The Cult of Management Bollocks

OK, so maybe I was a bit hard on that 'resilience handbook' I was on about last time. Perhaps I misrepresented the advice for dealing with workplace stress that it provided. Apparently it doesn't just advise you to smile in the face of adversity. Oh no. It also advises that you should 'be gentle with yourself'. Which sounds like advice on masturbation techniques to me. However, I suspect that they merely mean that you shouldn't be too self critical. Which highlights one of the problems with the stuff that these consultants come out with - it isn't really English. Sure, it is composed of English words, arranged into some semblance of a sentence, but it doesn't actually make sense. Deliberately, as if they actually came out with their advice in plain English, it would be obvious that you needn't have paid them for it. They're simply stating the obvious. But if they dress it up in feel good phrases and aphorisms, then managers can patronise their workforce with it, repeating it all over and over again, with a fixed smile, wide eyes and insane enthusiasm.

Which is another problem I have with the modern workplace: dealing with managers in thrall to these consultants and/or the latest management fads, is like trying to deal with Scientologists, or Moonies. To be fair, I think I prefer the Scientologists. At least their brand of insanity, sorry, belief system, is internally consistent. The evangelical zeal with which managers pursue whatever constitutes the latest management bollocks is truly disturbing. They really do treat it as a religion, its edicts to be unquestioningly followed. Every stage of implementation is treated as some kind of new divine revelation. It's even justified in quasi-religious terms, with the words 'the Chief Executive has decided we're going to implement it'. Ah! God has spoken! No other explanations for why we are being forced to follow a management regime which is effectively undermining the organisation's entire ethos and rendering the workforce inefficient and incapable of delivering any kind of customer service. But, in a classic piece of double-think, the whole process is deemed to be in the name of greater customer satisfaction. Except, of course, customer service has been redefined: what used to be called 'piss poor' is now 'acceptable', and what was 'acceptable' is now deemed to be 'inefficient'. Welcome to paradise and all hail the messiahs of bollocks!