Buzzwords: Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down

[Tom Morris]

How about some real-world uses?

De Montfort University: Services for Business

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What have we here? Misplaced punctuation, and mounds of buzzword B.S. What exactly are we supposed to gather from this segment? What "solutions" - bespoke, cutting-edge or otherwise - am I going to get from the university?

The best example I saw a while back was a report from the Corus Group, a British metals company. They've changed it now - but it was a complete minefield of buzzwords and jargon. Having read it three times, I still had no idea what the business actually did. It provided "solutions" to it's "partners", and everyone was very excited about these "services". Exactly what sort of services or solutions they are are not explained.

Another bit of jargon I saw today: "step change" - a bit like a step function, but rather in a non-mathematical context. From what I can gather, it's basically a discontinuous change. You know, just like how we use the word "change" in our ordinary language.

"Building revenue streams" - you know, because a lot of streams are 'built'. And, of course, "make money" hasn't got nearly as many syllables.

"Persistence" is another one I see. There are a number of cases when I can see a valid use of this word - if one were talking about, oh, the challenges that an athlete faced in training for the Olympics, or maybe about relational databases. Corporate annual reports is not one of those cases.

What about this:

Accelerating sales growth is a key objective for (the company), as it is the ultimate driver of earnings growth and value creation for our shareholders.

Yes, a fairly simple equation that one - sell more stuff means more profit, means stock goes up in value. You would have thought that anyone who is reading the corporate annual report - either the executive board or the shareholders - would have probably figured out this fairly simple rule of business operation by now. Still, at least it's something reasonably well-defined like "shareholders" rather than "stakeholders".

Both persistence and 'accelerating' come from this blog entry. A definite 'subscribe', I say. One of the points he makes is that successful CEOs - the Steve Jobs' of the world etc. - speak very clearly and without jargon.

I don't particularly like the phrase "human resources" either. Quite what is wrong with personnel - except that people don't usually spell it right - is beyond me.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Bespoke ...

I don't even know what that word means.

~~ Paul

 

[Foolmewunz]

I don't even know what that word means.

~~ Paul

Ditto, and ditto, again! That's horrible coinage.

It's a verb. How are they using it? As a modifier, e.g. "bespoke solutions"?

 

[jimbob]

"Suits you sir".


I do know where it is appropriate, on Savile Row.

 

[Modified]

How about some real-world uses?

De Montfort University: Services for Business

Classic. "We do stuff. Contact us if you need stuff done."

 

[The Atheist]

I don't even know what that word means.

~~ Paul

It's bicycle racing terminology - the "A" spokes are on the right hand side of the wheel and the "B" spokes are on the left.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

It's bicycle racing terminology - the "A" spokes are on the right hand side of the wheel and the "B" spokes are on the left.

Facing which way?

~~ Paul

 

[Ben Tilly]

Paradigm shift.

Indeed. Particularly since it is used in a manner so contrary to what Kuhn's point was when he popularized the term. (Paradigms are valuable in large part because people don't try to give them up.)

 

[kmortis]

Facing which way?

~~ Paul

When you're sitting akimbo on the saddle.

 

[stilicho]

"Span of control" is one of my favourite buzzwords and an alternative pronunciation for the Slayer cover band "Slab of Limestone".

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

When you're sitting akimbo on the saddle.

Facing which way?

~~ Paul

 

[jimbob]

Facing which way?

~~ Paul

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,,2166642,00.html

 

[Thanz]

"Solutions", especially in the IT area. Everything you do or sell is a freakin' solution. Some guy who sells computers trying to convince me he sells "solutions". Ugh. You are pushing boxes, just like thousands of other businesses.

 

[jimbob]

Thanz,

just posted this on the corporate delusions thread, but maybe should also go here:

SAP faces $100m fraud claim from Waste Management Inc for failing to deliver on a buzzword-filled promise.

or according to the WSJ quoted here:

"SAP AG is being sued for failing to deliver an "out-of-the-box integrated end-to-end solution that increases...effectiveness." Amazingly, the meaning of these buzzwords are at the heart of a claim seeking more than $100 million.

There is more to it than this, but

"SAP further represented that the software was an 'integrated end-to-end solution'. Unknown to Waste Management, this 'United States' version... was undeveloped, untested and defective."

A blog about it on Electronics Weekly's "Made By Monkeys" blog

Our company "uses" SAP...

