Latest / Best of Business / James Schloeffel: co-author of 'Wankernomics' talks satirical look at modern office culture

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James Schloeffel: co-author of 'Wankernomics' talks satirical look at modern office culture · Best of Business

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks B Follow
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• 0:16
  Speaker 2: If you work in a white collar workplace, the chances
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  Speaker 2: are that you have put up with more than your
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  Speaker 2: fair share of corporate bs. You know what I mean,
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  Speaker 2: the meetings that could have been emails, the stupid acronyms,
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  Speaker 2: the mission statements, the LinkedIn. A couple of ossie comedians
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  Speaker 2: have put together a highly tongue in cheek guide on
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  Speaker 2: how to navigate modern office culture. Kids warning. It's called Wankonomics.
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  Speaker 1: The book.
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  Speaker 2: One of the authors is James Schleffel.
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  Speaker 3: Hi, James, Hi, how are you well?
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  Speaker 2: Thank you very much? So is the idea here that
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  Speaker 2: you can basically rise through the corporate will just by
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  Speaker 2: using stupid acronyms and jargon and looking like you know
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  Speaker 2: what you're doing.
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  Speaker 3: Well, it's actually the only way that you can rise
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  Speaker 3: through the corporate ranks, because look, it doesn't matter how
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  Speaker 3: smart you are, Like you could have a PhD in
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  Speaker 3: theoretical chemistry, but you're just not going to be matched
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  Speaker 3: to the person in middle management who has an omni
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  Speaker 3: channel thought leadership adiation solution that is going to cascade
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  Speaker 3: to SLT for feedback. So this kind of language is
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  Speaker 3: the key to surviving, if not thriving, in the corporate environment.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, you sound like you know what you're talking about.
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  Speaker 2: Is this based on some real world experience or just
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  Speaker 2: you've been observing this?
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  Speaker 3: It is based in real world experience. I did work
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  Speaker 3: in the corporate world for a long long time, and look,
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  Speaker 3: in many ways, Wangonomics is a bit of a therapy
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  Speaker 3: session for me. It's a way for me to work
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  Speaker 3: through the issues that I've built up over the years.
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  Speaker 3: But I think also too, it's a way for other
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  Speaker 3: people to have that therapy session too. It is quite cathartic.
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  Speaker 3: I think reading this book, what is.
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  Speaker 2: The evil role that LinkedIn plays here?
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  Speaker 1: Well?
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  Speaker 3: Look, LinkedIn is a funny place, isn't it. It's actually my
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  Speaker 3: favorite social media platform because it's this weird place where
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  Speaker 3: everyone is inexplicably excited about everything, Like you know what
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  Speaker 3: I mean, Like, it doesn't matter how mundane someone's day
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  Speaker 3: has been, they will talk about their little achievements at work,
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  Speaker 3: as with the excitement levels that they would usually only
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  Speaker 3: muster when they're on class A drugs. So you know,
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  Speaker 3: even if you've just you've just finished a report, you've
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  Speaker 3: sent out a document. You need to be thrilled or
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  Speaker 3: excited or ecstatic about it. That's that's what LinkedIn is.
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  Speaker 3: It's a funny place.
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  Speaker 2: It feels to me like it's a very exclusive club
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  Speaker 2: of people. I mean, even though it's very accessible, it's
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  Speaker 2: a very exclusive club of people. Or at least they
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  Speaker 2: like to think they're exclusive and special for using LinkedIn,
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  Speaker 2: don't they.
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  Speaker 3: Well, you've got to make yourself sound sounds special. But
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  Speaker 3: that's the key to it. So look, you would never
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  Speaker 3: say something like on LinkedIn that you maybe worked in
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  Speaker 3: a bar when you were at university. You would say
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  Speaker 3: that you managed a portfolio of liquid assets.
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  Speaker 1: You know.
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  Speaker 3: That's the kind of that's the kind of wankery you
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  Speaker 3: need on LinkedIn to give those kind of minor accomplishments.
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  Speaker 3: Give them a bit of a bit of a push,
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  Speaker 3: make them sound like they're something special.
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  Speaker 2: So what's the proportion do you reckon of, as you
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  Speaker 2: call it, wankory. What proportion of whankori versus actual ability
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  Speaker 2: do you need in order to succeed?
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  Speaker 3: Well, here's the funny thing, right, So we've done some research. Sorry,
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  Speaker 3: we've made up some research that has shown that there's
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  Speaker 3: about twenty percent of people in any given workplace that
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  Speaker 3: have absolutely no idea what they're doing, totally out of
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  Speaker 3: their depth. And we've all seen these people. They're usually
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  Speaker 3: in senior management positions, and so they will use these
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  Speaker 3: long winded words, overly complex sentences to give the impression
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  Speaker 3: that they know what they're doing, because like instead of
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  Speaker 3: saying I'm incompetent, you would say something like there are
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  Speaker 3: a lot of moving parts, and then all of a
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  Speaker 3: sudden everyone thinks that you're you're very, very clever. The
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  Speaker 3: problem is, though, the language of that twenty percent then
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  Speaker 3: very quickly spreads to the other eighty percent, a bit
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  Speaker 3: like how a virus spreads. I mean, it's incredibly infectious
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  Speaker 3: because you could have someone saying a phrase like circle
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  Speaker 3: back at the start of a meeting, and the end
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  Speaker 3: of the meeting, the three or four people are saying
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  Speaker 3: circle back, and then by the end of the week,
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  Speaker 3: the entire office is speaking like that. So it spreads
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  Speaker 3: incredibly quickly, and unfortunately there's no vaccine for it.
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  Speaker 2: James, thank you very much, appreciate your time, very very much,
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  Speaker 2: and your mutual hatred of our mutual hatred I suppose
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  Speaker 2: of Lincoln James Schliffle, who was one of the authors
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  Speaker 2: of wang Konomics. If you want to get it, you
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  Speaker 2: could just go to the website wanconomics dot com and
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  Speaker 2: it'll tell you where.
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