Do you get messages about these Gestapo seminars for useless managers?

The latest one - shades of 1984 - is called How Managers Can Confront - and Stop - Unacceptable Employee Behavior

It sure tells you how to kick the rebs into line

It includes a "module" called "Progressive Discipline: The "Career Advocate" Method for Salvaging Endangered Employees".

The "overview" says that "every manager encounters employees who cross the line into unacceptable behavior. Maybe they tell off-color jokes. Spread gossip. Act like slobs. Practice poor personal hygiene. Ridicule core organizational values."

What kind of person talks about "core organizational values?"

You can just picture it.

"Bloggs! Stand to attention. Have you been ridiculing core organisational values, you treacherous wretch?"

God, what garbage. Aimed at people with three fatal problems.

1. Don't know how to hire the right people.

2. Don't know how to manage or motivate them.

3. Speak in some weird pseudo-English that only exists among the living dead.

There's a lot of them about. Like zombies they walk jerkily about in large firms, politics and government.

Incidentally, one of the greatest TV commercials ever, the one that made Apple and Chiat/Day famous, was based on the visceral loathing normal people have for this mindless, totalitarian approach to managing people.

Watch it.

http://cnettv.cnet.com/1984-apple-commercial/9742-1_53-15243.html