Let's move on to some more toxic buzzwords. Today's selection is drive.
My goodness, business drives a great deal today. In 15 minutes of Web browsing in only one industry, I learned that Allstate drives sustained shareholder value, Nationwide drives down the cost of healthcare, and Farmers drives innovation. In another quarter-hour of looking at advertising sites, I found that McCann Worldgroup drives demand, while Interpublic Group's diversity "ignites the creativity that drives results." And Wilen Group is driven by its innovative Founder (their capitalization, not mine).
It seems that drive has become a true buzzword, and as buzz waxes, meaning wanes. With just a little thought, we can come up with substitutions that work and aren't burdened by the self-consciousness of corporate gobbledygook. We can strive to build shareholder value, reduce the cost of healthcare, or foster innovation. We can increase demand, give clients the results they want, and be inspired by an innovative founder. Eliminating what I call flabspeak will bring about greater understanding. And isn't that the point of communicating?
Showing posts with label weasel words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weasel words. Show all posts
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Top Buzzwords and Why to Avoid Them, Part I
I'm not against jargon. If you're writing for a company magazine or speaking to a group of like-minded folks who know your industry, jargon is a useful tool. So this post isn't about that. This post, and several to follow, will deal with specific buzzwords--business words that are overused and rarely examined for meaning.
Those who have followed these posts know that my least favorite buzzword is solution, especially when, God help us, it's used as a verb, e.g., "We'll solution marketing's ideas this afternoon." What's the point of a solution if a problem hasn't been articulated? And if you look closely at Web sites, you'll see that solution is often simply a substitute for program, product, or service--all perfectly lovely words that tell the customer something about what the company does.
Right up there with solution is the word leverage. It's almost as overused and just as nonsensical. Leverage, in the context we hear it today, comes to us from the world of finance. Investorwords.com defines it as "the degree to which one is using borrowed money." It became a very popular term during the Go-Go '80s. Everyone was buying companies with OPM (other people's money), using the assets of one company to purchase another, and dancing in the streets. Greed was good. Well, look where that got us. But I digress.
Today, business literature and Web sites leverage everything, e.g., "We leverage our core competencies, business synergies, and human capital to bring you best-of-breed service." I'll bet if you asked the perpetrator of that sentence what he or she meant by leverage, you'd be greeted by a great big silence.
As far as I can tease out from the Web sites where this word appears on page after page, companies are trying to tell you that they have a lot of different kinds of skills and they'll take full advantage of them to give you great service. Leverage has nothing to do it. It's just a buzzword that's run amok.
As I said in Talking Your Way to the Top: Business English That Works, buzzwords are not just meaningless; they can be dangerous. I believe most people use them because they think it makes them sound like the big guys. They become too lazy to dig out a thesaurus and look for an apt synonym for the phrase du jour.
But in the worst case, buzzwords can be employed to shade the truth, to make the picture look rosier than it is. By saying nothing and using a lot of words to do it, companies can sometimes hide the facts. Today, that's shortsighted. Customers are looking for the greatest possible clarity before they plunk down their hard-earned dough. They're fed up with lack of meaning. Show them you care by giving them what they want: direct, simple communication. It will pay off.
Those who have followed these posts know that my least favorite buzzword is solution, especially when, God help us, it's used as a verb, e.g., "We'll solution marketing's ideas this afternoon." What's the point of a solution if a problem hasn't been articulated? And if you look closely at Web sites, you'll see that solution is often simply a substitute for program, product, or service--all perfectly lovely words that tell the customer something about what the company does.
Right up there with solution is the word leverage. It's almost as overused and just as nonsensical. Leverage, in the context we hear it today, comes to us from the world of finance. Investorwords.com defines it as "the degree to which one is using borrowed money." It became a very popular term during the Go-Go '80s. Everyone was buying companies with OPM (other people's money), using the assets of one company to purchase another, and dancing in the streets. Greed was good. Well, look where that got us. But I digress.
Today, business literature and Web sites leverage everything, e.g., "We leverage our core competencies, business synergies, and human capital to bring you best-of-breed service." I'll bet if you asked the perpetrator of that sentence what he or she meant by leverage, you'd be greeted by a great big silence.
As far as I can tease out from the Web sites where this word appears on page after page, companies are trying to tell you that they have a lot of different kinds of skills and they'll take full advantage of them to give you great service. Leverage has nothing to do it. It's just a buzzword that's run amok.
As I said in Talking Your Way to the Top: Business English That Works, buzzwords are not just meaningless; they can be dangerous. I believe most people use them because they think it makes them sound like the big guys. They become too lazy to dig out a thesaurus and look for an apt synonym for the phrase du jour.
But in the worst case, buzzwords can be employed to shade the truth, to make the picture look rosier than it is. By saying nothing and using a lot of words to do it, companies can sometimes hide the facts. Today, that's shortsighted. Customers are looking for the greatest possible clarity before they plunk down their hard-earned dough. They're fed up with lack of meaning. Show them you care by giving them what they want: direct, simple communication. It will pay off.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Another spineless euphemism
In my book Talking Your Way to the Top, I feature several pages of euphemisms I consider linguistically dishonest, such as calling a body bag a transfer tube or referring to dead civilians as collateral damage. I just read a new one this morning in The New York Times. It's yet one more way to refer to firing people. "We're going to rebalance our organization." So go ahead and add "rebalance" to all the other words we now use to mean getting rid of employees: adjust the workforce, dehire, deselect, reduce in force, reduce the census, downsize, outplace, rightsize, terminate, shorten the path to profitability--and don't forget involuntary employee attrition and negative employee retention.
