Management: The Great White Elephant

his for most of us salaried employees.
When you actually take some time off your own painful sojourn in the organization, and study some attributes or characteristics of your company's 'management' people, you find tons and tons of interesting, and downright funny behaviour.
Being a humorist of sorts, I've been doing this for years. And I assure you, I always find it hilarious. The body language, the 'speak', the antics, general air, and nuances of top management people are something worth seeing.

I'll start from something that's common to those of us who work in projectized environments - The Project Steering Committe Meeting. Cast of characters are usually the CEO, the CFO, the Implementer, the Project Manager, The Conscientiously Objecting Executive, The Whistle Blower, and the Fringe Players. Short description of the characters follow:

The CEO - Self-explanatory, abi?

The CFO - Finance man, money man, whichever you prefer.

The Implementer - The guy who runs the team that's supposed to do the actual work.

The Project Manager - Usually some flunky with mutiple certifications, and knows nothing about what needs to be done, but facilitates the project.

The Conscientiously Objector - The chap who is doing his best to ensure the project doesn't fly.

The Whistle Blower - Always there to play the government-will-not-like-this card, but never shows any actual evidence of what they're saying.

The Fringe Players - No real deliverable, but just need to be in the meeting to stay relevant.



So our Project Team Meeting (never mind which project, they generally go the same way) usually runs like this:

Project Manager: Hi everyone, pls take a look at my status report/gantt chart/graph/spreadsheet, and look at the way I've organised the information. Though, none of the deliverables are on track, but never mind that, just appreciate the aesthetics.

Implementer: We are unable to deliver on any of these timelines, due to various random instances of force majeur. For example, a car ran over my dog's leg, and we've been in hospital ever since!

Conscientiously Objector: I have an objection to these deliverables. And I would like to debate each and every one of the points.

Fringe Player: .

CEO (in whispered aside to CFO): I have no idea what any of these people are talking about!

Project Manager: : Please let's stay on track! Now I have some next 20 slides on the status of this project . . .

Whistle Blower: It's very clear some of these deliverables are clearly violating some government statutory obligations xyz . . . following by a lot of big words. Deep silence followed by confusion on all sides.

CEO: Wait a minute . . This is not what I asked you guys to deliver!!!



Do you have similar management scenarios you see play out in your company on a daily basis. Please share with us.