It’s IN THE MONEY undoubtedly…. a buffoonography is the biography of buffoons. Since they can’t write for themselves a piece of idiotobiography (autobiography of idiots), owing to the sky high pedestal they see themselves on and because they believe that they don’t have time to write about the nonsense that they are, I’m yielding this precious space and time as a onetime favor!
You see time is of essence and buffoons know this. That’s why while they are busy being and acting nonsense, they hardly have any time left to write about this nonsense. They also don’t write because that would strip them off the time that they could be more nonsense or because they won’t like to waste their peoples’ time in reading and being amused by reading with what they can practically show!
And since auditors are the most observant people out there and since it is the auditors who are the critiques in any entity, there’s hardly anyone else who can be amused by the abject display of buffoonery, from a safe and comfortable distance, certainly.
Though you won’t be wondering about who these buffoons could be, have you been a regular to my blog site, still I won’t leave you in a guessing game. These buffoons are the executives sitting at the other side of the table from us, the auditors.
And before you could say how I can call them buffoons without expecting a befitting title, let me remind you auditors do not have a throne to defend or a stage to perform. We hardly get a seat on the strategy table unless regulation asks the executives to do so! It is the executives who earn laurels against their titles and fat paychecks for their (non)performances at the stage. And thus, it is them who are entitled to all the buffoonery out there!
So, without further ado, let’s get right to the most amusing examples of buffoonery one can come across. Well, I did, and I am not done!
Symptom: Losing it on official correspondence
Made Up Cause: A Top Executive cannot be responsible for someone who reports to him if he’s a manager and there’s no senior manager in between. This is a wasteful use of “Executive’s time”.
Real Cause: Mr. Top Executive spent no time and effort determining the already approved and established reporting protocols. He wants to get into no problems to resolve, because resolving a problem requires understanding which in turn requires an ability and a capacity to understand.
Symptom: Empathy for the employees
Made Up Cause: The Executive’s shares that his concern for employees knows no bounds. These are so significant that an entity’s lack of business model, income stream and zero gross profit shouldn’t be a cause of concern when it comes to contractual commitments with the employees. That is to say the Company may borrow money to fulfill employee commitments. It will be determined later whether the Company can actually borrow or not!
Real Cause: Mr. Executive has nil understanding of the income, expenditure and profitability equation. To him the entity is in business for fulfilling employee commitments, not making money for its shareholders!
Symptom: Simplistic Understanding
Made Up Cause: Using a Company’s allocated asset for personal benefit is akin to an employee using his salary on his immediate or larger family members. Both the asset and the salary are ‘given’ for employee’s use, which includes personal use!
Real Cause: Mr. Executive’s understanding is not simplistic. It is plain stupid! For an asset owned by an entity is allocated with its use guided, while the salary is earned and disbursed. But an executive who likes to confront each finding internal audit issues, any argument will do even if it’s based on utter nonsense and stupidity.
Symptom: Conflicting Signals
Made Up Cause: The executive opines that the entity he’s managing is not in the business of running other utility services in the housing facility for employees, even if these are legally required. One can outsource the management and provision of such services. It’s even better to finish the requirement for these services by removing employee families from the facility.
Real Cause: Understanding is aligned with stupidity already exhibited, just upping the ante. Mr. Executive is consistently stupid! Just at the time this idea was floated, another establishment was provided family accommodation at the same facility.
Symptom: I am in Control!
Made Up Cause: In order to secure better terms with a vendor for a transaction, a security deposit returnable / adjustable at the completion of the transaction can be converted to a bid bond adjustable at the first payment installment with the careful approval of the brilliant executive.
Real Cause: A review revealed no change in terms already secured. But the only ‘improvement’ witnessed was this conversion that ensured the business no longer holds any security till the completion of the transaction. The qualities exhibited were absence of control cognition, lack of not just basic control sense but also commercial sense! The fact that securing and retaining security deposit was a procedural requirement hardly matters here, because the executive likes to work in his own ‘mysterious ways’, not in the policing and procedural ways.
Symptom: Action only when I am hit
Made Up Cause: A new executive says that he should not be held responsible for past commitments of the management on audit findings. Especially when such commitments involve acting against dishonest officials or cheats. He maintains that he would do something only if he is attacked. He even likes to upgrade such frauds to decision making positions. His argument being what’s upgraded is the position not the person!
Real Cause: Stupidity mixed with cowardice. If its not about the person but the position, then it was the management’s position when commitments against audit findings were given and that doesn’t change with the new person! Moreover, the cheats upgraded were actually the ones who compromised their positions for their personal benefit when it came to performance bonus. The executive is out to break his own record at being stupid of course!
Symptom: I will Manage!
Made Up Cause: Anyone who wants to leave may please do so. The entity can withstand competent, skilled and qualified brain drain. How? Easy. The executive is now in Charge. He can show the world how he can manage the affairs of the entity with second rate, unqualified, incompetent and unskilled team. Afterall, he is going to be the king of that team. And that team? All hail the King!
Real Cause: It’s good to get rid of your criticism and resistance first, because it’s too hard to understand what it says. It’s good to bring your comfort zone along. Even if this requires shedding superior talent and replacing it with inferior one, at least the executive will have a smooth ride and may even be able to pull some stuff that’s beneficial for the executive at the cost of the entity itself! The executive has made personal appeals and advertisements across his networks for a replacement after being pleased with the resistance leaving. Insults and ridicules below those social media posts don’t bother him. Because it is not the first time!
There’s one fight that the executive is not done ducking! And that is a constant source of nuisance because that position is unrelenting and is in no mood of giving up, simply because that position doesn’t report to him and he can’t do anything about it. Internal Audit has indeed come a long way from dealing with buffoonery to being amused by it!
So, my dear executives, do it all in your ‘mysterious ways’ my fellow auditors would expose you in their obvious ways! That’s what we do and love doing!
It’s a piece of satire; similarities with the lifetime achievements of many executives is purely coincidental (real!).
And dear executives worry not, if indeed this is what you have been doing for all of the time you’ve spent so far in your executive roles. One always has time to learn and be the best at being nonsensical!
And even though we, the auditors, hardly have time from all the improvements we are causing everywhere around us, we are in no hurry either to miss a spectacle or two!