Management Mumbo Jumbo

[MikeUpNorth]

Okay, so religion gets a hard time on here (and rightly so) for being irrational and unsupported by evidence...so I thought I'd start a thread on another form of irrationality.

Over the last two days I have been on a 'Personal Effectiveness and Management Training' course at work, which is done by an external company. And I have to say I have rarely encountered such a steady and sustained stream of bullshit in such a short space of time.

Firstly they got us to undertake some kind of personality test, which involved us answering a load of highly subjective and vague questions about how we deal with people and conflict. These results were then interpreted and 'analysed' to give us each a score on three areas of personality: assertiveness, altruistic / team behaviour and analytical behaviour. But rather than giving much detail about these headings, they generally referred to them as simply 'red', 'blue' and 'green' for the rest of the session. Turns out I'm 'red/green', whatever that means.

The thing that made me laugh though, was that most of my colleagues swallowed this pile of bullshit whole; without stopping to think that the premise that you can reduce a person to three numbers, and then make accurate and helpful statements about their personality and behavioural preferences, is absurd.

The training then went on to give us 'advice' about the type of people we are. As you can imagine this simply involved listing a load of truisms for each colour, no better than the nonsense you read in horoscopes. But, guess what, most people responded with "wow, how do you know this about me?!" I just wanted to laugh and say "who doesn't find pressure to affect them in a negative way? You twat."

And then, when I thought it couldn't get any worse, they went onto NLP. The biggest load of pop-psychology, pseudo-scientific junk I have yet come across. The less said about that the better.

Sorry for the long post...but the frustration of having to bite my lip for two days has been killing me! Has anyone else been subjected to this nonsense? Is there anyone here who believes it? Does anyone know why people...otherwise sensible people...are so manifestly gullible?

 

[Dr. Dwayne]

red green you say?

this is the category they've lumped you into:

 

[Dr. Dwayne]

the gullibility thing likely comes from everyone's own sense of vanity. humans love to have other people talk about them.

 

[Justin]

Frustrated enough to put this in CE rather than General?

But I understand, these "trainings" are as useful as having a grenade up your ass.

At least you didn't have to do team bonding exercises, we're doing that next week. Looking forward to that whole day, coming back afterwards and hearing from management that the project deadline is delayed by a day and we should have a meeting to discuss why.

 

[Partizan]

I repair aircraft, its what I've always done, but look out here comes, Health and Safety, Human factors, working in confined spaces, tool box talks, self awareness, FOD training, and on and on and on and on. feck off and let me do my job.

 

[GAngel]

Okay, so religion gets a hard time on here (and rightly so) for being irrational and unsupported by evidence...so I thought I'd start a thread on another form of irrationality.

Over the last two days I have been on a 'Personal Effectiveness and Management Training' course at work, which is done by an external company. And I have to say I have rarely encountered such a steady and sustained stream of bullshit in such a short space of time.

Firstly they got us to undertake some kind of personality test, which involved us answering a load of highly subjective and vague questions about how we deal with people and conflict. These results were then interpreted and 'analysed' to give us each a score on three areas of personality: assertiveness, altruistic / team behaviour and analytical behaviour. But rather than giving much detail about these headings, they generally referred to them as simply 'red', 'blue' and 'green' for the rest of the session. Turns out I'm 'red/green', whatever that means.

The thing that made me laugh though, was that most of my colleagues swallowed this pile of bullshit whole; without stopping to think that the premise that you can reduce a person to three numbers, and then make accurate and helpful statements about their personality and behavioural preferences, is absurd.

The training then went on to give us 'advice' about the type of people we are. As you can imagine this simply involved listing a load of truisms for each colour, no better than the nonsense you read in horoscopes. But, guess what, most people responded with "wow, how do you know this about me?!" I just wanted to laugh and say "who doesn't find pressure to affect them in a negative way? You twat."

And then, when I thought it couldn't get any worse, they went onto NLP. The biggest load of pop-psychology, pseudo-scientific junk I have yet come across. The less said about that the better.

