New stoopid business fad that's driving me nuts (and old ones as well)

In My Humble Opinion
1

If I hear the words “elevator speech” one more time, someone will be punched in the throat. So far in the last month or so, I’ve gotten something like 5 assignments from 5 different management departments (training, my boss, the sales team, etc) to come up with “The New Exciting Marketing Tool, the Elevator Speech!”

For those not in the know, an “elevator speech” is the current stoopid management buzzword du jour. The idea is that "Every employee is a salesperson* and should be prepared to give a quick one-minute speech explaining the basic services your business offers. The name comes from the idea that if you meet someone in an elevator, you’re supposed to be able to give this speech between floors. Because, yeah–getting walking commercials will make you and your business more popular. :rolleyes:

A) How do I get a job coming up with these stupid, timewasters? Because annoying people who actually…y’know…work and produce stuff to justify my phony-baloney job sounds like fun.

B) Can I create a book called “The best Management Practice of All: Shut UP and Let Your Workers Work”? Would you buy it?

C) How many other stupid management fads can you name and describe?

I remember Sigma Six (Six Sigma?) where rather than shutting up and letting you do your job, a heirarchy of people wearing totally retarded-looking kung-fu style colored belts appears above you–the belts representing the varying degrees of “expertness”–the upshot being, rather than doing your job, you end up fucking around with “process improvements” that slow down your work as each successive expert tries to put their own phony stamp on your process so that a job that used to take 10 minutes (“Sort the mail alphabetically into bins, then put it on the mail-cart”) becomes a 3 hour process (“Sort the mail by size. No. By return address zip-code. No–by department. THEN alphabetically by size. Then sort each letter into new department folders. Then take the department folders to the mailboxes, which are arraigned alphabetically, and sort each department’s mail into the proper a-z mailboxes”) in hopes of getting a .001% process improvement.

I also remember “One Minute Management” (All management tasks should be done in 1 minute. One minute reprimand? Not a problem although HR will never, EVER let you get away with it). “One minute praise”? A little skimpy but ok. But “One Minute Goals”? :rolleyes: Any “goal” you can address in one minute is gonna be meaningless fluff. “Work harder! :)” or “Produce more! :)” or “Let us minimize our waste, shall we? :)” aren’t really management as much as they are bumper stickers.

Anyone else?
*If so, then fucking give me commissions, bonuses and trips, plus 3 drink lunches and expense accounts for schmoozing the clients like the salesfolk get.

2

Not sure why you think this is new. It’s been a prominent concept/buzzword for 10 or 15 years.

3

Yeah, our company had an elevator pitch 14 years ago, and called it specifically that. And the idea isn’t to be a “walking commercial” and volunteer the information to every poor schlub you cross paths with. It’s in case you’re somewhere (say, an elevator) and someone asks you what your company does, you can give them a quick, concise message explaining it.

4

Ugh! I’m convinced the best job to have in a down economy is to sell corporations on a new process to do things in a new and innovative way; with plenty of buzzwords thrown in.

Regarding six sigma… that one has staying power and isn’t likely to go anywhere.

Anyone remember the fad several years about applying the business practices of the Pike Fish Market to business situations? They show this great little video about the employees of the fish market love their jobs and toss fish around all day. It was STUPID. Ken Henderson, and SQL Server guru wrote an awesome article about how stupid the whole thing was. Here’s an excerpt.

5

I am a Six Sigma blackbelt. Two things:

  1. No one ever gave me an actual belt; I’m all jealous.
  2. Your particular Six Sigma 'tards were trying transactional process improvements. Those are annoying, and deserve a throatpunch.

Now, I’m off to actualize something and cascade it down to my crossfunctional-teammates.

6

My understanding of “Elevator Speech” has always been about selling yourself

For example, when some bigwig from the company that is acquiring yours pauses for 30 seconds to talk to you, what drivel do you spout about yourself.

In that context, it makes a lot of sense to me. One should always be able to express his or her own talent and value to the company in a very concise manner.
And there are variations: what about when introductions are being made when a new team is forming up for … whatever…? It’s really nice to be able to tell the guys on the phone from Germany what you do without stumbling over words.

7

And to post a relevant quote from the above article:

8

Huh–that’s not how they’re implementing it, Also, I honestly have never heard of it before say, 6 weeks ago.

On the other hand, why the hell do they need a name for it? If someone asks me what my company does, I can explain in a few sentences without a pre-scripted speech with a stupid-sounding name.

Anyway, either the person is asking me because they want to actually know–in which case, it’ll be a short conversation or they’re just passing the time and asking one of those “I don’t really want an answer” questions like “How’s your day going?”

9

Because it’s illustrative. What’s a more concise way to say “explain the compelling and salient points of your business in thirty seconds to two minutes”? I’ve never heard anyone say it’s a really brilliant term. It’s just a term people understand so it’s useful.

No, there’s at least one other option, that the person isn’t particularly interested in your business but may be convinced to become interested if you can give them a compelling pitch in 30 seconds to 2 minutes. That’s why you need your elevator pitch down.

10

Agreed. If I ever get off the road, I’m hoping to be trained to blackbelt myself. Six Sigma does work in my field. Now, I don’t mean stupid, make-work, little greenbelt projects, but bona fide, blackbelt level projects do work.

