The Art Of Ineffective Communication
It’s not just general lack of clue, astounding hubris, or basic incompetence that gives management a bad name.
If you’ve had the misfortune to browse the limitless shelves of business oriented dross in any airport bookshop, then you’ll know that the number of self-help books targeting the management classes far outweighs that of any other genre.
They’re often, rather predictably, about success (however you want to define that one¹), aggressively negotiating in an intimidating and definitely immoral fashion, selling things that no-one really wants to buy, developing some kind of mindset or other (growth, success, sigma, etc.), but very often they focus on one specific topic that management, judging by the number of books devoted to it, must be absolutely terrible at.
And that, fellow developers, HR drones, and management spies (I know you’re here), is the art of communication and how to do it most effectively.
It’s unfortunate, therefore, that whoever buys these tomes of inevitably pulp destined paper don’t actually digest, read, or probably even understand, any of the words contained therein².
I’m sure the management types know the vocabulary of communication, even though they’ve attempted to stuff it with meaningless and obfuscating business buzzwords in an attempt to…
