Bosses of anything

Who’s in charge? The bosses, the top managers, the principals, the directors!

The boss of anything (military unit, school, store, hotel, museum, company) has to deal daily with plenty of poos : managing the managers, financial movements, meetings and decisions. Hard work!

Some are good, some are bad, but today I draw a line between two other categories, the line is a question :

Do they know the field they’re working in?

It’s a real question, because of course we all know plenty of ignorant bosses. They are maybe good in certain places of their position, after all!

But you knowwww, you see where I’m going : can you be a good army general if you know nothing about warfare? Is this school principal a good manager and decisions maker if he’s never been a teacher? How to you pilot a bookstore if you don’t like books? And what about politics?

They CAN, proof is there are plenty of these dumb fishes in our funny world! They have to make terrible things : make decisions, knowing nothing.

Happily, there are forces which can counter attack these :

1. Some of them ignorants are smart enough to listen to those who work.
2. Workers have the possibility to slow down stupid decisions.
3. They can also hide the proper things to do.
4. What else?

If you’re in charge, and you know not a spoon about the field you’re working in, be proud, you’ve come to a good position – and don’t expect respect from the guys on the ground! Do your job, get paid, try to limit your capacity of pain and nuisance. That’s already good. Let people work…

You could of course find a more logical position (where are you good at?), but if the money’s good, you’re good. Right?

Thanks for reading!

N/N-1 Business Bullshittery

ONE

Evaluation based on numbers is a bullshite minefield. Each steps spurts numbers, statistics, calculations.

Which mean nothing but bring managers the illusion of mastery.

Digits Masters Detrimentors

TWO

The N-1 bullshite is one of most simple bullshite poo of the business world.

“Last year you made 100 – this year you make 90 : you have obviously a problem, come to my office”

But :

1. Contingency : Maybe last year you got an unexpected big order from another company, and without this order you would have made 60, therefore you’re doing great today, but it’s hidden in numbers
2. Market’s vagary : Maybe the “hit” you got last year is postponed this year for the month after, therefore you’ll hit the roof in a month
3. Thus, prepare to have a “problem” next year, because of the N-1 bullshite
4. Non significant : Maybe the “analyzed” field is too little : for example you sold 4 staplers in August 1976 and 3 in August 1977 so you’re at -25% – maybe you’ll sell 5 in a year and you’ll be great (and you become an “erratic employee”)
5. Events : “Your stock is too high this year (+35%!)” but there’s a reason your manager ignore (there’s a big event in two weeks and you’ll sell every single piece)
6. Not mastering the whole world : Maybe you’re at +135% but there was a shortage last year and it did not depend on you
7. Purpose : You have a shitty manager, so you make everything possible to get him bad number-indicators… but do a great job out of numbers.
8. Lazy colleagues : you’re alone mixed up with a team.
9. Reality hidden by numbers : a lazy guy on a trendy field has good N/N-1 with a lousy attitude which spoils the company’s reputation (get +35% but could have made +60% with a better work), and a great team on a transitioning market gets lukewarm N/N-1 but does a great job for the company, and prepares a bright future for business.

 

Do you have any ideas I could add to this list?

THREE

Numbers are an illusion. They “show” a simple reality, most of the time completely out of the real world, which is moving, multiplugged, complex, and human. Numbers and percentages hide things. They lower your comprehension of what happens.

Talking to people is better. Being smart too. Let % flow around idiots. Have fun.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Instagram : mariakdolores

 

Digits Masters Detrimentors

Example 1

A film distributor hesitates about what to do with a foreign movie, thus it puts it in a few avant-garde theaters in three big cities of the USA, and makes big money, and is very happy about it, then pulls it out.

The distributor doesn’t realize the movie fiercely agitated social medias and could have made 20 times more money with a larger proposition across the country, and much much more if it let is spread by word of mouth.

Example 2

His job is to sell concert tickets 8 hours a day, he’s asked to also sale an insurance fee with each ticket. He sells 3000 tickets a day, 35% insured – which is pretty good.

