Hated Sales/ManagerSpeak phrase of the week:

This week: "Think Outside the Box."

AAARRRGGGHHH! That phrase has now become so irritating that I'm afraid I will lay the Hammer down on the next jackass who says it in a meeting. Note to Sales/Marketing/Management folks: If you are in any way competent you should have hired people who by DEFAULT look at problems from many angles before deciding a course of action. And your company should be selling products that are different and better than the competitors. If either of these things are not true it is a reflection on YOU and your inability to hire the right people. On the other hand if you use that phrase out of habit or because you think it's cool in that disturbing frat-boy automaton way just DON'T or someone is going to lay the the Hammer down one of these days.

My old company started using that inane phrase in the late 70's.(hate it) You would think if they were actually thinking outside the box, they could come up with a new phrase by now. The other catch word I hated from back then was paradigm.

"We need to think outside the box to achieve a paradigm shift to achieve new synergy within the product space."

Uh, so you want us to create a warp drive unit?

nice.

Some of my personal "favorites".

"Failure is not an option."

Or after someone has made an error..."We need to be sure that doesn't happen again." Really? Gee, thanks for that. I thought making mistakes was why we were here.

Or how about when five tasks are given to you at once. You ask the reasonable question..."which is top priority? which do you want me to work on first?" and get the classic..."They all need to be done right now." Oh, really...ok, hold on, I'll just clone four copies of myself for you.

In reply to:
"which is top priority? which do you want me to work on first?" and get the classic..."They all need to be done right now."

Which to me means they're all of equal importance... and they're catagorized right under "lunch".

I've noticed how things are asked of you based on the following words in someone's title:

Officer (CEO/COO) says "I don't care where we go as long as we make more money when we get there" - they know what they don't know and usually stay out of my hair as long as I'm producing. - in high school, these guys were in 4H and missed all the good parties.

Sales says "I promised the client we'd get them to New York by tomorrow" - they ask for the difficult and leave me alone to find the best way to walk on water to make them look good. They need me to make things happen, I need them so I don't have to come into direct contact with the clients' sales guys. I don't speak their language (which consists of sayings like "you sly dog", "how's your wife and my kids?" and are usually punctuated with an elbow to the ribs and spilled beer) so they translate for me. - in high school, these guys were getting drunk in church.

Marketing says "The client needs to be in New York by yesterday", hands me a map of Eastern Europe and jumps up and down in the back seat screaming "Are we there yet?" and "You know, if I would have driven we'd be there already", then they usually hit their head and drift off to sleep until their next lack of forethought becomes my crisis - they ask for the impossible, micromanage every step and then try to put the blame on my shoulders when it all goes to hell. Most of these people have extra chromosomes. A further way of determining someone in marketing is whether or not they have TGIF - Toes Go In First - written on their shoes. - these guys had mothers that drank while pregnant.

Bren R.

In reply to:
"which is top priority? which do you want me to work on first?" and get the classic..."They all need to be done right now."

My standard reply to that is along the lines of "OK, they'll be done when they're done."

Don't even get me started about the promises the S&M boys make. Unbelievable. They spout off their "MarketingSpeak" crap without understanding the tech behind what they are selling. They then can not for the FREAKING LIFE OF THEM resist saying "uh, yeah, we could add that in. By tomorrow." Ever wonder why "vaporware" is so prevalent in the industry? That's why. We have a project RIGHT NOW that is supposedly 3 weeks behind schedule because a sales rep, WITHOUT THE BENEFIT OF CONSULTING OUR ENGINEERING DEPT., sold a non-existent application to a customer. Not just a module for a current app or and update but a BRAND NEW APP. On top of that he allows the customer to add req's to the project constantly. My solution: Either make all S/M personnell go on salary only or they have to give up 50% of their commissions to the folks that ACTUALLY DO THE WORK!

I wonder what those S&M guys say about us IT folks.

I'm thinking S&M would stand for Sales & Marketing. In that case there wouldn't be any leather involved.

Sounds like it should BS to me.

How about "It will get easier once you get used to it," which really means bend over, buddy.

One of my favorites is the use (or misuse, depending on how you look at it) of the word "clearly" in a manner which implies "and if you don't see it the way I do, you are the stupidest jackass to walk on two legs." Clearly the word "clearly" is clearly overused to clearly indicate that clearly anyone who clearly disagrees with me is clearly an idiot! AAARRRGGGHHH!

In reply to:
I wonder what those S&M guys say about us IT folks.

I would assume they view us as know-it-all roadblocks to their goal of acquiring that beachfront house in Barbados. That and as their personal research lab because they are too lazy to actually learn things for themselves. Example: The other day one of them decided they need use an enterprise-level CRM solution. Fine. But as part as their shpiel it came out that they didn't actually want to learn how to use it. They want IT to not only research the software (believe me, they don't want any part in actually choosing it because if we spend $$$ and they don't use it or they claim it's not what they wanted they can (try to) blame IT) but to learn how to use it and all of its quirks then show them how it's done.

