Tuesday, April 22, 2008
The Destroyer
Glorious were these three years. That’s how long I have been content with existence and cathartically imploded. “Cathartically imploded” you ask? It’s what I call bursting out and then collapsing back to where you first began.
So what prompts the revival? A revelation! A revelation so powerful that it is as frightening as waking up with a third testicle!
In your existence, someone that you despise, or will eventually, will have the ability to vaporize your destiny and do what he or she will with it. People who deny that are just better prepared than those of us who will admit it.
What does that mean?
That true freedom is a myth. We will always live as serfs to bosses, spouses, nature, or other fatal addictions. Yes! I’ve seen guys who lived with the disease called marriage till death! They were fine before, but after…you do the math! J
On a tangent, the question then is why? Why do we let people past our armor, why do people we give so much to behave the way they do. Well, no great logic there. My favorite band Slipknot said it best when they titled their song “People = Shit.” Simple isn’t it? What? You were expecting a long sermon instead?
There are two types of managers – the destroyers and the creators. The creators have all been fired, are dead, or chased after their personal Moby Dick that no one talks to them anymore except the voices in their head. The destroyers have invaded the corporate world en masse. They are a shortsighted batch of MBA students that are spawns of the MBA rush that began in the early and late 90s. I pity this group for the sincere cowardice and lack of inspiration that they work with. Realistically, these are the people that destroy running business units and call the cost cut that results, a profit.
Case study time as they say in B school – what I call the bullshit factory.
You have a business unit that deals with eLearning. The unit generates about 1 million USD in revenue. Gross margins are at 30% and you want to push to 60%. Staff strength is at 50. Employee morale is average. No attrition. Quality is also at its highest in the industry. So the question is, what do you do to push to 60%?
Well, the answers can be varied but this is what actually happened: The existing manager was shot down the ladder for a destroyer and an additional overhead called a content testing team was put in place. This was not only a huge hit to the margin but also to the project timelines. Raining chaos for a month, and the client went south for the winter. Now, there is no staff, there is no business, everything is kaput.
Why? Simple! It was because of the destroyer-manager. This breed of management scum believes that out of the two ways of making profit; making more revenue and cutting costs, you at some point will not be able to make more revenue. What’s that? Do you say that you agree with that paradigm? Ah! You forget that we are talking about IT and not manufacturing! This is the common mistake that most destroyers make and that is because when they were in the bullshit factory, IT was a distant dream, so one of the fundamental things they weren’t taught was that there is something called Human Capital. All IT centers around human capital; it is your most valuable asset. You could lose your server and your insurance could replace that. Lose your best programmer or creative writer and you are seriously dead! Cause there is some competitor somewhere who would use that opportunity. I’ve even seen some destroyers believe that their resources go through a depreciation cycle and say that this person has been in the company too long. Sad…isn’t it? Sadder when you consider how many destinies the destroyer can change!
So, having said the problem, what is the solution? The rebirth of the creator! The creator is no messiah, the creator doesn’t give a damn about people; he gives a damn only about growing his business. To this end, any smart person is an asset, you just have to be smart to utilize the person. What if revenues drop you say? I have this to say. If you have a smart production team whip your sales force into getting more business and not fire good production floor talent, which is what your business base is.
This is something that most companies will not do. Again, this is the fault of the bullshit factories. As the production floor is where people are the most populous, it seems obvious that that is the place to start. Myopic…and again the destroyer changes your destiny.
There is yet another problem why we will never see the creator again. The creator is not a B-school product. This character is an entrepreneur that works from the cerebrum and not from his textbook recall. The days of Warren Buffet, Honda, Ford, the real entrepreneurs is over. These are the days of amorphous corporations that use the armor of the “entity” to mask their destroyer identities.
However, These destroyers are the best thing to have ever happened to the industry I toil in. Why are they the best thing to have happened to the industry? Because, they are like a grand narrative, and every grand narrative contains the seed of it’s own destruction.
