Tuesday 4:31pm
I am listening to Sheila by Jamie TOf course it makes me think of P
But when I think of P, I have no picture
She is only semireal
Nearly everyone I like is
I am sitting in my new chair. I bought it from OfficeWorks. Some guy stopped us and said the kid can’t stand in the trolley, health and safety. And I’m thinking, surely my kid’s health and safety are my business; nothing to do with you. But I say nothing.
My back is sore. The old chair was fucked. That’s why I changed it. Why else would I bother? I’d keep things forever if they never broke. You should see my T-shirts. They have to be rags before I even think of binning them. And they become like old friends. I’ve known some of them longer than I’ve known my wife, after all.
I just finished reading about Paraha grammar. There should be a tilde in there but you know how it is. So anyway, some guy claims that it is a countercase to “Universal Grammar” and these other guys say it isn’t, it’s just another language, which fits like this and this. I started reading his reply, but he is a man whose thesis is crushed, and he just can’t let go. And that makes bad reading, because he is left with a wilderness of special pleading and reinterpretation.
In a short while, I go to pick up Mrs Z and the kids. They’ve been at the inlaws the past couple of days. No one ever said I couldn’t or wouldn’t go to their house, but I don’t any more. I used to enjoy it. They live on an island famed for its natural beauty. But whereas I once had an open mind, I now have “inlaws”, just like the cliche. Fucking Word! It stuck the accent on. I don’t want it, so now I have to fix the autocorrect thing.
I am thinking about reading Billy Bragg in Teh Graun on the subject of patriotism. I’m not sure I can be bothered though. I read a post this morning on Aaronovitch Watch that quoted Orwell. He pretty much said it all on the subject. I have read the last graf of Bragg and that’s enough:
An expression of our values in a document enforceable by law would give those who wished to integrate something tangible to aim for and empower newcomers to hold us to account if we fail to live up to our own aspirations.
Fuck that! What a bellend! I don’t even want to know what he thinks should be in the document. The point is, Billy boy, what values you do or don’t have are your own business, and nations only have values in so far as they aggregate the values of the people who make them. Yeah, some write them down and try to make them objects of worship (hello America) but they are doomed to failure, because people will resolutely adopt or ignore values that appeal to them, or appealed to their fathers. Anyway, my values can pretty much be summed up in a sentence: Just don’t fucking bother me and be nice to your mum.
Okay, I’m lying. I have principles. I just haven’t decided what they are today.
I am editing a book on information systems. It is a collection of the grindingly obvious. This cannot conceivably pass as having a pedagogical purpose. If you don’t already know 90 per cent of this, you are too dim to be allowed to graduate. Only the chapter on database design has been of any conceivable use. The chapter I’m now working on is talking about how crucial a mission statement is for “strategy”, for fuck’s sake.
This is how wisdom works in our world. People repeat this bullshit, over and over, until gainsaying it seems impolite.
It bothers me a bit that people I like aren’t real but, I have to tell you, I was thinking this morning about whether if I stopped over on my way to the UK (which is unlikely, because I’m not all that likely to go via the States), I would like to make any of the people I know online real, and I was a bit frightened of the idea. Frightened? Or anxious? Anyway, I wasn’t clear on what it would add to them bar a potentially good experience for the files, as it were.
I could see the point of meeting S. Or could have seen it back when she hadn’t decided that I just wasn’t worth bothering with.
Which I’m not. I’ve never really minded bad opinions of me, whether they are my inlaws’ (perhaps deserved), S’s (not half as deserved as mine of her) or K’s (in the what teh fuck, bitch? category frankly). Occasionally, someone will say that my view of myself is not the same as theirs of me, and I say, I have no idea. I have no idea what your view of me is.
I am not having fun. I don’t want to drive to Cleveland. But it’s not like a huge amount of my life isn’t made up of doing things I don’t want to anyway.
And by the fucking way, it’s not painful that you have to do what you don’t want to do – and the pain isn’t lessened by knowing that others have to do what they don’t want to even more so – it’s knowing that you could conceivably be doing something you actually do want to.
If you had a clue what you wanted, I mean.
posted by Dr Zen @ 4:28 pm
15 Comments:
surely my kid’s health and safety are my business; nothing to do with you... Just don’t fucking bother me and be nice to your mum.
Closet libertarian.
Anyway, I wasn’t clear on what it would add to them bar a potentially good experience for the files, as it were.
You have to visit San Francisco sometime. Maybe it will be a good experience. Maybe good experiences are all we really live for.
There is nothing closet about it. I'm a frank libertarian. I believe in a state that protects me, not one that mothers me.
The chapter I’m now working on is talking about how crucial a mission statement is for “strategy”, for fuck’s sake.
And your quarrel with that is...?
*What* is complete bullshit? Creating a mission statement? Needing one to develop a strategy? Strategic planning in general? What?
Sweetheart, you quoted me and I quite plainly said what was wrong. Believing a mission statement is crucial for strategy is something no one should be writing who doesn't use crayons as their implement of choice.
A mission statement is nothing more than than the clear verbalization of what it is you want to accomplish. How is it bullshit to not need that in order to create strategy?
