1) Weekend
2) The New York Times
ran an op-ed (see Slate’s glossary of journalistic
language for definitions of op-ed and other terms) this week that
presented an interesting counterpoint to last week’s Weekend Reading about
corporate jargon. The author of the
column, which follows, is Randall Rothenberg, who wrote a terrific book about
how the development of an advertising campaign really happens, titled Where
the Suckers Moon: The
Life and Death of an Advertising Campaign. I recommend the
book for anyone who enjoys reading about business, advertising, or cars (the
book profiles Subaru’s “What to Drive” campaign). I do not recommend Mr. Rothenberg’s position
in his NYT column, and a follow it with my own counterpoint.
Speak, O Muse, of Strategic
Synergy
The New York Times,
The language of modern
business is under attack yet again. Assailing such fashionable terms as
"high-performance culture," "alignment," "rightsizing"
and scores of other bits of biz-buzz, social critics are going so far as to
attribute the recent spate of corporate scandals to a business culture in which
opaque language represents the broad acceptance of hidden, often amoral
activities.
Embarrassed, some companies
are taking the offensive against argot. Deloitte Consulting recently released a
free software program, called "Bullfighter," that hunts down and
suggests replacements for jargon in business documents. Instead of "enterprise,"
for example, it recommends "company" or "organization,"
arguing that the initial choice is "a grandiose word that isn't very
specific."
As part of my job, I oversee
my company's "thought leadership" activities, help arrange
"synergies" among our "service offerings" and create
"transparency" in "knowledge management" across our
"operating units." I am also a lifelong writer and editor — a former
critic of business patois who has learned to revel in it. I have come to see
the criticism of "bizspeak" often speaks to what the critics,
including those on the inside, do not understand about business.
Large, modern companies are
confederations. Although convention would assume that all people in all
divisions and departments are pursuing the same objectives, rarely is that the
case. Instead, senior management spends much of its time seeking to reconcile
the myriad competing interests inside the company — the battles for pieces of a
limited budget, the fights for financial and psychic reward — trying to
harmonize the various factions with the organization's goals.
In this continuous struggle,
words are tools of negotiation. Jargon is frequently a placeholder. A phrase's
meaning will be vague at first, and purposefully so, for the process of seeking
agreement about meaning is essential to the ability of the enterprise — no, not
the "company," but the entire complex web of employees, suppliers and
customers — to move forward and (I say this without regret) "add
value" to shareholders' wallets and people's lives. "Alignment" may
be one of those silly terms that jargon-watchers love to slam, but when we
achieve it in a company, we can feel the results.
This touches on another
virtue of corporate vernacular: It often represents ambition in the act of
fulfillment. In my firm, we speak frequently of our desire to help clients
"transform" themselves. Over the years, there has been wide agreement
that such "strategy-based transformation" includes raising returns to
shareholders, making companies better places to work, helping them recognize
and prosecute opportunities in markets they may be overlooking, fixing broken
systems and processes, and building new ones.
But we have also debated, at
times heatedly, how to motivate and organize such drastic changes at companies.
A bit of jargon — we even shorthand it as S.B.T. — has been like Oz to Dorothy,
an initially shapeless destination, which, through argument and deliberation,
has taken on form and meaning. It may be jargon to you, but for us, S.B.T. is
something we now do routinely with clients the world over.
Words, in other words, are
social constructions. So are companies. Defining the former helps shape the
latter. The terminology may be foreign to outsiders, but it is lingua franca to
insiders — the codes and symbols that allow colleagues to live together well.
Randall Rothenberg, a former reporter and editor for The Times, is
director of intellectual capital at Booz
Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm.
© 2003 The New York Times
For my counterpoint to Mr. Rothenberg’s counterpoint, I will rely on one of my favorite thinkers. You can find this and other deep thoughts in the Mission::Values section of www.analects-ink.com.
Confucius’
Rectification of Names
“If
language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is
said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this
remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the
people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no
arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.”
From
The Analects of Confucius, Book 13,
Verse 3 (James R. Ware, translated in 1980.)
Tsze-lu said, “The ruler of Wei has
been waiting for you, in order with you to administer the government. What will
you consider the first thing to be done?”
The Master replied, “What is
necessary is to rectify names.” “So! indeed!” said Tsze-lu. “You are wide of
the mark! Why must there be such rectification?”
The Master said, “How uncultivated
you are, Yu! A superior man, in regard to what he does not know, shows a cautious
reserve.
“If names be not correct, language
is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance
with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.
“When affairs cannot be carried on
to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music
do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are
not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot.
“Therefore a superior man considers
it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that
what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires
is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect.”
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