Sorry for the long post...but the frustration of having to bite my lip for two days has been killing me! Has anyone else been subjected to this nonsense? Is there anyone here who believes it? Does anyone know why people...otherwise sensible people...are so manifestly gullible?

Part of the game we play i'm afraid. Wait till you get training on dealing with the different generations and they try to feed you the bullshit about gen Y and how you have to give them special attn.

 

[ooeat0meoo]

All of these tests have a lie-detector woven into the questions. My girlfriend studied test developement, at the masters degree level. Having said that... NLP (I agree, is complete bullshit) has a portion that focuses on lying. When you are asked a question, don't wonder your eyes up to the right, believers of NLP think that is body-language for someone telling a lie.


Sounds like they could be doing an integrity test on your employees. Has your company had a problem with theft?

 

[ukbob]

These are not new Mike. When I went to America 24 years ago they started with the same bullshit in the company I worked for. I actually walked out of them and not a word was said. When they "tested" all the various departments at a given juncture mine came out top in all levels. HR asked me how I did it. Common sense, understanding your job and relating to the people who work for you as human beings and letting them do their job.
They then wanted me to write a paper on my methods. I agreed for a fee of $100,000, they declined.

 

[MikeUpNorth]

Sounds like they could be doing an integrity test on your employees. Has your company had a problem with theft?

No it's nothing like that. We were given instruction in how to 'use' NLP; we weren't analysed with it ourselves. I guess the premise is any tool that could potential help managers deal better with clients and staff is a good thing.

I spoke to the head of HR about it and she said it was just a trial they were doing to see whether the managers felt it would help. Personally I think it won't, other than perhaps in a placebo kind of way with building confidence.

 

[Red_Molly]

Mike, do you know the name was of the personality 'test' you did.

Professional interest.

rich

 

[Wibble]

I love personality tests. Have you noticed how they repeat questions more than once, presumably to see if you are consistent?

I go out of my way to answer differently each time. My method is answer as truthfully as possible the first time and say the opposite if you notice a repeat question. When they ask you to only put an x I give short essay answers to the silliest questions. A great sport.

Scenario based stuff can be even sillier.

I once "failed" at the final hurdle of a very long interview process for a government agency because I told them exactly what I thought of their scenario based bullshit (by which time I had very much decided that I would turn the job down if offered it). That and using the cab voucher that was meant to get me from the airport to the train for the whole journey home

 

[Red_Molly]

I loved [tongue well stuffed in cheek] all the personality tests based on 16PF, till it became widespread that the original 16PF was just made up out of the head stuff, no test data or anything.

As a skeptic I tend to investigate what I'm being sold. Most HR people, in my long experience in HR, aren't bright enough to do that, that's why they are in HR.

 

[Plechazunga]

I find prolonged exposure to management bullshit literally unbearable. Actually physically painful.

Once, in my last job, I was in such agony after an hour and a half of stakeholder visions and joined-up thinking - and it was going to last the entire day - that I pretended to take a phone call informing me that my mother had had a serious accident. Shameful though it was, it was the only means of escape I could think of except jumping out the window.

Then, a few months later, I did it again.

Anyone here read After Virtue? I know we've discussed it before on here... he spends a good couple of chapters casting doubt on the entire concept of managerial expertise. Dunno if he's right... for instance, I'm fairly sure I could convincingly feck up a large company within weeks if made CEO... but I do suspect a large amount of management theory is without value, and that the good managers go on instinct, experience and case by case logical reasoning.

 

[Wibble]

I totally agree.

I usually torture the person giving the presentation with stupid examples and asking them how this theory would deal with it. Given that my retarded question is less retarded than the presentation they usual feel the need to answer, at length. Keep this up long enough and presentations fall apart at the seams, often hilariously.

Games are also good e.g. see who can say a chosen word a set number of times first. I once won because I managed to say "wheelbarrow" 7 times when being given a talk on tax legislation when working for the ATO.

