Jon Warshawsky woke up one day and realized he was speaking like an idiot.
It’s an occupational hazard when you work for a giant consulting firm. Warshawsky, 39, discovered he was using words that sound important but don’t really mean anything.
“When I say, ‘We pushed the envelope and came up with a paradigm shift that we’re going to synergize across the organization,’ I really haven’t told you anything,” said Warshawsky, a manager at Deloitte Services in San Diego.
Warshawsky teamed up with two other reformed consultants – Brian Fugere, a principal at Deloitte Consulting, and Chelsea Hardaway, a former brand director at Deloitte Consulting – to write a book: “Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighter’s Guide.” They’ve also written anti-jargon software that scours empty phrases from prose. It is available free at their website, www.fightthebull.com.
The authors say businesspeople speak like idiots for four reasons: 1) To sound smart; 2) To avoid individuality in a corporate setting by stifling their own voices; 3) To overpromise or oversell, accentuating the positive and denying the existence of obvious screw-ups; 4) To avoid thinking by using prepackaged numbers and pointless generalizations.
Information technology – from blogs and e-mail to websites – amplifies the problem. So does the career track of an MBA student.
“People who go to MBA school are really fun, intelligent, normal people,” Warshawski said. “But by the time they’ve been working for 10 to 15 years, they start to sound like I did.”
Here are some terms Warshawski would remove from the business vernacular:
Center of excellence – “It’s like saying, ‘we’re the vortex of incomparable splendor, the hub of magnificence,”‘ Warshawski said. “If you are calling yourself the center of excellence, how stuck-up is that?”
Going forward – As in “we need a going-forward plan. … It implies that this plan is brainier than something that isn’t a going-forward plan, which would be what? A plan to go back in time?”
Mission-critical – “Everything can’t be mission-critical.”
Quality-driven – “Why would you even say that?” said Warshawski. Does it mean other parts of the operation do not care about quality?
Thought leadership – “I think it means ‘we want to be experts,’ but ‘thought leadership’ is a very pretentious way of saying that.”
Value proposition – As in, “‘We need to articulate the value proposition.’ … As soon as I say that, you’ll like me a notch less.”
Reinvent the wheel – “You hear it and you just get a stomachache.”
Incentive-ize – “It’s meant to sound scientific, but it’s not a word.”
Mindshare – “I guess that means attention or awareness,” said Warshawsky. Maybe people who need to share a mind don’t really have one of their own.
Future-proof – “That’s the dumbest thing you can say. I don’t know what is future-proof. Maybe air, water or God. Probably not your business plan and definitely not your information system. If you look at any computer system from 20 years ago, it’s gone.”
Beware of companies and executives using strange language. Warshawsky is fond of this paragraph from Enron’s 2000 annual report to shareholders:
“Enron’s performance in 2000 was a success by any measure, as we continued to outdistance the competition and solidify our leadership in each of our major businesses. We have robust networks of strategic assets that we own or have contractual access to, which give us greater flexibility and speed to reliably deliver widespread logistical solutions. … We have metamorphosed from an asset-based pipeline and power generating company to a marketing and logistics company whose biggest assets are its well-established business approach and its innovative people.”
“Even if Enron was telling the truth and they were making real money, you can’t tell what they do for a living,” said Warshawsky. “It’s almost like they were trying to throw you off the trail. It’s really too eerie to read it now.”
Al Lewis’ column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. Respond to Al at denverpostbloghouse.com/lewis, 303-820-1967 or alewis@denverpost.com.
