Recycled Bullsh-IT

This is the title of a collection of essays by bonkers surrealist, Kurt Vonnegut. They may be made-up words, but each is worth considering in the context of enabling change. Other change musings can be found in Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

A “wampeter” is an object around which the lives of many otherwise unrelated people may revolve. Sound familiar? Most organisations I have worked in resemble a solar system of departments on different orbits (e.g. “what planet are marketing on today?”), aligning once in a, er, blue moon, but mainly causing gravitational drag on everyone else. The Holy Grail, or wampeter, here is the end to end customer process that defines the journey our paying clients experience when they interact with us. Unless we are in syzygy (as per its astronomical meaning), they will experience delays, poor alignment to their needs and massive tidal waves, though the last one may be taking this space analogy too far. A proper alignment of these key processes provides a much stronger pull with the customer.

“Foma” are harmless untruths, intended to comfort simple souls. Such as, “you won’t feel a thing when we remove 10% of your budget this year”. Or “continuous improvement will make your life easier”.  However, you should expect your workers to have a bit of nous to spot they will soon be of no use to the company. Spouting, “We’re all in this together!” while trousering a massive bonus is quickly spotted for the harmful lie it is. Better to accentuate the positive outcomes you expect to gain from the change – You will all be better skilled after the training (assuming you pass…) In real life we all use them. The trick is not to abuse them. The simple souls, I mean.

A “granfalloon” is a proud and meaningless association of human beings. Ah, back to one of my favourite bugbears, governance (cf Do you Want Governance with That?). The Steering Committee is one of the finest creations of large organisations to spread the blame as far as possible for any failure of ownership/nerve/responsibility/etc., by the senior management. Like a sophisticated muck spreader, it flings the manure far and wide eventually settling downward on the poor sods trying to dig for victory. My experience here is: keep the engagement with the stakeholders short and personal. Nobble, I mean brief, each individually before the committee meeting with some good reasons they can rehearse to agree with the recommendation you are going to make. Ensure you go with options (but not too many), a recommendation (which should be blindingly obvious), and a sacrificial decision for them to refuse so that they can feel pleased that they have exerted their authority in the fifteen minutes a month they can be bothered to spend on the programme.

In these depressing times it’s worth stepping back and taking a wider perspective of life, the universe and everything. Remember that work is just those irritating few hours between spending time with family, friends and finding peace for yourself, and that you don’t actually need much money to be happy.

John “Welcome to the Monkey House” Moe

PS Read some of Kurt’s best quotes to chill out more