 

[bigred]

Anyone using any of these should be immediately shot:

pro-active
empower
can't see the forest for the trees
think outside the box
self-licking ice cream cone
stretch the envelope
core values
results-driven
goal-oriented
straw man (also a JREF fav!)
synergy/synergistic
right-sizing
leveraging
paradigm
peel back the onion (Lord knows using this can make me cry)
sidebar
offline (ie "we'll take that offline")
team-building
mentoring
run it up the flagpole
open-door policy

Finally a classic IMO:
http://professionalsuperhero.com/

 

[bigred]

Playboy's Unabashed Dictionary {in seminar-speak}

Sexual Perversion: global vanguard paradigm shift from pushing the envelope to thinking outside the box...

LOL @ the bunny. Another classic.

 

[bigred]

PS how could I forget what is probably the trendiest one out there now: "business model."

 

[drkitten]

Anyone using any of these should be immediately shot:

Actually, a lot of the terms do have very useful meanings. The problem is that most people don't use the words correctly.

Cases in point:

proactive : has already been discussed upthread. It's very useful as an opposite to reactive, describing someone who actively creates a (hopefully profitable) situation. You usually want proactive salesmen who will create their own list of clients instead of just sitting and waiting for the phone to ring.

empower: again, "empowering" someone to perform a specific act is very useful, esp. if you're trying to streamline decision making. And it's near synonym "authorize" is not very useful, since "authorize" often comes with an implicit "in emergencies only, but not as a matter of course."

stretch the envelope : "the envelope" is a well-established term in almost any science where you're measuring the performance of a system as a region in abstract space.

results-driven, goal-oriented : again, very useful if you're trying to keep teams focused on some particular aspect of a project. For example, if you're Google and trying to speed up search, then a possible technology that will increase accuracy at the expense of speed is actually counterproductive to the immediate goal. A "goal-oriented" management will decide not to pursue.

leveraging : very useful term in finance, meaning "using other people's resources to my advantage." I.e, if I can borrow money at 3% and invest it returning 6%, I can use the "leverage" in the investment to make arbitrarily large amounts of money up to the limit of my credit. More generally, Google's search engine may give me leverage to a particular task that I need to do without having to develop search technology myself.

 

[bigred]

But the point is not the word/phrase itself being "bad" but rather the overuse and/or misuse of it, esp just to be trendy or sound more intelligent about something.

As for results-driven and goal-oriented, they are IMO with rare exception annoying if not idiotic to use because they state the obvious. ie who is NOT results-driven or goal-oriented in the business world? As for your example, mgt would not decide to persue that, period, if they possess working brains. And what kind of mgt is not "goal-oriented?"

 

[drkitten]

As for results-driven and goal-oriented, they are IMO with rare exception annoying if not idiotic to use because they state the obvious. ie who is NOT results-driven or goal-oriented in the business world?

Lots of people. An alternative to "results-oriented," for example, is "process-oriented," where the primary goal is to preserve a working system without developing lots of ad-hoc exceptions for marginal "successes." Most retail chains -- and, indeed, most large commercial enterprises -- are "process oriented" in that they don't typcially allow people at the lowest levels to make on-the-spot decisions.

As a simple example, if I wanted to buy 100 sandwiches for a meeting or something from the local deli, I could probably negotiate some sort of bulk discount with the guy running the place, because the "result" of making the sale is worth it to him. But I typically couldn't cut that kind of a deal with the local McD's.

As for your example, mgt would not decide to persue that, period, if they possess working brains.

Actually, I picked the example I did for a very good reason; the manager who made that particular decision probably no longer works for Google precisely because it's the wrong decision. It's particularly wrong in light of Google's resource allocation policy, which was designed specifically to "empower" people to to take non-"goal-oriented" activities and be rewarded for them, specifically because Google's long-term strengths require major resource investment in long-term research and product development.

And what kind of mgt is not "goal-oriented?"

Smart management. "Goal-oriented" management is typically short-sighted and lacks the ability to plan for long-term effect. It's almost the direct corrollary of "can't see the forest for the trees" and the antithesis of "think outside the box."

That's the real problem with the buzzwords. People use the buzzwords because they sound good, to the point where they forget that there are real alternatives to the buzzwords, some of which are even better.

"Empowerment" of employees, for example, sounds great until you realize that there's a corresponding loss of control for management; anything I'm empowered to do I will probably do in a way that you don't like. So what happens is that the words get bleached of meaning.....