Each of them means you're out of a job, and each one is a crock of unadulterated buzzspeak cooked up to evade the truth and avoid the responsibility. Where is George Carlin when we need him?
Each of them means you're out of a job, and each one is a crock of unadulterated buzzspeak cooked up to evade the truth and avoid the responsibility. Where is George Carlin when we need him?
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Political correctness hits new heights of idiocy
In my last post, I didn't mention one of the British towns that the Local Government Association chastised for their substitution of the phrase "idea shower" for the word "brainstorm." The members of the town council had decreed the new phrase because they felt that people with epilepsy might be offended by the term "brainstorm." Strange to say, when members of the area Epilepsy Association finally were asked for their opinions, they stated that "brainstorm" didn't bother them at all.
It's good to be sensitive, but it's always best to go to the source if you don't know what to say. That's what happened years ago when we were unsure about the word "handicapped." When associations that served that population were asked what to do, they came up with what they called "people first" language, that is "people with a disability." Years and years ago, the first association that served those with cerebral palsy said that they perferred "affected by" rather than "afflicted with" cerebral palsy.
Yesterday on campus I heard a middle school student who was attending a camp there refer in all seriousness to a young man she was working with as "vertically challenged." He was shorter than she by far, but I noticed there was no word for her "condition." Is she "vertically superior?" "Vertically enhanced"? He's short. She's tall. That happens in middle school. Kids know it. They may be uncomfortable about it, but we don't have to wrap them in cotton and speak in code about a simple fact.
Could we just use common sense? Of course, we want to call people what they want to be called, but fashions wax and wane, and not everyone prefers the same term. If you don't know, ask the person what he or she would like. Does she prefer "African American" or "black"? Does he mind if you refer to him as a "diabetic" or would he rather you say, "My friend has diabetes"?
We have become so afraid of offending one another that we often avoid meaningful discourse altogether. As I read about George Carlin's death--the man who noticed that in his lifetime "toilet paper" had become "bathroom tissue" -- I thought about what a field day he would have with "idea shower." He certainly had a wonderful ability to skewer the whole PC parade, and I hope that in his memory, we might all become more linguistically honest.
It's good to be sensitive, but it's always best to go to the source if you don't know what to say. That's what happened years ago when we were unsure about the word "handicapped." When associations that served that population were asked what to do, they came up with what they called "people first" language, that is "people with a disability." Years and years ago, the first association that served those with cerebral palsy said that they perferred "affected by" rather than "afflicted with" cerebral palsy.
Yesterday on campus I heard a middle school student who was attending a camp there refer in all seriousness to a young man she was working with as "vertically challenged." He was shorter than she by far, but I noticed there was no word for her "condition." Is she "vertically superior?" "Vertically enhanced"? He's short. She's tall. That happens in middle school. Kids know it. They may be uncomfortable about it, but we don't have to wrap them in cotton and speak in code about a simple fact.
Could we just use common sense? Of course, we want to call people what they want to be called, but fashions wax and wane, and not everyone prefers the same term. If you don't know, ask the person what he or she would like. Does she prefer "African American" or "black"? Does he mind if you refer to him as a "diabetic" or would he rather you say, "My friend has diabetes"?
We have become so afraid of offending one another that we often avoid meaningful discourse altogether. As I read about George Carlin's death--the man who noticed that in his lifetime "toilet paper" had become "bathroom tissue" -- I thought about what a field day he would have with "idea shower." He certainly had a wonderful ability to skewer the whole PC parade, and I hope that in his memory, we might all become more linguistically honest.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Hooray for our British cousins
Last Friday, the Local Government Association in Great Britain told British civil servants to banish the buzzwords. One hundred words, including stakeholders, synergies, coterminosity, revenue stream, and empowerment, should be excised, the Association says.
Well, hallelujah! May I suggest that American business take a leaf from this book and immediately banish leverage, paradigm shift, planful, impactful, point in time, presenteeism, repurpose, radar screen, off-peopling, low-hanging fruit, messaging, mission critical, granularity, human capital, enterprise, drive and driver, bandwidth, actionable (except in its legal sense), at the end of the day, skill set, seamless, value proposition, value add, and many more. If we can stop wasting our time thinking up meaningless, self-conscious "business" phrases, perhaps we can back to doing actual business.
Well, hallelujah! May I suggest that American business take a leaf from this book and immediately banish leverage, paradigm shift, planful, impactful, point in time, presenteeism, repurpose, radar screen, off-peopling, low-hanging fruit, messaging, mission critical, granularity, human capital, enterprise, drive and driver, bandwidth, actionable (except in its legal sense), at the end of the day, skill set, seamless, value proposition, value add, and many more. If we can stop wasting our time thinking up meaningless, self-conscious "business" phrases, perhaps we can back to doing actual business.
Friday, April 25, 2008
It's all about design
How many times in the last seven days have you heard or read in an ad, on a Web site, or in business collateral, "Our product (or service) is designed to ..."
- Make your life easier
- Save you time or money
- Improve your relationships
- Make you more attractive
- Solve your problem
Well, I don't care what it was designed to do. Does it actually do it? If so, say so. "Our product..."
- Cuts your cooking time in half
- Reduces wrinkles 95 percent in three nanoseconds
- Makes it easy for you to pay yourself first
If something is only designed to do something, it sounds as if it might fail. And if it does, that's somehow the customer's fault. "Well, it was designed to work. You must have done something wrong."
"Designed to" gives you some wiggle room, to be sure, but it also plants doubt in the customer's mind. Be bold. If your product works, stop waffling and stake your claim.
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