Glorious were these three years. That’s how long I have been content with existence and cathartically imploded. “Cathartically imploded” you ask? It’s what I call bursting out and then collapsing back to where you first began.
So what prompts the revival? A revelation! A revelation so powerful that it is as frightening as waking up with a third testicle!
In your existence, someone that you despise, or will eventually, will have the ability to vaporize your destiny and do what he or she will with it. People who deny that are just better prepared than those of us who will admit it.
What does that mean?
That true freedom is a myth. We will always live as serfs to bosses, spouses, nature, or other fatal addictions. Yes! I’ve seen guys who lived with the disease called marriage till death! They were fine before, but after…you do the math! J
On a tangent, the question then is why? Why do we let people past our armor, why do people we give so much to behave the way they do. Well, no great logic there. My favorite band Slipknot said it best when they titled their song “People = Shit.” Simple isn’t it? What? You were expecting a long sermon instead?
There are two types of managers – the destroyers and the creators. The creators have all been fired, are dead, or chased after their personal Moby Dick that no one talks to them anymore except the voices in their head. The destroyers have invaded the corporate world en masse. They are a shortsighted batch of MBA students that are spawns of the MBA rush that began in the early and late 90s. I pity this group for the sincere cowardice and lack of inspiration that they work with. Realistically, these are the people that destroy running business units and call the cost cut that results, a profit.
Case study time as they say in B school – what I call the bullshit factory.
You have a business unit that deals with eLearning. The unit generates about 1 million USD in revenue. Gross margins are at 30% and you want to push to 60%. Staff strength is at 50. Employee morale is average. No attrition. Quality is also at its highest in the industry. So the question is, what do you do to push to 60%?
Well, the answers can be varied but this is what actually happened: The existing manager was shot down the ladder for a destroyer and an additional overhead called a content testing team was put in place. This was not only a huge hit to the margin but also to the project timelines. Raining chaos for a month, and the client went south for the winter. Now, there is no staff, there is no business, everything is kaput.
Why? Simple! It was because of the destroyer-manager. This breed of management scum believes that out of the two ways of making profit; making more revenue and cutting costs, you at some point will not be able to make more revenue. What’s that? Do you say that you agree with that paradigm? Ah! You forget that we are talking about IT and not manufacturing! This is the common mistake that most destroyers make and that is because when they were in the bullshit factory, IT was a distant dream, so one of the fundamental things they weren’t taught was that there is something called Human Capital. All IT centers around human capital; it is your most valuable asset. You could lose your server and your insurance could replace that. Lose your best programmer or creative writer and you are seriously dead! Cause there is some competitor somewhere who would use that opportunity. I’ve even seen some destroyers believe that their resources go through a depreciation cycle and say that this person has been in the company too long. Sad…isn’t it? Sadder when you consider how many destinies the destroyer can change!
So, having said the problem, what is the solution? The rebirth of the creator! The creator is no messiah, the creator doesn’t give a damn about people; he gives a damn only about growing his business. To this end, any smart person is an asset, you just have to be smart to utilize the person. What if revenues drop you say? I have this to say. If you have a smart production team whip your sales force into getting more business and not fire good production floor talent, which is what your business base is.
This is something that most companies will not do. Again, this is the fault of the bullshit factories. As the production floor is where people are the most populous, it seems obvious that that is the place to start. Myopic…and again the destroyer changes your destiny.
There is yet another problem why we will never see the creator again. The creator is not a B-school product. This character is an entrepreneur that works from the cerebrum and not from his textbook recall. The days of Warren Buffet, Honda, Ford, the real entrepreneurs is over. These are the days of amorphous corporations that use the armor of the “entity” to mask their destroyer identities.
However, These destroyers are the best thing to have ever happened to the industry I toil in. Why are they the best thing to have happened to the industry? Because, they are like a grand narrative, and every grand narrative contains the seed of it’s own destruction.
Labels: elearning, Management
# posted by ☭ Comrade Nambiar☭ @ 6:27 AM 
