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    Don't be a writing tutor

    Lord knows I'm no master stylist, but sometimes there's extra cash to be had from people about to fail out of their MBA programs. But is this (real example) the sort of quality we want to be encouraging in that career direction? Do we just quietly take their money and rejigger their writing into C territory?

    CDC’ HR has various functions, which include job analysis, performance management, strategic formulation and implementation, and the balance scorecard. At CDC, HR has these functions to influence staff members’ behavior, attitudes, and work performance. These plans will help HR to run efficiently to enhance employees’ performance, show innovation, increase productivity, and keep its competitive edge, and to achieve the company’s goals.

    HRM supports the goals of CDC by its job analysis and design and it s work performance management. Its Job analysis consists of equipping staff members with the knowledge, training, and skills needed to maintain compliance of Medicaid’s policies. HR’ performance management consists of planning, monitoring, rating, and development and training.
    Thing is, it goes seriously downhill from there.

    #2
    Don't be a writing tutor

    Can you actually fail an MBA for writing like that? I was under the impression you got extra points for it.

    I'm currently dealing with a company that offers "best-of-breed solutions for mission-critical applications". With a straight face.

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      #3
      Don't be a writing tutor

      Sounds like a dog to me, AB.

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        #4
        Don't be a writing tutor

        Arf!

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          #5
          Don't be a writing tutor

          The company that I work for "changes, comments on, rejects and embraces brands".

          The company focuses on "the future of brand communication" and "improving the quality of brand narration."

          The company does this because "that's what everyday communication activities are all about under social media conditions."

          Good job I don't have kids.
          - "What do you do, Daddy?"
          -"What do I do? I'll tell you what I do, my little soldier: I focus on improving the quality of brand narration, that's what I do."

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            #6
            Don't be a writing tutor

            This is the kind of thread that helps me make peace with my career choice.

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              #7
              Don't be a writing tutor

              I had a brush with this kind of bollocks when I was on that part time secondment to, you know, an actual company with an office, a few years ago. It's a kind of shamanism, I think. It's there to sustain the illusion that there exists a realm of expertise called "management", that some have mastered and therefore deserve fatter pay packets. It sustains that illusion most reliably for the managers themselves, who are the ones with an emotional stake in it. Yer Rank and File seem mostly to be deeply cynical about it, and in fact it contributes to their cynicism. Yet it eventually sucks many of them in.

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                #8
                Don't be a writing tutor

                I think the fact that much of the language used to go on about management is ridiculous and attempts to exclude the unitiated, shouldn't lead us to conclude that there isn't a realm of expertise called "management".

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                  #9
                  Don't be a writing tutor

                  ad hoc wrote:
                  I think the fact that much of the language used to go on about management is ridiculous and attempts to exclude the unitiated, shouldn't lead us to conclude that there isn't a realm of expertise called "management".
                  No, that would be a non sequitur. But I suspect that management expertise consists rather more of a mixture of common sense, charisma and a few tricks of the trade than it does of principles that require abstract and arcane terms of art.

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                    #10
                    Don't be a writing tutor

                    I also suspect that what counts as expertise in management is more dependent than people make out on what's being managed. I call this Clive Woodward Syndrome.

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                      #11
                      Don't be a writing tutor

                      I agree 100%. Now can i interest you in my book?

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                        #12
                        Don't be a writing tutor

                        You probably can actually. More than I could interest you in either of mine, anyway.

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                          #13
                          Don't be a writing tutor

                          Treibeis, I presume you have to deal with the same kind of gibberish that's the bane of my life: half-German, half-English verbal diarrhoea shot through with poorly understood buzzwords.

                          Occasionally you read articles complaining about it by defenders of the German language. The trouble is, these people often veer into a kind of mild xenophobia, failing to understand that this language is just as incomprehensible to English speakers.

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                            #14
                            Don't be a writing tutor

                            Are you more of a formulator, or an implementer? Or do you facilitate the coordination between formulation and implementation (vital)?

