Now we understand - page 1

Are you with me yet? by Bill Parker

To all intents and purposes the totality of the arguments (each and every one) would lead us to believe that, all things being equal, we should quit our reliance on the project in question. It is absolutely and abundantly clear that as far as I am concerned at the end of the day, we basically need new directions. We need to roll out a better customer interface.

At this moment in time we currently take the process of scheduling the roll out of prioritized initiatives to the point where no one can actually understand what we are talking about. We attempt to leverage off grass roots thinking at the coal-face, but at the end of the day will have little tangible, customer focussed material to go on. Even the grass roots, whoever they are, have long since forgotten what it is we actually do.

Actually, and as a matter of fact, during the period from start-up to the present day it has been one of growing confusion, jargon and unmeaningful communications. We tried to embed a behavioural & cultural environment interface into all our key business processes. We integrated all our risk silos, and talked up the process at seminars and workshops, indeed we over-workshopped in some employee's minds. And at the end of the day we are dysfunctional as a corporate entity despite some serious efforts at ground-truthing our modus operandi. In my opinion we have also marginalized our clients and made our client interface hard to understand. I mean to say its not rocket science after all!

Last but not least, and with all other things being equal we obviously need to attend to the fact of the matter. I would like to take this opportunity to recommend that in point of fact, and the final analysis, regarding the collaborative, scalable & customizable work , it was never destined to fly well. The fact of the matter is that the fly-wheel has fallen off, and at the end of the day, nobody can find it. And when one comes to think of it, we are only selling toilet rolls.

Do I make myself abundantly clear?

Stakeholder engagement -- the state of being betrothed to Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Data capture  -- a step that must be taken before you send the ransom note to Starship Captain Jean-Luc Picard threatening harm to his android crewman.
Drill down  -- a short command to ask that a toddler relieve itself of a power tool
Proactive  -- colloquialism for a street hooker that is with a client
Business case -- a soft satchel in our Autumn range at Oroton (available in charcoal or chocolate)
Thanks to Sandra Lambert

An interpretation of the Prime Minister's Australia day speech
from Marty.

"unswerving commitment to racial equality" = "We'll decide who comes to this country"

"enduring values of the national character" = encouraging a backdoor "white Australia policy"

"staying the course with reforms to the way we work and to our welfare arrangements" = giving the bosses what they want, cutting wages, dismantling the right to organise and making people work for unemployment benefits, even if they have a disability or young children

"As I've said before, as a Government we are willing to meet the Indigenous people more than half way on this road" = the abolition of ATSIC and tying welfare payments to "mutual obligation"

"Within limits, all Australians have the right to express their
culture and beliefs* and to participate freely in our national life" = sedition laws *does not apply to persons of "Middle Eastern appearance"

"our more enterprising and entrepreneurial society" = the growing gap between the richest 1 per cent and the poorest 40 per cent

"a postmodern culture of relativism where any objective record of achievement is questioned or repudiated" = I don't like it when my rosy view of history is challenged by the "black armband" brigade; teachers are too left wing, just ask Kevin Donnelly

"Australia is a liberal democracy with global political and economic interests and a proud history of defending freedom against its enemies" = Australia is a junior partner in America's global ambition to become the new Empire

"environmental stewardship" = we don't believe in global warming and you can all eat GMOs

"They hate our freedoms and our way of life." = The Iraqi insurgents and the remnants of the Taliban are preventing the US from getting access to 20 per cent of the world's oil reserves

"This Government will do what is necessary to protect the Australian community, but we will do it in a way that does not diminish us as a community or as a nation. This means finding the right balance between the legitimate interests of the community on the one hand and individual civil rights on the other. And inevitably this will be a matter for passionate debate." = the sedition laws, but having Ron Walker in charge at the SMH and my pal Rupert running the nation's
media will make sure there is no debate

"Thank you." = Get st*ffed

COMPETITION WINNERS
We asked people (via the forum) to translate the following comments from Australian Trade Minister, Mark Vaile:

'The market access pillar in agriculture must go beyond this proposal ... We need to keep negotiating to push the ambition levels out ... At the end of the day we need to see a closing of the gap of the differential of the way industrial goods are treated to the way agricultural goods are treated.' ABC News

Two people won a copy each of the 2006 Weasel Word Diary:

'The pillar devoted to the Capitalist Agrarian God must be replicated everywhere - you've been too timid in your pillar placement proposal. People need to sacrifice as much to the pillars for the Capitalist Agrarian God as they do to the statues for the Capitalist God of Industry'. Michelle Wauchope ( Vayshti)

'The minister is actually proposing a radical new irrigation system - the Market Access Pillar. This will be a giant column rising several hundred kilometres into the Australian sky, with a rotating sprinkler on top.
All Domestic Agriculture Market Participants (DAMPs i.e. farmers) will pay a fee proportional to how much they need/want water (the ambition level), upon which they may or may not receive these argicultural goods, via the Regional Airborne Irrigation Network (RAIN), possibly at the end of the day.
No guarantee of this is provided by the government however, as they're currently having trouble in testing getting the differential at the top of the tower to deliver RAIN properly to all DAMP sectors. When the kinks have been worked out, the final version of the pillar will be mounted directly above Parliament house, replacing the flagpole.
The minister notes the problems but is optimistic, as the Standard Howard Industrial Treatment has been flowing to industrial sectors from Canberra for years.... John Marshall (jmchisel)

The other four winners of our translation competition are:

Charlie Myres

"Righto; four rolls of Ringlock and fifty star pickets thanks cobber" said Wayne the dark and handsome farmer.

