Say What? Wading Through the Nonsense In Microsoft's Re-Org Memo 165
curtwoodward writes "Steve Ballmer's attempt to reorganize Microsoft into a more focused company will define his legacy as CEO. So you'd think the wordsmiths in Redmond would take a little time ensuring their message was crystal-clear, right? Not exactly. Ballmer's big, gung-ho memo to Microsofties, posted on the company's website, is chock full of nonsense and corporate executive doublespeak — or, as Ballmer might say, `high-value experiences' that will `involve repartitioning the work' and `drive partners across our integrated strategy and its execution.' Huh?" Honest language in corporate communications is a rare quality. I suspect there's a special language-butchering training course that most C-level executives enthusiastically complete.
They are now generating memos entirely with this (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:They are now generating memos entirely with thi (Score:5, Interesting)
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The Real Memo (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear business community:
Please pay no attention to the news that we are sending pretty much everything you type directly to the NSA in exchange for buckets of cash and favors. Especially you, China! Losing our entire strategy for southeast Asia would probably hurt the stock price. Hah! If those idiots knew!
Also, for those of you who like Windows 8 except for the forced UI change, you're shit out of luck. It's a thing I've said is good, therefore it is good, and the millions of customers desperately fleeing the platform have no effect on how I view that decision. Because I'm a really smart business guy. Look, I'm in a suit and tie!
All the best,
Steve Ballmer
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Don't be silly. The versions localized for Asia already send it straight to the Ministry of State Secy&^:M
@...;/
no carrier
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Even look at application stores. Valve has been doing one on Windows with Steam
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1. Windows Explorer hangs because it's single-threaded, not because of hardware problems. It has one process trying to move files, copy files, read the directory list, etc... and that same process trying to update the graphical user interface. It should split them into two linked processes, one to do the actual disk reading and writing, and the other to display everything for the user. That way when the disk process has a problem, the GUI continues to work flawlessly for the data it alread
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1. No, I didn't know about the checkbox. I'll take that option for a spin. I was having that problem with Windows Explorer hanging on XP, Vista, 7, 2003 Server, and 2008 Server. So maybe there's just some oddness with our network - but again, there should be a separation between the flow of control drawing the GUI and the flow of control reading and writing data, so that no matter how bizarre or unreliable your network is, the entirety of the file manager doesn't han
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... because Ballmer has a stiffie for the iPhone yet doesn't have a damned clue about what makes an iPhone an iPhone! News Flash, Jobs spent more than 3 decades slowly but surely building up Apple to be a high end boutique brand, refused to cut prices even in the 90s when they were on the ropes, because for his entire strategy to work it NEEDED to be expensive!
A perfect analogy would be slapping a new coat of paint on a Pinto and expecting to get Porsche money for it, because MSFT slaughtered the competition precisely because they were NOT expensive, they were the Walmart to Apple's Macy's and there is NO WAY IN HELL they are gonna suddenly flip that and get people to pay more than for an Apple to buy WinPhones and Wintabs, its NEVER gonna happen, it will NEVER work, the MSFT stores are ghost towns, all the little shops like mine have "Yes we have Win 7!" signs in the window, he is burning the damned company to the ground trying to force a strategy that has less of a chance of succeeding than Heaven's Gate II has a chance of being made!
...
And Apple execs too can destroy a company trying to make it the "next Apple".
Former Apple retail chief Ron Johnson, confident in his extreme brilliance that had made Apple incredibly profitable (of course, why share credit with Steve Jobs or anyone else?), extended the benefits of his genius to J.C. Penney's, attempting to run it like an Apple store: dumping value priced merchandise for boutique items; no discounts, not ever; simply throwing away unread a huge consumer study just completed declaring that "j
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I really don't want Chairmaster reading that rant: the last thing I want to see is Ballmer to get a clue and do something that would help that company. It's way too much fun watching him run it into the ground.
Re: They are now generating memos entirely with th (Score:2)
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I believe Angeret is counting the fact that Ballmer, himself, is also a dick - as well as having one as an appendage.
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You used that spelling in the correct context[1]. Is you one of them there fancy-ass book-larned college boys?
[1] i.e. not as in trademarks and patents.
