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Attack of the Corporate Weasel Words
theodp writes "Does it bother you that churches have a Mission Statement touting their Core Values? That even the CIA has a Vision? In his book Death Sentences: How Clichés, Weasel Words and Management-Speak are Strangling Public Language and in this Newsweek interview, Australian author Don Watson argues it's time to protest the mind-numbing business jargon that infests our schools, churches and political speech. Examples that people have sent to him can be found on Watson's website."
my favorite from TFB would have to be the "Damaging energy exchange". I think it means accident. Although the report in which it was included was at pains to point out that "accident" was an inappropriate term for a "damaging energy exchange", and that the British Medical Association Journal had banned the use of the word "accident" in its articles.' And of course, to "Add value", which is obviously 'to agree with one's boss.'
In Soviet Russia, all your Natalie Portman hot grittified, Netcraft BSD/Steven King obituaried, greased Yoda doll in mabootied, welcomed by our new GNAA-overlorded, imaginary beowulf cluster of Burma Shavin' weasel words are belong to us!
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/games/career /bin/ms.cgi
Free XBox, PS2
Is your sig supposed to look like spam?
...carry more weight when the coming from authors residing in English-speaking countries, which we can all agree Australia is not.
If we aren't going to eight-ball on these associative forward looking statements then clearly we've all got to just co-operatively compete in deciding on a common way forwards that brings all of the stakeholders on board, while enabling individuals to determine their own optimal path to success.
My other pet peeve is "solutions" as in "refuse organisation and disposal solutions" - Trash collection.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Gaius Lucius Aetor, prefect of rome, decries the jargon laden language infesting the shools where young romans are taught. Say Lucius "It is time to strike back against this meaningless business jargon, which substitutes platitudes for thought"
Anything which says "Innovat" in some form is bullshit. It's the same toy as last week with more useless buttons.
"We're working on a new phone, it'll be even better then the last one because it can send e-mails and surf the internet!" translates to "We're adding more things which cost a lot of money and won't improve your phone any".
The old saying "If it's too good to be true, it probably is".
I like muppets.
We are in a culture where people need to specialize in order to succeed. Now there is only so much specialization that can be achieved. So of course buzz words are needed to justify the niche marketing of... business, goods, and even employment specialties.
...the pointy haired boss from Dilbert is not just a myth. Without these words, that I find to be a detestable sore upon my tounge for each utterance, there are managers that would say "Ooh, that doesn't sound so good... why don't you uhh... perk it up a little bit....yeah." Basically we need to find the Lumbergh gene in the human race and erradicate it so we can stop making the stupid bosses happy, then we can dispose of these garbage words.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
Didn't Orwell write this long ago:
http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html
Weasel Words
.In response to the question:"How are you" ? "I'm good"." Does anyone say "I'm bad" ? When someone says that he or she is good, the person could be asked if he or she has been bad recently, or if he or she is simply making a statement about his/her morals.' [from Paul Grant, Ontario]
Productivity gains is where workers have to work longer hour for less money and produce more products/outcomes. Productivity gains has nothing to do with developing new technology or buying latest technology, machinery, hardware or even software, because industry cannot incur such costs to their bottom line. If industry did invest in such areas it would not achieve the mystical productivity gains.
Choice - that which allows one to have more than one option if they have the financial resourses above and beyond one hundred thousand dollars. [from R.Conlon]
Anytime soon 'If something is going to happen soon, it is imminent. But if it is likely to occur anytime that seems to me to be inexact. Anytime might mean soon but also might mean in a hundred years. So I declare "anytime soon" weasel wordish.' [from Peter Hair]
Situated pedagogy 'I think that this means that how you teach depends a bit on where you teach. ' (From Dr Catherine Scott)
Time Poor 'This from,Gardening Australia magazine, June 2005, "People these days are time poor..." The article was referring to selling your house and recommended that the garden was immaculate, for the potential purchaser's satisfaction.
As if our parents and grandparents were not short of time after; milking the cow, lighting the lamps, washing by hand, chopping the wood, tending the livestock, walking rather than riding, writing error-free letters in long hand and queueing for work.
