Nicholas Bate

Instant Business Speak: 27: The Mother Ship

Many organisations suffer from MS/PITB Syndrome or Mother Ship Pain-In-The-Butt Syndrome. When you are owned by somebody in another part of the world they just don't get it. The Paris office gets irritated by the ridiculous requests of 'the Brits' in London: a lunch-time conference call? In Paris? Sacre Bleu! The UK team in Birmingham think their US colleagues 'at Corp' are crazy (sigh. could we once again remove all the bullet points which are followed by the word passion?) and will the Tokyo guys ever understand head office in Munich? (we realise it's increasing efficiency but...) It's not just the irritation caused by more work as a result of overlapping time zones, nor cultural practices being imposed beyond their origins. It's just that Fundamental Rule II of Business is:

What The F*ck Do They Know?

(Fundamental Rule I is here)

Instant Business Speak 26

People in organisations talk a lot about building their network. Once a rubber band around a stack of business cards, now a complex inter-connected web of social media software, 'contacts' and 'who do you know?'. Networking is the new escape plan, having by-passed the lotto win as an ever-present hope. Hope? Hope of escape. Surely someone, somewhere must recognise my talent? And be able to help me out of this career cul-de-sac?

Possible. Unfortunately the power of the network has increasingly been diluted by becoming grid-locked as everyone hopes someone else will help them.

Instant Business Speak 25: The Vacation

High-flyers are now increasingly in an On-Going Catch 22 Situation. To do well in their organisation, can they really afford to take a vacation? It means you are out-of-the-loop, rarely get a full heads-up and miss out on cascades. Slide-decks silently fill your in-box in a predatory manner and fully transparent is rather opaque. Consequently many good men and women increasingly take a 'Soft Vacation' (TM); not in the office for a week or so but simply surreptitiously checking their phone between dips in the pool with the kids, hiding in aisle 4 (drinks) of the little French supermarche to write long responses on why the figures are not good and scouring www.GetMeABrandNewJob.com in the local internet cafe.

Don't do it. Take a Real Vacation and turn off the electrons. Or The Other Kind of Vacation which is appreciate the joy of just being there.

Whatever, you need a proper break.

Instant Business Speak 24: We Need A Number

Organisations love numbers. Once you have a number you (1) have a target for improvement and (2) you feel in control as numbers-after all-are absolute. Thus the sales team have a number-a target-for sales of New Product X. But numbers have a side effect: you can end up only worrying about the number and lose the bigger picture. To take an example if you have a high temperature and therefore 'the number is wrong' it could be lowered by drinking more cool water, possibly or some paracetamol, possibly. But-and you get this clearly-it's only the symptom being tackled. Why has the temperature risen?

Year after year companys fret over their annual survey of employee happiness, trying to get 3.3s to become 4.2s. But-as they-find it's not going to work because all effort has been put into manipulating the number rather than actually working on employee happiness and thus developing better figures.

Beware the number. It's handy but it's also a seducer into dark alleyways from where you'll never return, be it revenue figures which draw you away from profitability, happiness stats which take you away from real people development or market share growth which hide a decaying vertical market.

Instant Business Speak 24: Fully Transparent

Fully Transparent is an example of a word or phrase-leverage, 'let's park that for a moment', cascade-are others, which are heavily used in organisations but alarmingly nobody quite knows what they mean. The CEO's request for a 'fully transparent' returns policy will be acknowledged and talked about in many a meeting: mail will be sent, slide-decks produced and conferences held but but nobody will have the courage to ask him or her what they really mean. In fact to insist on full transparency.

Instant Business Speak 23: The Target

Although many things which are studied on an MBA (q.v.) are of dubious worth in the actual world of business, the methodology of the setting of a valid and considered sales target is usually a worthwhile area. The new sales target for the new FY (q.v.) is carefully calculated by a mixture of top down plans such as what would we like to achieve?, what capabilities do we have? etc. added to bottom up such as what is the market doing?, what potential threats are there? etc. Into which mix can be added a bit of what if? scenario planning. Done well, done rigorously it helps an organisation create a sound target for growth for the coming year.

Sadly, though, many organisations are resistant to such an approach generally because it rarely adds up to dramatic figures which are fun to flourish at an annual conference. And so consequently the figures are created by adding a simple-large-percentage. The consequences of this ad-hoc approach will reverberate in meetings of howling pain for the rest of the following year and probably necessitate many a re-org.

Instant Business Speak 22: The ID Card

• Excuse me, Sir: where's your ID card?
• Right here.
• Well, could you display it more visibly in future, please?

A conversation played out a thousand times a day in organisations from Hong Kong to London, from San Francisco to Moscow by desperate employees who don't want to be an ID number, who don't want to be labelled, who don't want to feel they are back on their first school trip to the Natural History Museum with colour-coded baseball hats. They want to be a free (wo)man!

It's not going to happen, though. The modern business is in control, is in lock-down. The ID card is simply a symptom of something deeper. They say they want you to think outside the box. They say they want more creativity. They say they want a revolution.  But try taking off your ID badge.

And the fact that the back door is propped open with a fire extinguisher so that smokers can escape the alarms? That's different, Sir. Please don't make this hard for me. Or you.

Instant Business Speak 21: Change

Apparently we-the employee-don't like change. Consequently we have to be trained, coached and cajoled into 'handling change'. We need to learn the n steps of change. And when we get difficult we are reminded we are in the denial stage of handling change.

No, No, NO! We love change. Change is refreshing, change gives opportunities. Change is growing up. No, what really, really frustrates us is not change but poor communication about change. WE need to feel we have been involved, kept informed and our possible alternative solutions and viewpoints explored. Many a business now either dead and gone or struggling would have done well to learn that leadership is a conversation, a grown-up dialogue not just a 1-way instruction camouflaged by Handling Change Workshops.

Instant Business Speak 20: The TLA

The TLA or Three Letter Acronym  of course is a classic case of ENC or Emperor's New Clothes. When new people join an organisation they are reluctant to show their ignorance in a meeting or conference call so never do ask what e.g. CSP (Cascaded Slide-deck Portfolio) actually means. But they pretend they do. And if you have a business being run by people who pretend and even imagine they know what they are doing you a RFD (Recipe For Disaster).

It's even tougher for customers. There are only SMT (So Many Times) you can interrupt an Account Manger in full flow with his/her PowerPoint slides before it is best to give up and CSM (Clear Some Mail).

 

Instant Business Speak 19: The Empty Coffee Cup

Meeting rooms generate empty coffee cups. You'd have to walk into a room immediately the cleaners had just left to find one without them. And half-used bottles of still water too, and often small brown carrier bags from the deli and somebody's security card. That's because of one of the most fundamental rules of the business world is:

An Empty Coffee Cup Has No Owner.

Thus coffee cups will be abandoned with little or no thought for who will clear them up.

Does it matter? Does it matter! Sure. In business-as in Life-the small stuff (abandonment of the dirty cups) is an indicator of the big stuff (management of the project). And the external stuff (state of the room) is an indicator of the internal stuff (state of the thinking).

Take a discrete note of those who own their cup and dispose of it thoughtfully.  Better than any expensive, flash assessment centre for sorting out the best future leaders.