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Yay, certain companies should definitely use that generator - the first thing Ive got was "maximize sexy interfaces". Sounds much better than the usual human-generated "penis enlargement" phrase i am getting in spam...
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Reminds me of the old Dilbert Mission Statement generator. Loads of fun.
Re:They are now generating memos entirely with thi (Score:4, Informative)
Here's something similar that you can tweak:
http://cmorse.org/missiongen/ [cmorse.org]
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I wish I had mod points. :(
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Microsoft is buying time. They need to downsize by at least 25,000 employees. And to prevent the key employees from jumping away now, they are eliminating that urge by dangling carrots.
Just like the bullshit generator (Score:2, Funny)
This shit is just like the bullshit out of that : http://cbsg.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/live
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So they're using open source software in the executive suite -- hurrah! ;)
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Believe it or not, I have that bookmarked and I throw a phrase from there in meetings every now and then just for kicks. Nobody ever dares say anything. They'd look stupid if they say "I don't understand that" and are afraid to mess up if they make a positive comment.
Take It Back (Score:5, Funny)
Ballmer will make you want to take back those nasty things you said about Bill Gates in the late '90s.
Re:Take It Back (Score:5, Funny)
What people don't know is that Ballmer is a secret Linux FOSS champion. In reality, he's actually Richard Stallman's secret half brother and together they're going to bring down the largest proprietary software company in the world.
Re:Take It Back (Score:4, Funny)
In reality, he's actually Richard Stallman's secret half brother
Maybe if Richard Stallman shaved off all his hair, we'd be able to see the family resemblance . . . ?
Or we could photoshop one of Amanda Bynes' wigs onto Steve Ballmer and see if he looked like Stallman . . . ?
Actually, Steve Ballmer, wearing an Amanda Bynes wig . . . would look frighteningly like Amanda Bynes . . . wearing an Amanda Bynes wig.
Re:Take It Back (Score:5, Funny)
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Actually, Steve Ballmer, wearing an Amanda Bynes wig . . . would look frighteningly like Amanda Bynes . . . wearing an Amanda Bynes wig.
Recently I saw a picture of Amanda Bynes on the cover of a supermarket checkout gossip rag and my first reaction is she looked like Eddie from the Iron Maiden album covers. [wikimedia.org]
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Ballmer will make you want to take back those nasty things you said about Bill Gates in the late '90s.
Quite the opposite. Although I disagree with his business practices at least Gates had an occasional original idea. All Balmer does is ape whatever Apple (and to a lesser extent Google) is doing.
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at least Gates had an occasional original idea
Such as? Serious question.
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Prerequisite (Score:1)
Yes, the prerequisite is a minimum of two years as an editor for slashdot.
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If there's a way to automagically decryt that garbage back into intelligible speech, it could be the new way of confusing the jerks spying on our email. As a side benefit, it'll probably make the government spybots overload a few vital components if they try to read enough of them.
Ever wonder? (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you ever watched an interview with Ballmer and after thought to yourself "Did he actually answer any questions?" /Ballmer smiles.
Ballmer: "We pass the TCP/IP stack into a business flow analysis helping our customers make better decisions!"
Interviewer: "Wow, you guys are busy. Way over my head."
Ballmer: "Just look for it this fall on stores. You'll be pleased we fixed the UDP experience problems with VB."
Where is the actual story?
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Have you ever watched an interview with Ballmer and after thought to yourself "Did he actually answer any questions?"
He should have gone into politics.
(Maybe this is him buffing up his portfolio.)
"Deterrence deterrence deterrence!" (Score:2)
Lawks a mercy!
While he's not exactly the last person I'd want to be within arms length of the big red button, he's certainly not in the top half of the list.
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I'm no politician, but I'm not even sure I'd trust myself with it.
Stephen Hawking? Maybe.
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Stephen Hawking? Maybe.
Why? Because he couldn't reach it? That's the only reason I'd trust anybody.
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It's hard to tell if he's making that joke or not, given all the Stephen Hawking hero worship and political correctness, jerkoff.
CE (Score:2)
D'OH!
It's doubly normal (Score:4, Insightful)
It gets worse (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can actually parse the bull, it does have some actual meaning underneath it, and what it says isn't necessarily a good thing.
"We will pull together disparate engineering efforts today into a coherent set of our high-value activities. This will enable us to deliver the most capability—and be most efficient in development and operations—with the greatest coherence to all our key customers.”