The presenter thought I'd gone mad but it was worth it because the other competitors had to pay the forfeit of saying "Hillbilly" before they spoke every time for the rest of the presentation.

 

[MikeUpNorth]

Mike, do you know the name was of the personality 'test' you did.

Professional interest.

rich

SDI was part of it: http://uk.personalstrengths.com/

And, as I mentioned, some NLP bullshit too.

I think the very premise that you can reduce anyone to a few numbers (even if colour coded and nicely plotted on a chart) and then tell anything meaningful about them from the results is absurd.

 

[MikeUpNorth]

Oh, I forgot to mention, the thing that really wound me up was when this woman (perfectly plastic make-up and always smiling a permanent false smile) started talking about 'state management'. This turned out to be just a fancy term for 'always look on the bright side of life'. She must have banged on about 'state management' for a good half an hour.

And then she had the stupidity/ignorance/conceit to suggest that people who are 'manic depressive' (the term she used) could be relatively easily cured by applying 'state management' techniques. At this point I did object and say that research strongly suggests that bi-polar disorder is in fact largely genetic. She kept on smiling and said 'never mind about genetics'.

These people are bullshitting their way to fair amounts of cash.

 

[Frosty]

God I hate management rubbish... Kolb learning circle anyone?

 

[noodlehair]

Things like this just serve as proof that the world is run by complete spastics

 

[Feedingseagulls]

I find prolonged exposure to management bullshit literally unbearable. Actually physically painful.

Once, in my last job, I was in such agony after an hour and a half of stakeholder visions and joined-up thinking - and it was going to last the entire day - that I pretended to take a phone call informing me that my mother had had a serious accident. Shameful though it was, it was the only means of escape I could think of except jumping out the window.

Then, a few months later, I did it again.

Anyone here read After Virtue? I know we've discussed it before on here... he spends a good couple of chapters casting doubt on the entire concept of managerial expertise. Dunno if he's right... for instance, I'm fairly sure I could convincingly feck up a large company within weeks if made CEO... but I do suspect a large amount of management theory is without value, and that the good managers go on instinct, experience and case by case logical reasoning.

MacIntyre?

I have to say that I didn't find the critique of managerial technique the most interesting part tbh.

 

[noodlehair]

I find prolonged exposure to management bullshit literally unbearable. Actually physically painful.

Once, in my last job, I was in such agony after an hour and a half of stakeholder visions and joined-up thinking - and it was going to last the entire day - that I pretended to take a phone call informing me that my mother had had a serious accident. Shameful though it was, it was the only means of escape I could think of except jumping out the window.

Then, a few months later, I did it again.

Last one I went to I just left during the first "coffee break"

I said "right, I'm off then" to one of the girls, then went for a wonder around Chelmsford (they forced us to go to Chelmsford), before quickly realising it was still a shithole, and going home.

Nobody even bothered to question me about it, though if they had, I would have told them I left because it was shit, purely because it seemed a better and more plausible excuse than anything else I would have been able to think up.

 

[peterstorey]

I find prolonged exposure to management bullshit literally unbearable. Actually physically painful.

What a wuss, everybody thinks it's a chance to get away from the office for a couple of days and get pissed up.

 

[Wibble]

I'm with Plech. I'd take a week of work over a day of management bullshit every time. I have a very low tolerance for bullshitters.

 

[Plechazunga]

MacIntyre?

I have to say that I didn't find the critique of managerial technique the most interesting part tbh.

No I quite agree. (And I never really grasped the importance of the managerial stuff to his thesis, beyond the idea of using people as means rather than ends.) It was just that that bit was relevant to the thread topic.

What a wuss, everybody thinks it's a chance to get away from the office for a couple of days and get pissed up.

Yeah, except the getting away from the office, piss-up bit used in our case to involve going two floors upstairs, to another office, and an all-day seminar with no booze or even sarnies, just shit coffee.

 

[spinoza]

I skipped 3 consecutive 2 day courses full of management bullshit in the last 3 months.