While he takes a 15 minutes afternoon break, someone takes his place for cover, sells 10 tickets, 5 of them insured – 50%.

The cover guy gets big congratulations by the boss : 50% is better than 35%, right?

Example 3

Google “spurious correlations” to find hilarious graphs that “proves” that there’s a link between “Per capita consumption of cheese (US) correlates with number of people who died by becoming tangled in their bedsheets” or “German passenger cars sold in the US correlates with Suicides by crashing of motor vehicle”.

Then be afraid, because it happens all the time in your company.

Example 4

In a medium size city, a DIY and artists store’s boss puts a book & stationery corner. It’s pretty rare, and people come from the everywhere around to buy a magazine or a book. Each of both activities enriches the other.

A new boss arrives, watches the turnover, assures that it’s not that much, then closes the corner. Then complains the whole store revenue slowly decreases…

 

TOOL/DIAL :

Evaluation. What is it? If in one’s job one has to analyse numbers, one has all the chances to understand NOTHING.

Digits give the great illusion of mastering things. And it’s just wrong.

When a “manager” watches bunch of numbers without meeting, asking, listening to the people involved, he’s just a happy jumping goat, an ignorant.

Therefore he’s ridiculous, embarrassing, and detrimental.

What is important is not measurable with numbers.

 

Thanks for reading! (sorry for my English…)

Entering Business Schools Duplicity

Hi everyone,

I talked a long time yesterday with a mother, whose daughter was preparing prestigious Business Schools competitive exams…

…and interviews…

…and tests…

We agreed on this :

Out of the “knowledge” part, the whole thing is rotten. Most of these 19 years old kids are not ready to be big managers and negotiators. Therefore they have to train to FAKE.

 

I had conversations before, with guys who organize this kind of stuff.

Logic tests, they say, are so tricky that they’re not used to pick out “logical persons” AT ALL, but to handpick the… guys who are able to train themselves to do stupid logical exercises.

Or with this teacher in a big institute, saying that what, in fact, they train students to look the part – nothing more – for at least 10 minutes, in front of any specialist in the world. You know a little of everything, a surface.

 

Well, in a way that’s common sense. You swallow knowledge, but in fact you know nothing when you begin 1/ your curriculum 2/ your career. That’s not really a problem, and we all know that we mostly learn on the job, as you go along, with time and meeting people.

 

At the end we agreed on the fact that all this system will have the tendency to move aside and rule out a whole part of people who could probably be good (or great) for the courses, for the jobs.

Those who don’t like to fake.

 

Thanks for reading!

Marcus Aurelius VS bad management

“If only the bird with the loveliest song sang,
the forest would be a lonely place.”
John James Audubon

Ahh… “If only…”.

In France we say “Avec des si on mettrait Paris en bouteille” : “With “ifs” one could put Paris into a bottle”. Makes sense, I suppose…

Bad management is pretty common. If it’s too bad you have to quit, right? It you don’t, you have to deal with it. That simple!

Some managers are lazy, or weak, or just plain stupid. Some are violent, unsteady, irrelevant or beyond understanding.

You can’t fix people, but you can fight, say “It’s enough”, etc. It’s a path, you can go N+1, or use the Union, or make a team with colleagues : I’m not talking about that today.

In front of bad management, you can choose 4 paths :

1. Have a good ulcer. Or a breakdown.
2. Find a way to deal with it.
3. Fight back.
4. Quit.

Here, Marcus Aurelius is useful :

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

OK, here’s my tool :

1. Focus for a few minutes and think about what is your job really about.
2. You’re paid for that, therefore do your job, the best you can.
3. Consider management as the weather.

That’s all.

• If you sell things, your shelf displays must be clean and interesting. Vegetable, flowers or books. Great displays. Focus!
• If you teach, your students must listen and understand, and if they love you, you’re good. Invent tricks and watch them.
• If you’re a journalist, write great articles, captivate your audience and do your best. Blossom smiles!
• If you’re a truck driver, drive well and pay attention. Do your job and listen to some good music.
• Etc. Etc.