This says that smart people won't be able to work on small, high functioning teams like they need to. Instead, itsounds like they're going to break up teams and pool their people. This will have the effect of making everyone equally mediocre, which is not what they need.
“Some of these changes will involve putting things together and others will involve repartitioning the work, but in all instances we will be more coherent for our users and developers.”
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." What value does he deliver if everything is the same? This squashes out room for innovation.
This memo is not only gobbledygook, it's hiding some really bad practices.
Re:It gets worse, or better? (Score:2)
I agree with you and with Curt Woodward's final summation, "It makes sense, if you can stay awake." There is some meaning behind the catch phrases. I also agree with you that it about putting the overall company goals above the idiosyncratic.
I disagree that this is necessarily bad or means removing small high functioning teams. The ability for a developer to create an application that functions is different environments, such as desk top, cloud and tablet is significant. What is means for Microsoft is under
Re:It gets worse, or better? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:It gets worse (Score:4, Insightful)
"We will pull together disparate engineering efforts today into a coherent set of our high-value activities. This will enable us to deliver the most capabilityâ"and be most efficient in development and operationsâ"with the greatest coherence to all our key customers.â
This says that smart people won't be able to work on small, high functioning teams like they need to. Instead, itsounds like they're going to break up teams and pool their people.
I think your translation is a bit off. What he is saying is that they are going to try and stop all the duplication of effort that has taken place in the past. MS has several different and independently developed UI toolkits, the advertising platforms for Bing and XBox 360 are separate. Even Windows CE and Windows Phone were not close enough to benefit from each other's development, so for example the version of .NET for CE is even more crippled and doesn't get updates that the Windows Phone version does.
It's apparently taken 20 years to realize this. In some ways its more risky because it means picking a technology and running with it rather than having several and letting the most successful win. He is right though, it's better for customers. We got screwed by .NET for CE being abandoned, for example.
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I think your translation is a bit off. What he is saying is that ...
That there is so much room for debate says much about the clarity of the writing. In practice it means whatever somebody wants it to mean, which means that it means nothing.
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windows phone runs windows ce underneath so it definitely did benefit, that they have shitty politics about what to release on what has nothing to do with it.. also windows phone benefited from zune(which pretty much is the entire problem with the fucking platform).
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They didn't back-port a lot of the updates from WP7 to CE7. For example we found that .NET on CE7 doesn't support a long and apparently random list of languages, including Portuguese and some eastern European ones. We put in a support request with MS and they said that there was no business case for them to port the fix back from WP7 to CE7, which basically seems to have been abandoned.
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Re: It gets worse (Score:2)
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we will be more coherent
They're going to work on lasers!
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If you can actually parse the bull, it does have some actual meaning underneath it, and what it says isn't necessarily a good thing.
"We will pull together disparate engineering efforts today into a coherent set of our high-value activities. This will enable us to deliver the most capability—and be most efficient in development and operations—with the greatest coherence to all our key customers.”
This says that smart people won't be able to work on small, high functioning teams like they need to. Instead, itsounds like they're going to break up teams and pool their people. This will have the effect of making everyone equally mediocre, which is not what they need.
“Some of these changes will involve putting things together and others will involve repartitioning the work, but in all instances we will be more coherent for our users and developers.”
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." What value does he deliver if everything is the same? This squashes out room for innovation.
This memo is not only gobbledygook, it's hiding some really bad practices.
It is actually a bit worse than that: until now, most of MS change since windows XP has bees either a continuous effort to wring money out of old things (xp/vista/win7/win8, and the various Office versions), or some hideously expensive "hard copy" of established markets (Xbox), or lastly, buying markets outright (Skype).
The quality of strategy no1 has been chancy at best: yes, customers still pay the MS tax, but let's have a spurt of piety and say that corporations simply no longer look forward to the
Re: It gets worse -- Australia's CSIRO has done t (Score:2, Insightful)
(Oops). ... Did untold damage. Operating overheads went through the roof, and it is now virtually impossible to do small well focused work (at least in many divisions). CSIRO has seen it' 80th birthday, but unless things change I won't be holding my breath for a centenary.
So, if we want a roadmap for Microsoft....
