Parris on strategy etc

[webofevil]

Matthew Parris in today’s Times

Last week I cited a Department for Work and Pensions list of its myriad heads of “communications”, “strategic communications”, “communication operations” etc. This has prompted a reader to send me a full-page newspaper advertisement, describing situations vacant in the Commission for Equality and Human Rights.

It advertises the positions of 13 different Directors (“Salaries £55,000- -80,000”): a Director of Policy, of Foresight, of Research, of the Disability Programme, of Business Planning, of the Commissioners' Office, of Legal Policy, of Legal Enforcement, of Corporate Law and Governance, of Information Management, of External Affairs, of Stakeholder Management and of the English Regions.

What is “stakeholder management”? What is “information management”? What does a “Director of Foresight” do? Why is there no Director of Hindsight? Why does the CEHR want a “Director of External Affairs”—are quangos now to maintain embassies abroad?

Well, each job is described. All require (the ad says) “strategic vision”, the Disability Director being required to “lead and direct a portfolio of strategic policy projects” (as well as “deliver the CEHR's mandate and cross-strand approach”), while the Director of Business Planning is “developing” “strategic policy projects”, and the Foresight Director is busy identifying “key strategic objectives”.

The Director of the Commissioners’ Office, meanwhile “will fill a strategic role”; the Legal Policy Director (“working closely with external stakeholders”) will “build strategic relationships” while “leading the development” of a “legal strategy”; and the Legal Enforcement Director will ensure the CEHR “meets [its] strategic objectives”. In a text no longer than this column, one clutch of vacuities occurs again and again:

strategy/strategic: 8

policy: 9

manage/management: 10

lead/leadership: 8

relationship/s: 5

build/develop/build and develop: 12

co-ordinate: 3

stakeholders: 4

The landscape is littered with “goals”, “objectives”, and “targets”. An insane climax is reached in the description of the Director of Stakeholder Management's role: “You will help build and develop the external face of the CEHR [though the External Affairs Director “will have a unique opportunity to build and develop the external face of the CEHR”] as an accessible, ambitious organisation. Key tasks will include co-ordinating stakeholder relationships... whilst co-ordinating a process that categorises relationships... You will also establish relationship management objectives and goals.”

On what planet, in what galaxy, in which cosmos do these people live? Is theirs an internal language, known only to a priesthood? Does the language mean anything to them? An entire segment of our fellow citizens is spinning off into a kind of linguistic oblivion, leaving us, gaping and bewildered, behind.

The first comment on the column:

I spent a while (a long time ago) working in recruitment advertising. I soon found out that the point of a job ad is not to describe the job in detail, in case you put people off. The idea is to 'sell' the role by creating a kind of verbal mood music. Words like ‘strategic’, ‘leadership’ and ‘stakeholders’ are designed not to communicate information, but to signal that this is a vaguely senior role in which you’ll be taken quite seriously. Public sector organisations use them a lot, thinking this will prove that they are modern, thrusting businesses.

I got out of recruitment advertising quickly.

The Cabinet Office human resources strategy

Comments

[lifesizemonkey.livejournal.com]

It's very much like that where i work. I want to set up an auto-reply email to any email i receive from our HR dept that simply asks, "But what does that even MEAN?"

[offensive-mango.livejournal.com]

Information management is important. Just because it sounds like doublespeak doesn't necessarily mean that it is.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

Yes, there are a couple of things Parris complains about that are actual terms with concrete definitions, whose meaning has clearly passed him by. But his general point still stands; in fact, it may even be reinforced if, as far as non-strategy-speakers are concerned, genuine meaning is being utterly subsumed by bullshit.

[offensive-mango.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's true. Then again, "information management" really is what it is, and that is the simplest term you can use to describe it, but it will always sound like bullshit to people who aren't involved in it and whose jobs will never touch it. So how do we know that every other term they've used isn't just as real and valuable to people who are involved in that side of business?

[strictlytrue.livejournal.com]

I agree with Mango. Generally, I find Parris and his ilk to be a bunch of smug c*nts who couldn't run a (insert cliched phrase about running things here), and know that they can't - and don't care. It's fair to say that some documents use too much jargon, but that's about it. Just because Parris has found 9 uses of the word "policy" in a document, that doesn't mean that it doesn't mean anything.

On top of it all, Parris, despite his liberal leanings, is a Tory. And Tories hate the state, or public bodies, trying to run or manage anything. It's like Clarkson on Jonathan Ross the other day opining how much better it would be if there were no Government and people just, y'know, sort of got on with it. Unfortunately, without management - or at least people trying to manage, even if it is in a clumsily worded way, people just sort of don't.

Moreover, it's not an accident that it's the Commission for Equality and Human Rights that he's picked out. That's another thing that Tories just assume should "just happen".

[lowlowprices.livejournal.com]

Are there any acknowledged originals in the field of management theory, whose writings can be read for illumination and enjoyment by the interested layman and whose thought is neither wholly parasitic nor needlessly vague, apart from Brian Clough?