I've been warned already, so there's a good chance that I'll have to go on one soon. I'm praying that another global financial institution will collapse so that I don't have to go.

 

[Red_Molly]

Mike, well clearly you missed the point, and the training spend was wasted on you. Now I know a little about SDI, so to help complete your education.

Elias Porter’s psychometric Strength[/b] Deployment Inventory test is based on hos Relationship Awareness Theory which owes a lot to the theories of Eric Fromm, a social-Marxist, Freudian and then anti-Freudian philsopher and clinical psychologist

Fromm came up with the 'Big Five'. Five basic human needs; Relatedness, Transcendence, Rootedness, Sense of Identity, and A frame of orientation.

Fromm then says there are two ways we relate to the world, which are:
1. acquiring and assimilating things ("assimilation"), and
2. reacting to people ("socialization").

From these we get Five 'orientations of character', four bad (malignant)
ones: 1. Receptive 2. Exploitative 3. Hoarding, and 4. Marketing
and a Positive one, 5. Productive

Elias Porter reckons 4 key thingymees:

1. Behaviour is driven by the motivation to feel self-worth, which itself is derived by different factors in deifferent people.

2. Motivation itself is modified in conflict. He describes a 'Conflict Sequence', through which you can predict changes in motivation stage by stage.

a. concern for self, the problem and the other person >
b. concern for self and the problem (feck the others), and >
c. concern only for one's self (feck this and feck you too)

Throughout each stage when there is conflict the universal productive motive of behaviour in conflict is to preserve personal integrity and self-esteem.

3. Weaknesses are Overdone Strengths (my personal favourite, seriously - your weaknesses are what you are too good at). Porter reckons that what Fromm describes as non-productive behavior is in fact ineffective behavior being driven by positive motivation. And this is from where much conflict stems. I bet it does...arguing about wtf he is talking about.

He also suggests that people judge others by their own standards, and the more peoples' motivational values differ from each other, the more people see the others' behaviours as overdone.

4. “The more clearly the concepts in a personality theory approximate how one experience’s oneself, the more effectively they serve as devices for self-discovery.”

So, according to Porter, a psychometric test should help the test-taker become more self-aware and thus be more useful in making behavioral choices. Well, duh! yeah.

Porter was the first to come up with the idea of colour coding, Red, Blue, Green, to help more easily tag types of motivation.

Does knowing any of that, and what comes out of the SDI tests make you more effective at work? Does it better help you understand, and therefore be more tolerent of different people in a work group? No, thought not. But that' s worth a thread on its own.

The clever bit, of course, is that Porter and his wife, wrapped all this up into a marketable product that made them very rich indeed. Firstly LIFO which was quite successful, and then the very compelling SDI (not a test you understand, but a journey of self-discovery and team building), and which gets touted by accredited trainers not clinical prsychologists trained to deal with the depression they fecking cause.

 

[Scholesgoals]

i had this at school, pile of toss! Whoever up there that said its because people love to be told about themselves is totally right. Thats where any real psychology ends for it because they already have your money.

I like to play with this stuff though... i see it as a game, i try to aim for a certain colour. When we did it at school, we managed to convince all the asian and black kids to get red and then pulled the racist card on them to try and make the test people feel awkward.

"could all the reds please stand up" *sharp intake of breath*

and then Ekko said "excuse me, have you noticed that we are all the ethnic minorities here? What is this?!"

Very funny. I miss school now, we realised from such an early age that the real enemy wasnt each other. it was the establishment. They hated us!

 

[MikeUpNorth]

I like to play with this stuff though... i see it as a game, i try to aim for a certain colour. When we did it at school, we managed to convince all the asian and black kids to get red and then pulled the racist card on them to try and make the test people feel awkward.

"could all the reds please stand up" *sharp intake of breath*

and then Ekko said "excuse me, have you noticed that we are all the ethnic minorities here? What is this?!"

One of the best piss takes I've heard. Congratulations!

