WITCHES ARE A BORING, GRUMPY LOT
Sometimes, though, we like to have some fun.
We have a special game that we play when we want to lighten our load.
Its called “Let’s cast a management-speak spell!”. Sometimes also known as “Taking the little blue bottle!” or “Taking the piss!”
You’ll have heard of “benchmarking,” “cascading” “overarching” “mission statement,” “bring it to the table” “think outside the box,” “blue sky thinking,” “knowledge base,” “win-win situation” “core competencies,” “client focus,” “incentivise,” “up-skilling” etc etc.
You know them all.
What you probably don’t know though, is that each and every one of these terms is the result of a tiny magic spell from one of our little blue bottles.
This is what we do.
A posse of witches fly around on broomsticks looking for committees in action. No one knows we’re there of course, because it takes a witch to see a witch. Every now and then, a committee decides it is necessary to make something seem more impressive than it actually is. When that moment comes, we take the little blue bottle containing our spell and sprinkle a few drops in the room next to one of the committee members. We usually choose one who is nodding off. As it evaporates, he/she inhales the potion and suddely wakens with a jolt and will startle the committee by shouting out something like “overarching agenda,” or “Gen Y”. Sometimes instead, there is an utterance of gobbleydygook (itself a little blue bottle spell word) such as “The consultants recommend parallel organisational processing.”
This is only the start of the game.
To win the game, the management speak or gobbleydygook has to travel all round the world. All the witches in the game audit how fast it travels and the number of utterences as it spreads. The winning witch is one whose “management speak” first reaches 1000 utterences across three continents. The “Little blue bottle common usage prize” is very coveted. Some day, I might tell you what it is.
Maybe soon I’ll open a separate page with all the utterences that have been used as I read through the MTAS/MMC and Medical Workforce documentation from the DOH. Tonight I came across one of my very own “little blue bottle spells” that I cast a few years ago as my broomstick and I swept along the corridors of Westminster.
Its spreading nicely now I think.
That makes me chuckle!
