join the war

One of the things I do when I’m training new comers to the organization is that I tell them what I did that day, using all the jargon and acronyms I can think of. After I finish my spiel, I ask the recruits if they knew what I said, inevitably, I get met with blank looks and nervous giggles.

The point is that each organization has its own dialect and that once you know what you’re doing, its easy to talk almost exclusively in that jargon. Which is fine if the people you are talking to know that jargon, but less than useless if you’re talking to a customer. It’s all very well for me to say “if you fill in a 490, I’ll be able to distill the Maguffin from the slimy tove” and know what I mean, but the customer will not have a clue what I’m going to do or, more importantly what they are supposed to do. My lesson to the recruits is one of the most fundamental pieces of advice about communication I know

Its not what you say that’s important, its what people hear

And added to this

How you say something sends a message that you may not want received

The worst example of this is management speak. It is a dialect that is particularly annoying-unnessarcarily verbose, filled with empty phrases, buzzwords and phrases, spin and so on.

When our organization was going through its last restructuring, management promised clear communication. When the report of the review came out, it was five pages long. Grabbing a metaphorical machete, I went looking for the key messages. After about quarter of an hour, I found that the five pages were concealing the following messages:

1) because we are short of money, 50 of you will be unemployed by next Tuesday
b) its not our fault. Honestly.

I know why management does this. Firstly to hide bad new (as in that example) but more importantly to send the message “We are smarter than you. Look at all the words we know. Some of them are really long, too. And so because we know these words, we really are smarter than you. That’s why we get the big bucks. So you can be sure that we know what are doing. Did you see that four syllable word in paragraph five? Only someone who knows what they are doing could use that. That’s why we’re here and you’re going to be looking for a new job. Remember to use of lots of big words on your resume”
(Sorry, got carried away there.)

The real fun part is when they make words do things that they are not supposed to. For example for the last few years I have been fighting managers who insist on using “learnings” as a noun. I guess that they think it sounds “cool” from a managerial perspective. I just think it sounds illiterate, a point I’ve made repeatedly, along with the notion that there is already a perfectly acceptable noun available for use. I have had limited success, because while “lessons” is a word that anyone can use, “learnings” is clearly a word used by people who really now what is going on.

About a year ago, radio live’s weekend host (and former able tasman) Graeme Hill declared war on the phrase “going forward” claiming that it is a completely redundant phrase. Yes, it’s designed to make the speaker sound dynamic, but its been used so often that its passed through being a cliché, to being really annoying, especially when its over used. In her last presentation to us, our manager used it fifteen times in thirty minutes (yes, I counted)

I’m with Graeme on this. Do not allow management speak to continue. If a speaker continues to use it, all them out on it. The strategic use of mockery can be effective. Don’t forget the value of irony.

Make a stand for clear communication. Lets stamp out Management speak in our life time.
Going Forward