Today's time poor must have such a dreadful rush; flicking a switch, ordering online, driving everywhere, relaxing at the cafe, turning on a machine, editing at leisure on the computer and enjoying the benefits of industrial awards that protect their working conditions.[from Max Shooter & Charlie Myres]
Geo immobilised ' This morning on ABC 702, during a discussion about nuclear energy, a Greens MP (Ian Cohen?) used the term "Geo Immobilised" when describing the disposal of nuclear waste. What I think he meant to say was they bury it!' [from Murray Whitlocke-Jones] Does anyone have another interpretation? Email us if you do.
Poor Customer Service ' When used by a customer, this really means "you aren't giving me back my money even though I have used your product and discovered I don't like it."This is different from "good customer service", used by the merchant, who has busted a gut to get the right product in the customer's hands so the merchant doesn't have to hear customer complaints who discovered that he doesn't like the customer that he insisted on buying over the merchant's objections (only applies to independent retailers - sorry) [From Gerry Lewarne]
Outcome 'Heard on the ABC news. Describing the conclusion from a coronial inquest in regard to the death of a woman after an operation. It is concluded that the woman would have had a better outcome if something had been done sooner. She would have died later? Not as much? Or not at all? Presumably the latter.' [From Jeffrey McCubbery & Dr Chris Fyffe]
'The outcome was very, very unfortunate for the people involved.' Former Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock on ABC radio when asked about the Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez cases.
Socialisation 'Used in the context of communicating information to people in order to get their feedback and/or approval. In my workplace, people say things like "we need to socialise this idea with the management team" - too bizarre. [from Vanessa Petterson]
How are you? I'm good: '
For your convenience: 'Heard on a Virgin flight from Brisbane to Sydney: "for your convenience, the cabin will be pressurised". How about, "so you don't die, the cabin will be pressurised" or just, "the cabin will be
"Exciting re-review and recommenting opportunity" for the /. editor's favorite activity.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Until you get rid of the "never say die" agendas that everyone has, you'll never get rid of this type of dialogue.
They have their spin that their talking points are designed to get across, and so long as they are defending a position that benefits them (no matter how hypocritical or nonsensical), they're going to have to utilize such unnatural speech.
I'm a big tall mofo.
I misread the "Newsweek article" as the "Newspeak article" and I was all like woah, damn dyslexia.
One time I spoke out very strongly about management speak. Synergy this, leverage that. Buzzword Bingo is not amusing when you see that someone can gain power by saying absolutely nothing at all.
The counter argument was that it's the jargon of management. Just as programmers talk about arrays in a different sense than a layman, or maybe 'threading' for another example. Buzzwords isn't a problem, it's just the language of management.
I think that's EXACTLY the problem. Managers don't talk to themselves. They lead with ideas, and understand the problems of others to help organize solutions. If nobody understands what the fuck they are saying, it's not management!
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
They have renamed Ticket Collectors at Birmingham New Street to "Revenue Protection Officers".
Unfortunatley the new moniker doesn't seem to have empowered them or imbued them with any sense of purpose since they are too busy showing each other their new mobile phones to actually check anyones ticket.
Christianity has always been expressed through the culture it lives in. It should be no suprise that some churches have visions and mission statements -- they want to succeed, and one model for success in America is the corporation.
However, there is a backlash against this strict hierarchical structure, and as many traditional structures are being circumvented by new ways of doing things (blogs vs. old media, P2P vs. old music distribution, network vs. hierarchy, etc.), many churches will change to reflect this. This can already be seen in the Emergent conversation, and in the writings of Brian McLaren, Johnny Baker, Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones, and others...
That sounds more like a crash to me -- and not all crashes are accidental.
We can't exactly use the word collision, as not all collisions cause damage (purely elastic or purely inelastic collisions will transfer energy without permenant deformation of the bodies involved)
I'm not sure if there are times when the word 'crash' denotes a situation that isn't a 'damaging energy exchange', but it seems better than 'accident', which has more to do with something not having been done intentionally, and very little to do with damage or energy exchange. (the context of its use may suggest that, but you haven't given its context).
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
There is a way to actually have fun with these nonsense terms:i tbingo/
http://www.perkigoth.com/home/kermit/stuff/bullsh
I tried this myself in business seminars, definitly works! It's better to have humorous people around, though.
The worst mission statements are the ones that are just so disconnected from reality- The ones that were dreamed up in a boardroom where no one had ever seem the manufacturimg facility. I bought a pair jeans and on the tag it said that "we strive to create the best most durable blah blah blah" and when I put them on, a button fell off....
