Toddlers, with shotguns

Perhaps it’s age, or perhaps a genuine change in corporate behaviour, but where did all the grown-ups go?

The more you look around in today’s corporate management structures, the more it appears we’ve unleashed a bunch of toddlers with shotguns. Primed to have maximum impact on the business, armed to the teeth with great ideas, filled with enthusiasm, but sadly, all self-serving. No more strategic alignment, commitment to customer, sense of moral responsibility or even a touch of fear of consequence.

Today it seems to be about randomness and inconsistency to build, develop and shape the corporate culture. Less about building people up, coaching and mentoring, more about surprising them with profound actions or even a bit of fear.

Today corporate culture seems to be more about cringing, keeping your head down and not drawing attention to yourself… but then again, with those toddlers with shotguns around, who’d blame you..?

You’re a micro, micro man…

Micro, Micro Man,
I’ve got to be, a Micro Man
Micro, Micro Man,
I’ve got to be a Micro

Micro is the new Macho. In the month of Movember, how cool would it be to have a Micro Manager with a thick Macho moustache!

Awesome. Someone to tell me when to breathe. When to read each email. How to respond. My very own Micro Man will disempower me, relieving me of the terrible burden of decision making. Liberating me. I would no longer need to think, because Micro Man does all the thinking for me.

The best thing about having my own Micro Man is that if I were to do something well, the credit would go to him, standing beside me all the way. If I screw something up, obviously that’s because I’m too stupid to follow the instructions given to me.

The more Micro Men we have in the world, the more mindless idiots we can employ. By giving them a home, we will have no room for those troublesome, free thinking innovative types. With a Micro Man, I can leave most of my intellect and energy at home. It’s simply not needed in the office anymore. I would be so task focussed, without the distraction of solving problems, innovating, or doing anything other than what Micro Man tells me. Every day I would live to bring glory to Micro Man, carrying out his instructions with discipline and diligence.

Micro Man. The key to predictability in the office, with everyone following his instructions. Suffocate innovation, diversity and free thinking. Get yourself a Micro Man today.

When politics trumps purpose

As bizarre as that sounds, it does… (most of the time)

It wasn’t that long ago that a business and it’s collective shared in a common purpose – to make the business great at what it does best. Sadly, since then it seems that most of the grownups have left the room and left the business’ fate to the school-yard bullies and inconsequential, petty politics.

So many businesses nowadays are so racked with petty internal power struggles, distractions, veiled threats, intimation and all the inefficiencies that come from that, that the actual business’s reason-to-be seems long forgotten. The business seems no longer able to do what it is good at… instead it has become a confusion of petty politics.

It does not take much imagination to predict where a business following this path will find themselves in just a few years, yet the politic internal seems not to see this, nor frankly to care. Surely this should be called out as corporate delinquency, or are we too politically correct (or just too scared) now to point this out?

Whatever happened to a sense of corporate responsibility, duty of care to the company and it’s staff? To actually inspiring and leading the business to once again be great, to be competitive and to have a clear purpose that inspires and excites?

When will the adults come back and take control?