Yes, that one - ‘Mistakes’ - has a certain ‘resonance’ with me too, as in ‘‘Try not to exemplify this one’’.
Some of the others that are applicable here are -
‘‘Teamwork - A few harmless flakes working together can unleash an avalanche of destruction.’’
‘‘Success - Some people dream of success, while other people live to crush those dreams.’’
‘‘Ignorance - It’s amazing how much easier it is for a team to work together when no one has any idea where they’re going.’’
‘‘Meetings - None of us is as dumb as all of us.’’
‘‘Idiocy - Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.’’
‘‘Compromise - Let’s agree to respect each others views, no matter how wrong yours may be.’’
‘‘Blame - The Secret of Success is knowing who to Blame for Your Failures.’’
What - me a cynic ?
Most of these supposed team-building exercises are to put together - for at least a short time - people that pretty much live in their ‘cubes’ and don’t usually see each other in person. In contrast, edblysard hadsan excellent point and post above when he wrote about his daily work and the crews. A train crew spends pretty much all of their work time together, and has to function as a team to accomplish their assigned tasks - and do so safely. That’s really up to that team’s leader - the condu
I can’t tell whether “The Office” or Dilbert are more real! Both are 100% in my experiences either having worked there, done that, or have had the opportunity to deal with selling to them!
I forgot to include Traffic; we had a one-woman Traffic Department–and I worked with her in my capacity as Buyer, Shipper, and in-coming shipments Planner.
From time to time, someone would mention that there was some discord between personnel in a couple of areas, but no names were ever mentioned to the group. Apparently the discordants knew who they were.
We had a very good manager who was hired away from us. I told the man to whom he had reported, “Don’t get us a pointy-haired manager.” He almost succeeded. The new manager tried to institute his own ideas, but we saw little value in them, and he left after less than a year.
I noticed that some of my other favorites were not on that web page - so here’s another link to a page that does have them - http://despair.com/viewall.html - such as this one related to this thread -
‘‘DARE TO SLACK - When birds fly in the right formation, they need only exert half the effort. Even in nature, teamwork results in collective laziness.’’ [emphasis added - PDN]
and especially this really great one -
‘‘LEADERS - Leaders are like eagles. We don’t have either of them here.’’
It’s good [%-)] to know there are some others on here with similar eccentric ‘tastes’ in humor [and we haven’t even heard from Murphy Siding yet, either].
A few further comments, prompted by [not critical of, as you’ll see below] edblysard’s post quoted above;
Teams can be and often are ‘self-selective’. I’ve seen a lot of strong teams built or continued outside of the workplace, too - sometimes in locations where ‘Rule G’ is not applicable [bars/ pubs], as well as more casual get-togethers at picnics, parties, ball fields, boating, fishing, hunting, car races, etc., etc.
Alright, team insinuates a sport scenerio. So a few observations.
Teamwork actually produces stars. Ever notice how a guy can be a poor or mediocre performer for years but be thrown into the spotlight when he arrives at or plays for the right “team”, the right set of players that allows him to exel? So if the right team produces a star or stars, is that not counter to its purpose?
Also, we have moved away from WWII and away from military like chains of command. And in its place has been the rise of the NFL and an emphasis on college basketball bringing about this team concept of doing business.
In both era’s…WWII and militarism, and, post WWII sports teams…we have adapted to the most common orgainization in our society and made it part of our business culture. Back in the 50’s and 60’s we looked for former military men to take managment position while today we call on former sports coaches and “team” players to manage.
So, what’s next? Where do we go for our next recruitment class? Comedy Central? Computer Nerds (and I mean that in the nicest way)? Right now I still see sports figures as our center of adoration, or war “heroes” are considered kind of “ho, hum” and there are no other real groups in sight! No, don’t tell me. Bloggers and Tweeters!???
The hotel where I worked closed last year partly because of a decline in travel for meetings. Most of the corporate events we hosted involved intense business, but a few were “creative events.” One that was a big success involved the advertising department of a huge corporation; they made art from trash for three days. But there was an undercurrent message of “learn to be as imaginative and cooperative as possible, because the economy is about to crash and ALL your jobs depend on it.”
