Ruminations on Being Pecked to Death by Morons

Aweh fellow Ruminants & Groupies in day 458 of Re-Modified Lock Down Currently Level 3.

Period as a semi-retired pensioner: 84 days

So firstly, we have Covid in our house again and Nerine tested positive on Tuesday after feeling sick on Monday. We are monitoring her very carefully. I had the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine on Monday. 

The topic of today’s Ruminant Pink Friday ™ is that of being pecked to death by morons and was sent to me by one of my groupies. The broader topic is the danger of meaningless work. I was sent this Jordan Petersen YouTube clip which talks about the stupid stuff large organisations and bureaucracies force you to do and get involved in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQAv0Bn96Gc. Those of you who have not worked for a large organisation may struggle to identify with this topic. The example he chooses is an organisation which introduced corporate policy banning the term flip chart because apparently “flip” is a derogatory term for Filipino’s. Large organisations have people, usually in the HR department, dedicated to writing corporate policies, codes of conduct and rules. It is often the case that the number of rules and policies proliferate and become increasingly complex. This then necessitates more and more lengthy compulsory and deadly internal training courses “educating” the poor employees regarding corporate policy, governance, compliance, and values etc.  To ensure you do not doze off there is a test at the end which you have to pass or repeat the training. Jordan Petersen describes this as being pecked to death by morons. Often those with access to the executive lift and spa are exempted from these courses and lower-level employees are forced to take the brunt of this.

In early 2020 I was part of a meeting which I would not have believed had I not witnessed it myself. It was a Wednesday afternoon meeting from 15h00 to 17h00 where sprint results presentations were made to those with access to the executive lift. To those of you not familiar with this specific use of the term sprint, it is part of a current corporate fad for agile methodology. A sprint is a short, time-boxed period when a scrum team works to complete a set amount of work. I had just completed a two-week sprint focussing on long term strategy options for the organisation. There were three sprints on the agenda and ours was the last item.

The first item on the agenda was a values led cultural transformation for the organisation presented by HR. Earlier in the week my personal screensaver was removed from my computer and was replaced by a corporate culture screensaver. I immediately consulted my most IT savvy colleagues asking how I could override this and reinstall my personalised screensaver. They were not able to help. The corporate screensaver was imposed deep in the system and was highly praised as a quick win in the cultural transformation journey.

It was interesting that the screensaver stated the organisation was iconic and respected and admired by all stakeholders. No actual evidence was presented to back up this statement. It is just a self-evident fact by virtue of being stated as such. One of the core purposes of a corporate is to create long term shareholder value. It is therefore perhaps conceivable that organisations which destroy long term shareholder value might have some shareholders which might not be using words like admiration and iconic.

If you invest wisely in organisations which create shareholder value, then you can perhaps look forward to retiring in Val de Vie with regular overseas trips. If you admire value destroying organisations, then perhaps the Brakpan municipal old age home might be more your style. They do have a happy hour and Bingo evening on Fridays. Once a year they also organise a bus trip to Bela Bela funded by a raffle.

The next step in the cultural transformation journey was to be a nicely bound values and code of conduct booklet sized to fit into your top pocket. The idea was to always keep this with you so that if ever you were in a difficult meeting, you could quickly consult the booklet to get behavioural advice regarding the correct values based approach. This was warmly applauded. Someone then mentioned that not everyone has top pockets and that this is particularly true for women. It was then proposed that the booklet would also be converted into an App which would be downloaded onto your phone. This was very enthusiastically received. It would be much easier to surreptitiously consult your phone in a difficult meeting than flip through a book. There was then a lengthy project management discussion regarding budgeting getting first drafts ready and scheduling the booklet launch, roll out and training courses.

By 16h45 our sprint on long term strategy had not come up for discussion yet. It however began to dawn on me that I was way out of my league and that I really had nothing meaningful to contribute in this company. I remembered that I had a date with my son for casual chess and beers at the local chess club at 17h30. Fortunately, I was sitting at the back, and I slipped out quietly and nobody noticed or mourned my absence.

Then Covid happened and suddenly cultural and behavioural transformation was no longer front of mind. Now I will probably never be able to benefit from the culture and behavioural App that could have transformed my life. I have many deeply seated behavioural and cultural deficiencies. If only I could have had that App together with the 3-day training course things could have been so very different.

Thank you for all the helpful suggestions and comments. Please keep them up.

Regards

Bruce