Social engineering - or just office politics?
In a recent article:
http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=228538
someone pulled my up on my spelling. On the basis that the response that I gave was found to be quite amusing (by my wife), and also on the basis that the suit wearing community in my company are unlikley to read this (most of the suit wearing community in my company can't read period - Marilyn Vossavont has left the building) I thought I'd post it.
Quote:
ntsa wrote on Today 10:37 AM:
lol.
Sorry - natural defence mechanism from years in the trenches. (Hear me out - this is a good one ).
I always write my documents in a plain text editor. There are all sorts of good technical reasons that I give to people why this is but thay have nothing to do with the real reason.
As it's you, I'll let you in on my secret: NEVER produce a 100% perfect document. For preference get your spelling/grammar mistakes (not numerical mistakes as this will call your findings into question) in the document as early as possible. If you can get them into the title without anyone noticing - do it!
Why I hear you ask? Well managers are subtley scared of technocrats. They fear that one day we will automate their roles. This leads to a deep seated desire in the suit wearing fraternity to (be seen to) 'be making a valid contribution'.
You can mininise the impact of said 'contribution' by ensuring that the 'contribution' that they make is of small significance to the point you are trying to convey.
Said suit wearer will be so anxious to get his/her 'valid comment' in, and therefore protect their suit-wearing jobs, that a well timed red-herring spelling/grammer mistake gives them a much easier target than actually trying to understand ideas that you are conveying.
At the end of the day everyone feels like that had a real good meeting and you walk away with the deal/funding/whatever that you wanted. Everyone's a winner.
Some might call this social engineering. Me, I just call it office politics.
Seriously - try it at your next meeting. This really works!
Regards,
ntsa
NOTE: Marilyn Vossavont holds the world record for the highest IQ ever recorded.