One that did not appear successful involved engineers from a software company. A separate vendor brought “props” for the outdoor “games;” I would not have chosen them. The participants were all Asian, did not speak English well, and found the activities to be humiliating.
A NASA project had a meeting here a few years ago, and since then the budget for travel and conferences has been slashed. From time to time, people who have a lot of responsibilities need to interact with peers from distant places in a relaxing environment. NASA, of all organizations, should know the benefits of expanding perspectives and the costs of poor communication.
And there were a few gatherings where all they did was hang out in the bar.
I left Uncle pete nearly a decade ago but this brings back less than fond memories, yes the rails waste money on these ridiculous programs at the white collar level two and everyone either tries to avoid them or goes throught the motions when forced into them, gripes about them before and after acknowleding no benefit at all.
Shortly after the UP-SP merger they made everyone in management go through “Living the values” which took an entire week off site. It provided no benefit to anyone for the reasons already pointed ut in previous posts, pretty much everyone grudgingly put up with it until the week was over, prefering to have hemaroids removed with a chain saw than go through these nonsense team building excersises. Typically at our chemcamp all week team meetings we would get stuck with one or two long sessions of teambuilding nonsense as well. I recall at Chemcamp in Nebraska, many middle managers would head off site to a rinky dink bar in a rural area to get away and unwind. Upper management eventually learned of this annual practice and tried to get involved and organize activities at this “let our hair down” off site location. It ceased to be an escape but another organize team event led by upper amangement and teh middle managers found another rinky dink tavern to go to and avoid the “official management organized activity”. They never get it.
Interesting to see commentary on ISO 9001, TQM, Macolm Baldridge, Six Sigma, lean six sigma etc. I am amazed at the upper level managers that buy into these flavor of the month programs, spending time trying to ram them down everyone’s throats and the brown nosers who go to great lengths to show support for them. Dilbert will never run out of material to take from the enver ending Corporate stupidity.
A week??!! Oh my God - I’d already be registered at the unemployment office by Tuesday let alone the end of that week.
I have my own theories as to why upper-management at UP or anywhere else would persist in this philosophy when over the years it’s been largely debunked and shown to be of little/no value:
1.) A truly warped and condescending view of the rank & file that literally blinds 6 or 7-figure salaried management to the ill effects of the “team building” craze. They simply don’t believe the dog faces in the ranks would have legitimate reasons for not enjoying “mandatory fun”, and in a mildly sadistic aspect they enjoy watching said dog faces jump through the hoops they’ve assigned.
2.) It is actually a ploy of management to better discern the company loyalists from the rogues or “lone wolf/ranger” types as I heard it once described by an “Office Dynamics Expert” (how I kept from throwing-up I don’t know after hearing that title). If you rebel against/resist free food and the chance to toss water balloons blindfolded, you’re obviously willing to resist the “important” edicts management will issue in the future.
3.) Where I work currently (until somebody at my company reads this post), I believe it’s largely driven by the “management academy” thinking here, where management-oriented personnel are expected to follow a strict course of “team dynamics” policies and have it as a part of their performance reviews to “engage their employees through team activities and exercises”.
Communication is obviously a vital skill in the railroad industry as in any field, but there comes a point where people have to be treated as adults by management and not children.
At one of my daughter’s former employers [about 10 years ago] she learned - first-hand, from one of the ‘serial offenders’ - that the official ‘remedy’ for ‘politically incorrect’ / sexist remarks, jokes, language, etc. was usually not ‘discipline’ per se as we might know it, or even dismissal - but instead, repetitive mandatory attendance at a ‘sensitivity training’ seminar. That policy and the seminar quite evidently had the intended effect - the guy was desperate about it and would plead to not be reported, so that he would never have to go back to one of those again. Some of these seem to be of like kind . . . [:-^]
One of the most rediculous episodes in my time in “BIG BUSINESS” was being told I had to read WHO MOVED MY CHEESE! I took the book home and returned it, completely read, the next day, and told the boss that it was so juvenile I thought I was in kindergarden! He couldn’t believe that I had read the book in one evening (everyone was given a week) and further stated that I must not have understood it. I put up a sign at my desk that stated, “change is inevitable except from vending machines”. He claimed I had a warped sense of humor. Oh, yeah, he drove me out of the building after that.
