Corporate Cliches

There are some phrases that I keep hearing day in and day out. I thought I will spend some time pondering over what they mean or if they mean anything at all.

I have heard the expression "look at the long term" so many times that at the beginning of this month I decided to start counting its occurrences.

Going by the theory of relativity what is long for me is short for the management and vice versa. Let me explain: Whenever I ask for a project change I am long and the management is short and whenever it comes to vacations the management is long while I am short and people tell me Einstein did not get Noble for relativity. He must have had nasty manager.

I never quite understood why my manager keeps emphasizing on "the bigger picture".
Hence I decided to find out the bigger picture. I searched every wall in the office, looked in every nook and corner but there was no bigger picture only some mundane posters which talked about ideas and stuff. None of these can be the bigger picture because every damn person in the office has memorized these and yet the management feels that none of us has seen the "bigger picture".

One day my curiosity got better of my fear and I sneaked into my manger's cabin looking for the answer and there I found a picture of him taken while he was vacationing in Greece. So this is the bigger picture he talks about all the time!!
No doubt it is important.

My personal favorite is “It’s got to be a team effort”. What I like about this one is the timing. Whenever the team and the manager disagree this beautiful line is quoted.

This one is specific to my company which sells retirement solutions. The buzz word these days is: “owning retirement”. The logic being, the baby boomers are going to retire soon and there is going to be huge money that one can tap.

Everyone has been asked to think about ideas on these lines. I have a really innovative idea.

The baby boomers will be 60 in 2010 and that is when they retire. So assuming the life expectancy to be 70 they are going to die in 2020. Then there will be huge demand for coffins. Business opportunity!!!

That’s called “out of the box” thinking.