Thoughts About Buzz Words – Used All Too Often in the Online Industry
Tuesday, 07. 7. 2009 – Category: Enversa Companies
Joe Executive: “We need to optimize modalities and our proprietary technology to produce measurable results that ultimately produce an uptick in client ROI.”
Every walk of life has its own unique language. Sports figures live by the cliché — “It’s time to put on our game faces and give 110%.” Politicians thrive on the fine art of speaking without saying anything.
In the corporate world, the lingo revolves around buzzwords, and perhaps nowhere else is a dialect so ingrained. When listening to a presentation by the average executive, one wonders if it is even possible for that individual to turn off the buzzword generator. Or does the typical conversation around the family dinner table sound like this:
Dad: “When your mother and I were still in discovery phase, I’d ping her, your grandfather would answer, and we’d have a download session where he’d impress upon me that I should optimize my value add.”
Mom: “Kids, Grandpa thought your father would never amount to anything.”
Dad: “He had concerns about certain bad actors, so our dates had a hard stop at midnight.”
Mom: “Your broken down car and motorcycle were the least of the problem; he just didn’t trust you.”
Dad: “Sure, there was a vetting out process, but I detected an up-tick in acceptance when we started ramping up production of his progeny.”
Mom: “Grandpa loves you kids.”
Dad: “We went through a number of iterations to customize our proprietary technology. Not all produced measurable results. There were some redundancies and we may have exceeded our bandwidth in having so many of you, but we paid attention to every consumer touchpoint.”
Child to sibling: “All I need is ’spearheading our expansion’ for a Buzzword Bingo, but if it comes up in this context, I’ll hurl.”
So why do we continue to hear such jargon when most agree it sounds like blithering nonsense? The offenses creep in one misbegotten usage at a time.
The author of a presentation may have decided the word “use” had appeared enough so he decided to show off his physics background and substitute “leverage”, and the expression stuck. Speakers desire to sound more educated, although that doesn’t explain “get our ducks in a row” instead of simply “organize”. In certain instances, buzzwords are more impressive. A superior is less likely to question an increase in budget for a department that will drive efficiencies — possibly because nobody in the organization truly knows what that means.
On occasion, an unfortunate executive is required to repeat information that originated with a technical person, and you can almost empathize with him having to say “spider the web”, “cached on the server”, MySQL database implementation”, or “javascript pixel fire”, because he isn’t familiar enough with the usage to swap a different phrase that relates it in laymen terms. The problem worsens when the term evolves from its original application, and soon something more meaningless than clever results, such as when human resources are referred to as bandwidth.
The goal of communication is that both the speaker and listener take the same meaning from that which is spoken or written. That objective is not automatically achieved through statements about optimizing modalities & proprietary technology to produce measurable results.
The ultimate explanation may be that deep down, we’re not that different from the athlete and the politician when it comes to expressing ourselves, taking refuge behind clichés and evasive language. Or stated more clearly, multivariate applied methodologies drive efficiencies. Ramping up ancillary modalities while soft pedaling granular redundancies in a shotgun approach leverages what the market will bear beyond as the status quo.
A paradigm (once mispronounced as “par-a-dig-um”) shift is necessary in order to return us to the days of actual “heavy lifting” rather than vague obscurities that outline a workflow’s processes.
“It seems like there’s a lot of brainstorming going on around here.” – Fred Pickren
NOW – Share with your colleagues how many buzz words or buzz phrases you found.
Brandon Hansard, Media Director, works for Enversa Companies, a division of CornerWorld Corporation.
Tags: Brandon Hansard, buzz words, cliches, communication