Little Johnny Dolittle’s grand entrance into the story deserved nothing short of a spectacle — confetti bursts, juggling assistants, and a drumroll included — like a circus ringmaster sweeping into the spotlight with grand promises and glittering distractions — and so came the Great Reshuffling (for Johnny), or Great Reshuffling 4.0 (for more ancient citizens).

It was his first major initiative as the newly anointed face of leadership, and it carried the unmistakable aroma of half-baked genius. The centerpiece? A so-called Grand Strategic Vision (“Building Tomorrow Together Today! – trademark pending) — a document, forwarded as a Memo to the entire workforce, so full of vague proclamations and dazzling buzzwords that it practically screamed: written in haste by an enthusiastic intern who once skimmed a management blog.

Ald Firt (pronounced /ɔːld fɑːɹt/), a veteran Engineer of SHOTE Services, was reading this document in his small office under the stairs, half-amused, but more than annoyed. He glanced up from the pages and muttered to Hedwig and Balthazar: “Oh splendid, a half-baked masterpiece of gibberish by someone who probably needed a dictionary for half the words they used.”

But the foggy content of the document, combined with the exaggerated use of buzzwords currently in vogue with similar international bodies, and a total lack of clear idea where it was leading did not matter. It was heralded as revolutionary by Johnny’s entourage, praised by Johnny himself as a unique and historic moment unlike anything ever seen before (despite echoes of all previous attempts), and hailed by Manager the 4th as a historical benchmark of modern leadership, and by Ald as a masterpiece of visionary black hole.

The opening salvo of this masterpiece declared that to achieve unprecedented efficiency and synergy (a word generously sprinkled throughout) through bold action, the system must be restructured. Roles, teams, and responsibilities would be reimagined in ways never seen before — the key, as it was explained, was not to reduce the workforce but to clearly define who is doing what and how each person contributes to the common goal.

Never mind that another strategy existed before, and people already knew what to do…

Moreover, the Great Reshuffling would also provide a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for each person to design their personalised development journey, identify aspirational competencies, and map out what skills they may wish to cultivate in order to better contribute to the goal as described in that guiding strategic paper…

as if entering an exclusive club of aspirational ladder-climbers with PowerPoint addiction, loyalty cards, secret handshakes, and endless workshops; Ald mused.

Thus ended the introduction of the Forthcoming Latest Reform — (and thus began the collective headache, as Ald noted) with promises of much, much longer working hours in order to properly define what is coming and then roll it out — all presented as opportunity, obligations and involvement galore, with a bright, possibly imaginary future, in return.

“And here the circus starts again, and Welcome, Big Brother, Ald made a mental note for his manual. And shouldn’t someone explain to the littl’un that this is already Reshuffling 4.0? One Manager = One Reshuffling! And this was just the opening act of the circus…)

<<<TBC>>>

Stay tuned: The next story will follow the rollout of this foggy strategy, featuring absurd department names and delightfully surreal antics. Expect endless meetings titled The Grand Alignment Convergence, reports from the Department of Redundancy Department, and Ald’s increasingly poetic commentary as chaos unfolds.

And don’t forget: the story and all characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, organisations, or events is absolutely deliberate, purely satirical, and absolutely deserved.