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Poet's Corner

DARE TO CRITICISE?

23-02-2009

Middle managers are the bane of Brendan Hawthorne's life. You know the sort - too insecure in their own position to have an opinion, and wary of anyone beneath them who might want to try expressing theirs.

Do not offer an opinion
to the middle management stratum
in case it offends
Upends a perfect partnership
based on pleasantries
and ‘aren’t we doing
terribly ok?’ reports
Any other views will be regarded
as undesirable dissent
and perpetrators will be held
at least at arms length
before being quarantined
from the rest of the workforce
Having an idea
or worse still behaving
with passion and conviction
could be deemed to be
outrageously contagious
and therefore be labelled as
more dissident dysentery
from the ideology of the rank and file
Far better
it seems
for mercurial management
with mealy mouthed mutterings
to measure the mood
and political temperature
with performance indicators
before going about retaining
the status quo
of static decay and stagnation
than be expansive
original
aspirational
and border breaking
So here we are
in the no risk haven
of Service Sector GB PLC
Held up in sanitised suspended animation
Held captive in institutionalised solitary confinement
just in case a decision maker is wrong
Just in case creativity is seen as dangerous
and not just another phrase
for a report outcome
And that all non blue sky
thought shower thinkers
are too left field
to be taken seriously
and are recommended
for re-programming or deletion
Yet if it hadn’t been for
visionaries and compassionates
dreamers and inventers
risk-takers and go-it-alone strategists
we would never have stood up
for ourselves
Our human rights
Our personal beliefs
and celebrated them
We would never have set foot
outside our blinkered
warehouse of containment
and found the hideaways of
those dilly-dallying
let’s not make a splash
don’t let anyone know we’re here
faceless get along’s
who wouldn’t be able to
have their foreign holiday
their ‘New World’ wine
or their choice of car
if it hadn’t been for someone
off a back-street
off a council estate
from a broken home
saying
What if we did this.................?