                            The relative safety of the long citation:

                            According to "Performance Management: Making it Work," "an organization attains the full vision of performance management when executive leaders have communicated their strategy to their managers and employees in a speedy manner and are committed to providing continuous updates to their plans."
                            And then, paddling about on one's own:

                            HRM’s job analysis is effective because it gets detailed information to all employees in regard to and enables staff members to perform numerous task, such as CDC’s and Medicaid’s policy and procedures that change constantly. Most of these programs consist of the resident’s profile, which changes constantly because their behaviors and medicine change; therefore, HR implements strategies with different task or different ways of performing the same task to keep consistency and control over employees’ work performance. HRM and management use the monitoring and policies to weed out bad performances, to ensure all employees working in the interest of the CDC.

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                              #15
                              Don't be a writing tutor

                              No, read my book, 'Arguing About Dyslexia: Just Let Big Ones Be Big Ones' A snip at £12.99 (all proceeds to the 'Help Ian.64 Have More Money' Appeal.

                              I'm sure Pseuds Corner figures somewhere in all this, what with some examples being perilously close to the criteria of verbosity and self-ridiculing poetic gubbins required by that column (especially if it describes 'brands'). The management types who come out with all of this wouldn't speak that bollocks all day long, so why should they write it? Or do they? Perhaps when asked what they want for tea by the wife reply, 'The evocative undercurrent sustained by the perpendicularity of chips, leading to aesthetic impasse created by unadorned, brutal dichotomy of crispy pancakes'.

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                                #16
                                Don't be a writing tutor

                                Treibeis, I presume you have to deal with the same kind of gibberish that's the bane of my life: half-German, half-English verbal diarrhoea shot through with poorly understood buzzwords.

                                Oh yes. Although the real bane of my life is having to write watered-down "Eurovision English". If a nominal superior (particularly the one who spent six months in London in the 1990s and therefore speaks and writes flawless "Oxford English" ) doesn't understand a word, then it doesn't exist.

                                I wouldn't mind if I were writing in Wurzelspeak or rhyming slang, but some twat refused to recognise the word "thigh" the other day, simply because it was the first time he'd come across it.

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                                  #17
                                  Don't be a writing tutor

                                  Ha - "Oxford English". I remember getting sick of hearing about that when I worked at language schools. Unfortunately, I never did manage to get hold of a tape of Pam Ayres.

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                                    #18
                                    Don't be a writing tutor

                                    A recording of a conversation between Billy Whitehurst and John Aldridge in the Manor Ground dressing room would have been good, too.

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                                      #19
                                      Don't be a writing tutor

                                      I see Wyatt's going for my "not a proper subject because it isn't over one of those doors in the courtyard of the Bodleian" award.

                                      I did something called Management and Marketing as part of my ACA conversion. It was possible to pass with common sense but there was some good stuff in there, and the jargon wasn't overdone.

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                                        #20
                                        Don't be a writing tutor

                                        Tubby Isaacs wrote:
                                        I see Wyatt's going for my "not a proper subject because it isn't over one of those doors in the courtyard of the Bodleian" award.
                                        Then I haven't been clear.

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                                          #21
                                          Don't be a writing tutor

                                          I suspect that management expertise consists rather more of a mixture of common sense, charisma and a few tricks of the trade than it does of principles that require abstract and arcane terms of art.
                                          I'm not being unkind in quoting this bit. You've got some Platonic distinction of what's proper "techne" and what isn't but don't say why. That's why I made a gag about "scholia philosophiae" and all.

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                                            #22
                                            Don't be a writing tutor

                                            Tubby Isaacs wrote:
                                            I suspect that management expertise consists rather more of a mixture of common sense, charisma and a few tricks of the trade than it does of principles that require abstract and arcane terms of art.
                                            I'm not being unkind in quoting this bit. You've got some Platonic distinction of what's proper "techne" and what isn't but don't say why. That's why I made a gag about "scholia philosophiae" and all.
                                            What do you mean Platonic, Platonic how? How am I Platonic?

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                                              #23
                                              Don't be a writing tutor

                                              'Cos it's not sexual...

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                                                #24
                                                Don't be a writing tutor

                                                It's a favourite Plato topic- is such and such a "techne"? Rhetoric, that sort of thing.

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                                                  #25
                                                  Don't be a writing tutor

                                                  Your assuming too much about how Greeked-up I am, I'm afraid. But I'm not on a "this is not a real subject" tip, really, if that's what you mean. I'm on an "Emperor's New Clothes" tip, which isn't quite the same.

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