Random Management Consultant

Posted on 2002/06/20 18:45:01 (June 2002) by john.

Is your innovative customer focus strategy lacking a total quality vector?

Recently I've been particularly interested in the crazy jargon spoken by management types. Particularly so, as I've just finished reading Scott Adams' The Dilbert Principle, which I'd heartily recommend to anyone else who works in an office, or has, for any other reason, had any kind of exposure to this baffling phenomenon.

For some time I had wondered whether such phrases were some kind of extremely high level, information rich, wise, learned, and bordering on the philosophical form of communication. Or, frankly, just bollocks. As someone who understands almost nothing about management principles and corporate strategy, I thought I'd conduct a small experiment. I'd long suspected management consultants just randomly string together a series of the current buzzwords, following only the most basic rules of English grammar to construct sentences of little or no real meaning, let alone actual relevance to the task in hand. Being of an engineering discipline I then naturally wondered how simple it would be to simulate the thought processes of one of these people. Yes, in a fit of originality, I made another random phrase generator.

You can give it a go here.

With only an hour or two's effort, the results, I feel, are disturbingly convincing.

P.S. For any management consultants who'd like a copy of the script to run on a laptop as emergency backup during executive meetings, please send all enquiries to extortionateproducts@maison-de-stuff.net.

Fabulous piece of work. Was this created all by yourself Mr. H, or was a rip? Wither way, it is a great addition to the maison de stuff and I thoroughly appreciate it.

I am not looking forward to working with these consultant people when I get into industry. They sound about as fun and interesting as having your boils lanced.

There must be an academic version of this too....

Posted by Rob Lang at 2002/06/27 14:07:22.

Yep, it was entirely my own work. Some of the individual words may have been inspired by Dilbert, but everything else was done by me.

Posted by john at 2002/06/27 15:35:28.

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