 

[MikeUpNorth]

Thanks for the reply Red Molly; you basically echo everything that was said on the training.

My main criticism of the whole thing is it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ask a load of people questions about their behaviour, then re-word it and read it back to them. Genius. And, as you rightly say, has made a fortune.


Oh and these "Five basic human needs; Relatedness, Transcendence, Rootedness, Sense of Identity, and A frame of orientation" may as well have been picked out of anyone’s arse.

 

[Dave89]

One of the best piss takes I've heard. Congratulations!

Seconded! And I hope you're only passing that on molly. Hope to god you don;t believe that rubbish.

 

[spinoza]

Oh and these "Five basic human needs; Relatedness, Transcendence, Rootedness, Sense of Identity, and A frame of orientation" may as well have been picked out of anyone’s arse.

Money, food, mates, a significant other and Manchester United?

 

[peterstorey]

Maslow's pyramid: food, shelter, sex, friendship, self-actualisation and Arsenal winning the league.

 

[Steev]

Management-type bullshit drives me round the bend. In my old job, my whole department had to attend an all-day seminar entitled "Choose your attitude!".

This had come about because morale was low (rubbish pay, other departments treating us like shit, manager who was thick as pigshit etc.) so they decided to send us on this course that basically boiled down to someone saying "Hey you guys!!, turn that frown upside down!!!" for six hours. It also included the obligatory stand-in-a-circle-and-throw-a-ball-to-someone-while-saying-an-interesting-fact-about-yourself type bullshit (My fact: "I'm Bored! CATCH!)

One of the most useless, patronising, pseudo-psychological bullshit-infested seminars I've ever experienced. Utterly worthless.

But, unsurprisingly, the middle-management types who arranged it thought it was great. Which sums up why this sort of thing continues to be successful. Middle-managers are utterly mediocre - they were average at school, and are average in adult-life. They have no capacity for abstract thought. They have no concept of logic. They're the sort of people who believe Paul Daniels when he says "Now that's magic!". They are utter, utter cnuts.

And they should all die.

 

[Dave89]

They're the sort of people who believe Paul Daniels when he says "Now that's magic!".

 

[M160RA]

Fromm came up with the 'Big Five'. Five basic human needs; Relatedness, Transcendence, Rootedness, Sense of Identity, and A frame of orientation.

Based on what? Sounds like psycho-babble to me.

 

[Laphroaig]

No I quite agree. (And I never really grasped the importance of the managerial stuff to his thesis, beyond the idea of using people as means rather than ends.) It was just that that bit was relevant to the thread topic.

I suppose it fits quite nicely into the book's attack on the ideals and ethical ideas of our society. Our characters become a charade, or means to achieve whatever goals we happen to set ourselves.

Still, I agree that those passages are of the less interesting ones in that brilliant book of his.

 

[Red_Molly]

Seconded! And I hope you're only passing that on molly. Hope to god you don;t believe that rubbish.

Hey! don't shoot the messenger.

Do I believe it? Actually yes. Is it useful in clinical psychology? Yes. Is it useful for personal improvement? Hell yes...if I'm selling it

Seriously, much too much useful clinical psychology stuff has been turned into money-making management/personal effectiveness/team building type training. It just does not add anything useful to the mix.

Just as valid (properly validated against these types of tests) is self-assesssed questionaire asking straight questions about you what type of person you are, allied to same asked of colleagues/friends. And more useful too. But you can't charge a fortune in licensing fees for the simple stuff.

Here's the very best approach. Performance is what counts. High performing teams are a groups of people who work co-operatively together with common goals, and who commit themselves to extraordinary targets.

That's what every HR department should know. That's where every HR department should focus its training budget. That's what needs facilitating. Simple really.

 

[Red_Molly]

Based on what? Sounds like psycho-babble to me.

Based on some clinical research Fromm did in Mexico City (and prior experience in Germany, and Switzeralnd I think, and America I suppose). A few others validated the tests --- for clinical psychology purposes. It was Porter who tweaked it in order to market it.