All weekend, the Facebook feed and my personal were bursting with links to the same video - “Very Important Meeting” from the Comedy Club members. Comments and captions were monosyllabic: “ha”, “exactly”, “do you remember, we did the same in N in R”, etc. I did not immediately watch the video, but as soon as I saw it, I realized: this is an article. Article on Habr. Because the video turned out to be cool, in terms of relevance for today no worse than “Red Lines”, funny and somehow very symptomatic, causing not kind, but nervous, almost sarcastic laughter. Well, let's see, let's see.
The video itself, if anyone has not seen it yet (I post a link to the most normal of the channels, if the SS themselves upload it, I will re-upload it). Videos are constantly deleted, you have to shift 🙂
Hint: Because it gets deleted all the time, search YouTube for "important comedy meeting" or "nail it or stick it." Particularly patient can review the entire advertisement and find the original at 48:45 in (by the way, for the fans, there is an interview with Wylsacom at the beginning of the issue, like a geek issue).
First of all, I want to say that the video had a cool screenwriter who not only thought up this story, but who was in the subject. I am sure that this is not an ordinary author of the guys, but someone who went through the corporate vent in a large company and felt important nuances.
Advertising line: .
At first glance, it may seem that the purpose of the video is to make fun of office newspeak and slang, which is incomprehensible to a simple hard worker-supply manager who accidentally turned into a supply manager. For an inexperienced viewer, it is - frankly incomprehensible language, funny reactions, vivid images. For a person who has gone through 14 years of corporate life and three very large companies (all IT), the video sounds completely different. It's a caricature of all of us guys. For some, almost everything is considered, for others - only a part, but how not to recall the immortal Gogol: “Who are you laughing at? Laugh at yourself."
So, let's go
Somewhere before this meeting, the supply manager formed the agenda - and all the managers gathered about whether to nail a sign or stick it. Already at this stage, we see the first problem: the lack of personal responsibility of the employee within his competence, the desire to transfer everything to the field of collective responsibility. In addition, most likely, the agenda itself was formed incorrectly and the essence of the issue was not voiced, otherwise he would have known that his report was expected.
We see a large group of managers, learn about the presence of departments in the company, which means that we are talking about a complex hierarchical organizational structure, which just disposes of collective responsibility. That is why they list a huge number of actions that will be initiated after the meeting.
In addition, towards the end of the video, it is proposed to conduct a digital screening and a focus group. In large companies, there are several motivations for such actions:
- spend your department's budget on research
- really test the hypothesis and find an external, weighty, justification
- to show that the employees who are involved in these processes are not paid in vain.
And yes, it happens that such serious events are held for trifling decisions such as evaluating the New Year's landing page. These are inexpedient expenses, it is better to turn to a / b tests 🙂
Further in the course of the meeting, important root causes of such behavior of company managers are revealed.
“We want to avoid fakery so that there is no negative background.” The company is obviously afraid of mistakes, because they can affect the reputation. Unfortunately, in our time, information (even unverified) scatters instantly and it’s easier to overdo it and not make a decision than to prove later that you are not a camel and spend money on anti-crisis communications, which, moreover, do not give any guarantees. This feature is common to almost all companies.
"Glue is toxic, and we would like to avoid the image of a toxic company." Again, the company's image is important not only inside, but also outside, in particular, in order to choose the best applicants for itself. If there are bad rumors about the company, it will no longer be possible to get a cool professional. And consumers can bully a company over a stupid little thing.
"This is against our metal free philosophy", "we will be accepted". The company looks back at important trends. In particular, hereinafter we see that the corporation has become dependent on one of the most fashionable and controversial trends - ecology. Indeed, if a well-known corporation does something unsustainable, it will be angered not only by customers, but also by non-profit companies and advocates. And this is again reputation, risks, money ...
The company's communication methods are also interesting. First, it is reported that one of the managers will send out a letter following the results of the meeting (by the way, for some reason they didn’t mention the word “followup”, it sounds right at every rally of large companies at the end), then channels and chats are instantly created in instant messengers. And again, two features of modern management are revealed.
- Everyone voices the rationale for why he chose this or that messenger. This is also part of the removal of responsibility - I informed, I argued, and you do whatever you want.
- Lots of technologies used. Indeed, one company can have 2-3 instant messengers + mail + chatroom. This is inconvenient, confusing, scatters information and reduces efficiency. The problem is that companies can be lobbied for certain technologies by groups of employees, and then a conflict of interest arises.
At the same time, the manager-analyst offers to watch the presentation in keynote. And, I must say, this is a good move: the information is visualized, and comes not only through the audio channel, but also through vision, which improves perception. Even in the video, this is a “clear spot”, a good visual. This does not mean that you need to spend working time on presentations on any trifle (do we remember what the heroes gathered for?), But if the topic is serious, supporting the explanation with slides is a good surprise for the meeting participants.
We have three key points left.
The problem of a long period of decision-making. “You sit on your asses and cannot solve an elementary question. While you were deciding what kind of alarm we should make, we got robbed six times. You decide a year - a year! - where to put the cooler," the supply manager, who, in fact, created this agenda, shakes the air.
Indeed, the chain of approval in a large company can not only slow down the project, but also cause specific harm - for example, waste or spoil a resource, miss a market opportunity, not implement automation on time, and so on. Again, there is an imitation of activity (coordination), the work formally takes place, but there is no final solution. Small business cannot afford such a luxury - it will go bankrupt 🙂
Finally, the only rational solution is proposed: to use "plastic screws from recycled ocean debris" for the plate. A good decision from a person with a salary of a million (uff, worked out) - take it and do it. But then we return to the fact that, in fact, the negative hero of the video is the supply manager, because he splits the task exactly according to the guideline and asks a new question: “Do I make the screw head for a Phillips screwdriver or for a hex?” The trigger worked, everything resumes in a circle, the rally is scheduled. That is, even in such a petty task, the employee relieves himself of the burden of making a decision. But do not rush to condemn him - maybe the company is persecuted by any independent decision and the initiative you know what it does with the initiator.
Thus, we saw a typical corporation that depends on external opinion and lubricates responsibility as much as possible. This is certainly an inefficient company that has subsidized sources of income. Therefore, for employees of large companies, the video is “life-giving”, and for employees of medium and small businesses it is an occasion to laugh at certain things that no-no, and even slip. Especially if an effective manager from a large business gets hired. Need to re-educate 🙂
About Newspeak
Finally, I will turn to the main theme of the video - newspeak, an office language overflowing with anglicisms even where it is not needed. I am a fairly modern employee who understands absolutely all these words, it happened that in past jobs I had to trump them when it was not yet mainstream (2008-2010). So, everything is very clear here.
- Such words give a visible weight to the speech, light juggling gives the experience of a manager "in a corporate".
- They mask mistakes, problems, and outright messes.
- They single out a circle of the elite who understand these words.
- They give a sense of professionalism - you just feel like in the best scenes from American business films.
But this is true up to a point. When you become a professional, you understand that only those who are well versed in the topic can explain in human language and on their fingers. And such office newspeak is not needed.
Of course, some buzzwords, especially in IT, will not go out of use: we refactor and commit, debug and check, deploy and send to production. These are professional jargon. But you need to get rid of solution and disigina 🙂
While writing, I thought that it turned out to be something similar to the essay “what the author was thinking about when he wrote the novel”, although he may not have thought about anything, but sipped wine and dreamed of a young serf. So here - we do not know what the writer was thinking, but our laughter and the virality of this video are very symptomatic. And it’s great that while we’re laughing, it means that everything is fine with self-criticism.
Source: habr.com