leadership training II

“Today, in pairs, let’s all discuss”
(just kill me now) “our team’s purpose.”
So many fatuous platitudes
(be still my bad, bad attitude)
“through thick and thin, through stormy weather
we are all in this together!”
(And it’s really true, I’ve tried the door!
There is no exit any more!
The B-Ark’s launched, and oh, dear god,
look, there goes the last escape pod… )

Then suddenly, it all makes sense,
I’m the one that’s been being dense.
Attention drifting back, I hear,
at last the words that make it clear!

There it was, there all along,
I’d just had the spacing wrong:
Not [XXXX] Values in Action,
But [XXXX] Values Inaction!

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I wonder if it’s possible to be expelled from leadership training? Would yelling “stick it up your nose” get me blessedly ejected, or would someone respond “but do our team want XXXX that can be nasally fitted?”.  

Seriously, if you need a workshop from a management consultant to figure out what your purpose is, you probably don’t have one. And no amount of leadership training is going to give you one – it’s there to make that sure that if you ever did have a purpose, you don’t anymore. (Remember, as a leader you are not a contributor any more.)   

Or, you could consider looking at the name of your team, to see if there’s an obvious clue there – like IT Support, or Teaching Team…  And then maybe get on with doing that instead of having an extended collective existential crisis over your purpose, instead of say, answering the phone or writing your next lecture! Just sayin’… it’s not rocket science. Unless you’re in the Space Operations Group, then it is.

And as if it wasn’t bad enough having Values, now we have [organisation] Values in Action! I dearly hope the person who wrote that realised how it sounds when read aloud, and did it on purpose.