11

That’s how I have always heard it used. You have a business idea that you want to pitch to a VC firm? Then make sure you have a solid elevator pitch down pat. If the VC guy likes it, he’ll ask for more detail.

12

Well, it’s great that you can. The pre-scripted speech isn’t required by you, and can be ignored. Not everyone will have the big picture of your company’s business which you do, and others will have the knowledge but not the skills to articulate it concisely.

Some years ago I worked in the R&D department of a small to medium company. Obviously I knew what we did, and I knew the functionality of our products. What I couldn’t really articulate well was what would drive an organization which did not currently use our products to buy them. To me that’s the benefit of the pre-scripted speech. “We produce <industry-segment> software which assists our customers to <summary of functionality>. By doing so they <summary of benefits>.”

13

No–that’s what the sales guys get paid for. I don’t even see how you’d introduce it into the conversation.

A Short Play, Illustrating This Point

Elevator door: Ding!

Me: {Steps on}

Bill Gates. who just happens to be in this particular elevator: What floor are you heading for?

Me: 12 please, but speaking of floors, now’s YOUR chance to get in on the ground floor of FenCO[sup]tm[/sup]! Yes, FenCO[sup]tm[/sup]: the nation’s first and leading manufacturer of cheese-flavored nuclear wickets. We care about cheese-flavored nuclear wickets so you don’t have to!. FenCo![sup]tm[/sup]!

Bill Gates: I’ll…just get off here…thanks. {hits emergency stop, pries open doors, crawls out and yells} Security!!! There’s another one here!

I doubt that anyone in the world got a lucrative business contract by accosting strangers in the elevator with four trenchant sentences. :wink:

(On preview, it looks like the idea would be ok in certain environments…but…it appears that once again, my company found a buzz-word and is trying to get everyone–I mean, janitors, mailroom folks, internal IT people…everyone to do it.)

14

Longer than that. 20 years ago I took a 2 week management class taught by Harvard Business School profs. One asked me at lunch for a one sentence description of what my place did - he was impressed that I could give it to him. I don’t think they were called elevator pitches back then.

Compared to most fads (like the old Mission Statement one) this is pretty rational. I contend that if you cannot describe what your company/division does on one or two sentences, you don’t understand it, and it is likely that any decisions you make will be unhelpful. Saying what you do in one sentence understandable by everyone might be a bit tougher.

15

I’ve seen that stupid fish video twice in the 2+ years I’ve been with my current company. There’s one that’s almost as bad. Something like “Give 'em the Pickle” (meaning just give a customer the little things instead of nickle and diming them for every little modification they ask for). Except that I work in an inbound call center and we don’t offer pickles, either literally or figuratively. We take the caller’s information, send it off in the system, then talk to the next caller.

???

16

I think you are a bit unclear on the concept. They are for when you are asked what your company does, not to spout to captive elevator passengers, cabbies, waiters, and washroom attendants.

Here is the alternative:
Businessman - who might be interested in hiring you with a big raise some day. So what does your company do?
You: I dunno. I just shuffle papers and read the Dope.
Businessman: Okay (Rips up hefty signing bonus.)

Now, if you want Bill Gates to fund your startup or back your great new idea, then you better be ready to give him an elevator pitch for it. Then you get to be aggressive.

17

Don’t you dare. It’ll just mean more work for the rest of us and we can’t get anything done as it is.

18

No, no: I am now clear on it, thanks to the folks in this thread. However, my company isn’t. We are supposed to go accost washroom attendants with it. It says so, in writing on the assignment I was handed today.*

Wouldn’t I be better selling myself in this situation than the company?

Businessman who might want to hire me with a big raise: So what does your company do?

Me: We make wickets. The world’s best! I recently developed and got implemented a new production initiative that sped up production by 86% which also decreased severed finger incidents by 2%! More fingers makes for happier AND more productive employees.

If I’ve only got 4 sentences to spend with Daddy Warbucks who could potentially make me rich, I’m not going to waste them on my company alone.
*Ok, not the washroom attendant part. But yeah, part of the assignment for the next two weeks is for every (literally, every!) employee at my level or below (and maybe above, I don’t know), down to the nighttime cleaning crew, the security guys, the internal IT guys to A) make up an elevator speech (either 4 or 5 sentences–I don’t have the assignment with me but they mandated the number) B) Demo it to their supervisor (and optionally their co-workers) and C) give it to at least 3 people in the following week (next week, not this one).

I strongly doubt that any of the folks working for me in internal tech-support/help-desk are going to be asked by members of our own company who are the only people they speak to during their work hours: “Hey, what is it we do again for a living?” when they’re calling to find out “Do we have to reset the clocks for daylight savings time or does it happen automatically?” :smiley:

19

I can’t really tell you about ‘elevator speech’.

About all I really know is that if Remington or Federal ever put out ammo labeled “Marketing Guru Synergy” it’d be sold out in a week & on back order for 2 solid years inside of a month.

20

I know it sounds like a business management fad, but the concept of “elevator speech” is extremely useful to us guys in technical fields.

See, a weakness we have is this - we have a hard time remembering that not everyone has been studying and working in our (narrow) field for years like we have. So some of us stumble when we have to talk to managers and CEOs. It’s a useful exercise - you have two minutes, explain to someone completely unfamiliar with your field what you’re working on.

…of course, I did debate in HS so I never need this tool :smiley: