What's It Like In Corporate SA

[Polymathic]

I just a "telephonic meeting" with somebody in middle management in a company based in Cape Town and at the very least 65% of what the person was meaningless Corporate buzzwords and phrases and like 35% of what the person said had actually to do with what was actual reason for this "telephonic meeting".

The person did also get flustered and started to stutter I asked him a basic question about the topic.

This makes me think middle management meetings in SA companies are mostly people throwing buzzwords around to try and sound smart more than anything else.

Am I wrong?

 

[Snyper564]

I just a "telephonic meeting" with somebody in middle management in a company based in Cape Town and at the very least 65% of what the person was meaningless Corporate buzzwords and phrases and like 35% of what the person said had actually to do with what was actual reason for this "telephonic meeting".

The person did also get flustered and started to stutter I asked him a basic question about the topic.

This makes me think middle management meetings in SA companies are mostly people throwing buzzwords around to try and sound smart more than anything else.

Am I wrong?

Dude

YOU HAVE TO PLAY TO WIN

 

[epah]

I just a "telephonic meeting" with somebody in middle management in a company based in Cape Town and at the very least 65% of what the person was meaningless Corporate buzzwords and phrases and like 35% of what the person said had actually to do with what was actual reason for this "telephonic meeting".

The person did also get flustered and started to stutter I asked him a basic question about the topic.

This makes me think middle management meetings in SA companies are mostly people throwing buzzwords around to try and sound smart more than anything else.

Am I wrong?

This whole Paragraph sounds like you are throwing buzzwords and unverified percentages around to me.

 

[Harmonic]

I just a "telephonic meeting" with somebody in middle management in a company based in Cape Town and at the very least 65% of what the person was meaningless Corporate buzzwords and phrases and like 35% of what the person said had actually to do with what was actual reason for this "telephonic meeting".

The person did also get flustered and started to stutter I asked him a basic question about the topic.

This makes me think middle management meetings in SA companies are mostly people throwing buzzwords around to try and sound smart more than anything else.

Am I wrong?

No. That was pretty much my (6 year) experience of corporate South Africa as well.

Between useless buzzwords, endless meetings, managers always trying to outdo each other etc nothing ever really got done effectively.

 

[Harmonic]

Dude

YOU HAVE TO PLAY TO WIN

Well technically you don't have to. Lots of people making very good livings for themselves outside of corporates. I'd rather go live off the land in the forest than work for one again.

 

[Polymathic]

This whole Paragraph sounds like you are throwing buzzwords and unverified percentages around to me.

I'll verify my percentages to you with a backhand, but I know that you'd actually enjoy that, so I won't.

 

[Tman*]

We need to engage with our partners to ensure the deliverables. Working together as a team will ensure we solve market challenges to understand these buzzwords!

 

[My_King]

I just a "telephonic meeting" with somebody in middle management in a company based in Cape Town and at the very least 65% of what the person was meaningless Corporate buzzwords and phrases and like 35% of what the person said had actually to do with what was actual reason for this "telephonic meeting".

The person did also get flustered and started to stutter I asked him a basic question about the topic.

This makes me think middle management meetings in SA companies are mostly people throwing buzzwords around to try and sound smart more than anything else.

Am I wrong?

Sounds like somebody in middle management was a stellenbosch serial pisser, who just crawled through getting a degree.

 

[Illegal Allien]

If you think SA corporate is bad, wait till you interact with outsourced resources from India. They are just the same, only with worser accents.

 

[chuckles_the_cnt]

for the most part it's a shtshow.

 

[CatMom1]

We need to engage with our partners to ensure the deliverables. Working together as a team will ensure we solve market challenges to understand these buzzwords!

Let's circle back to ensure strategic alignment...

 

[Y'all Qaeda]

 

[BrotherTheresa]

I just a "telephonic meeting" with somebody in middle management in a company based in Cape Town and at the very least 65% of what the person was meaningless Corporate buzzwords and phrases and like 35% of what the person said had actually to do with what was actual reason for this "telephonic meeting".

The person did also get flustered and started to stutter I asked him a basic question about the topic.

