Today, let’s argue. I’ll start, but for the faint of heart, I must give a HUGE SARCASM WARNING. I may not actually mean much of what follows, although if you’ve never read anything else I’ve written, you may well be a bit confused. WARNING OVER.
Life is not for the bold, they’re often punished for their foolishness. Vision is not required, compliance and completion are all that matters, and even completion is not as critical as compliance. Vision, the self-serving claim of the foolishly bold, is the sort of thing that not only gets you into trouble, it should be outlawed. No, that’s too glamorous a term. Not outlawed, discouraged. Find your task, the right task, the one that will be authorized, and just do that. Vision will lead you astray.
Never, under any circumstances be relentless. Take your breaks and picture the coming weekend. Live for your vacation and make sure you leave each day on time. Never show up early, never stay late. Never refuse help to a fellow worker, and never withhold your friendly ear, your commiserating connection. Phones will always ring; they need not be answered so quickly, they’ll just ring again anyway. Start working, when you must, but don’t invest too much, and never lose your sense of observation of those around you. If you simply set your antenna to look for it, you’ll always know the exact moment when you’re supposed to reduce your effort. Conservation of energy and social pleasure are truly critical values. Take time to smell the flowers, and if no one has ordered any at the office recently, make sure you ask the administrator what the flower policy is.
It is additionally critical to save jobs from the hatchet man’s reach and we don’t execute people, let alone plans, that is for barbarians. Not only is execution, like vision, a thing of sharp danger and risk, it really isn’t what we do. What we do is survive and get through. We react and we meet. We discuss and we surely do consider from time to time. But, most things take care of themselves and initiatives come and go. It’s okay to appear interested, but not overly enthusiastic and it is far more important to be certain than busy. Too busy gets noticed, and that really is not good.
The last thing anyone wants is for you to be heavy, too deep, too intense, too talkative, or, let’s face it, too attentive. You weren’t hired to think. Just do your job and keep your nose clean. Don’t fill your nose up with all the fumes of purported “insight.” If we wanted you to analyze, we’d put the word “Analyst” in your job title. And, come on, we don’t penetrate around here. It’s a dirty word and you can never be too careful about the words you choose. Words matter, and that’s absolutely not a good one. No penetrating, and in fact, let’s not say that word anymore, please.
Analysis can’t help. What we need to do is put the past behind us, and focus on the here and now. We must be realistic, and I don’t see anyone paying for an analysis around here. Well sure, some companies sell analytical reports, and so of course in those cases we’re allowed to analyze things like the market, or computer software systems, etc. We can even analyze financial statements and other internal reports. But, the thing you never want to analyze is behavior or worse, thinking. We’re not Psycho-analysts. Theory is for sissies. Philosophy and religion are not welcome here, and we don’t believe in things like souls that can’t be observed and measured directly, anyway. Read the manual, if you must. Find the policy and follow it, if you must. Better yet, just show up and be good, as in fit in. We shouldn’t be talking about this this much.
We have a research and development department. They invent and reinvent things. No one else need consider such and don’t go getting creative on us, it will not be tolerated. Follow the posted guidelines, and by all means, read today’s memo, carefully. All required instructions will be provided.
The one thing we can all agree on, however, is that we repeat and repeat and repeat. No, no changing what we repeat, that’s not allowed. We haven’t done it that way before, and we didn’t invent that here anyway. No starting new things, or changing old things, until the reorganization indicates the new program. But, you can be confident, the new program, and the new reorganization will be a whole lot like the last one, and you can comfortably repeat that.
In fact, we don’t need any cornerstones, we have corner offices. We’re already completely excellent, although that’s not the correct way to express our mission. We provide the best service in the market and optimize the return to all of our stakeholders, providing extraordinary value because our people make the difference. We haven’t quite replaced IBM, yet, but our dream is to arrive at the day when no one can ever be fired for purchasing from us. Our market share indicates that soon, we will be the state of the art in comfort and conformity.
It’s good to debunk things that need not be considered. Don’t you agree?
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