Management?

WEATHER

It’s sunny? Good! It’s a storm, it rains, it’s cold, windy? Whatever! GOOD!

You can’t fix people. You can’t fix the weather. Focus.

Do your job, JtfC!

Have a nice day!

Ohmylanta ! Bad #management ideas

Here are a few bad management ideas to apply if you want your team exhausted, potatosad, ineffective or bored :

• Bossy Tinpot Dictators are the worst pain in the ass ever. One could wonder how they just find the drive to “be” that Type.
• Delation based reports is a plague. You just pick up the worse idiots in your team and give them a little cap. Have your favorites to do this.
• Micromanagement is exhausting. Just keep check on people and give little orders about their job (where they don’t need you at all).
• Incompetence or cruelty? Make you team wonder if your strategy is based on one or the other…
• Give orders without explanations, even if you know that your employees will wonder why you need this.
• Don’t ask your team what they think how things should be done.
• Make your team lose their time (for example to fix your mistakes).
• Give paradoxal orders (a command that would undo the other one).
• Suspicion : just show your team you mistrust everything they do for the job.
• Procrastination is great. Just hope the problems will be fixed by magic. Answer it’s “not the moment to talk about it”.
• Invent useless rules. Watch people struggle.
• Be unreliable. Say A to Bill and B to Bob. Decide randomly in the end.

 

Tool : 

A team is a clock, an engine. There are two types of managers. You can put a little oil here and there, from time to time, and let people work. They all know their job. Or you can add sand.

Instagram : marisharasikoskinen

 

#Management : Why the HECK would you want to have an homogeneous team??

Management is funny to study. You’ll find shelves of books to read about that in every good bookstore. So it stays a mystery why we note so many stupid ideas in all hierarchies…

One of the great GREATEST Stupid Idea EVER is the will, from a manager, to have an homogeneous team.

All teachers in the world know that kids have different kinds of intelligence. Some are visual, others need words, etc. It’s the SAME for adults, silly!

You are a manager. You have a team. NOBODY is like the other one. Some are fast, but muddled, others are slow and precise. Some like to talk, others to think, some are one-task, others are multi. Some guys know how to sell, others are great organizers. Some are clumsy but clever, other are dexterous but dumb as dead maggots.

Let people be who they are! USE who they are. Encourage them! They’re good! The LAST thing you should ask people is to follow the same dumb goal. We’re all different, and if you ask people to be the same and get the same objective, you’re just a fool.

Nevertheless, it’s something you’ll see for more centuries. Managers’ stupidity is bottomless. C’est la life, dear. Just facepalm, there’s nothing much more to do here.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Halloween in June

So you work in a store, a big store.

It’s June.

A truck delivers big packs of Halloween shit.

Yeah! That’s the way it works today…

You’re like a bit amazed by such an amount of stupidity.

But you’re told to present all this.

Halloween.

In June.

You place it. All of it.

Then, it’s, you can guess, a big failure.

Dust piles up on orange skulls and pumpkins.

Nobody buys it.

Until this angry day in the end of August…

When your good manager says :

“Sales not good, send all this back to the supplier!”.

Well, of course your mind could be full of WTFs.

But it’s not.

You don’t expect common sense from this world.

You just don’t.

You send all back.

This is “normal”.

Because, one week before Halloween…

You install Christmas stuff.

Right?

Right.

That’s the way this world goes.

 

Instagram : kloelicious

 

 

Obedient “to the finger and the eye” is the French “beck and call”

“Obéir au doigt et à l’œil” (“to obey the finger and the eye”) is the French way to say that you’re at somebody’s beck and call.

I found out that it comes from “beckon call”, which makes sense, right? By the way, I learned a word : Beckon – “gesture to come”. 

How do you say that in your language? In common use, what’s the radioactivity of “beckon”? Is it neutral like “to call over”? Or does in imply a little slice of servitude? What are the differences between to yield, to comply, to obey, to submit?

