As a wet-behind-the-ears young reporter, impenetrable business phrases often carried a mystical allure comparable to that of an enchantingly beautiful Romany fortune teller; with promises of strange and wonderful delights lurking wistfully behind her veil.
Nowadays that same corporate gibberish is far more likely to bring me out in a nasty rash, such is the cynicism that meaningless management terms can foster in an otherwise innocent business journalist. But I am not alone, MPs, surely some of the worst offenders in this respect, are beginning to question the use of such language.
The House of Commons Public Administration Committee met earlier this month to discuss whether or not there should be a ban on politicians using inane jargon.
In an insightful exchange, Simon Hoggart, sketch writer for the Guardian newspaper, imagined Winston Churchill’s famous war-time speech re-written by a local government employee. ‘We will fight on the beaches’ turned into ‘an ongoing programme of hostile engagement in littoral sectors,’ for instance.
Every single group has its own jargon, David Crystal, Professor of Linguistics, Bangor University, explained to the listening MPs. But it becomes a problem when this language forms a barrier between them and everybody else.
Mathew Parris of The Times was also called to speak to the committee, and said that a lot of political jargon is borrowed from public relations and professional communications language. “Politicians are particularly vulnerable to not knowing very much at all, but wanting to sound more knowledgeable than they actually are,” he said. “They grab, like drowning men clutching at straws, at what sound like the vogue expressions.”
Can this be applied to the use of jargon in a private sector work environment, where much of this political jargon is apparently conceived? Is your slippery tongued colleague or manager simply hiding his lack of nous behind a thin veil of impenetrable dialogue every time he pops a ‘ubiquitous CAE factor’, or a ‘synergistic strategy’?
Perhaps it’s a cover for the fact that his or her job isn’t that difficult to learn; a dangerous fact which must be protected from all outsiders and new starters using a barrage of virtually meaningless yet impressively baffling phrases like ‘mega-intuitive PTT orchestration’ and ‘granular versioning’.
There may never be a definite answer to these questions, but US business expert Bob Lewis has unravelled some of the mysteries of management language for our entertainment. Have you come across any of these, or are there others that we should be aware of? Let us know below...
Management Speak: You have to show some flexibility.
Translation: You have to do it whether you want to or not.
Management Speak: We have an opportunity.
Translation: You have a problem.
Management Speak: In a perfect world.
Translation: Just get it working and get it out the door.
Management Speak: We're going to follow a strict methodology here.
Translation: We're going to do it my way.
Management Speak: We have to leverage our resources.
Translation: You're working weekends.
Management Speak: You needed to be more proactive.
Translation: You should have protected me from myself.
Management Speak: We need to syndicate this decision.
Translation: We need to spread the blame if it backfires.
Management Speak: Our business is going through a paradigm shift.
Translation: We have no idea what we've been doing, but in the future we shall do something completely different.
ManagementSpeak: We need to leverage our operational customer alignment for increased satisfaction.
Translation: Too many of our customers have figured out how we do what we do and we need to re-confuse them.
Please suggest additional management speak translations you’ve come across, or even used (shame on you).
