UseNet Syndrome

by Graham Email

The phenomenon whereby any insufficiently moderated social media platform, over time, deteriorates to resemble UseNet. In other words, the traffic becomes dominated by spammers, trolls, trollbots, assholes and other examples of the flotsam and jetsam of humanity.

ITIndglish (n.)

by Graham Email

An emerging dialect of English, comprising 33% IT buzzwords and acronyms, 33% Indian dialect or Indian english phrases (i.e. "do the needful") and 33% English. Now the predominant lingua franca in Global IT support based in India.

Obfuscatory Time Recording (OTR)

by Graham Email

The practice, within a project team where team members, instead of recording the actual hours expended to complete a task, instead merely enter a standard number of hours each day (usually 8). This results in gross under-recording of actual task durations in whatever project management metrics are created from the project, which in turn results in the perpetuation of poorly designed processes and associated tasks.

Extreme Corporate Naivite (ECN)

by Graham Email

A condition sometimes found among employees suffering from a surfeit of idealism. This condition is characterised by a belief that corporations should be governed by the application of principles such as fairness, integrity, high ethical and moral standards, objective measurement of performance, mutual respect for fellow empoloyees etc. There is no cure for ECN; nor should there be a cure.

Credibility

by Graham Email

A quaint belief or aspiration, rooted in commonsense and an understanding of the human condition, that senior leaders in government and corporations will accumulate credibility and enhance the willingness of their followers if they are plausible, honest and humble in their dealings with other leaders, rival corporations, peers and other employees.
Credibility in many leaders is eroded by the negative consequences of popular alternative behavioural approaches such as "my way or the highway", "never apologize, never explain", and "take the money and run"

covert sabotage

by Graham Email

A dysfunctional behavior usually engaged in by members or leaders of project teams who are unhappy or hostile to a new or changed project, approach or process. This may take many forms, from passive-aggressive public behavior in meetings, to public enthusiasm for the change accompanied by behind-the-scenes attempts to delay or disrupt the change. The objective is to preserve the team or organization's current ways of working and functioning.

Bubble (n.)

by Graham Email

An alternate reality inhabited by many senior and successful corporate leaders, especially CEOs. The size and pervasiveness of the bubble is often directly proportional to the leader's total income from the corporation, and is further increased by their access to non-monetary hubris enhancers such as corporate jets, company-paid housing, fawning adulation by the business media etc.

Sink Or Swim

by Graham Email

An approach to career management for employees which consists of pitching a person who has succeeded in their previous role(s) into a new role for which they may be totally unprepared or incapable, without any training, preparation or coaching, and then retreating to a safe distance to await the outcome. As one might expect, the outcome is not often positive.
Sink Or Swim as a career management and people development approach is often co-morbid with other approaches such as scapegoating.

Obfuscation Engine (acr.)

by Graham Email

A standard process in dysfunctional corporations, whereby clear reports of status from project managers are initially created (or later converted into) ambiguous, impenetrable nonsense for presentation upwards to internal leadership and/or clients. During this process, any status information that might be construed as negative is modified to give the impression of execution and delivery normalcy, and issues or risks are downgraded in importance to the point where stakeholders can simply pretend that they no longer exist.
See Columbia Shuttle Disaster, Upward Message Dilution.

History

by Graham Email

A pesky repository of facts that most corporations and societies ignore when formulating ideas, policy and strategy.

Answer Shopping (phr.)

by Graham Email

The process adopted by dysfunctional or ethically-marginal senior leadership when they have already created what they believe is the correct answer to a pressing issue (which may or may not be the correct answer). People presented as "experienced", "authorities", "consultants", "experts" etc. are asked questions designed to elicit the pre-determined answer (verbally or in written form), in order to support and validate the chosen answer or decision within the corporation.
Often employed as a mechanism for post hoc justification of a severely flawed leadership decision.

Exile

by Graham Email

The concept of dealing with out-of-favour employees by transferring them to a function or location which is known as a punishment zone.
Exiled employees often determine, quite correctly, that Exile is an arbitrary and capricious punishment and an abuse of power, and leave the corporation soon thereafter. In rare cases, the employee's value is belatedly recognized and they are recalled from Exile and restored to their previous (often a better) position.

Binary Leader

by Graham Email

A leader whose desire to "keep it simple" and "make it clear" leads to his/her evaluation processes being almost exclusively focussed on creating two alternatives at differeing ends of the spectrum. Black or white, chalk or cheese etc. Such leaders dismiss "shades of gray" and don't do "nuance".
This approach to problem-solving survives until the failure to consider althernative courses of action other than two false dichotomies leads to a project being derailed, at which point the leader is either forced to drop their binary approach or risk Exile or making a CLM or CTM.

Beauty Contest Testing (BCT)

by Graham Email

The variant of Testing performed on a project where the software has missing or incomplete documented requirements or specification. Since there is no objective way of demonstrating compliance with requirements, Testing completion occurs when the client opinion leaders or decision makers declare the solution to meet whatever requirements they believe exist at that point in time.

Any Warm Body Syndrome (AWBS)

by Graham Email

A process, usually triggered by lack of planning, dysfunctional recruitment processes etc. etc., where project leadership, desperate to fill vacant positions in delivery teams, abandons any semblance of a structured, information-based decision making process for recruitment, instead hiring the first person who they talk to who appears as though they might be qualified for the role. Any Warm Body often results in the adoption (in short order) of other dysfunctional people management behaviours such as Sink Or Swim.

Lightning Conductor Leadership (acr.)

by Graham Email

A style of leadership where the leader is instantly influenced (postively or negatively) by interactions with his/her leaders or peers. When their interactions go badly for them, these individuals proceed to sulk in their offices or roam the corporate location in a bad frame of mind, stopping only to ream their teams or pick on team members to excoriate (usually for failings that are more imaginary than real). When things go well for them they suddenly morph into relentlessly cheerful, happy people, and praise their teams effusively.
Given that humans tend to remember bad interpersonal encounters more than they remember positive encounters, the long-term results are usually a wary, demotivated team, and a frustrated leader, who often ends up suggesting a variant of the approach "the beatings will continue until morale improves"...

Finger In The Air (FITA) (n.)

by Graham Email

A time-honoured approach when faced with the requirement to assemble an estimate for a piece of work, which involves the raising of the index finger outside the building, which results (via an obscure process inside the cranium of the person owning the finger) in the creation of a collection of values which are presented as an estimate. The relationship between the problem space attributes and the data is usually not revealed.

Careericide (n.)

by Graham Email

See Career-Terminating Move.
Thanks to Leanna from Indianapolis for this one.

Corporate Egoteric Publication (acr.)

by Graham Email

A book, usually written by a "ghost writer" at the bidding of the board of directors and/or the CEO, which purports to be a serious management book, but is in fact a combination of a hagiography of the corporation and the CEO, designed to portray the corporation (and by extension, the CEO) as dynamic, visionary, thrusting, determined to succeed etc. Thousands of copies of the book are purchased by the corporation (often causing the book to appear to be a best-seller), and given to leaders, who are expected to display the book on their desks, bookshelves etc.
The book functions as a talisman to confer higher status on the displaying leader, who is, by virtue of the display, "in the know", "with the program" etc. In reality, most copies of the book gather dust, and magically disappear from display within a month of a change of corporate leadership.

User interface

by Graham Email

That part of a software solution which is the most important for customer satisfaction; however, instead of utilizing skilled user experience designers, many delivery groups assign the design of the user interface to group members (usually developers) who proceed to prove the truth of the Law of Claimed Competency.

Law of Claimed Competency (rule, realistic)

by Graham Email

A useful principle which states that the actual competency of a person to perform a given task or set of tasks is in inverse proportion to their claimed competence. The principle is often true because of human failings, including one or more or combinations of arrogance, optimism, inexperience, "Not Invented Here", hubris, ignorance and stupidity.

Supplier Partnership (phr., Orwellian)

by Graham Email

A fine-sounding phrase, uttered by the leaders of the Vendor Management function of a corporation during corporate broadcasts and public meetings. What viewers cannot see while they are uttering the phrase is the location of their foot, on the throat of a bruised, battered, bleeding supplier.
Vendor Management personnel who are fans of "The Sopranos" will intermittently shift further weight to their foot until the supplier's face goes blue and they agree to further price reductions.

Morale (n,. aspirational)

by Graham Email

A magical "thing" that is regarded by everybody in corporations as highly desirable, since it is believed that high morale will cause employees to sing a merry tune and smile while being massively productive and positive.
Corporate leaders believe they should always have high morale, but sometimes morale is extremely difficult to locate or enhance. In really dysfunctional corporations, mediocre leaders adopt the mindset that morale can be increased by intimidation (as in the famous warning "the beatings will continue until morale improves").

assertion (n.)

by Graham Email

A phrase, sentence or slogan, normally used by Sales and Marketing personnel, but now frequently used by leaders (and failed leaders) at all levels of many corporations. Assertions are usually devoid of any supporting facts, but are supposed to cause the listeners to knod knowingly and instantly snap into action in an attempt to convert the assertion into reality (or perception).

Sales

by Graham Email

1. The role of identifying prospective customers, engaging them in dialogue to determine their real and tangible needs, matching those needs with a corporation's offerings, and moving the prospective customer to a point where they agree to purchase significant amounts of the corporation's offerings now and in the future.
2. A smooth-talking, high-living collection of sometimes-shady individuals, many of whom appear to believe that (a) if you can sell one type of offering, you can sell anything to anybody, (b) you can slide much further on bullshit than you can on gravel.

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