The Wankernomics Podcast

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/shownotes

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?

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.

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.

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.

"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.