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« Quote of the day, maybe the decade

All Too Familiar

Published on 9 Mar 2012 at 3:21 pm | No Comments | Trackback
Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, Manifest Masquerade, Thanks for Playing.

Great case of CargoCult biz from Derek Lowe who is guest blogging for Ms. McCardle at the Atlantic.  (BTW, does anyone else see a pattern in the progression of her "projects"…  Maybe it’s just me but…   congrats to her if I’m right.)

 Things always changed.

I remember trying to get this across to representatives of the managerial group pushing this new system. We kept hearing about how better goal alignment, "coaching for success", and a good dose of positive attitude would make this whole thing a success, and I couldn’t take it any more. "Look", I said, "I can’t ‘just put down what I’m going to be working on for the year’, because I don’t know. I can’t ‘just focus on the projects that are most likely to succeed’, because I don’t know what those are. I don’t care what it says on the org chart. I’m in research, and my real bosses are a bunch of cells in a dish and a bunch of rats in cages. They determine what I’m going to work on next. And they can’t be coached for success, and they don’t care how much team spirit I have, because they don’t listen to me."
This didn’t go over well. My audience from HR seemed to think that I was either lying, trying to be funny, misinformed, or (most likely) just not enough of a team player.