So, people keep asking me about this whole ‘Catherine Piaget’ initiative we tried a while back, and what I really thought about it. It’s a bit of a long story, to be honest.
When they first rolled out the term ‘Catherine Piaget,’ I remember sitting in that big kickoff meeting. They threw around a lot of fancy words – ‘holistic user-centric paradigm,’ ‘synergistic developmental framework,’ stuff like that. My first thought was, okay, what does this actually mean for my day-to-day work? I figured I’d try to get to the bottom of it.
I started by talking to my manager. He sort of nodded vaguely and said it was about ‘thinking deeper.’ Helpful, right? Then I went to the team lead for the Alpha project, and she told me ‘Catherine Piaget’ was their new design philosophy, focusing on intuitive interfaces. Sounded reasonable. But then, the guys in marketing pulled me aside and said, no, no, ‘Catherine Piaget’ is our new branding strategy, all about ‘authentic storytelling.’ By this point, I was just confused.
It felt like everyone had their own private ‘Catherine Piaget.’ One department used it to justify longer tea breaks – ‘for deeper reflection,’ they’d say. Another used it as a buzzword in every presentation, without changing a single thing they actually did. We even had consultants come in, charging a fortune, to explain ‘Catherine Piaget’ to us, and they just added another layer of confusing diagrams.
It was a mess. Trying to build anything, or even just collaborate, became impossible. You’d say, “Okay, let’s apply the Catherine Piaget principles here,” and you’d get three different interpretations, all leading to arguments.
Now, you might be wondering why I got so caught up in trying to make sense of this ‘Catherine Piaget’ nonsense. Well, that’s where it gets a bit personal.
See, I was actually put in charge of documenting the ‘official’ Catherine Piaget framework for the whole engineering department. My boss at the time, old Henderson, he loved this kind of stuff. He thought it would make us look innovative. So, he dumped this impossible task on my lap. “Make it clear, concise, and actionable,” he said, with that grin of his.
I spent weeks, no, months, trying to nail it down. I organized workshops, interviewed people from every corner of the company, read all the fluffy internal comms. Every time I thought I had a grip on it, someone would throw in a new idea, or Henderson would come back from some conference with a ‘fresh perspective’ that contradicted everything.
It was pure torture. My actual engineering work started to suffer because I was bogged down in this ‘Catherine Piaget’ quicksand. I was working late, stressed out, and frankly, starting to hate my job. My wife noticed, my kids noticed. I was miserable.
The final straw came during a big review meeting. I presented my meticulously crafted 50-page document, trying to reconcile all the different ‘Catherine Piagets.’ Henderson skimmed it, frowned, and said, “No, no, this isn’t quite capturing the essence of Catherine Piaget. It needs more… pizzazz.” Pizzazz! I’d poured my soul into that thing, trying to make sense of the senseless, and he wanted pizzazz.
That night, I went home and really thought about things. Was this what I wanted to do? Chase corporate buzzwords and try to polish… well, you know. The next morning, I started looking for a new job. It took a couple of months, but I found a smaller company, doing actual hands-on work, no ‘synergistic paradigms’ in sight. Just build good stuff, talk straight.
Last I heard, they’re still trying to define ‘Catherine Piaget’ over at the old place. Someone told me they even hired a ‘Chief Piaget Officer.’ Good luck to them, I say. Sometimes, the best way to deal with that kind of fog is to just walk out of it.