What are the dials and levers here? If you’re at somebody’s beck and call, what does it show? Is it about fear? Power? Is it about persons, or systems, companies?

What about the beckoning person? How come this person expects you to act this way? Has he enough power to get you back in “the right track”? Or does he have to understand that “people are not all obedient”? What a shock!

What happens, in a situation where you’re supposed to comply and you don’t? Failure to comply, disobedience, rebelliousness? Why would you? A frontier has been crossed? Did you change? Did you grow up? Has the whole system changed? Did you change your mind? Why?

In what territory to study this? Kingdom? Management? Spouses? Clients/employees? Politics? Parenting? What are the limits of beck and calling?

 

Giberrishing management and other relationships

Erving Goffman explored it a long time ago in books like The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. I copy paste wikipedia :

Goffman believes that all participants in social interactions are engaged in certain practices to avoid being embarrassed or embarrassing others. This led to Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis. Goffman saw a connection between the kinds of acts that people put on in their daily life and theatrical performances.

So : life in society is a theater.

In relationships, there’s often a gap between an ideal and… reality. It can lead to drama, or to theater : wear a mask. Acting like you are supposed to do.

In management, it’s the same! One day you realize that your manager is managing as if he was believing his sh*t. And if YOU are the manager, well…

Where else?

Everything is fine, right?

Dials :

So what? It can be useful, to be “in peace”!

Where is our theater? What happens when masks fall, and why? Anger? Steam? Change?

Why and how can we become ourselves suddenly, and what would be the consequences?

 

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : myivoryroot

Incompetence or Cruelty?

When you have to work with people, groups, companies, you encounter…  failure. Something went wrong somewhere, from your manager, or during a delivery, or in whole projects. This is a mess. You got the wrong thing, you’re under a stupid decision, you have not enough, or too much, etc.

This moment when you fall on your ass, saying :

“Are they really stupid or they’re doing it on purpose?”

…is interesting. Because from there you can do many things. You can act, you can try to fix, you can report and feedback,  you can become sarcastic, you can realize it’s too late, you can laugh, or cry, or lament, or have revenge, or to be in rage, or resign…

What I say in this case is :

Incompetence or Cruelty?

And sometimes, we REALLY wonder, right?

Thanks for reading!

“Be Spontaneous, please” (Can you see my mask?)

“I’m taking a picture of you. Please smile. Nooo not like that! A big, natural, spontaneous smile”.

Everyone understands this example, right? When someone asks you to act… spontaneously, you’re stuck in an awkward grey nauseous mood. It’s called “the be spontaneous paradox”. It can happen anywhere, in a couple, a family, at work : one person requests something that can only be given spontaneously – love, interest, appreciation, desire, tenderness… You’re now stuck in a Double Bind.

Here’s a good dialog from the 2006 movie “The Break-Up” :

• I busted my ass all day cleaning this house and then cooking that meal! And I worked today. It would be nice if you said “thank you” and helped me with the dishes.
• Fine. I’ll help you do the damn dishes.
• That’s not what I want.
• You just said that you want me to help you do the dishes!
• I want you to want to do the dishes.
• Why would I want to do dishes?
• Why? See, that’s my whole point.
• Let me see if I’m following this, okay? Are you telling me that you’re upset
  because I don’t have a strong desire to clean dishes?
• No. I’m upset because you don’t have a strong desire to offer to do the dishes.
• I just did.
• After I asked you!

MMMmhh?

Imagine a club, a private club with big mellow armchairs. The boss enters the room and solemnly criticize the atmosphere, and then asks everyone to be a little more gay and happy, “a few more laughs would be perfect!” – Imagine the disaster!… (I saw this one day from a web forum administrator. I tried to explain him, but without any effect).

Tool 1 : Learn how to detect when someone asks you to “act spontaneously”. And beware of this when it’s meant but unsaid, perversely implicit : it’s worse ! Your answer can be multiple.

