You Want Me to Calib-Wha My Huh?

Note to very smart, effective colleague: Jim Collins called. He wants his decoder ring back.

I recently started working with a woman who is the real deal: she gets things done. It’s her job, actually: take intangible concepts that executives are in love with, map them out to real results, and motivate people and teams through respect (or fear) of her access to the execs to get them done. She’s brilliant, and I very much like working with her.

The only problem is that I cringe whenever she speaks or writes a message. Her use of corporate jargon is so pervasive that I’m pretty certain some of our younger colleagues have absolutely no idea what she’s talking about. Here’s one example, from last week:

Subject: Current state calibration

Hi team. Attaching a link to the Sharepoint. In the current state folder are snapshots of the key workstream areas the leadership is focused on. Please take a review through of those you are less familiar with. I would like each person or team to share out the highlights of the current state of their work. We will then take questions and bring some calibration of scope.

I didn’t need a Rosetta Stone software package to master the corporate language; there’s no substitute for experience. But I haven’t experienced this level of jargon abuse since the early part of this decade, when the flood of business titles—Good to Great, Authentic Leadership, Blown To Bits, Straight From The Gut, Execution (actually, one of my favorites), and the wholly-annoying Who Moved My Cheese?—converted most sane people into inaudible, metaphor-spewing automatons.

Admit it, you’ve likely overused “matrix,” “benchmark,” “solutions,” “tipping point,” and “at the end of the day” as much as I have. I used to silently mark, in my day planner’s margin, the number of times in one meeting a late-'90s client said “synergize.” (Who knew it could be effectively used eighteen times in an hour?) And I will cry foul when “communication” is used as a active noun by those who have no idea how to effectively communicate (as in, “We need to send out a communication about this business decision that absolutely nobody cares about”). I don’t care what Ram Charan told you, veep, it ain’t a noun.

I’ll give my new colleague credit for completely avoiding acronyms to date, like ROI. Or TCO. Or OMFG, which was the first thing I thought when I first heard her speak. It was the same feeling I experienced this past weekend, up north in a small town, upon seeing the woman my age wearing “the claw” - that permed, teased late-'80s hairdo with bangs standing a good seven inches above the forehead, thanks to the staying power of Aqua Net. Here, I’d worked so hard to forget the salon faux pas of my youth, while this lady is holding onto it for dear life.

Some things just need to go away.

Yes, words are useless! Gobble-gobble-gobble-gobble-gobble! Too much of it, darling, too much! That is why I show you my work! That is why you are here! - The Incredibles (2004)

Comments

[Mary Connor]

Bless you for your advocacy of clear English. Jargon does indeed make very smart people appear less so.