Quite right, but there's really no mystery here. Everyone agrees that being on the receiving end of disruption is unpleasant, so the consultants have noticed that they can sell disruption as a product, to the managers, with the line that "This way, you are the *cause* of the disruption rather than the effect.". From the viewpoint of a sufficiently dumb manager, that means they look far-sighted and perhaps get an opportunity to dispatch one or two disruptive employees (ironically using the excuse that they weren't disruptive enough). From the viewpoint of the consultant, they only have to deliver chaos -- the more the better in fact.
You want to DISRUPT my TECH? How about I DISRUPT your FACE?
My “iBeats by Dr Dre” earphones have ceased functioning. They lasted all of eight weeks. Tangerine Dream at Coventry Cathedral. HD. Tangerine Dream at Coventry Cathedral 1974. While I’d been joking that I was trying to defile Dr Dre’s muvva-fuddin’ bitch-slappin’ earphones by listening to early Mike Oldfield and Tangerine …
COMMENTS
-
-
Saturday 12th September 2015 11:19 GMT TheProf
Re: BWI
I worked for a company that ran an 'innovative ideas' scam, sorry, scheme along those lines.
If you had a brilliant idea to save the company money all you had to do was cost analyse to the last penny the whole project and you'd get (up to) 10% (up to some limit obviously) of the money saved in the first year after implementation costs were deducted .
Your idea's saving the company £10 million p.a. in subsequent years? Nothing for you, sucka!
-
-
-
Saturday 12th September 2015 16:51 GMT TitterYeNot
Re: TNT!
"Turtled Necked Twat, brilliant!"
Agreed, a highly amusing and appropriate moniker for someone who does unfortunately actually appear to exist. Well, I say he exists, he might just have been a relative of Steve or something, the one I knew was even worse so became Jeff-The-TNC (and no, the C isnt for 'countryside', though there's a distinct phonetic relationship.)
And Alistair, a staple gun when someone utters the catchphrase “disruptive technology”? Really? Let's not let things get out of perspective here.
It deserves a nail-gun at the very least...
-
Saturday 12th September 2015 20:36 GMT Shadow Systems
@TitterYeNot, re Nail Gun.
Which style of nail do you suggest be used from across the room? I can't always get "up close & personal" with the TNT Consultant, so am forced to open fire from a distance. Standard Roofing Nails tend to tumble mid-flight & render themselves highly inaccurate, so I need a style of nail that will remain true-on-target. Or should I just invest in a Sniper Nail Gun instead & take pot shots from the roof as they approach the building so they never get inside to begin with?
*Cough*
I'll get my coat, it's the one with the portable air compressor & bags of nails in the pockets...
-
-
-
Saturday 12th September 2015 08:37 GMT Loud Speaker
If you keep going with this type or research, you will soon find that, where as "bigger" just means bigger, "enhanced" means "we have added so many new bits, we have not had time to debug them, and now even the old stuff no longer works properly". (See "New Coca-Cola", Unity and "systemd")
-
Saturday 12th September 2015 09:03 GMT Anonymous Custard
Not to mention the old chestnut of "new and improved", which is of course self-contradictory.
All these TNT's (that is definitely going into regular usage at work) get rather squirmy when you point that out and ask them for details about how their new whizzy product or project can be both.
-
Monday 14th September 2015 17:10 GMT Roo
Squirmy TNTS
"All these TNT's (that is definitely going into regular usage at work) get rather squirmy"
"Squirmy" reminds of me when I asked an Azul rep what the FP performance of their Java hardware was like. It was a fair question, they were pitching it at apps that spent 95% of their lives crunching FP...
I never did get *any* answer from Azul, so I'm guessing their FP performance disrupted their disruption.
-
-
-
Saturday 12th September 2015 08:52 GMT P. Lee
>the rate of change is fast and it is getting faster.
While I agree with the thrust of the article, I'm not so sure on this point.