• If you try, you just have to put a mask. But it’s not you, it’s theater. Maybe you will have to wear it!
• You can just say no, of course.
• Go meta-communication : talk about this, explain the paradox and that you will not stay stuck into this.

Tool 2 : Do you do it? Putting other people into these “Please change and act spontaneously like this and like that“? If you did, can you detect the desperate unease and awkwardness you put in the other’s brain? Can you see the mask?

I will always remember this example I got from Watzlawick, a father punishing his kid telling him “Go to your room, and come back when you smile”. Horror!

 

“Let’s pretend” and other as if games

Kids made a hut in the garden. They joyfully scream stories like “Now we’re pirates ! We’re on a boat yeyy ! Oh, look : a whale is coming !”. Then it’s a castle in the desert, a cow-boy fort, etc.

When we become adults, we love and we have to play that game, differently. Instead of pretending to be pirates, managers gabbledygook empty glorious words to a groupe of inner-sarcastic employees. Instead of yelling in the garden, two friends rejoining after a long time fight and misunderstanding suddenly hug and cry together, forgetting their ruins, sobbing projects about strength and sparkling cleanliness. Friends again and forever ! And just spend five minutes in a political meeting, just to taste this energy…

As if, pretending, call it what you want. We all do that, and when we speak this way, we’re like kids : “Yeah, we are strong !”, “Yeah, we will beat them all”, “Yeah, it will be simple and beautiful !”, “Our company is the best !”. Hip hip hip hourra. Do you feel the heat in your heart, when you’re on that path ?

Tool :

Uplifting ! That’s a good english word I learned recently. We all need it from time to time, after a crisis. Suddenly it makes things simple, or more likely d-o-a-b-l-e. Of course it’s not simple, nor even doable, probably, but we have to overshadow this. Let’s pretend we’re strong and OK and that we are on the good path ! Reality sweeping under the carpet…

The secret subtility behind this is : How much we all screaming kids BELIEVE in this shit ? Reason, we all know in the deep, is there in parenthesis. “Dinner is served, kids !”, we all fail, and snap, there’s no castle in the desert, it’s just our f… garden.

Why do I think of Goya, at this time ?

“Dreams of reason produce monsters”

 

Fun of Classifying Personalities

#lilith #movie #blackandwhite

Think how funny it is to find yourself in a classification. En Astrologie, you have 12 boxes. Each sign has characteristics. If you’re a Pisces you are a dreamer, Gemini is fast, Cancer sensible, Taurus slow, etc. You can spend your whole life studying that, or just be funny casual about it, or lazy too : this is a good way to accept your own faults and flaws, no ?

There are many other tools in psychology, helping us to understand who we are, Enneagrams or MBTI, for example. Maybe you’re a leader, or a diplomat, an introvert, an observer, etc. It can be a good way to know yourself, some people around you, a group you’re managing, etc.

One day, you meet another classification, and you’re ready to have fun to put people in boxes ! I just realised that the “mental disorders classification” can be one.

And I would say : OMG ! In French : Oh la laaaa !

Do you have Dependent Personality Disorder Symptoms ?

“Dependent personality disorder is characterized by a long-standing need for the person to be taken care of and a fear of being abandoned or separated from important individuals in his or her life.”

Do you have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Symptoms ?

Are you obsessed by order, rules ? Do you have superstitions about signs and numbers ? Do you fear to lose control ? Focus on moral ideas and rules ? Do you organize to the level of perfectionism ? Do you obsessively dissect your relationships with friends ?

See me coming ? You see ? Of couuuurse you’re not that a sicko-weirdo ! But, well, maybe a little, non ?

Dials : Have fun in classifications. Find your dials. Watch yourself and grow and evolve… or smile and be lazy with “I’m like that, that’s me !”.

Tool : All these classifications are useful because they invite you to have empathy. We all do what we can, after all. On fait tous ce qu’on peut…

A Bomb in a Drawer

I have a little story for you.

