Meta's Organisational Values Are Hilarious

For years, one of the huge problems with Boeing was that it was run by people who knew how to build planes. While this "engineering-first" approach produced excellent planes that didn't fall out of the sky, it lacked the soft-skills that professional managers bring to an organisation. Then, about 30 years ago, things started to change. Boeing replaced its management, swapping out old-style engineer managers with MBA-graduate managers who know how to write convincing PowerPoint decks with nifty values statements and purpose statements and mission statements. For a while, it seemed like a genius move. The catch? Boeing's planes started to fall out of the sky. This is the story of how one company decided to embrace the wisdom of management theory, and in doing so became the ultimate case-study in management theory.Sign up to our the free Wankernomics thought leadership program (our free email newsletter) at Wankernomics.comFull tour schedule: Wankernomics.com/live Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2008 General Motors circulated an internal presentation listing 69 words that employees were banned from using.It’s not the typical sort of list that you might see in a company’s brand voice guidelines or corporate communications playbook. This thing reads like the glossary for a horror novel.Graphic words like ‘apocalyptic’, ‘mangling’, ‘grenadlike’ and ‘disembowling’ make the list. So too ‘Hindenberg’ and – bizzarly – ‘Cobain’. But seemingly benign words like ‘safety’ and ‘critical’ are off limits too.In this episode James and Charles explain why the list was circulated in the first place, and try to make sense of the words on it. They also have a broader discussion about how companies use language as a form of control, and attempt to describe one of the worst examples of graphic design on a PowerPoint presentation ever seen.View the PowerPoint slide from hell here: https://wankernomics.com/shownotesSign up to our the free Wankernomics thought leadership program (our free email newsletter) at Wankernomics.comFull tour schedule: Wankernomics.com/live Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At Wankernomics, we love corporate values – the four or five words that are chosen at an off-site meeting run by an overpaid facilitator, placed on a poster in the office kitchen and then never spoken about again. In this episode, James and Charles unpack the organisational values of social media giant Meta. Do Meta’s values match with reality? Were they written by a toddler? And what on earth does the word Metamate even mean? Sign up to our the free Wankernomics thought leadership program (our free email newsletter) at Wankernomics.comFull tour schedule: Wankernomics.com/live Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Coming up with a brand name is difficult. Just ask James. When he was a branding consultant he named two television channels. Both have since been scrapped. In this episode, Charles and James reveal the original working titles for some of the world’s most well-known brands. Some are brilliant, some are incredibly weird. One could have totally changed the way we think about using search engines. James also shares his war stories about naming brands, and how senior people with no skills or experience always want to get involved. Plus, James and Charles start the process of renaming Wankernomics. Sign up to our the free Wankernomics thought leadership program (our free email newsletter) at Wankernomics.comFull tour schedule: Wankernomics.com/live Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Workplace productivity apps like Trello, Asana, Jira and Miro are everywhere now. But do they actually increase productivity, or are they just another thing to add to your workload, that actually ends up slowing everything down? In this episode James and Charles try to get to the bottom of what these collaboration tools actually are, and debate whether there is anything more boring that someone talking about Jira. More importantly, they explore how the world might have been different if Lennon and McCartney had access to workplace productivity apps. Would ‘Let it Be’ have benefited from more stakeholder input and alignment? Would the process of writing ‘Hey Jude’ have been simpler if it allowed for the tracking against key milestones. It would certainly have been more measurable. Sign up to our the free Wankernomics thought leadership program (our free email newsletter) at Wankernomics.comFull tour schedule: Wankernomics.com/live Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our People & Culture team advised us that we rushed ahead and launched this podcast without first doing an onboarding episode. What a disaster. How will people know how to listen to the podcast? Have they done the safety induction? Where is the kitchen? And are they even aware of the Wankernomics Mission and Vision Statements? Or Purpose Statement for that matter? In this episode, James and Charles answer all of those questions and more, so that new starters can confidentially settle into the Wankernomics podcast and feel right at home. Welcome aboard. Sign up to our the free Wankernomics thought leadership program (our free email newsletter) at Wankernomics.comFull tour schedule: Wankernomics.com/live Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"When I grow up I want to manage the delivery of complex cross-functional initiatives and shape scope across business cases" said no-one, ever. Job advertisements have a language all of their own. Meaningless phrases like “Dynamic, fast paced environment”, “self starter”, “unlocking incremental value”, “key stakeholders”, “driving insights” and “our people are at the heart of everything we do” are used so liberally that it’s often impossible to tell what the job is actually for. So what do these phrases really mean? And why do companies use them? In this episode Charles and James deep dive into the meaningless language of job ads and the psychology behind them, unpacking an actual job advertisement line by line. Plus, Charles reveals how in his wedding vows he promised to unlock incremental value and nurture relationships within key ecosystems. Sign up to our the free Wankernomics thought leadership program (our free email newsletter) at Wankernomics.comFull tour schedule: Wankernomics.com/live Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most workplaces have at least some ridiculous processes that seem to serve no purpose. But when it comes to pointless bureaucracy, Government departments are best-in-class.Charles and James tell two stories – one from Australia and one from the UK – where bureaucracy got completely out of hand.You’ll hear about stationery budgets, re-used envelopes, wayward traffic cones, and a very different definition of ‘mogging’.Please note, before listening to this podcast you must fill out a mandatory form, undertake a safety briefing and attend a subcommittee meeting.Sign up to our the free Wankernomics thought leadership program (our free email newsletter) at Wankernomics.comFull tour schedule: Wankernomics.com/live Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2025 a worker was sent an email from their employer to recognise their three years of service. Inside the email was a button that read, ‘view recognition’, which when clicked on, revealed the reward. We don’t want to spoil how absurdly bad this reward was – you’ll have to listen to the episode to find out.In this episode James and Charles reveal some of the worst employee recognition schemes imaginable, and how some organisations are even outsourcing their employee recognition to third parties.Then they deep-dive into an infamous incentive scheme at one of America’s biggest banks that was so morally horrifying it led to a multi-million dollar fine and a minor change to the company’s logo.Along the way, James and Charles unpack how large organisations outsource responsibility and how jargon is used to paper over morally questionable, or even illegal corporate behaviour.Warning: this episode contains buzzwords and other corporate bullsh*ttery that could be offensive to some listeners.Sign up to our the free Wankernomics thought leadership program (our free email newsletter) at Wankernomics.comFull tour schedule: Wankernomics.com/live Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2023 the entire network of Optus – one of Australia’s largest telecommunications providers – went down for 12 hours. The outage caused major disruptions across Australia as 11 million people went without internet and phone access.So how did the outage align with the company’s purpose statement of “Powering Optimism With Options”. And what the hell does “Powering Optimism With Options” even mean?Charles and James unpack Optus’s response to the crisis, and in the process uncover some of the most ridiculous corporate jargon ever seen. You’ll hear about “Possibilities yet to be imagined”, the obsession modern brands have with being loved and a very weird story about an internet-enabled cat feeder.It’s a best-practice tale of corporate bullsh*ttery with lessons for anyone wanting to understand how modern organisations work.Sign up to our the free Wankernomics thought leadership program (our free email newsletter) at Wankernomics.comFull tour schedule: Wankernomics.com/live Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.