Management Speak

What the hell is it with people working in large corporations talking like assholes??? Has anybody else experienced this phenomenon?? Where people forget to talk like actual fucking human beings and start using terms like “reach out to” instead of just “talk to” or “contact”, “deep dive” instead of “investigate”, “call out” instead of “mention”…Even worse is the set of made-up terms unique to each business, which everybody seems desperate to fit into just about every sentence! Why can’t you just talk normally? It’s so much more efficient! It takes up so much extra time and energy to try to find a way to verbally kiss the CEO’s ass every time you open your mouth or send an email! I get that people like to sound smart. I get that humans also like to be a part of some bigger kind of organisation, whether it be a group of friends in high school or a political party we support. I even get that we like to prove we belong there and make ourselves feel special by adopting certain characteristics which are associated with said group. Like your friends are suddenly really into super-skinny jeans, so now you are too. Or the political party you support has decided to sell ridiculous red baseball caps with some meaningless message stamped across the front, and you think “It doesn’t matter if I’ll look like a total moron, at least people will know who I am so they won’t have to get to know me to find out, and risk discovering that I’m actually a very lonely and bitter person trying to escape my hollow existence by bellowing racial slurs and being a giant bigot”…..Where was I?

Oh yeah. So I started working for a large international corporation a couple of years ago (will not tell you which one as I definitely don’t want to get fired). I had never worked in a business environment before, my background being in animal training, but I figured communication would be the least of my worries now, considering my co-workers could actually speak. Boy, was I surprised.

The very first email to reach my inbox sounded something like this:

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Hello all,

As you may know (I didn’t), we have streamlined our pipelines (…do you need a plumber?) for the next quarter (of what?) in preparation for the upcoming launch (are we building a rocket?!). We would like you all to be proactive (as opposed to what, anti-active?) in reaching out to (physically?) the appropriate stakeholders (like Buffy the Vampire Slayer…I’m going to like this place). In the previous quarter we focused very much on low hanging fruit (We get fruit? I like this place), leaving bandwidth (you should talk to your internet provider) for innovation, brain storming and mindsharing (I don’t like this place). We would like to touch base with you (I’m out! I hate team sports) to deep dive (also afraid of sharks) into our best practices (but not the mediocre practices) to get visibility (My visibility is excellent, thank you. I had Lasik) on where we’re dropping the ball (is it sports or diving now?). We need to brain storm (nope!) a paradigm shift (what is this, Star Trek?), synergy leverage (wat.) and a more strategic fit (what?) to facilitate less negative growth (WHAT???).

The take away (I’m listening…but don’t say Mexican) is let’s hustle (the dance?), get result-driven (as opposed to being driven towards a lack of results) revise our SOPs (STD or drugs?), rethink our B2Bs, reinvent our B2Cs and get our SaaS in the POCs with a CRM and stick our SWOT right up their PPC (…y’all need to get tested).

Go team!

Ping me (is that like “bang”?) or Shaun (Shaun’s hotter) if you have any questions you’d like to discuss offline (didn’t know we were online).

Kind regards

Dave

David Hardnose
Snr Acct Mngr SMB US EU JP (good God I hope those aren’t STDs)

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What the fuck is going on??? Jesus actual Christ.