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Did untold damage. Operating overheads went through the roof, and it is now virtually impossible to do small well focused work (at least in many divisions). CSIRO has seen it' 80th birthday, but unless things change I won't be holding my breath for a centenary.
It's nice to know that some country other than the US is screwing up one of its premier research institutions. On second thought, no it's not.
Re: It gets worse (Score:3)
Exactly. People don't need a new PC, they bought an iPad or Android instead. I have MacBooks and I do almost all my browsing on iPad because its easier. I'll probably buy another iPad before another new full computer...
Windows became IRRELEVANT which is WORSE than competition because I forgot about it. The dialog is totally dominated by Android at retail, and customers buy Apple in spite of stores like Best Buy trying to get them not to.
Double-speak (Score:1)
So good (Score:4, Funny)
How wonderfully appropriate [dilbert.com].
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These were, after all, the people who, for many years, deployed the Critical Notification Update Tool. True story! [wikipedia.org]
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Gah. Gah. Gah. Gah. Why, oh why doesn't Slashdot have an edit function? (Yeah, yeah, I know, use the freakin' preview. I did, but didn't see it until after I hit submit.) Critical Update Notification Tool, of course. Great joke, down the toilet.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut_the_Great [wikipedia.org]
Sprayed coffee out my nose (Score:1)
I have gotten more than a few dirty looks for playing buzzword bingo.
I've seen similar slogans before ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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If anyone thought that capitalism leads to free market, they have ample evidence now that this is not the case.
Free markets are the result of lightweight regulation - if you eliminate all regulation altogether, the natural result of capitalism is concentration of power (because capitalism is, by definition, concentration of wealth in a few hands).
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First world governments are run BY companies. The politicians are all their cronies, because the companies control the funds and media they use to get elected.
He's fighting for his job (Score:3)
Microsoft can't seem to do anything right on the consumer front, and while pushing customers into the cloud may get them a nice reliable monthly subscription from a lot of shops, it's also a dangerous gambit, as it increases the odds that shops will abandon the Windows desktop OS or eventually move their services to another provider.
It's a very dangerous time for Microsoft right now. They'll still be selling a whole fark ton of software/services, but if they don't grow at the rate that Wall Street expects them too, their stock will start taking a beating and then the spiral starts.
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it's on a thread.. that's why he is again getting rid of everyone who could replace him. that's what the reorg is about, they haven't been performing that badly as teams they are now it's just their objectives which have been set to total fuckdisaster.
Scott McNealy was well known for this.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Scott McNealy was well known for this.... at Sun, "put all our wood behind 1 arrow" was one of his favorite phrases.
Microsoft's market cap is 299B; Oracle's is 144B, so at least they aren't destined to be purchased by Oracle yet...
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How about a an LBO [wikipedia.org]?
Ballmer at Tanagra? (Score:5, Funny)
Our Stunning Reorganization (Score:5, Insightful)
We will be replacing all of the employees with small shell scripts. The ones we can't, we will be outsourcing your
jobs to Elbonia, until there are no employees remaining that are not upper management.
Then we will declare bankruptcy, pocket all the profits until we re-emerge as a shell company sellining
rights to our name.
Oh and XboxOne.
Corporate Reorg (Score:2)
Hurr Durr Herp Derp
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Hurr Durr Herp Derp
Didn't you just mis-spell "Hodor!" ?
let me translate (Score:2)
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Wholly Crap (Score:2)
Holy Crap! It's wholly crap. My eyes glazed over from the first paragraph. It was literally painful to do anything other than skim the first sentence of a paragraph.
Janus speaks... (Score:3)
Ballmer's big, gung-ho memo to Microsofties, posted on the company's website, is chock full of nonsense and corporate executive doublespeak — or, as Ballmer might say, `high-value experiences' that will `involve repartitioning the work' and `drive partners across our integrated strategy and its execution.' Huh?"
Relax. I'm sure Ballmer didn't write anything. Rather it's the work of market-droids trying to justify their MBAs with buzz words - anything to keep the chairs on the floor and not in the air. I will comment on one quote, however:
“We will pull together disparate engineering efforts today into a coherent set of our high-value activities..."
