[in BossLady’s office]
BL: Ding, I got your presentation. I LOVE it! It’s great! It’s well-researched, thought out, love the strategy…
D: Great!
BL: But…it’s too informative.
D: What??
BL: It’s not going to work. It’s…going to scare the crap out of them. You’re going to start a panic.
D: Have they seen the news??
BL: Well…you know that, I know that. But you have to understand… They can’t handle this kind of thing. You want to manage people, don't you?
D: Uh, no. Not if it means catering to idiots who need to be treated like they're brain-damaged.
BL: Well, that's who we have. They think they want to know, but they really don't. Let me just show you what I think needs to be taken out. It's not a lot. [crossing out a few slides about how bad and disastrous our state deficit is]
D: What?! But-but that’s what the presentation is about! You can’t get rid of that! It’s on the news, in the papers, every policy wonk in the state releases a report about our numbers. They can’t handle policy??!
BL: (sigh) These aren’t directors; these are middle managers. They are sheep. They won’t know how to handle this information so we need to manage it for them. [crossing out a slide of message points]
D: Oh, no, I have to TOTALLY disagree with that. If we are supposed to be asking them to help us fight for a better state budget, we need to give them the tools! Otherwise, what’s the point of this presentation? ‘Uh, the state budget is bad but I can’t tell you how bad or how to talk about it.’ What the fuck??
BL: Ok, ok. You have a point. I guess it can stay. But this has to go. [crossing out phrase ‘uninformed public.’] This is them. Can’t say this.
D: But we can call them sheep. Niice. I thought we were about empowering women. How can we empower staff, ask them to perform for us, but not trust them with what we know or trust them to be rational adults? What about giving everyone the benefit of the doubt and treating them like equals?
BL: (wince) Yeah...no. We actually set the bar a little lower than equal.
D: But they’re our Leadership council! Being a leader is about responsibility and trust – but we don’t trust them? What's this group for? And how come I'm not on it?
BL: Senior management realizes now that this was probably a mis-named group.
D: Jesus.
3 comments:
Ow.
I was commenting on a different blog earlier today about how so many people both today and throughout history show such distrust and fear towards intelligent people and intellectual thinking. Seems to be a running theme today.
Oh- and you should tell your boss: the Leadership Council isn't misnamed, it's ironically-named!
Nice reportage, D. That could be a scene from a Mike Judge film, with a tweak or two.
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