Management Bollocks

I am struggling to keep up with all the "management-speak" at my place of work. It seems that every week some new phrase creeps in to the conversations. I fell victim to jargon this past week when I was asked what would be attributes of my quality scorecard, and I didn't have a clue how to answer. Now put it in a normal sentence such as, "What would be some metrics that we could use as an indicator of your project's quality" or something similar, and I would've known what was being asked. Other jargon that I encounter in my job almost daily are: lets socialize it at the all-hands, we need to assess the value-stream, get off your bike and hit the ground running, let's pareto the data, We really need to push the envelope on this one, 360-degree feedback, lets put that on the parking lot for now, we need to attack the low-hanging fruit.....its endless.

I have a cool book called Management Bollocks. Here's a couple of my favorite entries:

Reinvigorate your family life by importing positive management models into the home:
Introduce total Quality management into mowing your lawn.
Implement Key Performance Indicators for the cleaning lady.
Write a mission statement for the milkman.
Outsource your children. Downsize your spouse, Re-engineer your cat.

Your organization's core competencies must be protected at all costs. If you're not sure whether your organization has any core competencies, bring in outside consultants. (To pay for outside consultants, it may be necessary to close down your core competencies).