Jargon Juice

The new Kool Aid in corporate America is Jargon Juice, an invention of the trendy corporate entitlement set of Project Managers, a clever if not helpful group of “professionals” who manage to be overpaid by simply dressing up and inserting the latest in meaningless corporate slang into every conversation they have and creating pretty Pamela Anderson PowerPoint presentations, not pornographically but metaphorically speaking. In other words, pretty, littered with fake parts, and utterly lacking in substance.

Now corporate jargon is certainly nothing new, but the Project Management Cult is so frighteningly adept at inventing new words to express obvious, self-evident thoughts, that I am convinced they are on some kind of verbal steroids – Jargon Juice. When I contacted the FDA with my concerns about an unregulated steroid, the spokesperson replied: “Dear The Captain, we have run your concerns up the flagpole and our senior leadership has by divine decree established the Verbal Steroid Advisory Board to address your concerns in this space; we will leverage the combined expertise and synch up with a multi-disciplinary team of subject matter experts. We have put out a call to our functional leads to identify the right players and should have a crackerjack board of key stakeholders assembled and ready to run in 12 to 120 months. We’ll revisit your concerns at that time. Have a wonderful life!” It’s worse than I’d imagined. They have infiltrated our government!!!!

The Captain is not prone to paranoia. Embellishment, playing fast and loose with the truth, poetic license, fibbing, and creative truth telling – guilty as charged! But there is a well-hidden undercurrent of rationalism and pragmatism that ultimately drives my nonsense. But in this case, paranoia has crept in alongside my delusions and fantasies. I am beginning to think that PMs (looks a lot like PMS, which I know is a sexist comment, but somehow fitting here) are descendents of those aliens who colonized northern Africa and built the Pyramids in Egypt; but then reason prevails, as it’s obvious to anyone whose had the misfortune of working with them that PMs never really build anything. But they are good at playing PMS tricks, kinda like my sisters when I was a kid. So before I start spitting verbal steroids, here is The Captain’s list of PMS Tricks!

· Kick Off Meeting: If a “Project” being managed was a house, this would be the equivalent of the homeowner hiring a consultant to call a meeting with the GC, the rough carpenters, the trim carpenters, the plumber, the electrician, the electrician’s wife (she does his books; plus, she’s hot), the painters, the carpet installers, the hardwood layers (sorry, couldn’t resist), the roofers, the tile guy, the architect, the interior designer, and Cousin Vinnie for the sole purpose of telling them all that a house is about to be built and furnished and they are expected to perform their assigned tasks to make it all happen and then – the cherry on top of the sundae – calculating the cost of his (homeowner’s ) time to be deducted from the final invoices of the invitees, Electrician’s wife excluded.

· PowerPoint Presentations. These are the PMs version of The Sims, that video game where teenagers create a virtual but nonexistent world, which is basically what PMs do when they present Project Proposals to the Senior Leadership Team (what they call their bosses) in slick PowerPoint presentations. They have no clue about how to actually make the pretty pictures and sounds come to life, but it sure as heck looks good to the SLT and carries with it an expensive price tag, so it must be a “value package,” whatever the f*ck that is. And by the way, female PMs don’t like it when you ask them if they wanna see your value package.

· Project Reassignment. When the people who have to actually try and build the overpriced toys in the PowerPoint presentations fail miserably because of the unrealistic goals and deadlines created by the PMs and the project heads South in a hurry, PMs hurry up and get themselves “reassigned” to leverage their expertise on other high level projects, preferably in another part of the company where they are not well known. They are immune to fan shit.

· Get paid good money to manage projects in businesses about which they know nothing. That’s quite a trick!

· Get paid good money to manage projects in businesses about which they know nothing. Oops, sorry about that; this one just sticks in my craw.

· Set up recurring 3 hour meetings for all the project team members that they themselves attend sporadically but only to take attendance at the beginning and crack the whip on deadlines at the end.

· Create spreadsheets with deadlines for things like: Reference SLT 14.5 times during Kick Off meetings; buy milk; make at least 7 condescending remarks to Senior Business Analyst who questioned a deadline in front of peers; book Cruise; request feedback from Business SMEs to create illusion they have input; blame IT for missing deadlines every 45 to 60 seconds; take meeting roll call at 1, 3, and 5 minutes from time dialed in, after spending first 5 minutes gloating about vacation no one else on call can afford.

· “Accidentally” kick out phone plug when Business SMEs start asking difficult questions (OK, I do this).

Believe The Captain when he says: I have a special value package!

Yours taking screen shots of my special value package,

The Captain