How about some honest ones- "We seek to have a complete monopoly on unreliable operating systems..."
I love the ones that have nothing to do with the product... "Our mascara comany seeks to delight our customers, create world peace, and give out random orgasms...."
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
I have a small business. I am realizing very quickly that success is often determined by your ability to communicate. (I'm also married, and this rule applies equally well to that.)
If you can't clearly communicate to a client or customer, you can find yourself losing business very quickly. If the client thinks they're getting one thing and you deliver another, that's usually a breakdown on your part. The same goes for clients that don't understand what is required of them.
Clear and concise gets the job done, makes everyone more comfortable, and takes less time than thick marketing copy or 'vision statements.'
In my still-idealistic view of the world, that's how it works. I realize that some companies rely on obfuscation and meaningless text to confuse their customers into thinking they're getting one thing when the proposal says another. Or to lock people into contracts that they didn't understand (ie, zero interest for 12 months).
But those aren't honest. And they don't encourage repeat business, referrals, or customer satisfaction. So in my mind, they don't promote success.
ACTION ITEM!
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
If we're going to tackle this corporate jargon problem, team, we're going to have to leverage our core competencies. We're going have to be goal-oriented and results-driven.
I say we kick off our anti-buzzword action plan by hitting the ground running. Now, who's going to own the mid-level implementation plan for this milestone?
P.S. Props to Action Item, Superhero for inspiration.
There are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that can keep their train of thought,
an ill wind that blows no good
I'm looking at writing a mission statement for my own company, and the more I research it the more I appreciate existing ones.
/shrug.
It does baffle me that churches have so much money, and I am a little afraid that God (TM) didn't intend it to be quite that way. I'm sorry (I have agnostic tendencies), if God exists I surely don't think (s)he intended for any church to be large enough to be considered a business. In fact it disgusts me that here in the United States many of the local religious figureheads drive nicer cars, own bigger houses, and smoke fatter cigars than myself. Men of God? Nay! Men of themselves.
That said, I appreciate that (privately owned) schools have missions statements, and I appreciate that they are trying to serve their target. I think that every state-funded school in the state of (insert your region) should share a common mission statement. I think its also in their best interest to fulfill their goals as described by that mission statement.
It has gotten out of hand. There was a time when Not-for-profit really meant Not-for-profit, and I see these "charitable" organizations seeming to crawl forward with beady-green-dollar-sign-eyes.
Anyway. Mission statements are a wonderful invention and critical in this world known as capitalism. Bloody hell, though... why does the local minister drive a Lexus?
Deja Vu
n. 1. The sensation that you've read this very article before.
this reminds me of something i saw when i used to work in corporate america. once before a company wide meeting, a friend/colleague handed me a sheet of paper with a grid of boxes on it- like a bingo board, but each box had a 'buzzword' in it- synergy, proactive, win-win, B2B, e-commerce, e-solutions, etc., etc. the goal was to mark off a word every time you heard it in a meeting. if you crossed off all the words in one row, column, or diagonally, you stand up and yell "BULLSHIT!". freakin' hilarious.
Don Watson needs to chillax.
These phrases though lacking any real content do give the illusion that you know what you are talking about and is about the only way I got through college. If you have any doubts about this, check this freakishly well "buzzed" proposal generator. http://www.monzy.org/surg/
You make fun of France once and your Karma is never the same...
It sounds like this guy is trying to jump on Prof Frankfurt's bandwagon (On Bullshit.) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0691 122946/qid=1121094466/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_ur_1/102-0 573459-7462505?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 t ml
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/s7929.h
The problem, as Mr Frankfurt seems well aware of in his 80 page book, is that people can endlessly bullshit about how much bullshit there is out in the world. Don Watson also seems aware of this and intends on capitalizing on it.
What a curios title, How Clichés, Weasel Words and Management-Speak are Strangling Public Language by Don "The Australian" Watson.
Choking the chicken of discontent, are we? Well, if you've ever worked in a call center, weasel words (lies) and management speak (bullshit) are survival tools. Leverage them wisely.
--
What would you hear if you crossed an Australian with a Canadian? G'day, eh. (OK. You think of a better question to make the answer funny!)