It seems that IT has grown into such a huge and rigid beast that structural change is actually far too expensive to contemplate. Isn't that the reason for the industry bloodbath - vendors aren't offering any constructive change and we're not sure if people would want it even if it were on offer? The cost of change outweighs pretty much any benefit you could imagine. That much is obvious from the number of companies still running SAP. ;)
My A-Level CompSci teacher used to say the answer to any question regarding why computers are used is "quick, cheap and efficient." He failed to mention (possibly because it wasn't really so back then) that IT is incredibly fragile. We have centralised so far, with so much complexity, that one small change can bring down massive systems, eh RBS?
-
Sunday 13th September 2015 03:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: >the rate of change is fast and it is getting faster.
Good point. But I'd go further and not see change as a cost per se. The system in place *is* the business. Change it incorrectly and your profit and your business may no longer exist. What is a bank these days without an Internet site?
As such the need for change is usually based on newcomers entering the market with a better product which hurts your business (e.g egg bank remember them?)
Of course keeping current and doing R&D to invent the next business upgrade is useful, but actually deploying it merely to steal an extra 5% of the market and risk losing the 40% you hold is what counts against disruption.
-
Monday 14th September 2015 10:54 GMT fajensen
Re: >the rate of change is fast and it is getting faster.
The thing is that after some first-movers make the "disruptive*" change and make off like bandits in the process, the competition piles in and drives margins (and quality) to Zero. With Zero margins, investment and innovation dry up so one has basically to make money by cornering a part of the same market everyone is fighting over and charging to maintain it - i.e. Rent Collection.
"Rigid and Brittle" is what you want as a rentier business!
Makes it hard, potentially a business-killing decision, to move away from one product and into the arms of the competition. If the competition is equally shit then there is no need either - the fully developed competitive market place where all profit opportunity is competed away - ensures this.
*) Disruptive in my opinion means a jump into Hyperspace - someone drives a change that completely changes the landscape for everyone else. Because of this, the value of the change cannot be modelled in advance, which also means that the bean-counters will never approve it, so, once bean-counters are hired and cloaked in power, there can be no more disruptions from that place.
Bill Gates, f.ex., he saw the value of combining DOS with the PC way before anyone else, the people he bought it from didn't "get it either". Now, lumbered with bean-counters and change management processes, Microsoft, HP et cetera lumbers around following "hot trends" that are already long over!
-
Saturday 12th September 2015 08:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
This all sounds very familiar
Mrs Coat's boss is highly susceptible to TNT salesfolk. The IT dept always knows when someone flogging the latest tech fashion has visited. He bangs on about the cloud and other similar bollocks but really doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. More dangerous than disruptive.
-
-
-
Monday 14th September 2015 05:48 GMT MonkeyCee
Re: Ironic?
Seriously El Dabbsy? My Sennheisers are from the cheapo end of the range (25 euros, so roughly 20 squids) and have "better"* performance than dem beats.
Then you can have your awesome sennys, and your travel ones :)
*By standard acoustic measures. For looking like a tw@t, they are about half as good.
-
Saturday 12th September 2015 10:03 GMT MrT
"Our events are short..."
...brought this to mind:
Fozziwig: My speech! Here's my Christmas speech. Ahem. "Thank you all, and Merry Christmas."
Jacob Marley: That was the speech?
Robert Marley: It was dumb!
Jacob Marley: It was obvious!
Robert Marley: It was pointless!
Jacob Marley: It was... short!
Together: I loved it!
-
Saturday 12th September 2015 10:07 GMT Chris Miller
"People resist change"
The unanswerable response to any objection from The Consultant ("not a team player" is another good one). The unspoken subtext, of course, is that people resist change that makes life worse for them. If you doubt this, imagine offering your staff a new contract that pays them twice as much for half the work (cf. medical professionals under Tony Blair). How much resistance would you expect to this change?
-
-
Saturday 12th September 2015 21:02 GMT Shadow Systems
@KA1AXY, re: Change.
I agree that Change for Progress is fine while Change for Change's sake is more-often-than-not a disruptive impediment to progress.
