Case Study - Theater is 7/5ths of Performance
PEAS'N RICE!!!!
....you've unwittingly joined a "task force" tasked with subtly forcing compliance with the status quo.
You probably can't change it, but you can damn well roast the shit out of it once you figure out what's really going on.
This post might contain expletives.
[Expletive] happens when dealing with corporate bureaucracy.
Welcome to Innovation Theater
Excitement is palpable. The Process Innovation Management Platform team is formed and finally kicking off its efforts...and you have an invite, though you're a tad suspicious of the name. You simultaneously juggle the naming choice and how you're finally going to get to make a difference! You arrive at the kick off meeting, pen, paper, and ice-cold Dr. Pepper.
Then it hits you like a freight train hits a "stalled" Prius, a one-line statement in the team charter splashed on the 2,000" TV..."NOT WITHIN PURVIEW: Delivery of solution-based outcomes" and you know exactly where this shit show is going...
One of your neighbors, a Greek chorus of sanity in the world of corporate madness, sees it too and casts a knowing look; he's crystallized the insanity in mere microseconds while you sip Dr. Pepper to conceal your disappointment.
The Flowchart of Futility
The team leader, colloquially described as The Weatherman unfurls a dreadful Process Map in all its pixelated "brilliance". It's a labyrinthine Visio™ flow chart "outlining" the generation, sorting, and delegation of ideas with an appropriate quantity of perfunctory "gates" and "nodes".
Via a PowerApp™ an idea is entered, by users, into the "system", a series of committees evaluate and route the ideas to a PowerBI™ hell hole where other people may or may not implement the idea. Otherwise the idea is canned.
Internal "Power Users" will be graced with the opportunity to generate a new PowerApp™ with a new underlying spreadsheet of obviation (whatever that means) and another PowerBI™ dashboard.
For those ideas too sophisticated for the local plebes, the idea is sent off to corporate IT gods for "implementation", likely another SLAP (Spreadsheets Labelled As Programs—because why fix what's clearly broken?) or Workwaste (the enterprise HR app that makes everyone want to waste away) dumpster fire if the new app can survive the New App Authorization Process (NA²P). The place where good ideas go to take a nap, AKA "The Nursery" where all the "adults" just want the toddlers to shut up and take a nap.
This is the moment you felt like Sarah Connor in Terminator 2—watching a nuclear blast of bureaucracy incinerate your hopes of real progress.
Theater All the Way Down
And just when you think the PowerApp™ madness has peaked, you realize the real problem isn't the tools—it's the entire system that creates them.
The beautiful dysfunction: Corporate incentives breed local "solutions" that promote chaos, which ultimately transmutes to pure fucking theater.
Can we say "transmute"?
Corporate Incentives: The Quarterly Earnings Wankathon
Nobody has real power to fix shit. That power belongs to suits obsessing over quarterly reports and shareholder value. As long as your business unit bleeds enough profit, there's literally zero incentive to solve problems—even profitable ones. Why fix what ain't broke enough to hurt the stock price?
Localized Tools: Excel's Prettier Cousin Who Can't Hold a Real Job
Management grudgingly admits efficiency might be nice, you know, theoretically. But enterprise solutions cost real money and require actual decisions. Enter Microsoft™ with their "revolutionary" PowerApps™—Excel's prettier cousin who still can't hold a real job. They've created the thinnest veneer of improvement over the same old spreadsheet clusterfuck.
Only Promotes Chaos: Information Silos and Corporate Guillotines
Zero effort to integrate knowledge because that would require, you know, coordination. Information stays scattered like confetti after a failed product launch. Disruptors get the corporate guillotine faster than you can say "synergistic optimization." So everyone works within the constraints, building Rube Goldberg machines out of PowerBI™ dashboards.
Only Promotes Theater: The Survival Game
The net effect? Some people discover there's more value in appearing innovative than actually being productive. It's the only game that gets you ahead while keeping your head attached to your shoulders. Others don't play at all—they just duck, cover, and pray the next reorganization doesn't notice them.
The Process Innovation Management Platform never intended to manage innovation at all. They're just pimping out everyone's time for their own process theater.
Mission Accomplished (Sort Of)
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LEGAL NOTICE AND DISCLAIMER
Be it known to all readers, prospective litigants, and weary HR drones that all scenarios, characters, dialogues, and corporate malfeasance contained herein are purely hypothetical constructs, presented "as is," without warranty of reality, veracity, or immunity from HR retribution. Any resemblance to actual persons—living, departed, or reluctantly employed—or to specific organizations, subsidiaries, holding companies, meetings, conference rooms, email domains, job titles, salary ranges, organizational hierarchies, corporate buzzwords, team-building exercises, quarterly objectives, performance metrics, bathroom conversations, water cooler gossip, Slack channels, shared drives, expense reports, parking assignments, cafeteria seating arrangements, or interdepartmental feuds is strictly the result of the reader's fertile imagination and in no way a matter of record, precedent, or admissible evidence.
Should any perspicacious sleuth discern veritable correlations to real-world events, such recognition is hereby declared purely fortuitous, coincidental, and entirely divorced from fact. This disclaimer serves the dual purpose of (a) shielding yours truly from frivolous lawsuits, needless performance improvement plans, and impromptu"we need to talk" meetings that could easily inspire an entire future blog post, and (b) maintaining plausible deniability for all parties involved.
Reader discretion is advised. The author assumes no liability for occupational hazards incurred through excessive pattern recognition.