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Weapons of Mass Destruction Program Related Activities.
From our self-described "CEO President"
To be fair, churches have been using the word 'mission' (hence missionary) for centuries, and business picked it up and turned it into a weasel word later. But 'core values' are a fair cop.
Wow, just like George Carlin. Only not funny!
At my last job we did not have a receptionist - we had a Director of First Impressions.
btw: I'm looking for a job as a Chief Software Imagineer - anyone hiring?
It's all well and good, as we geeks love to feel superior to management-sorts and snicker at them at every available opportunity.
However, this man comes across as something of a luddite. Much of his opposition to certain phrases is decidedly ludden.
What's wrong with "email" as a noun? "E-mail Message" is long and pointless, when Huffman coding suggest it can be shortened to "E-mail" or just "Mail".
In addition to that opposition, he seems to have a limited grasp of Idiom, Synecdoche, Zeugma and other long-established English literary traditions.
What's wrong with calling an iPod "sexy"? How can one meaningfully be opposed to "poor customer service"? "Reject"? "Requeue"?
He sounds like a lunatic complaining at any kind of neologism or idiom he didn't have a hand in. Like people who complain about the change in the meaning of the words "gay" and "pussy".
I'm tempted to say "grow up!" at him.
Also, a Detention Centre isn't a prison. "Ramp up" is an idiom. It doesn't simply mean "to increase". It means to start something small, and the increase gradually to full capacity. Perhaps we should stay that instead?
"To drill down" is a well-established idiom. What's the problem?
It's bonkers. This man seems to have an absurd overreaction to many perfectly innocuous words and phrases. Whether born out of Luddism or some paranoid objection to all neologisms isn't clear, but I'd suggest that this man be ignored as a quack.
I don't know which came first, jargon-talk, or politically correct speech, but somewhere in the last thirty years, speech and writing has become more about saying something with empahis on:
Maybe, though I get slaughtered sometimes, that's why I like slashdot... slashdotters give as good as they take. And usually say what they mean, or at least try. Case in point, how simple could a mission statement (hate that term) be other than "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." be?
I jumped off the politcally correct band wagon years ago when two "corrections" juxtaposed themselves:
You all can fight back by using candid, frank, and direct language. But, you'll pay a price. Utlimately though I think you'll find it much more satisfying.
Good business is indeed all about communication. Kudos to your integrety (and what IS your small business if I may ask).
However, in a world with a lot of bad business practices, communication gets quickly obscured. When most people are flinging BS, it's who flings the most convincing BS that wins.
The point of the Weasel Words actually is not communication, however. The last thing way too many wordweasels want to do is actually say something.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
When I was going to school all my writting requirements required one thing, Length. The more you write the better grade you get. They never focused on Spelling or Grammer or tried to gently guide me to writting well (Which I still cannot do). The more you wrote the smarter you are. So as these people get higher and higher up in buisness threw the natural process of Dieing and growing up. More and more exects will use more and more "Weasel Words" To fill up their papers and statments so they look like they know what they are doing. And in turn they will judge others intelegance on how much data they fill. The easiest way to acheave this effect is by using Buzz words because they sound like good vocabulary words to use but they wouldn't to esoteric for a common person. There is a fear of putting empty spaces without someting to see or read on it. Most new cars on the visors will have warning messages on them or mirros on the other side. A visor just cant be a visor to block the sun from going into your eyes while driving. A large room or office must have enough stuff in it or it is considred empty and dull. Every inch must be utilized if you cant think of a good reason to utilize it then you make up some other reason to utilize it. In order to stop Weasel words we need to change our culture to allow space into our lives and allow emptiness to exist.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Oh please. Reminds me of this joke:
Harvard freshman: Excuse me, where's the library at?
Harvard snob: At Harvard we prefer not to end a sentence with a preposition.
Freshman ponders a moment...
Oh, so sorry. OK. Where's the library at, asshole?
That was the motto a corporation I used to work for came up with. They meant that they are a people-first, family-oriented, nice company.
It never seemed right to me, but I couldn't place the problem until recently, driving past a shell of one of their former buildings. Your vision is supposed to come from your values, which should be part of you. If your values come from your vision, that means that your guiding principles are a result of desires, which can change with the winds of economics.
