our methods.

Out of the box thinking – The fact that this cliché term is overused in the corporate world, shows how difficult it is to accomplish. The concept being that if you want to skin a cat, there is more than one way.   To use another cliché. Though often the task, “skin the cat” is the box.  The best way to accomplish proverbial out of the box cat de-hide,   may be to change the problem, go fishing. This action removes the obvious bounds of cat skinning and get us back to likely original problem. We’re hungry, which may have slipped our mind when we realized we didn’t have a knife handy to skin Sylvester who we decided might make a convenient meal, when the noticed the cupboard was bare.  Individuals employing the term “out of the box thinking” could rarely skin a cat, nor fish if their life depended on it. Most of their energy is spent being boxed in by corporate cliché which they readily copy from their peers. In an effort to cloud their basic incompetence and lack of creativity. 

Not a Team Player – Every team has its star player. On this team, I’m it. You need to do everything to support my efforts and goals. We all become successful with my success. You can bask in my glory.  Typical uses in a conversation:  Boss to subordinate, “I need you to be a team player here, set the example. Start supporting my ideas.”   Subordinate to Boss, “Steve’s not a team player he brings up roadblocks to every idea we present.”

Build Consensus – I’ve already figured out the path forward, your ideas, input etc. are counterproductive to my plan. You need to get on board. It’s your job to come to consensus with me.  Typical uses in a conversation:  “You have not built consensus for your position.” 

Outsourcing  --We have decided to fire you. But to make the process more miserable, we are going to force you to train your replacements. After all, compared to them you are overpaid, it’s the least you can do.  While we realize your replacements will not have your skills and experience, at one fifth the price, we have plenty of time to train them on the job.  At least my mismanagement won’t be so expensive now.

Right Sourcing --The previous round of outsourcing was not fully successful. The replacements while cheaper failed to meet performance expectations. We will replace them randomly with a mix of other vendors and contractors until such a time as we happen on the same level of performance we had before we considered outsourcing.  As a proof to how well this model works, we noticed some of the vendors under consideration have forwarded resumes of potential candidates who were former employees of ours, but are who are now willing to work for reduced rates.

PowerPoint People –Individuals who sole occupation seems to be the assemblage of really good looking PowerPoint presentations.  These individuals rarely understand the content of the PowerPoint presentation but will revise it 50-60 times introducing lots of art, animation, and graphics while going to great length to ignore the technical aspects being presented.  Example follows in excerpts of e-mail between a worker bee and a power point person. I would like to say I made this up. Unfortunately it’s a real life example at a company, I worked with for a bit.

PP 6/5/2014 10:55: “Hey got your video demo for the deck. The SVP wants it to be less than five minutes, can you tell me if it is? Its key the success of the presentation.”

WB 6/5/2014 10:56: “Did you watch it?”

PP 6/5/2014 11:38:  “Haven’t had a chance to, been in too many meetings about the project.”

PP 6/5/2014 13:45: “Following up on my request for length of time on the video, needs to be less than five minutes. When can I get the video time?”

WB: 6/5/2014 13:46: “If you watch it, you will know how long it is.”

PP: 6/6/2014 07:38: “Still looking for answer on video length. What is delay, do I need to escalate?”

WB: 6/6/2014 7:39:  “See below:

PP: 6/6/2014 10:15: “Coming up on my deadline, so how long is the video?”

WB: 6/6/2014 10:15:08:  <sigh prior to typing>, “1 Minute, 52 seconds.”

PP: 6/6/2015 10:50: “Good you were able to get it trimmed it to less and 5 minutes, thanks.”

NARS – Not a Rocket Scientist. Engineering term.  Common in Silicon Valley and other Tech areas. Average Information Technology engineer possess a science degree of some type --Physics, Computer, Aerospace or Mechanical Engineering and spent way too much time late at night in college taking the determinate of a matrix, or studying the fine details of Newton’s Interpolation formula as opposed to getting drunk and laid.   If you don’t understand the two mathematical concepts introduced in this definition you are probably not a rocket scientist.  There is nothing inherently wrong with you, but like in high school, when cheerleaders and football players wouldn’t give future rocket scientists of America the time of day, IT engineers are going to be annoyed with you if you bother them. They are the cool people now, making all the cool stuff for society, and you are just a NARS.  If you think this definition just used a term to define itself that is a concept known as recursion.  If it bothers you a lot to the point you want to correct the definition, you are definitely a NARS. There is an acid test on whether you have potential to leave NARS society: have you Googled the terms, “Determinate of a Matrix”, or “Newton’s Interpolation formula?” If you have, there’s hope for you, if not:  get together with your NARS buddies and talk about football and shows on Bravo or something.

Drones – Part of the founding piece of any colony. They have their purpose, but outside of inception, nobody has found a use for them. Long after they have played their part, they tend to hand around expecting people to think they are important, but pointing out if it weren’t for their original actions, nobody would be here.