08 December, 2008

Dial A Cliche - On The Phone With My Boss

I spent nearly an hour makin' out with my bluetooth this morning while discussing business strategy with my boss, Big D. It's an entirely grueling endeavor whenever I talk to him, due to my long ago realization that, without the heady use of business world cliches, the man would be at a complete loss for words.

Big D is a little like Ron Burgundy, only dumber. I swear that he has a teleprompter loaded with cliches that he reads during our bi-weekly updates. It's more than a little evident that the guy is clueless, so he uses a masterful array of cliches to appear knowledgeable, when in fact he's hiding behind the facade of an uninspiring manager.

His favorite cliche is to end every lame point with, "but at the end of the day". In fact, he blew out his "but at the end of the day" quota with about five months left in the year. I propose we give him an award for this at the upcoming holiday party.

This morning he was in a particularly focused cliche zone.

"Look, we need to think outside of the box in this current paradigm shift we're seeing in order to win the business of the low hanging fruit. Let's use the 80/20 rule to identify potential partners that best fit our value proposition in order to create a win-win situation for us and the customer. We need to be aggressive and push the envelope by maximizing leverage through our core strengths because at the end of the day we need to show the client that we're the best in breed that can perform as a change agent that brings value-add to the table. So let's hit the ground running and provide a scalable solution that takes it to the next level in todays highly competitive market place."

As you can clearly ascertain, Big D is a master of saying everything and nothing, all at the same time.

At the end of the day though, I do know one thing.

It's just the end of the day.

And thank God for that.

2 comments:

Anna Gibbs said...

This frightens me that corporate America has become a cookie cuter of management that is unable to think for themselves. I just got a new boss and it seems to me that he went to management training and leaves as The Scarecrow with a list a Merckisms that babbles off without making much sense what so ever. I’m happy to hear that I’m not the only one subject this unacceptable management style. I think that it’s time that they start to “think out side of the corporate box” or with their own brains.

Max Fischer said...

well said, Miss Anna. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then pharmaceutical management training is what paves the way.