So when will this start? :-)
I'm not sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure Balmer realizes he is no longer in B-school. He seems to like to surround himself with like-minded B-school buddies, and runs Microsoft like it's the fraternity Mu Sigma Alpha. This kind of bizarro, "in"-group lingo doesn't actually fly when you're the CEO of a Fortune 500 company in what appears to be a consolidation/contraction phase and a profit-taking decline. This buddy mentality is the last thing "MS House" needs.
Plainspoken English matters in business when there is a crisis at hand. This kind of platitude laden memo belongs in a company that is not hungry and is cruising along with a high-quality, high-growth business strategy. Then you can talk biz-orgs theory all you like, however you may please.
My 2 cents. That penny is depreciated to the inflation standard of the year 2500, I would guess, but I find this kind of gamesmanship worrying.
I want MS to adapt and succeed. It has every reason to. It doesn't seem to be doing so. It seems to be resting on its laurels, and has been for a decade.
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To be fair, he graduated from Harvard and is the CEO of the largest software corporation in the world, while you are some guy who posts anti-government rants onto technology discussion boards. He is much more qualified to talk about what's acceptable when you're the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, just as you are much more qualified to discuss being an internet weirdo.
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he didnt exactly earn that position though, just some clown buddy buddy with the owner, and has no experience outside of MS his entire life
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Hey, glad to see you're working on your rage issues, if not your tact. You have no idea who I AM.
Lockstep (Score:1)
What I gathered from the memo is two-fold:
1, Drive as much business as they can to the subscription model
2. All products will be tightly integrated and dependent on proprietary interactions
The first gives them the constant revenue stream. The second one destroys modular computing in that if you upgrade one area running Microsoft software, you are almost forced to upgrade all areas. That cost (we used to call it the forklift upgrade in mainframe days) will drive more businesses towards the subscription mod
oh dear... (Score:1)
One really weird sentence, among many (Score:3)
"We have powered devices for many years through Windows PCs and Xbox."
What the heck is that actually supposed to mean?
Depends on the meaning of "through" (Score:2)
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"We have powered devices for many years through Windows PCs and Xbox."
What the heck is that actually supposed to mean?
I think it means they have powered Xbox Controllers and mice and keyboards, usb harddrives/sticks/flash chips and the kinetic.
Basically, if you can plug it into the Xbox or Windows PC and it powers up, MS has been there for ya. I guess they are an electric company now.
Poetry... (Score:3, Insightful)
What people fail to realize is that these memos are poetry; they're meant to be poetry and are to be poetry and nothing factual at all.
Their meaning is designed to be interpreted by the mood of how the reader feels about their position in the company. This is a taught
skill. Anyone expecting to gleam facts is seriously barking up the wrong tree.
I though everybody knew this?
Sony's mistakes (Score:3)
MS is trying to follow in the mistakes made by Sony. I wouldn't buy Sony DVD players for many years. Why not? Because they wouldn't play VCD or DivX. And why wouldn't they? Because the division of Sony that produces films made sure that wouldn't happen, as VCD and DivX were often used for piracy. Thus the hardware was crippled as a result of the overarching strategy of the company as a whole. They compromised in one area with the theory that somehow the other part of the company would profit more (which is of course incorrect in this case).
The more a diverse company attempts to function as a single entity, the less flexibility the divisions have to compete on a level playing field with companies that aren't so encumbered. It's clear that Sony is finally waking up a little, as they have been quick to point out how the new PS3 allows offline gaming and resaleability of used titles. It's very, very rare for Sony to come across as an advocate for consumers' rights, so that was quite a big change for them.
So in other words, I think this philosophy is going to hurt MS in the long run.
Sounds like (Score:2)
Sounds like they are planning to create more hardware of their own and focus on supporting that hardware.
So are they planning to sell the Xbox One as a combo PC/Console?
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It's called an Executive MBA (Score:2)
(the extended course in language butchery)
Sigh... (Score:2)
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it's like he was required to write such a memo by someone else(the board? *bulletpoint on memo: "address the troops") and he filled it like schoolwork, like it had to be x words long.
because the actual content is just that they're doing a re-org. an actual one liner would have been less of a joke among employees..
holistic my ass..
Re:The memo is actually only one sentence long (Score:4, Funny)
... in three big dimensions: strategy, capability, collaboration, agility, common goals, divisional strategies.
Did Steve also head up the Spanish Inquisition?
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