This makes me think middle management meetings in SA companies are mostly people throwing buzzwords around to try and sound smart more than anything else.

Am I wrong?

There is a inverse relationship between the use of many buzzwords, and competence.

 

[Nerhzelok]

We need to engage with our partners to ensure the deliverables. Working together as a team will ensure we solve market challenges to understand these buzzwords!

Fixed it for you:

As we endeavor to synergistically align our collaborative efforts with our esteemed partners, it is imperative that we proactively engage in strategic dialogue to ensure the timely and effective realization of key deliverables. By leveraging the collective intelligence and expertise of our cross-functional team, we can optimize our ability to mitigate market challenges and gain a deeper understanding of the nuances inherent in the utilization of industry-specific jargon.

 

[Y'all Qaeda]

Fixed it for you:

As we endeavor to leverage the power of synergies and align our collaborative efforts with our esteemed partners, it is imperative that we proactively engage in strategic dialogue to ensure the timely and effective realization of key deliverables. By leveraging the collective intelligence and expertise of our cross-functional team, we can optimize our ability to mitigate market challenges and gain a deeper understanding of the nuances inherent in the utilization of industry-specific jargon, thus ensuring that we remain at the forefront of best practices within the industry. To maximize the impact of our strategic initiatives, it is essential that we adopt a holistic and data-driven approach to decision making, leveraging advanced analytics and cutting-edge technologies to gain real-time insights into key performance indicators. Furthermore, we must be agile in our approach and leverage agile methodologies, such as Scrum, to ensure rapid prototyping, testing, and deployment of innovative solutions that drive business value. In order to stay ahead of the competition, it is essential that we stay attuned to the latest trends, technologies and best practices, and continuously strive to stay ahead of the curve.

FIFY

I told ChatGPT to elaborate on your sentence, and pretend that it is a business consultant that gets paid per word.

 

[Nerhzelok]

FIFY

I told ChatGPT to elaborate on your sentence, and pretend that it is a business consultant that gets paid per word.

Stupendous! Now we're ready to experience a state of financial prosperity.

 

[B-1]

The best part of big meetings are the attendees who said nothing the whole meeting and then feel obliged to make some irrelevant statement at the end so it sounds like they participated.

 

[Fulcrum29]

Depends on whom exactly within the company you are talking to and what culture they practice. Buzzwords are marketing speak, so whatever the discussion or rather conversation was about, it was the experience or as some would more aptly put it, the Customer Journey. I am not going into the techniques, but people within an organisation are trained to think in a particular way. Everyone in an organisation is a salesperson, but you have your outliers, people who doubt or question the product, the ethics, the practices, yada yada, essentially the detractors, but some step into it because they are too damn technical. Those who are technical, either they hide you or they summon you to engage with the smarter than you customer.

No, company will sell you a problem, they all sell you a solution, not a service, not a product, but it is within the solution you can technically create a problem which needs to be solved, so we up and cross-sell. Not going into the consultancy aspect, but you tend to see it in the scope, deliverables... eh, sometimes the client wills it though.

Anyhow. Buzzwords, every organisation has their trendy words or trademark tactics.

 

[HumanShield]

I just a "telephonic meeting" with somebody in middle management in a company based in Cape Town and at the very least 65% of what the person was meaningless Corporate buzzwords and phrases and like 35% of what the person said had actually to do with what was actual reason for this "telephonic meeting".

The person did also get flustered and started to stutter I asked him a basic question about the topic.

This makes me think middle management meetings in SA companies are mostly people throwing buzzwords around to try and sound smart more than anything else.

Am I wrong?

You spoke to someone in marketing/sales

 

[ActivateD]

When someone says scrum I unpack my rugby kit from the gym bag. Scrum let's go! Prrrrt!

Currently dealing with a scrum master who will organise a Teams meeting to discuss each finding I got to the point where I told my team to send findings at 5pm so they can do work.

If you think SA corporate is bad, wait till you interact with outsourced resources from India. They are just the same, only with worser accents.

Delt so much with Indian developers over the past 3 years that I have gotten used to the different accents. Now I need to figure out how to help them to incorporate secure coding practices into their mobile app development.