It’s Monday — that means back to work for many juggling writers who will hear things like, “We need to hit the ground running this week, attack the low hanging fruit in order to maximize productivity, and utilize our group dynamic to create a paradigm shift that positions us as forerunners in the [insert industry here] arena.”
Ah, corporate speak. Sadly, the extreme example above is not too far off from something a manager actually said to a group I once worked in.
The problem with corporate speak is it says nothing — it’s a cover up. Anybody who’s ever had a cat knows it can cover a piece of poo in its litter box, but the poo’s still there, stinking.
Some problems with my example:
- Unless you’re a professional athlete or selling beer at a hockey game, you don’t work in an arena!
- “Hitting the ground running” is another way to say, “We’re behind!” — so why not just say, “We’re behind”?
- Attacking “low hanging fruit” is a not-so-clever way of saying, “If we ignore the big things that matter and do enough little things that really don’t, we at least look busy (even if we’re still ignoring the big problems).”
- And why do people use utilize instead of good ol’ use?
Sadly, corporate speak and buzzwords sometimes make it into articles and fiction.
I’ve heard visionary used as a buzzword quite a bit, lately. Everybody who does something a little different than normal is now a visionary.
Last week, a couple friends joked with me because I mentioned a trailer for the new Robin Hood movie got to me. In the trailer, somebody says, “Your father was a visionary…”
The word seemed out of place — probably because I hear it used so much as a buzzword. So I looked the word up in two dictionaries. Depending which dictionary I trust more, the word was first used in either 1648 or in the early 1700s. Regardless of when it was first used, it’s not a word that was used during medieval times, when Robin Hood takes place.
It’s a case of a buzzword not even in use at the time making it into a work of fiction.
Buzzwords creep into articles and news stories, too.
Don’t tell me to “leverage cutting-edge moves for maximum returns on your workout!” — say, “Try these new exercises,” and give me some pictures.
Communicate with me.
Buzzwords and corporate speak date your writing; more than that, they destroy your message. Keep it out of your correspondence — written and verbal; Keep it out of your queries and pitches.
Don’t tell somebody that your article is basically about something — tell them what it’s really about!
I’m guessing agents and editors could care less about what happens to your characters at the end of the day… — they want to know what happens at the end of the book!
You owe it to editors, agents, and readers to avoid buzzwords.
And you owe it to yourself.
The ability to communicate clearly is one of the most important abilities there is.
Don’t ruin it by telling us “It has been brought to our attention by outside forces that our actions may have been construed as a failure to communicate properly on our part; please rest assured that we are doing everything in our power to ensure that this is a mistake we do not intend to repeat,” when what you really mean is “I’m sorry — I won’t do it again.”
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If you want to share corporate speak terms or stories that drive you nuts, feel free to discuss them in the comments. I’ll include a couple of my favorites below.
The “We need to hit the ground running this week…” example in this entry is close to what a manager once said to a group I worked in. It was more like, “We need to hit the ground running and get this done down and dirty. We need to attack the low hanging fruit and think outside the box. People are looking at us and we need to rise to the occasion and deliver!”
Aside from all the corporate speak used by this manager, what I really resented was the “think outside the box,” line.
I have yet to meet somebody who asks people to think outside the box who actually considers different ideas. In every case, I’ve suggested “outside the box” ideas; I’ve suggested ideas lurking along the edges and corners of the big, imaginary box. Others have, too.
And the ideas are always shot down.
They are met with replies like: “That’s too out there,” “They won’t go for that,” or “I’m not sure we have the authority to do that.”
What the person was really saying to the group I was in: “I did a bad job planning and I need help!”
Why not just say that?
I hate corporate-speak and buzzwords. Fortunately, I’ve not been in a position to have to listen to that sort of thing in a work environment, but I have to wade through job postings that babble on with that and make me wonder what the job really is about. I hear people using those buzzwords more and more outside of jobs in situations they really shouldn’t be using them, and am even hearing some of it on newscasts.
If that sort of thing shows up in novels, I swear I’ll stick to old stories and never read another new book again! I realize some buzz words find their way in to conversations accidentally and there are some words and phrases that you could get nitpicky about, but I’m talking about the kind like you mentioned.
I’m not a fan of turning nouns into verbs. I’ll confess that I’m extreme, here: I want to kick myself on the occasions I slip and say, “You should Google that…”
While I’m not a fan of “Googling” things, it’s become its own word, and I can kinda-sorta live with it.
But the act of turning nouns into verbs is a trend that can make the communicator look downright stupid.
My mom once shared the best example of making a noun a verb. She was in a meeting, and a manager said, “People, we need to solution this right now.”
She thought the manager misspoke.
But again, later in the meeting, he said, “We really need to solution this.”
Not “solve this,” but “solution this.”
Makes you want to cringe, doesn’t it?
But it gets worse. Since the person was a manager, the people who looked up to the manager started using “solution” as a verb.
Soon, e-mail about other issues were filled with, “We need to solution this,” and “Let’s get together later to see if we can solution the problem.”