[tup] That sounds like a ‘plug’ for a course in ‘‘Why engineers need to learn to communicate better’’, what RWM often essentially says about John Kneiling, and what Bob-Fryml said on 07-21-2009 at 6:32 PM back on Page 1 of this thread.
Or, a variation on the ‘‘If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound ?’’ conundrum.
Yes, Henry, I had to read it, too, at the direction of our dull-pointed-hair boss. I agree, it was juvenile, if not puerile. I do not believe that he realized that changes should be made only when they truly improve the process.
I hear you on all of those. Like the time I was a finish trainer and the guy goes why do certain mountain grades only let us go down at lower speeds. This was as we were getting ready to go down Eisenhower Pass in Colorado and its lovely 7 miles of 7% grades with 3 Runaway ramps in it grossed out at 80K. This same student missed a gear on Parlay in Utah a week later and screamed WE ARE GOING TO FREAKING DIE as the truck passed 70MPH. I somehow stopped that from happening since I am here. He was thrown out of the truck at Sapp Bros in SLC I delivered the load and took 2 days off in Stockton CA and had a few drinks at the hotel.
I as I think many, have found that once people advance to high levels in a company, some areas in their brai go haywire. Some of it is politically placed reasoning for decisons and policies but some of it comes from reasoning I can’t determine the root cause and wonder if they aren’t getting enough oxygen to the brain. I agree with a previous post that high level management is looking for sincere “buy in” from the middle management sheep when they have these BS programs going, be it team building or management style flavor of the month, some new software or system etc. The real brown nosers are the ones that look like bobbleheads at roll out.
I recall UP getting one system that created reporst on customer traffic. They demanded we use it with customer meetings and made us show proof we geenrated reports and presented tehm as the sales reps didn’t use it. The customers had more detailed and accurate data, it was an embarasement to show it to customers but management spent money on it and tried to force everyone to use it even though it made us look bad. Data was too generalized and frequently wrong.
UP got another system that flat out didn’t work, I don’t recall what it did exactly any more but no one would use it as it didn’t do anything. Upper level management demanded we try to use it once every week or so and report back and verify our attempt to use that system. I was preparing to leave the company so I didn’t mind being a rebel by pointing out the folly of this situation, I likened it to having a car with no engine but being asked to try starting it everyday and report back that the car didn’t work. I got the expected look for not being a team player and thinking outside the expected company lines but was happy to turn in my notice within the frame of that month so it all worked out.
The game in this instance was two fold: new takeover, new round of layoffs, et al. with kids who had just gotten used to a new plan in the past month or so. Now, things were about to be changed once again. Second part of the game was to get rid of us older (mid 50’s at the time) because we were supposedly more likely to resist change than the younger set. Only problem was (and is) that we older ones had been through this crap so many times before, we had learned to roll with it, adapt, not fight. Befuddled the hell out of the manager so he had to find other ways to force me to move out., then acted shocked when I picked up a pay check one day, said it was my last from him and went down the street to another job.
Like everyone else, I’ve been the victim of many, many rounds of HR silliness. There’s a lot of it out there! And, I think it wastes a lot of time I could be using to do something useful.
And, I know it’s lots of fun to gripe, rant, be cynical and swap stories, especially on the RR.
But, in just about everything I’ve been to, there’s been a nugget or two of something useful - or some basic truth that was only obvious once you saw it. So, if you don’t want these sessions to be COMPLETE wastes of time, you have to go in with the attitude of seeing what you can actually get out of them.
Everyone of us who works at the “grunt” level is there, not because of some basic unfairness in the system, but because we are flawed. We have some “hole in our game”. You want to move up? Then you have to fill in your weak spots. Nobody’s perfect, but those who get ahead are generally better balanced and have a more complete skill set that the rest of us. Of course, there are exceptions, but at least the places I’ve worked, that’s generally been the case.
Most of the time, we tend to be blind to our own weaknesses. It’s always easier to blame the “stupid boss” or “stupid system”.
You want your company to stop the silliness? Make the case! And, don’t let it be you own raggedy opinion. Everyone has one of those. Make a good logical, fact based arguement. Otherwise, realize you are just flapping your lips for your own amusment!