The Office Jester… every office needs one to sustain the corporate expert
The modern day corporate structure is designed to make muppets look like specialists and turn experts into puppets. In other words, the corporate world leans heavily in favour of man management as opposed to expertise.
Now, this post isn’t meant to be a slight on corporate managers all over the world as there are actually geniuses out there who truly can get the best out of their teams. Instead, this post, and indeed the following video is supposed to highlight the plight of the corporate expert albeit humorously.
We must not forget “humorously”. It is after all the point of the whole “Office Jester” exercise. So, how does the corporate expert cope with nonsensical managers and survive in such nonsensical environments? The following video shows quite succinctly.
Evolution of the Corporate Expert
The video dives right in, so be prepared when you press that play button. The very first thing that will jump out at you will be the manner in which the woman in white explains the “project”. The cool cat uses kewl phrases such as “new strategic initiative”, “increase market penetration”, “maximise brand loyalty”, “enhance intangible assets” all of which basically means “we want to increase our sales and profits”.
The vehicle they will use to attain these supposedly lofty goals is “Seven Red Lines” and they’re outsourcing the work to another company. Our advice to you is to not fuss too much about the “Seven Red Lines”. It’s supposed to be simplistic to show us how corporations can make even simplest of tasks into complex projects.
After that, there’s another little nugget that corporate managers value: delegating work. The boss and the project manager, you can tell, are nothing but managers and we mean that with as much condescension as we can manage.
This video peddles stereotypes, of course. This means that the design specialist, Justine, had to have been a vapid bimbette who would be better off in the dead field of interior designing than anything corporate related.
The project itself is full of contradictions, which any corporate expert will tell you, is common place. They want 7 red lines, all “strictly” perpendicular (!), some in green, and some transparent.
The corporate expert, obviously, says that such a combination is impossible and if you don’t understand why then maybe you’re a corporate honcho somewhere. Perhaps, you also don’t believe in the word “impossible” (motivational nonsense spouted by corporate managers everywhere, after all, one of their tasks is to “motivate”).
The corporate managers kept putting the corporate expert down while saying “you’re the expert here”. We wonder why these managers don’t listen to their experts and follow their advice if they think that they’re the experts. The answer is that they don’t think they’re experts.
7 red lines, all strictly perpendicular may be possible but only in The Twilight Zone because drawing them would result in the creation of seven dimensions.
In the rest of the video, the managers and the designer confuse colours with perpendicularity, thinking that they would affect each other. The pace picks up, which means that there’s so much happening that it would be counterproductive to write about it.
Maybe you can tell us what you think in the comments section. Are you a corporate expert who has suffered through such meetings? Are you, mayhaps, a corporate manager who is raging inside at the insults in this video? Do tell us.
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