“Idea Lifecycle”; KPMG Brain Explosion Brings Alumni “Evolution”

One of the fundamental ideals underpinning Firm Spy – which gives us motivation to continue burning the midnight oil while you all sleep – is an unyielding aim to expose and hopefully one day eradicate offensive, widely distributed corporate emails containing “HR speak”.

aliens watching the Evolution Channel

An example of the kind of rubbish we’re hoping to one day weed out was sent last week in the KPMG Alumni Newsletter to many of the firm’s former staff. Not only is the email full of the worst kind of corporate HR parlance, but its audience could not possibly have been more poorly targeted: many of the recipients left the firm because of its inflexibility and resistance to managerial change. That is, precisely the wrong kind of people to be hearing about KPMG:

• “evolutions channels”;
• “sustainable continuous improvement”;
• “supporting innovation”;
• “managing ideas through their lifecycle”; or
• “harnessing inventive thinking.”

Thanks to the anonymous ex-KPMG who sent us the following extract from the Newsletter:

New initiatives for our people

“Through listening to our people, we understand what it is they are seeking in terms of life and work balance and career development. Below are some of our recent initiatives intended to support our people as they progress through their careers. Evolution Channel supporting continuous improvement In June we launched a new opportunity for our people to present ideas and suggestions for sustainable continuous improvement. The Evolution Channel was established to enable KPMG people at all levels to share their ideas for sustainable continuous improvement for the firm, providing an accessible, interactive approach to supporting innovation. This exciting new initiative captures ideas from within the firm relating to improving the way we work, managing ideas through their lifecycle – from concept to implementation – by harnessing inventive thinking within our people.”

The ex-KPMG spy included the following comments with the extract:

I particularly like the statement “Through listening to our people…”. What a load of crap that is. I wonder if they are just taking the piss by sending that to their former employees, if they actually listened there wouldn’t be so many alumni!

The pertners involved in what KPMG call PPC (“people performance and culture”), such as FRM’s head Mike Ritchie and Advisory’s James Alt-Graham, would rather come up with emails and newsletters like this than actually solve the morale issues within the firm.

Meanwhile, we particularly liked the assertion that Evolution Channel will enable “sustainable continuous improvement”. This got us thinking about those peculiar folks that think plastic surgery is a way to sustainably and continuously improve appearance over time. They certainly have an aptitude for “harnessing inventive thinking” but will KPMG support this kind of innovation?

If KPMG‘s HR team finds that they are not Evolution Channel is not producing many ideas to manage through the “idea lifecycle”, we encourage them to visit our recent post on changes to the firm’s CA leave-policy and view the comments below the post. Our KPMG readers have contrbuted several “ideas” that in our view require “lifecycle management”.

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