Leader of a powerful, large, and profitable multinational organisation, enjoys beer, unconventional thinking, and tenacity. He dislikes politics, losing money, and “people who get on a bus”. I thought the last phrase was business jargon. It’s what the big movers in industry and commerce would say to one another. What does it mean exactly?
Was it a dislike of people who jumped on trendy management trends? Was it a feeling that people were willing to let others make the decisions instead of figuring out their own path? Is it a criticism against people who just go along with the flow? In fact, it has no meaning at all. The phrase comes from the “Compass” of the organization, a collection words and phrases that were created as a way to have fun and try to describe how and why the organisation functions. It is a way to describe the culture of an organisation. This is a quote.
“People who get on bus” – coined during our Graduate Namibian endurance challenges (wherein our 4th year students train to run and cycle for a full week in the Namibian desert). The bus is following us for safety, but it has never been the intention to get on. (See “Grit”.) The organisation values grit, rigour, and humor.
It means to never give up and keep going, even when things get tough. When the going gets rough, the tough will get going. This could be seen as a culture where getting onto the bus was a sign weakness. It is not an organization that would allow people to admit they were stressed or needed help. It is also a question mark for the organisation’s commitment to Health and Safety.
I could be doing an injustice to the organization. The Compass looks and reads like it was created by a group of middle managers who were having fun while describing their organisation’s culture. The Compass seems to have forgotten about the commitment of the organisation to EDI. The workshop facilitator would have had plenty of material to do some self-examination, and senior managers could have received interesting feedback. What would HR’s head have thought of it?
