Marketing People Believing Their Own Marketing

I was watching an interview last night on the news with the CFO of GM. His whole schtick was about how they were going to be reinvented into a new company through brand reductions and wait for it.... pumping more money into marketing and advertising. I thought to myself, does this guy really believe that more adds will sell more shiite cars? Then it occurred to me that TerryTelco.com has similar minded executives. For example, in a place that believes that internet use is down because there is nothing on the internet worth using or looking at -- not that its because the performance of the broadband network is so poor (or the access lines provide so little bandwidth) -- Terry instead will pump loads of money into marketing the next bump in access speed and call it "Ultra Super Duper Quick Broadband". There will be millions spent on lavish and exciting advertising around the launch of this service, but in the end the reality for the user will be the same as with anyone who has bought a GM car recently: disappointment.

When Life Gets Bad, Lower Your Expections Until It Gets Better

Not long ago the leadership team at TerryTelco.Com was instructed to go to an HR-sponsored "leadership training". During this training we were instructed on the virtues of repositioning our thoughts and feelings about different situations and how this could be done in such a way as to be to our advantage. At first this seemed to make sense until it turned into an L. Ron Hubbard Dianetics seminar. The instructor told us that in essence, it was our minds getting in the way of our happiness at work, as well as perhaps a lack of progress. What we needed to do is one of three things:

1) Accept the situation.
2) Think more positively about the situation until it made us happy.
3) Leave.

Since the first option was counter to what the seminar was on, we skipped that one. We also conspicuously skipped the third one: no one ever leaves TerryTelco.Com, right? Finally, we dug into what the second point -- the brunt of his thesis -- was. So he gave us this example where we had to think of a situation that was seemingly impossible, and to think more positively about it. Magically, those of us that have not been brainwashed through 30 years of employment at TerryTelco were amazingly unconvinced. This is rediculous, right? It gets better. One of our more outspoken colegues decided to give an example of how this was complete and utter bullshit. He explained why one of the systems we were made to use was well, I will not use the actual term he used, so for lack of a better term let say he called it "a sham." When he explained that there was no way in hell that thinking better about this system could make it better, the HR representatives blinked in utter puzzlement. Then they looked at each other, much like two deer might in the woods, smiled then completely ignored his point and re-explained his original point as if our colegue was daft and just didn't get the point. When I looked around the room, I noticed that the other Terries in the room were too shocked. Afterall, whatever HR feeds us is good -- don't resist, is apparently the mantra for Terry.

When our colegue re-explained his point -- using a much louder tone this time as he is known to do -- the HR people looked at each other with even more confused and then frightened looks. At this point I really thought they would call security and have him taken away to the HR centre to have his brain 'fixed'. Fortunately that didn't happen. We left it at that and continued on to the next section of rediculous training.

Terri-Tastic!

The title of this post really has the opposite of what you might think. Terri-Tastic has more of a negative meaning than anything else. For example, when you sit through a one hour meeting, where the first 15-25 minutes is spent figuring out how to get everyone on the call, saying hellos and general small talk, getting the silly collaboration "tools" working, planning for the next call, etc... and then you finally have the discussion where absolutely nothing happens because you've revisited a discussion that you had 20 times already over the past 2 years, that is Terri-Tastic.

Another example is when the IT department mandates the use of their special PCs and Windows build (which is badly broken to begin with), and that uses a different version of Java to run the VPN client than is required to run the time booking/management/vacation tracking system. So as soon as you are connected via the VPN, you cannot manage your time/booking/vacation because the Java application won't run on your IT-sanctioned PC. Ready to rip your hair out yet? I am.

The final example of this term would be a discussion about some topic, call it designing high speed lollipops, where the product management - who has spent months and months compiling the so-called requirements -- decides that they no longer like them because they wish to use a different technology to build this high-speed lollipop than is needed by the customer requirements -- decide to change (yes change!) the requirements. When it is pointed out that they are no longer customer requirements, and you then get a blank stare this is a Terri-Tastic moment.

Talkitecture

Talkitecture - Architecture based loads and loads of discussion situated in a fantasy world. Most often performed by Terries with "Chief Something or other" in his title.