Quoting, shmoting. In the courses I have taken, I've often thought that most of it was simple common sense. However, I have always appreciated doing things in steps, so strategic planning, while the writing up of such is a pain in the butt, appeals to how I do things naturally.
It's no different than all the self-improvement type stuff out there, really, which I've devoured over the years. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People begins with a mission statement. Mine was love, art, relationships when I went through the week long seminar, and I attempted to move my life in the direction of making those things priorities. Every program out there follows basically the same steps, they just give them names they can make money with.
Do you have another way of planning strategy? Do you not start with something akin to a mission statement? Perhaps you should write a book about it and get rich. Until then, perhaps you can give me some pointers. I'm doing a presentation on the evaluation and improvement of one's tutoring program in a few days.
Like I said, most of it is grindingly obvious.
You're missing the point, Arleen. Here's Woodside's "mission statement":
"Woodside’s mission is to create outstanding growth and shareholder wealth while conforming to our core values of: strong performance; care and respect; integrity and trust; initiative and accountability; creativity and enterprise; and working together."
No shit. Now you tell me how that helps you extract petroleum.
LOL! Actually, that sounds more like a vision statement.
Where do you see the company five years from now? Extremely wealthy with happy, fulfilled employees. :-)
Well, I won't argue with you about the ridiculousness of most mission statements. Our college's mission statement is suberb in saying absolutely nothing.
However, that is not to say that this company couldn't come up with a better one that drives the company, not just as a driller of oil (but this should certainly be included in the statement itself), but in how they might be different than other drillers of oil, or places the focus on a particular aspect of it. Then, the strategy builds on how to accomplish this difference.
Arleen, you were arguing with me about the ridiculousness of mission statements. The point is, this could be the "mission" of any corporation. Make gobs of money and bullshit about "values" to smokescreen your enormous greed.
In a broad sense, this of course is the "strategy" of a big company.
The rest of your post is nonsense. Woodside's "mission" can be summed up as follows:
"Find new sources of oil and drill it up. Grease palms in governments of the countries who own the rocks the oil is in. Keep people quiescent by bullshitting about values in your PR. That's it, folks."
Zen, dear, you are saying that a mission statement is not crucial to one's strategy. When you speak of a greedy company who only uses the mission statement for PR, well yes, you're right. The mission statement has nothing to do with the strategy, AND YET, behind closed doors they have the mission statement that you just gave and their strategy builds on it. Between the corporate bosses, they know exactly what the mission is, and they develop their strategy accordingly. Therefore, it really is NOT bullshit to say that a mission statement is crucial to strategy, though in such a case it remains unspoken.
However, when talking about well-meaning folk who want to make a difference, whether it be with their customers, their employees, their performance or all of these, developing a mission statement is what gives focus to whatever strategies are implemented. It just makes sense.
So your gripe really isn't with mission statements, it's with dishonesty and PR bullshit.
Arleen, your comment was as stupid as any you or anyone else has made on this blog, and I do include those by Grant, so you have had some stiff competition. I just conclusively showed you that a mission statement is not in any way crucial to strategy, in particular because it does not in any way inform the company's actual strategy, and you post that it is "what gives focus to whatever strategies are implemented. It just makes sense." No. It. Doesn't. I just showed it doesn't. Simply repeating the bullshit I just kicked into touch is not smart. You want to play this game, you have to show how that mission statement informs Woodside's strategy. Saying, erm, it just does when I have just shown it does not is not the way to do that.
I would be embarrassed to have posted what you posted, and so should you be. You are like a true believer. "I did a class on strategy and by fuck, I'm not going to admit that it was bullshit, even though Zen has plainly shown it is."
Let me run the point past you again. The statement I quoted could be any company's. I could find you ten like it with a short Google search. So how can it be crucial to this particular company's strategy, unless you are prepared to argue -- ridiculously -- that every company's strategy is the same?
Yes, I understand that. And you have completely disregarded my understanding of that in my previous reply.
THAT company's mission statement is an example of what is wrong with mission statements, but it does not negate that when written and used properly by people who take it seriously, a mission statement can be the crucial driving force of the strategy. The benefit of writing it down is so that everyone involved in the company/organization has a clear understanding of the prime directive.
End of discussion. I won't read your reply.
At least not tonight. :-P
The best answer you could have managed was, of course it doesn't. But here's one that does.
But I'd grow whitehaired and stooped, lose all my teeth and FUCKING DIE OF OLD AGE waiting for that, wouldn't I?
Because I was right. A mission statement is not *crucial* to strategy. If it was, Woodside would be FUCKED. And you will not find a mission statement that is crucial to strategy (let alone show that the mission statement is, which was the original contention, remember) for precisely the reason that Woodside's isn't. They are fluff. Bollocks to feed the employees and the press. They couldn't be anything else, because a company can do what it does quite happily without a "mission", just as I do what I do without one. Do you see?
No, you don't. And you are reading this, Arleen. I know you won't be able to resist. Because you want to know how hard you get spanked for your nonsense. This hard is the answer, and think yourself lucky.
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