Today, in a big company, ten minutes before an important meeting, someone enters a room and tells Miss Rhino that Mister Giraffe will probably “tell something” in this meeting. Tell something wrong. Or dangerous. Or inappropriate.

Is Miss Rhino terrified by this threatening information ? Nope.

She opens a drawer, takes a folder, picks a paper sheet. Then she goes in Mister Giraffe’s office, and silently shows him the paper sheet. When she’s sure he did read the paper, she goes back to her place. Done. Meeting time now !

Intimidation, deterrence, dissuasion, I don’t know how you say that in english. I prefer call it “a bomb in a drawer”. Une bombe dans un tiroir.

Miss Rhino has probably a bomb for every dangerous colleague in the company. But she never uses them. Her enemies should sometimes know that she COULD.

Tool : Do you need a bomb for some people ? When should you show it ? Much before danger (no), or just in case, seconds before assault ? And what if you must use one for real, one day ? To warn others ? OK, let’s call this “Instant Dissuasion”.

#whatisit

 

 

 

Art of Inventing Problems

To invent problems, if you’re a manager in a company, you just have to set rules. Many of them.

There’s always a moment when everybody will forget that a “problem” is not a problem per se, but it’s a problem “because it does not obey the rules”.

There’s sometimes a person, then, who – probably sarcastically – points out that the “situation” wouldn’t really be a problem if this stupid rule didn’t exist.

Tool : When a problem occurs because someone didn’t obey the rules, you can think into the box and put back this person on tracks, or you can think out of the box and just supress, kill, and destroy the stupid useless rule. Bim.

If you haven’t got this power : sarcasm or stoicism. Choose your weapon.

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Marcus Aurelius

 

What to Do With Stupid Orders – Que faire face aux ordres stupides ?

OK I’m french. My english is a frenglish, it’s rusty and wobbly, et voilà. Try me, though. I’ll do my best. I promise. If sometimes it’s too bad, just laugh at me or roll you eyes.

If you evolve within une hiérarchie, you have probably at some point faced… stupid orders. What can we do against stupid orders ? We can think, but we can also act.

Of course, we can choose to secrete some of the stress caused by stupid orders into our heads and that’s OK ! Try doing this for a while though and you’ll most likely stop, because you’ll find it’s useless.

Stupid orders make us think.

Maybe we first have to realize that our managers KNOW his or her instructions are dumb, useless, or counter-productive because after all this game of hierarchy is a matter of masks. At points, it can even become humorous to think that maybe the manager is hiding his own embarrassment when he asks us do – that. Donnez-lui un coup de coude (en pensée).

On the mood-dial of our brains, the needle can go from complete zenitudness (you don’t care about the consequences of disobeying stupid orders – you’re the Zen Master) to complete madness and murderous wishes. Alas, in the hierarchic work world, whatever you “think” can become completely useless. So what happens when your tired skull is fighting responsibility?

We play with this, manage it, compress it, try to understand it, and document it… it’s all ours. Maybe you are great at being able to detect stupid orders, however you prefer not to think about it. So then what do you do with the entire keyboard of options in front of you?

1. You can fight and say NO (aaaand… you’re fired. Goodbye).

2. You can try to explain to your manager (or to his own manager if you like danger) why the order is sooo stupid.

3. You can disobey and hide your “good work”.

4. You can just shut up and do the thing (muttering and mumbling in you beard if need be).

5. Discrete resistance is also an option. For example:  Sabotage.  Slowing the process.  Killing the branches of stupidity in silence and hiding your effort to make these stupid orders a partial or complete failure (however this could lead to betrayal by colleagues and your activity might be detected.)

Tools:

It can be useful to try various types of dissonance in an effort to develop your stance.

Inner Exile can be perfect at times. You are simply not there. You hide like a spider in a hole, linked by a casual thread.

Disguised Acceptation is cool too.  You merely say yes (and smile if you want), but you follow your own path.

At the most you’ll be found guilty of being a free electron. So there!