For example, changing the way in which a motorist controls the vehicle from the traditional steering wheel to something involving levers, dials, knobs, & random electrical shocks "to maintain motorist focus" is a really bad idea, while a change that removes the PEBKAC coefficient (aka Self Driving Vehicles) might not be such a bad idea.
However, changes like "upgrading" a computer from a perfectly functional state that Gets Shit Done, to a state that requires days/weeks/months of constant, hourly/daily tweaks to get the bugs out, to fix bits of broken code, & resolve incompatabilities that the TNT Consultant glossed over is a whole 'nuther kettle o' fish.
When a company I worked for brought in a TNT Consultant to assist with an "upgrade" to a bit of the corporate infrastructure, I could smell the DOOM coming like a rancid fart in a packed elevator. I tried to warn my manager that it was A Very Bad Idea but was told to mind my own business. Sure enough, a week after the TNT Consultant left claiming the upgrade complete, it all hit the fan when the IT Manager found out that the TNT Consultant had switched OFF the back up routine, unplugged the back up server's link, & rendered the nightly back up strategy a total shambles. And whom did they try to get to FIX that particular cock up? *Points at self* Yeah. Why? Because I was smart enough to have pointed out in the first place what a load of bullshit the whole "upgrade" had been from the get-go. So the IT Manager dropped it in MY lap to recover from. That's when I reminded him that (to use his own words when dismissing my original concerns) "That's above my Pay Grade & not something I should worry my pretty little head over". I smiled acidly & went back to my desk, his spluttering & stuttering like music in my SadoMasochistic ears.
Change that is Progress is often a good thing. Change just for Change's sake is often a complete cluster fuck waiting to blow up in your face.
-
-
Saturday 12th September 2015 11:34 GMT Doctor_Wibble
Like "democratise"
These are words used by people who don't like the status quo, i.e. that a small number of people have all the control and money, and 'disruptive' and 'democratising' is a way of having a go at that in order for all the money and control to end up in the hands of a different small number of people. If you want the money, be honest and maybe we won't actually have a problem with that.
In that grand dream of the disrupted democratised future, who is it that we envision standing on that hill looking down at the adoring masses?
p.s. how many fckn google recaptchas per post? this is the price of commenting, presumably? that's six or seven just for this FFS
-
Saturday 12th September 2015 12:15 GMT Richard 12
Disruption cannot be sold
Disruption means "A new product or service that nobody predicted".
Thus it's obviously not something that any consultant can possibly provide, and therefore anyone trying to sell it should be introduced to the stairs BOFH-style.
Companies do need to be able to spot a disruptive technology before they get disrupted, and follow Kodak.
-
Saturday 12th September 2015 13:00 GMT Unicornpiss
I never thought Dr. Dre had very good cans...
Regardless, re. disruption, I'm going to start a consultancy that will have midgets wearing funny hats come in and randomly kick people in the shins, defecate on the copier glass, remove bolts from chairs, etc. all in the name of disruption. I should soon be a multi-gzillionaire!
-
Saturday 12th September 2015 13:30 GMT Chris G
I can do that!
For half the price.
Let me change all your passwords to 123456, disable yoru firewall and uninstall any anti malware, in no time you should have all the disruption you could possibly desire.
It may be easier to put right as well.
I am deeply suspicious of TNTs and their female counterparts, whose speech is liberally sprinkled with phrases or words like disruptive technology, pro-active, synerg/y/ize/izing/istic, reach-out etc, BS buzzwords are for people who don't have anything that is genuinely meaningful to say.
If a sales pitch is so 'clever' that you have to pause to translate it into plain English ( if you can), it's a fair bet the cost will be higher than you are willing to pay and not necessarily only financialand the product will probably turn out to have no practical use.
-
Saturday 12th September 2015 16:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I can do that!
