It's Time for a Change

About once a month one of the shitshow executives holds a change agent forum meeting.  These meetings are a time when the shitshow executives pass out company kool-aid until everyone is drunk while delivering some self empowering message.  Pass forums have covered such topics as:

Make the Shitshow a place YOU want to work
Toyota’s Lean Practice for the Shitshow
Be a Change Agent
It’s up to YOU
Becoming Effective
How to Effect Change
Change is within YOUR reach

As you can see, the overall reoccurring theme is that each employee has the power to improve the shitshow and these are the tools you need to do it.  While the concept is solid, as always the execution is flawed.

One of the reasons these forums don’t work is because the people who attend.  The first type of person who attends these events are college new hires who are there to try to network with the senior executives or to hang out with other college new hires.  As discussed in “Hiring Process” these college new hires are not the type of people you would actually want trying to make the company better.  The other type of person who attends these forums are people who have been at the shitshow for 20 years and only attend in order to learn enough buzz words to look like they care in hopes of not getting fired before their retirement plan kicks in.  

The other reason these forums don't work is because the senior executives who give them are graded on quantity not effectiveness.  You see, the real reason these forums exist is because some executive level zookeeper thought that it was a good idea for these forums so he forces his direct reports to do them.  Needless to say the only results from these forums is the senior executives meeting their quotas for interacting with the low level minion monkeys.  The amount of change (better work environment, better execution, better management, and so on) is non-existent.  In fact one could easily argue things have continued to get worse.  But since the senior executives get their check marks, and because the executive zookeeper can keep track of these check marks, the purpose has been severed.

Because the more we change the worse we get, I throw rocks.