Another example that made me laugh:
As a trainer, I always make it clear to the people I’m teaching that I will do all I can to answer their questions. I pause after each new thing and ask if people have questions. At the end of a unit, I ask again. I admit that I may not have the answer, but I tell people I will do all I can to find the answer and get back with them. Sometimes I write their questions down on a notepad; other times, I tell them I’ll write any questions I can’t answer on the white board.
People who train, or have been through a lot of corporate training know that the white board section with the questions is known as “The Parking Lot.”
I avoid the term, but like “Googling” things, I will let it slide.
But the time I was in a class as a student and the trainer kept saying, “Why don’t we parking lot this concept,” I wanted to laugh and later, scream.
A friend kept a list of misused words on a whiteboard, complete with who said them and the context as a deterrent to this sort of thing. My personal favorite was “Let’s schedule an impromptu meeting to go over that.”
Cynthia,
Exactly! I like that language changes, but when it changes in ridiculous ways that are created to make somebody sound more intelligent, all it really does is makes them sound like a follower at best; stupid at worst.
I don’t mind industry terms. There’s nothing wrong with a screenwriting agent asking a screenwriter, “What’s the logline?” instead of, “What’s the one-sentence description of your screenplay.” Both people know what’s being discussed.
But when it’s babbling that really says nothing…it’s annoying.
I was once on a plane with a guy. He asked what I did, and I said, “I go to school and write independent comic books.” (Or something along those lines.)
I asked him what he did and he said, “I sell solutions.”
I asked him what he meant, and he went on about how he, “Fascilitates with companies by using his time-honored methods in order to assist them with coming to dynamic conclusions.” (Or something along those lines.)
I said, “So you’re a salesman?” and he went on with more corporate speak.
I saw it as a fun challenge, and eventually got that he sold accounting software.
When I said, “Why don’t you just say, ‘I sell accounting software to small businesses that can’t afford to hire a team of full-time accountants’?” he said, “It’s not that simple.”
But in talking to him, it really was that simple.
If I were running a small company that needed good accounting software, I’d want somebody to tell me they sell software that can help make accounting easier for me — not “I sell solutions,” and then talk in circles.
The software he sold could have been the best accounting software ever, but I wouldn’t trust the guy.
Salespeople who use corporate speak and buzzwords are hard to trust.
As a writer, part of my job is to sell myself and my writing.
It’s in my best interests to be clear and open.
Larry,
Ha! I’ve heard the “schedule and impromptu meeting” one before!
See, buzzwords spread!
I know I can sometimes sound overboard on my hatred of buzzwords, but it really makes people and companies look bad. Or, at the very least, dim.
I like the whiteboard idea.
I know I’ve said some goofy things in the past, and had they ended up on a white board where people could see them, I’d laugh and definitely not use the word or phrase again if it was bad.
I think what gets me most about buzzwords: they’re often used by people trying to sound important.
An occasional buzzword happens, but when it becomes the way you speak, it become silly.
While cliches fall into the buzz phrase category, I’m going to use one: Actions speak louder than words.
Show me you’re important by being a good leader and I’ll follow you damn near anywhere. Tell me you’re important and you’re going to have a very hard time earning my trust.
While I have no problem with “Googling” and “parking lot”, typical corporate speak drives me bats, as you know. I loved Larry’s example because it illustrates that they embroider their words so much they don’t even realize what they’re saying.
The one I hear over and over every day now is “reach out to” instead of “talk to”. Another is “ping me” instead of “call me”. Ugh to both!
“Reach out to,” seems so fake. The people who use it seem to use it to try sounding sincere, like they know they have let communication slip and are trying to show how much they care. Maybe they do care, but the people I’ve seen use it say it over and over because they are always ignoring things and then “reaching out.”
“Ping me.” When that became big, I had to look it up. Suddenly at work, everybody was pinging everybody; it sounded like something from a soap opera. They were pinging each other in conference rooms, pinging each other during lunch, and pinging each other in the bathrooms.
That’s when it hit me: everybody who started using “ping me” used a Blackberry. So I looked it up online, and “ping” was Blackberry’s way of saying an instant message, or something of its equivalent.
It was an elite group “pinging” each other, one that often ignored the world when their precious device emitted its Pavlovian vibration. A couple times I was talking with people who were “reaching out” to me, giving me their “undivided attention,” and every time their Blackberry beeped, they paid attention to it, instead of me.
They were the people who worked 60-80 weeks and expected everybody around them to do the same, even if everybody around them did as much actual work in 35 hours as they did in 80.
So they started using ping for other things: phone calls, instant messaging from computers, and e-mail.
In Texas, when somebody is going to a vending machine, it’s common to hear somebody say, “Can you get me a Coke?” and hear the reply, “What kind–Dr. Pepper?”
Coke is the word for any soft drink, and one must clarify what soft drink they are wanting. (Unless it’s a Sprite or 7-Up, because those are usually identified by name.)
“Ping” became a word like that. Somebody would say, “Ping me,” and people said, “E-mail, or instant message?”