Humor 11/23/97: Consulting Humor

Hi everyone,

I hope you had a great weekend. It snowed here in Boston on and off,
but it was fun despite the weather. This week, the recommendation for a
movie, CD, book or something else is the movie, "Anastasia". It's
fairly enjoyable.

This week's humor email contains two parts, both involving Andersen
Consulting. The first part comes to us from Lisa Hwang, who works at
Andersen Worldwide, and the second part comes to us from Jennifer Pham,
who works at Andersen Consulting. Sorry to those of you who have
already received a copy of these humor emails from them. I have to
admit, I use most of the Andersen jargon quite often.

Enjoy the humor, and have a great Thanksgiving! Take the time to thank
God for the blessings in your life. I hope you will have a safe trip if
you're traveling.

-Josh.
_________________________________________________________

Part I

Three consultants were in the urinal performing their morning
constitutional.

The first consultant finishes and walks over to the sink to wash his
hands. He then proceeds to dry his hands very carefully. He uses paper
towel after paper towel and ensures that every single spot of water on
his hands is dried. Turning to the other
two other accountants, he says "At KPMG, we are trained to be extremely
thorough".

The second consultant finishes his task at the urinal and he proceeds to
wash his hands. He uses a single paper towel and makes sure that he
dries his hands using every available portion of the paper towel. He
turns and says "At Ernst & Young,
not only are we trained to be extremely thorough but we are also trained
to be extremely efficient".

The third consultant finishes and walks straight for the door. "At
Andersen, we don't pee on our hands".
_______________________________________________

Part II - Andronics

Alex,

I thought I would make one last contribution to your infamous funny
email archive. This is original material! This is a list of annoying
Consultant-ease that we collected on a 7 month project in Florida. We
levied a fine of $.25 on anyone who used one of these terms deemed
Andronics. After seven months, we had close to $70 bucks. Please
forward this to your distinguished group of email aficionados who will
hopefully replicate it around the world (or at least throughout the Big
4 who have been responsible for creating this ridiculous vernacular).
Help save the English language from irreparable damage.

Add Value, Value Added, Value Add, Addition of Value, Value Additive,
Evaluating the Value Add. (We need a fresh credo)
Subject Matter Expert (SME) ("We need to get an Excel SME to teach us
how to sum a column of numbers.")
Up to speed (In reference to knowledge)
Metrics
Stake in the Ground (Are we a surveying company?)
Raise a Red Flag
Robust (This adjective was traditionally used for things like cigars,
now we use it to describe software and strategy)
Slice and Dice (In reference to data. Are we making fruit salad or
databases)
Piggy Back (...off an idea. A kids game turned management consultant
strategy)
Laundry List
Soup to Nuts
Craft a Message (I have heard very few well crafted messages at
Andersen, especially full of this language)
Wordsmith (Again, strong language compared to what is actually written
or said)
Make that Happen
Back Pocket (...idea. Now, in addition to a wallet, Consultants keep
ideas and strategies in their back pocket)
People, Values, Culture (PVC) (referred to as a civil right . e.g.,
Making fun of one's religion of is a PVC violation)
Sidebar
Offline (When any truth or candid conversation is about to be spoken in
a meeting, someone always asks to take it offline)
Head's up (Why are people always giving me a "head's up" about this or
that? My head is typically up during waking hours)
Touch and Go (Isn't this a military exercise?)
Touch Base (e.g., "I will touch base with you next week." That
sounds like sexual harassment to me.)
Low Hanging Fruit (need I say more?)
Deliverable (Probably the most widely used and annoying of the
Andronics.)
Issue/Resolution (I hear people refer to getting their car fixed on the
weekend as 'resolving an issue')
Per (...your request)
Ducks in a Row
Radar Screen (I know the PDA phenomena is really taking off, but I
don't know anyone who actually has a radar screen on them)
Living Document (sometimes referred to a breathing also. hmmm.)
Caveat (A very specific legal term now used by consultants to put
disclaimers on everything they say)
In Sync (Are we consutants or members of an Olympic swimming event?)
Key (I read an article on the Knowledge Exchange that used the adjective
'key' no less than 20 times in 6 paragraphs.)
Bubble up (when analysts finally get their collective voices heard by
the Partners)
Trickle down (opposite of bubble up, except this happens much more
quickly)
Log (as a verb... not in the timber industry)
Showstopper (An event which may kill a project instantaneously... like
analysts passing hate mail about clients on the client's email server)
Single/Multi-thread (denoting one or many people working on something)
Multitasking (I hate this)
Paradigm (Mix one part Covey to 100 parts original thought, not the
other way around)
Dovetail (Norm Abrams uses these joints on the New Yankee Workshop.
Consultants use these to interface platforms)
Continuum (I think Shaheen coined this in the 1995 annual review, it
took off from there.)
On the same page
Octel (as a verb. We like to verb words)
Notes (as a verb)
Roll anything (off, on, out, up. People at Andersen are always rolling)

Fire off (a dramatic way to send and email)
Readiness (Someone told me one time that they were assessing my
promotion 'readiness.' I thought it sounded funny)
Pound (#) out (of a voicemail)
To Punt (Part of the sports analogy craze)
Ball in/out of court (more sports analogies)
Drop the Ball
Take a S.W.A.G. (Super Wild Ass Guess)
Lay of the Land (I heard a manager say that he spent the first week at
the client assessing the 'lay of the land'. Again are we a surveying
firm?)
Topology (in reference to a Local Area Network)
Hammer Away (We all secretly want to be carpenters.)
Gray Area (Everything is a grey area when you don't know what you are
talking about)
Raise/Lower the Bar
Guru (It is amazing how little real experience it takes to become a
guru at something. Same goes for SME)
Process (way overused)
Due Diligence (I heard a guy argue that he had performed 'due
diligence' in helping with the housework)
Driving (in reference to using a PC, or a process. Ever have someone
walk up to your PC and ask if they can drive?)
Walk the Path (in reference to navigating in an application)
Gameplan
Doing anything "in or out of the box" (I wonder if the person who
created this analogy envisioned an entire industry building up around
it?)
Data Mining (Are we consultants or spelunkers?)
Drill Down (Are we consultants or roughnecks?)
Mapping (Are we consultants or cartographers?)
Checkpoint
Granularity (We do a sieve analysis on our ideas)
Regarding (this or that, constantly)
Tagging (as in returning/making calls)
Synergy (Back to the Covey recipe)
Thumbnail (as in estimating)
Strawman (I have yet to understand how building a strawman is analogous
to putting together preliminary ideas)
Flesh Out (...ideas)
Latest and Greatest
Screen Pop
Matrix (Every idea in the world is not two dimensional, therefore
everything cannot fit into a matrix)
Bottleneck
Critical Path (I saw a group of people trying to determine the
'critical path' for performing a pub crawl after work!)
Critical Mass (Physics, not people)
Proactive (Covey lives!)
On Board (used when a new person is welcomed to the project)
Ramp up/down
Strategic vs. Tactical
Level ( High, Low, Lower, Higher, Mid)
Take a step back
'x' Thousand foot view ("Lets take a 50,000 foot view of the situation,
then we'll dive down to 10,000 feet and take another look.")
In terms off.
Going forward
In the Near/Long term
Cross Pollinating (Bees do it on flowers, why can't we do it with
ideas?)
Framework
Painting Broad Strokes (In other words, we had a large effect on the
organization)
In the Loop (widely used and highly annoying)
Percolate (similar to 'bubble up')
Silos (Change management folks love the organizational 'silo' analogy)