Personnel Director... much better! It sounds more like conducting a choir than herding cattle!

Good example here of the conflicts between Rhetorics and Realities... and in our "postmodern paradigm," we have been conditioned to think we can change the "reality" by changing the "rhetoric." Partially true, but only if we understand the "reality" we are trying to change. This involves the good ol "paradigm shift" (which has become a cliche' as well).

Example: most business is "profit oriented." Nothing wrong with that, until the focus becomes so exclusive that it undermines product and people... which usually bolluxes up the "profit," leaving a lot of head-scratching... which falls back eventually on "cost-cutting." Which leads to more miserable people making a crappy product... not so hard to figure out... until it gets camouflaged in a bunch of bullshit rhetoric like "creating value," which- translated into plain English- means "make the stock price go up," which- parsed into realspeak means, "get upper-level management more percs and bonuses."

Fortunately, nobody who actually makes the product or service is fooled by the bullshit. Unfortunately, "upper-level management" thinks they are. I haven't yet figured out whether ULM actually "believes" it or not... but evidence suggests they actually DO through some strange process of "internalization." Here's a good working metaphor: the shoe factory.

The shoe factory is not there to "create customer, partner and shareholder value." It's not there to "provide jobs for the community." It's there to make fookin SHOES. Now somewhere... within the guts of the organization... there exist folk who were cobblers in an earlier day... somebody who actually knows something about making shoes. Now, there's the DESIGN of shoes... and the MANUFACTURE of shoes. What's a "good" shoe? And once we've decided that... how can we make copies of them as quickly and cheaply as possible? Then there's SELLING the shoes. That's where I used to work... "marketing." Marketing cannot be a separate kingdom from Design or Manufacture.

I learned the most by working closely with the designers... and NOT by trying to "influence" them about "what people will buy." That's the WORST thing a "marketer" can possibly do... because the truth is, we don't KNOW. We can tell them what people are buying today... or yesterday... but good designers already know that anyway.

The good news is... if everybody's really into shoes... and they design and make a good shoe... and they feel confident about doing it again tomorrow... they'll keep making good shoes. Start mucking that up with "policies and procedures" without explaining the relationship to a good shoe... and the whole thing becomes a pig's arse.