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We have a scientist in Denmark called Morten Münster who wrote a book called “Jytte fra marketing er desværre gået for i dag” (Karen from marketing has unfortun
by moksly 7y ago
We have a scientist in Denmark called Morten Münster who wrote a book called “Jytte fra marketing er desværre gået for i dag” (Karen from marketing has unfortunately left for the day), in which he talks a lot about the necessity of clear and simple strategies that can be understood by employees at 3pm on a busy Thursday. He has a lot of good examples, but mostly he outlines how silly something a long the lines of “forward together” is as a strategy because it quite literally means nothing to anyone who does any real work.
It agrees with this article, and I always find it kind of hilarious. I do work on the public sector, and we’re exceptionally bad at implementing strategies, despite having hundreds of people working on it. The thing is though, that most of those people have read these articles and books, exactly like this one. So apparently knowing these things aren’t even helping us implement meaningful strategies.
After years in the bureaucracy I’ve long learned to simply keep quiet while these pseudo-workers do their thing, and then get things done when they leave. Then you can always word the work up to sound like it plays into whatever current strategy we’re pursuing at the end of the year review.
- azepoi 7y agoI looked it up, it appears the title has been translated into English. Morten Münster, I'm Afraid Debbie From Marketing Has Left for the Day - How to Use Behavioural Design to Create Change in the Real World, Translated from Danish by Helen Dyrbye, Gyldendal Business, 2019
- goto11 7y agoPretty funny how you translate names like "Jytte". The translator chose "Debbie" while moksly chose "Karen"
- LargeWu 7y agoProbably just substituted a generic American sounding name, rather than a translation.
- twic 7y agoWhile the name is actually cognate with Judith.
- moksly 7y agoIt’s because I use reddit, their use of “Karen” seem appropriate for the use of “Jytte” in this context. Maybe “Debbie” is as well.
- tasubotadas 7y agoThanks for the tip
- hyperman1 7y agoI presume the bureacratic decision makers design these strategies exactly for what you use them for. They have to do something, and they have to demonstrate it costs money and effort. So they hire a bunch of externs with the intent of producing powerpoints, and put some buts in seats before them. Get someone to create some procedures and buy or build some software to support it. Money has been spent, which proves beyond doubt the problem has been solved. Meanwhile the actual workers can do actual work, and the strategy is vague enough that everybody can demonstrate to have done something.
- wool_gather 7y agoThere's also a CYA element to a degree, in that the person actually in charge can blame the development process or execution of the "strategy" (optionally along with one or more of the people who were nominally in charge of those things) if their attempt goes awry.
- toolslive 7y agoone of my more sarcastic personalities derives great pleasure in comparing what's happening in the workplace with what's described as effective sabotage in the CIA's field manual. https://corporate-rebels.com/cia-field-manual/ https://corporate-rebels.com/cia-field-manual/ tip for pro's : you can play the bingo version too!
- itronitron 7y agoI wouldn't be surprised if the authors of the cia field manual just copied verbatim their management training manual
- toolslive 7y agonow that is sarcasm with a big 'S'. Love it.
- jpmattia 7y agoThat is a great/hilarious post, even if the title is wrong. (The CIA did not yet exist in 1944; The manual is likely from the OSS, which was roughly the wartime predecessor of the CIA.)
- 99052882514569 7y agoThat 8-point "General Interference with Organizations and Production" list sounds like ~50% of city councillors on every council in North America.
- tejtm 7y agofor the original https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2012-featured-story-archive/CleanedUOSSSimpleSabotage_sm.pdf https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/...
- JJMcJ 7y agoDid my due diligence, Jytte (pronounced You-tay) is a Danish women's name.
- skrebbel 7y agoTotal nitpick: You-tay is very far from how the name Jytte is pronounced. In IPA it'd be ['jydə] I think. You-dah would be closer, in the sense that she might look up if you'd say that :-) But English doesn't have the [y] so it's hard to explain. Even harder that the y in Jytte is kind of halfway [y] and [œ]. Somewhere between the vowel in "few" and the "i" in Cockney "bird".
- JJMcJ 7y agoThanks for the correction. Got it from a web site on names. I guess they were sloppy on the phonetic rendering. Not enough due diligence on my part.
- cpeterso 7y agoThe title of the English translation of the book is "I'm Afraid Debbie From Marketing Has Left for the Day: How to Use Behavioural Design to Create Change in the Real World".
- Tarq0n 7y agoOne thing about the public sector is every task of a public body is important or mandatory to some degree. This means that most strategies are necessarily overly broad and that they don't have the freedom to pivot away from or deprioritize anything.
- Tarq0n 7y agoAlso you don't have the direct feedback loop of success or failure in the market obviously. Funding isn't directly related to performance either.
- luckydata 7y ago"forward together" is not a strategy, it's a slogan. Of course if your management can't tell the difference, you have a much bigger issue than simply a lack of strategy.
- ksumo 7y agoReminds me when Ballmer changed MS's original mission statement from "A computer on every desk and in every home" to "enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential". One clearly defines a victory condition, the other is nebulous BS. It accurately reflects that Ballmer had no vision whatsoever except for counting money.
- dhimes 7y agoAs Rumelt (Good Strategy/Bad Strategy) would say, a slogan is not a strategy.