"Ah; certainly Sir. How pleasing it is to see that your ambition levels are well pushed out."

"What the ...? Never mind, put 'em in the ute and then I'll need 5 big bags of dog biscuits."

A small frown appeared between the shopkeepers eyes.

"Are you sure Sir? It seems to me you are widening the gap differential slightly here. Perhaps Sir should reconsider the agricultural content of the last request? Then again, I suppose there is a large industrial refining content," he said hurriedly as the customers eyes darkened.

"Listen sport! Enough of the bulldust! I've got a date with a beer in 10 minutes at the Royal. Now give us 2 bags of seconds for the chooks and 1 bag of lupins for the yabbies."

"I'm afraid I can't do that Sir. It's company policy not to deal in base agricultural goods that widen gap differentials. Not to mention the market access pillar that you have taken little heed of in your selfish purchase proposal."

"What the blue blazes...?"

"At the end of the day, be forward thinking and make pushing your ambition level outwards your focus and commitment Sir. That's my advice to you Sir; no good will come from constantly looking backwards and failing to negotiate. Company policy Sir, is to eliminate the gap differential and have only industrial goods…”

A roar of fury that could be heard at the Royal ended the negotiation.

Éibhear Ó hAnluain

"You asked. I answered. Between us we're none the wiser. I'm happy."

Steve Gismondi

"Breach the limits of your competitors ...
Dip the pockets of your creditors ...
Negotiate until they drown!
Marginal derivatives WE MUST BOUND!
Agriculture will have positive slope ...
Industrial profit will be a joke!"

NurseWasabi

"We must get people more people to buy our farmed crap... and we have to keep pushing people buy more farmed crap so that we can sell more farmed crap. Ideally, we need to get people to buy the same amout of farmed crap as they do factory, mass-produced crap."

'Barrett's mission is to continue to challenge paradigms to unlock elite sales performance.' Barrett Consulting

Translation: 'We don't think we're making enough money.' Thanks to Dean.

'You can drive Insight into Action.'

Translation: ' Insight? Isn’t that the guy who works in Finance? Action? I’m sure that’s the little town five miles north of the city. I wonder if I can get there in an hour?' Thanks to Melissa Campbell

From the help menu on a City of Perth website. The site gives details on parking areas available in the city.

'InterMaps is a powerful web based GIS data view, query and analysis solution that allows mapping capabilities to be deployed across the internet. InterMaps allows the user to view and query information from a corporate GIS and related databases. InterMaps is maintained and updated by a GIS administrator to ensure all users receive consistent, current, and accurate information. Users are not able to modify spatial or textual data in InterMaps. Simply log on to InterMaps and explore the maps that are available in various modules.

Translation: 'Here is a series of up-to-date maps that you can view online. If you try to fiddle with them, you won't be able to.' (Thanks to Julia Lawrinson)

'After seeing posters containing a company's corporate mission statement ("empowering our customers to achieve excellence", that sort of thing) stuck on the wall of the men's toilets in their offices, I replaced the mission statement text with a translation into plain English: "We do stuff for money"' Thanks to Peter

'You can fight this stuff! A while back I was writing a guide to a sealed easy-clean keyboard for dirty workplaces and the company didn't like 'flat keyboard' as a name for it, because 'flat' means 'unexciting'. After some thesaurus research I re-wrote the guide calling it the 'unscrobiculate keyboard'. The bosses suddenly decided that 'flat keyboard' was okay after all... (thanks to Dick)

'While reading your [Don Watson's] interview in Newsweek, I decided to take up your challenge and find a definition for your quotation. As a man who graduated from university with a degree in English Literature, I thought myself well suited to the task. After pooling my meagre resources for this task, my wife's employer, the spouse of a corporate lawyer, relayed an answer.

Quote: 'Just as the skill and processes are not compartmentalized in the creation process, the evaluation of outcomes will occur against a background of understanding that separation of outcomes into discrete components is subordinate to the evaluation of the total process as a comprehensive outcome.'

Translation: 'This means that the whole will be evaluated before they figure out who ruined the critical piece.'

I was just as befuddled as you when I saw that block of corporate jargon and I hope this explains it. Mostly because I don't think I can get a better answer. (thanks to Paul Zichichi)

Some translations from Charlie Myres:

From memos to members and volunteers, National Trust of Australia (WA) Feb, 2005:

'Interpretation should be conceived in the main as an added layer to the use of the place as an ongoing entertainment venue.'
Translation:
'It used to be a drill hall, now it's a nightclub.'

'While the urban development has eroded the ability to understand the broader place as a military precinct, there is a strong opportunity...'
Translation:
' It doesn't look like a drill hall anymore.'

'In the first instance it is anticipated to result in an active deaccessioning program and a more manageable well utilised (sic) collection store. It will also assist the Trust in examining its collection strengths and weaknesses, to be more strategic with future acquisitions and to guide future updates of the Collections Policy.'
Translation:
'The Trust has a large collection of artefacts that take up considerable space at a growing cost. It is hoped that the collection will be sold or distributed before further deterioration takes place. The Trust must also consider whether to accept donations of artefacts from the public in the future.'

From a Fire and Emergency Services Authority of WA instruction on what to do when receiving a new vehicle. Oct 2003:
'The provision of a new or refurbished grant appliance/vehicle in the community creates opportunities for the raising of awareness of the commitment of all stakeholders to local community safety. FESA regional staff and local governmemnt officers are to consider and coordinate an appropriate community awareness opportunity on delivery of the grant vehicle.'
Translation:
'Please contact your local newspaper and ask them to report the arrival of the new vehicle, with emphasis on how it was funded.'

Now we understand page 2