Reach out.... i can't stand that phrase and insist on taking it literally whenever it is said... its usually the Merkins who use it and then get confused about my confusion over "reaching out, what through your screen..you know i am 6000 miles away right?"... then i come in with the killer .. "Ta very much"
-
-
-
Saturday 12th September 2015 18:10 GMT Mark 85
Re: I can do that!
You're right... I used to consider that "reaching out" should involve a cattle prod. However, this often did not change behavior. A 30-06 is a rifle.. for long distance "reaching out".
As near as I can tell, this buzzphrase comes from an old AT&T commercial series wherein the phrase "reach out and touch someone" was used followed by touchy-feely pictures and music. Shortly after, it was picked up by touchy-feely management. Who says advertising doesn't work?
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
Sunday 13th September 2015 15:40 GMT Trygve Henriksen
Re: I can do that!
That's 30-06 Springfield caliber, or 7.62x63mm for everyone using a sensible measuring system.
Slightly more powerful than the 7.62x51 NATO round,
30 - for 0.30" caliber,
06 - for 1906, the year it was adopted for use by the US Army.
It must not be confused with 30-40 which is sometimes called '.30 U-S.' or '.30 Army', though.
-
-
-
-
-
-
Sunday 13th September 2015 08:09 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Dabbs' column
I used to work in corporate events - setting up stages and handling lighting, sound and PowerPoint* for CEOs and the like.
It paid pretty well, albeit sometimes very boring.
This is very real. I saw a hell of a lot of this kind of insane rubbish - pretty much every large company goes down this path of paying for pointless consultancy after being told the right set of buzzwords.
Even in very low-margin, high-turnover industries where a small mistake could kill an entire multi-million pound business.
* You don't think anyone lets an xEO operate a PowerPoint unaided?They'd hurt themselves.
Anon just in case I'm short on cash and want to do it again.
-
-
Saturday 12th September 2015 17:10 GMT x 7
thanks for the Coventry concert link - fist time I've seen a decent copy online, all the others I've seen were poor quality digitised VCRs.
I can still remember when this was broadcast on BBC2 - my father couldn't understand what he was watching, and was quite upset at the idea of a lot of long haired german unwashed hippies in Coventry
-
Sunday 13th September 2015 00:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
Yeah, I know. We're all gonna be "digitised"
I'm suffering the TNT's attention here in the in-house Social Media project.
Will the knobwits never learn? The TNT makes selling the King some New Clotes that stupid people can;e see look lame beyond belief. Duh management welcome it with open arms, blathering how fabulous it is and how wonderfully we will all perform and how our email traffic will just disappear.
What d we end up with? An unending stream of fatuous, sycophantic remarks and the HR dept and other hangers-on, pushing even more drivel out, stuffed with stock photos of carefully demographically balanced groups of smiling faces, plus interminable videos of the management looking Very Important.
I would dearly love to orchestrate a lift shaft door failure for the TNT, the burbles who think this kind of thing is a good idea and anyone from Tibbr, I really would.
-
Sunday 13th September 2015 02:36 GMT OzBob
The lesser evil
is the manager who reads something in Gartner and reorgs the IT division based on his interpretation. As we all sat together and our salary ranges didn't change, we attended meetings in our respective roles and told everyone else what was going on afterwards, in essence basically ignoring the dividing lines. But that only works when no-one tries to take the mick and extend their job remit.
-
Sunday 13th September 2015 09:43 GMT poslfit
XML? You wish.
If you were around in the 1980s, that TNT would have been pushing an SGML solution, similar to an XML one, but less standardized and more customizable. I coded for two companies that offered both an SGML option and a reasonably priced choice for typesetting, and it never failed to amazed me how many customers chose SGML. We must have had a really good TNT.
-
Monday 14th September 2015 14:38 GMT Filippo
I do consultant work, but I joke that I prefer to call myself a mercenary. Anyway, the way I do it is, my bill only comes after deployment, and it's nearly always equal to the forecast budget.
I disapprove both of this thing of paying people while you're not even certain you're getting what you're paying for, and of this other thing of paying people more money because *they* screwed up the initial analysis.