Read the text. Translate any other unknown words.
What managers really do
With tongue planted firmly in cheek, we universally agree that all managers perform five functions
in an organization:
✓ Eat: Management clearly has its rewards, one of which is an expense account and all the company-paid lunches and dinners you can get away with. And if those yo-yos in accounting dare to question the business purpose of your meals, you can always threaten to leave them off your list of invitees.
✓ Meet: Meetings are truly a perk of management. The higher you rise in an organization, the more time you spend in meetings. Instead of doing productive work, you spend more time than ever listening to presentations that have no relevance to your department, drinking three-day-old coffee,
and keeping close tabs on your watch as your meeting drags on well past its scheduled ending time.
✓ Punish: With so many wayward employees, the best managers learn to punish early and punish often. What better way to show your employees that you care? Punishment also sends a welcome signal to upper management that you don’t put up with any nonsense from your underlings.
✓ Obstruct: When you ask managers what single achievement makes them proudest, they are likely to bring out policies as thick as the Yellow Pages that were carefully drafted over many years. A close look at the policy may reveal a package of deftly written red tape that does more to prevent good customer service than it does to support it.
✓ Obscure: Managers are masters of the art of miscommunication. No one knows better than a manager that information is power: The people who have it wield the power, and the people who don’t - are lost. With potential enemies all around, why give anyone else a chance to get an advantage over you? “Hey! That information is on a need-to-know basis only!” And for heaven’s sake, why let your employees in on the inner workings of the organization? They wouldn’t appreciate or understand it anyway, right?
Actually, this isn’t the list of the functions of management. Although the list may ring true in many cases, we’re just pulling your leg.
Ask 10 questions to the text.
Make a detailed plan of the text.
Translate the following sentences. Use the vocabulary from the text.
1. Менеджеры имеют свои награды, и, если работники в бухгалтерии смеют подвергать сомнению деловую значимость обедов, то любой менеджер может их всегда припугнуть.
2. Чем выше положение менеджера в компании, тем больше времени он/она проводит на собраниях.
3. Самые лучшие менеджеры наказывают часто, тем самым они показывают, что не будут мириться с сумасбродством подчиненных.
4. При близком рассмотрении политики компании, вы поймете, что она скорее препятствует хорошему обслуживанию клиентов.
5. Как вы знаете, информация — сила. Потенциальные враги везде, они жаждут раздобыть любые важные данные.
Be ready to retell the text during your credit.
(max 10 points)
1. Before reading the text, translate the following words: (use multitran.ru for better translation and remember! This is BUSINESS English)
| intended a consequence to go wrong a co-worker a complaint the executive suites to be punished to overlook a misconception equal to attach | to state to reflect to worsen to hire a crashing halt to dump to sneak a goal a reward obviously to boost |
Read the text. Translate any other unknown words.
Turkeys for the holidays
Here’s an example of how an intended positive consequence can and does go wrong.
Bob has a great story about a large California aerospace manufacturer that decided to thank all its employees at Christmas with a turkey for the holidays. Sounds good so far, doesn’t it? However, some employees noticed that their turkeys were smaller than their co-workers’ turkeys.
Soon the complaints reached the executive suites — employees with smaller turkeys thought they were being punished for poor performance.
Naturally, management couldn’t overlook this misconception. The following year, management instructed the supplier of the Christmas turkeys to supply turkeys of the same weight. The turkey supplier responded that all turkeys were not created equal. Supplying thousands of identical-weight turkeys would be impossible. Faced with this dilemma, management did what only management could do: It attached a printed note to each turkey stating, “The weight of your turkey does not necessarily reflect your performance over the last year.” Complaints continued, and the situation only worsened. Some employees wanted a choice between turkey and ham; others wanted a fruit basket, and so on. As the years went by, management found it necessary to hire a fulltime turkey administrator! Finally, the annual Christmas turkey program came to a crashing halt when management discovered that certain employees were so disillusioned that they were dumping the turkeys out of their boxes, filling the boxes with company-owned tools, and sneaking them past security.
Did the company achieve its goal of equal reward for all? Obviously not. The program didn’t boost employee performance or morale; it only caused a new set of management problems.