Middle management ouija
Office anthropology™
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The curious void whence the profound daftness of most management conviction comes.
Who is it?
It is not the CEO — she floats above the fray, could care not a row of buttons about the federation of employees at all, much less the management information and statistics they might generate — and nor is it any of functionaries nominally in charge of the workstream, all of whom when quizzed on the topic will instantly agree that, for example, the 365 performance appraisal system is from its foundations up a nonce, achieving nothing but illicit patronage, resentment, rancour and demotivation, and will even cite the passage from HBR in 1975 that established this beyond all reason.
But while no single individual can be found to utter a word in favour of a silly idea, all will be certain that someone else, way above their pay grade, perhaps even a lot of someone elses, all at so great a remove that one can scarcely imagine who they might be, never mind what drives their attachment to such a roundly derided management trope, is fixed upon it, and therefore it must happen.
These mysterious conviction mannered are never identified, and somehow the collective unconscious pushes it on, as if willed by some inner daemon.
This is the middle management ouija board.