Buzzwords of Despair February 8, 2008

Original image courtesy Stock.XCHNG

The grand plan

Every manager wants motivated staff, right? Well, despite what the management books might say, it really isn’t difficult for managers to motivate their staff. Unfortunately for managers, there are two kinds of motivation – the motivation to do a good job, and the motivation to do a bad one. Unfortunately, only great managers are able to motivate for success. For the rest of us, the only kind of motivation we can achieve is the negative kind – the motivation to under-perform, to swing the lead, to make mistakes, to leave the company, and so on.

Thankfully, we less-than-great managers can use all this to our advantage. The secret is for us to go beyond simple de-motivation. Yes, indeed: we must aim for something far more soul-destroying. Indeed, we must make it our raison d’être to project an aura of doom, create a zeitgeist of hopelessness, instill a culture of despair. Our glorious quest is to grind our staff so far down, that they’ll never, ever get up again.

You see, once our workers are in the state of total despair, they will no longer have the stomach to do a bad job. Imagine that! They’ll simply lack the gumption to under-perform, have no energy to rebel, lack the creativity to come up with good excuses, and they will have so little self-belief left that the idea that someone else could employ them will never even enter their poor little heads!

Genius, or what?

So here is the crux of this article. I am sure that it will be useful for both managers and our staff.

Managers

To you I give the power to demotivate even the most enthusiastic of your workers, and all it takes are a few simple words. Here is a handly list of some of those vacuous phrases that you can use when they want to give the impression of motivating your staff, but which will inevitably lead to the elimination of all morale.

Workers

To you I give these same phrases. If you hear them often, you’ll know you’re already doomed, for you are already working for one of us. Your soul is already ours (ha ha!). But at least you can play a little buzzword-bingo in the meetings.

The buzzword list

• Think outside the box
• Just do it
• Failure is not an option
• Give 110%
• This is our our wake-up call!
• Just be creative!
• You’ve got to be in it to win it
• Anything that’s easy is not worth a damn
• I know it’s a paradigm shift, but…
• There is no “I” in teamwork
• You’ll really be pushing the envelope
• Think win-win!
• You’ve got to look at the bigger picture
• It’ll all come out in the wash
• You’ll just have to be proactive on this one
• Play to win
• It’s my neck that’s on the line, here
• You’re in the zone
• Play hardball with them
• You’ll just have to shift the goal posts
• Roll with the punches
• Go with the flow
• Stick at it
• I didn’t get where I am today…
• That’s just life, I’m afraid

Then there is the utterly banal:

• I have every confidence in you

And most dastardly of all:

• I’ll be behind you all the way