I have been in numerous meetings over time with Terries from our Chief Technology Office who have titles like "Chief Architect of " and I can tell you that %99 of these discussions have been useless -- completely useless. Why you ask is this so generally the case? The answer is easy: these guys specialize in what I call Talkitecture. This is the dark art of endless (often circular) discussions about a topic without ever actually resolving any issues or (gulp) implementing anything.

Take for example, the seemingly endless discussions around whether or not to do Fibre to the Premise (FTTP) versus Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) that go on in just about every Terry Telco outfit these days. These discussions often go like this:

Question: Why do we need to upgrade our access plant to support FTTP/C?

Terry: Well, architecturally speaking, we've had technologies like PON available for decades. The problem is that there has never been a business case to do this. After all, what would anyone do with all of that bandwidth anyway?

This same discussion will go on and on (seemingly forever at some Telcos) cycling between FTTC as a compromise, and FTTP beacuse its "cool". At some point, some pointy-haired manager will request that we bring in the "big guns" from the CTO office to mull over the problem with them. Heck, they've likely been on full-time research projects related to FTTP/PON since the late 1970s, so they should know a thing or two about this stuff anyways. What happens then is they come in and bring their Talkitecture to the party. They talk, talk, talk and talk some more -- often across months of meetings. At some point in the discussion, we will cycle through all of the arguments that the original architecture team has gone through, and finally -- the coup de grace -- will be to cycle back and revisit the original discussions that even the CTO Terries brought forward. Hence, completing the cycle of Talkitecture.


The smart operations cut out

The Terrygasm

Terrygasm

terry⋅gasm [ter-ri-gaz-uhm]
–noun

1.the physical and emotional sensation experienced at the peak of excitation by a Terry (see Terrytelco.com), usually resulting from stimulation of some idea pertaining to out-dated Telco behavior, activities, processes, or devices.

Examples include getting approval to spend vast amounts of money to deploy an ancient technology that is slightly faster than the existing one, completely over-engineering something that could be done with off-the-shelf components for a lot less money, endlessly debating topics (resulting in a self-induced terrygasm), planning for new meetings (while in an existing one), compiling meeting minutes from and old meeting, or getting together for daily "tea time", having lunch at a predictable eating time, or getting a "new" mobile handset (usually one that is 4 years out-of-date, but it is still at least 4 years newer than his last one).

2. an instance of experiencing this.

3. intense or unrestrained excitement related to an out-dated Telco concept, object or process.

4. an instance or occurrence of such excitement.

–verb (used without object)

5. to have a terrygasm.

Origin:
2008; terrytelco.com

Terry's Cost Cutting Maneuver of the Week

Terry is on the rampage to save money these days. Rather than cutting costs by reducing the number of Terries around the shop -- which would definitely help things on a number of dimensions -- he again prefers to nickle and dime us to savings Nirvana.

One example is the other day when I went out to a local take-away place to get some sushi for lunch and forgot to bring cutlery back with my food. So I went up to the canteen and asked the friendly, helpful girl on the till, "do you have any plastic cutlery?" She replied, "What do you want it for?". Amazed that she could think I wanted it for any other purpose, I said, "to eat something" . To which she replied, "You'll have to pay for it", she said, "it's 10p".

You can't make this stuff up.

Anyone With Intelligence Need Not Apply for A Job at a Telco

Last week a dude in my group -- lets call him George -- had been having a really, really bad day due to the airline loosing his luggage and just being general shits about locating them. At one point he was about to put his fist through his monitor after talking with them when they suggested that next time his bags might not disappear if he travel with less expensive ones.

So to calm things down, another guy lets call him Jim, says, "hey man lets go upstairs to the canteen and I'll buy you a tea." So they go up to the canteen. George who does not like to use Styrofoam because he is concerned about its over-use, decides to grab a paper cup instead. gets a tea and goes in line. The woman at the register rings him up and says, "that will be 65 cents please." George says, "but I've got a tea in there, and that is 40cents, right?" She says, "Oh dear Sir, Telco Regulations require that I charge based on the container and since you've got a paper cup its 65 cents." Luckily Jim was there to stop George from jumping over the counter and strangling this poor ninny.

This is a good analogy for why deep packet inspection might be necessary. Charging simply based on the container isn't always the way to best maximize or economize the charge for network traffic.