"World Class" as BS

I've been to two team strategy meetings where the conclusion was that they wanted to be a “World Class” team. Maybe that was so early Oughties and no-one does it now, but just in case they still do...

It goes without saying that neither of the teams had a cat's chance in hell of being world-class anythings – they weren't even very good bullshitters. The first team, at a telco, was half contractors and half full-timers; the second, at the current employer, were reeking with the smell of booze and barely compos mentis after a company ball and piss-up the previous night. (If they'd been working for me, I would have told them all to go home and booked them off sick. Then read them the riot act about getting that drunk on a school night.) Both groups had been assembled to think through what they did and what they needed to change to do their jobs better. Neither team had the slightest idea of how to do this, nor, I believe, the slightest inclination. Desperate for something to say, the telco team came up with “world class” as they were putting together the Powerpoint thirty minutes before presenting the results to the Marketing Director, and the drunks came up with it about two-thirds of the way through the day as one of many merely random noises they'd been making.

What does “world class” mean? Well, since they don't do things too well anywhere except in Westernised countries, it means “doing it as well as they do in (insert company X name here)”. Company X, of course, pays well over the market rate for its people, which it selects by a rigorous three-stage process involving actual tests as well as interviews with a range of people. Which is not where the rest of us work.

It means you win awards from your industry or professional body (and my employer refuses to spring for the relevant membership, let alone the qualification fees). It means you're invited to give talks at conferences and that people from non-competing companies visit you to see how you do whatever it is you do. It means every time anyone wants to hire, they say to the head-hunters “see if (insert your name here) wants to come over”. It means you have published research and there are a couple of universities who could be interested in hiring you should you want to retire from the rigours of the private sector. It means the government ask you to sit on committees and you are asked to give evidence to official enquiries. The journalists who deal with your industry or profession know your name. It means you're at least as good as the people with the connections and desire for publicity to gather all these things to themselves.

The people in those two teams had no idea what is involved in being “world-class”. They said it because the truth is too painful for them to describe and admit to themselves, they don't think their manager wants to hear it and they don't believe anyone can do anything about it anyway. So they blow smoke up their manager's... face and in their own. And because he knows the truth and that he can't do anything about the problems they face, he nods along with it. The only people who win are the guys who hire out the room and facilitate the meeting.