Now, I have no problem with learning the basics of any new app, and I have no problem with teaching people those things. But everone else here and at other jobs just understands that if you need a new tool it is necessary and imcumbent on them to expense the ubiquitous "$50 computer book" and learn about that tech for yourself. At my company it is NOT IT's job to act as a help desk in that way. For problems or hard-to-find answers to software or hardware questions yes. But to answer basic functionality questions from people who don't even bother to use the Help menu, no. The question is does IT have the cycles available for this? No. We are a 2 1/2 person crew. The 1/2 works QA part time. We not only keep all of the systems running here but design an build the rackmount computer systems that are shipped to customers. Right now we have 1 ready to ship, 2 being finished, the pieces for 2 more arriving, and have 6 count 'em 6 in various stages of design. And of course every design has to go through CCB's at every stage. On top of that of course we are researching this CRM software. That leaves basically negative time to become the Jedi masters of the client side of this software. Luckily our VP put the kibosh on that idea quickly. And still luckier is the fact that our President/CEO is an engineer. We will research and implement a solution APPROVED bye the S/M department, and they will buy the books and learn how to use it to their advantage. Of course we'll buy one too, but *ssshhhh*, they don't need to know that.

Sounds to me like you have a deficit of about 80 man-hours per week. They should either double your salaries or hire two more people to answer their inane questions.

We actually do quite well 90% of the time. I guess you can tell who makes life hell for us the rest of the time. I guess the most frustrating thing is that we get the sense they are upstairs just planning and waiting until we are at our busiest before they spring their harebrained schemes on us. We're right at the edge of needing the other half of our third guy though. If we could have him handle most of the every day stuff (AND S/M!) we would be sitting pretty. And they should double our salaries anyway!

I work for a consulting company. In the past two weeks, I have only had my regularly scheduled appointments, nothing else pre scheduled to fill in my time. 15 minutes before a big empty block, every day, without fail, there has been an "emergency" that i have to get to now now now. Usually, the emergency is poor planning, poor promising, or complete and total fear of the client on the part of the sales guy. Today, I'm at my regular, very good client, and a machine goes down. I call the sales guy to tell him that I just am not going to be able to make my afternoon appointment (which I already had him push back an hour because I was an hour late to work from TRAFFIC.) He panics. He's terrified of the client. Abso-freakin-lutely terrified. So he agrees with her that I'll go over there, even if it's only for an hour. Dollars to donuts, she will not have a list for me, and probably won't really have anything for me to do.

Doubleyou
Tee
Eff.

Mark, you crack me up. Anybody who can get "Jedi" and "Kibosh" seamlessly into the same paragraph deserves the rest of the afternoon off.

In reply to:
Usually, the emergency is poor planning, poor promising, or complete and total fear of the client on the part of the sales guy.

Heehee. Another "Stupid Sales Guy Trick:"

SG: I told them we'd schedule the upgrade for 4:30 on Friday.

IT1: You WHAT?!

SG: Errummummm I thought that would be best, umm, so as not to impact their schedule.

IT1: They can schedule a down anytime. They run 24/7!

SG: Errrummmumm, uh, huhuh, synergy.

Later:

IT2: He did WHAT?

IT1: That's what I said.

IT2: It's not like the upgrade will only take half an hour! F!ck! We'll be in here until 9. And their IT is off after 5 Friday until Monday morning! If something goes wrong we are going to have to troubleshoot it from 2500 miles away and with only regular mill operators to watch things on their end. F!ck!

IT1: I know. I'm expensing steaks from Ruth's Criss and having them delivered by a cab. The Boss will sign for it before taking a baseball bat to SG's office.

A few minutes later:

The Boss: F!ck! Too bad he sells so much. I'd like to take a baseball bat and smash everything in his office including him. Order the biggest steaks they have and I'll have HIM sign for it under HIS budget. Each of you take a day off next week too on flex time.

How to be a Sales guy in a tech company:

1) Use email as little as possible when communicating within the company. That way when things go wrong they can't trace it back to you.

2) When asking for something, be as vague as you possibly can. NEVER give any time, cost, specification, or ANY other parameters. The trick here is to make the other guy specify these things, therefore removing responsibility from yourself.

3) When a customer asks for something, NEVER EVER EVER SAY "WE DON'T HAVE THAT!" Always say "we have something similar" or "we can make that work" or "we're working on that right now."

4) There are no margins in computer hardware. So, even though our products are made to run factories 24/7/365, try to hammer on the IT guys to lower their HW standards on every piece. I mean, spending $75,000 on hardware only leaves us with $525,000 for the software and man-hours. I don't get commisions on the hardware part.

5) When in doubt, obfuscate.

6) From the Book of Redmond, 2:13:

"And yea, tho yon Product hath performed well, and shall continue, resteth thine weary head not, for Upgrades shall be the Path to true Peace. Sayeth unto thine Customer 'Yon feature shall only be available-eth in the next upgrade,' and Lo, the eyes of Profit and Commission shall smile brightly evermore."

My dumba$$ boss always uses the phrase "economies of scale" along with "think outside the box". To bad he never uses them in the right context.

Sometimes I wonder how some people become Directors/VP's/CFO's/CTO's/etc.... I guess I don't play the sucking up game and never plan to.....

I thought everybody knew this. Every member of the workforce loses a brain cell for each dollar they are paid over and above what their position actually merits. People who are paid less than they are worth gain brain cells. This is why people who work for non-self-funded non-profits are so smart.

>>This week: "Think Outside the Box."

I had a minor triumph at work this year. We are now (all 600+ of us) more or less agreed that all are forbidden from even TALKING about "thinking outside the box" until they have demonstrated that they KNOW WHERE THE BOX IS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

This has made things run much more smoothly. You have to manage at least one project and actually FOLLOW our current processes before you can start recommending that we throw everything out and adopt your new process.

I prefer to think outside the sphere.

I prefer to think outside tetrahedrons.

neener neener neener!

I prefer to think outside of the cubicle myself, I believe spending my life in one of those things would drive me absolutely nuts.

"what about thinking outside the bun"

I find it hard to think outside my brain, let alone some darn box.