In their case, the talked about family and values, but they still expected 70-hour weeks.
They downsized me in preparation for a dotcom buyout. When the dotcom that bought them went under, the original management bought the company back for a lot less than they sold it for.
Not that I'm bittter or anything.
sigs, as if you care.
Productivity gains is where workers have to work longer hour for less money and produce more products/outcomes. Productivity gains has nothing to do with developing new technology or buying latest technology, machinery, hardware or even software, because industry cannot incur such costs to their bottom line. If industry did invest in such areas it would not achieve the mystical productivity gains.
This isn't a criticism of language, it's just pissing and moaning. Well-applied technology can lead to more efficient business processes, and productivity gains can certainly result. I recently visited an old employer of mine - for my last project there we had installed a new WMS (Warehouse Management System) with barcode scanners, and today they ship the amount of product, at higher levels of performance, with 90-100 employees rather than 150 previously.
There's plenty of room to attack the use of language in corporate environments today, but this is a pretty lame effort. They obviously need to reengineer their value proposition to maximally leverage their core competencies, relative to an integrated understanding of their customer base's unrealized profit potential...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Have you ever read any books from the Victorian era? It is just as incomprehensible.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
To make an only somewhat bold and oversimplified assertion, we've seen the effects of the middle-management mentality in (among many other examples) the travesty that has been the Catholic church's handling of the sex-abusing priests: "Middle-management" shuffled most of them around and let them continues to get away with their sick activities, rather than just deal with them properly in the first place.
Would ANY of that happened if there weren't such a tall management structure, if the religion weren't so organized, if it were instead just a bunch of more-or-less disconnected churches who only paid heed to the main-line directly to their "CEO"? And isn't that the way it SHOULD be anyway?
Feel free to flame, but I just can't see the necessity for such a stratified power-structure in religion.
Just the other day I was ranting to coworkers on how this lingo gets into everyday work.
I was writing up a report and I was including the phrase "Solutions", but I forget what I was solving. Can't I just fix something anymore? Why do I have to deliver a solution?
Issues and solutions, issues and solutions. I with I had an old-fashioned problem. I'd probably just fix it!
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
No matter how you word it, any mission statement can be reduced to "we strive to do our best, to be our best, to provide our best".
They are all to often a sign of weak leadership and direction hoping to compensate for such.
I dislike them on that basis.
People will argue for days about how shitty Microsoft is but when it comes to light we are all subtly being manipulated nobody cares.
At this time this article has 50 replies while a thread with SCREENSHOTS has 600.
at least to me, is whether we care what Newsweek has to say about anything. Obviously, the Slashdot crowd hangs out in Leftsville, for the most part, but being moderate, I would hope that they could appreciate the apprehensiveness I am expressing.
Politics, Life, and More on my Aspiring for the Future
will always be with us. The expression "call a spade a spade" goes back to ancient Greek city states and what they thought of each others directness in speech.
As long as you have to catch someone with your words, promote something with your pitch etc you will always have to make this choice: be honest and say up front "I'd like to make the following impression on you..." or be dishonest. The latter allows you to cover your hook with some bait of words: to use a vocabulary that obscures the nasty and disarms the thinking of your victim.
Your vocabulary is a bit like your wardrobe too: You don't go to a business meeting in cutoffs and T-shirt [well I do but...] and you don't use freehand drawings for presentation graphics...some situtations call for wrapping the contents in ostentation and formality. Makes me glad I'm just a coder.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
You know, I dont mind core values or mission statements nearly as much as I detest Catch Phrases designed to maipulate the sheep of the world. If your cause is completely run by catchphrases (pick a political party and political issue, any will do). Heaven forbid we actually explain something to people, just make sure it rhymes and is catchy and you have people willing to follow you to their doom.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
In a market, people generally try to choose the best product at the lowest price. That means you have to know what the best product is as well as how much it's worth. Information is power.
Well, if your product is chalk, then people aren't going to be willing to shell out £2.50 for a box of 30 chalk pills are they? So they sell you Settlers Tums instead of selling you chalk. Think of branding as economic disinformation.
Exactly the same techniques are used in business management for exactly the same reason. To confuse the market and get people to shell out more money for the same commodity product (management). Economic disinformation.
Deleted
It's really not the buzzwords so much as the matrix of meaningless in which they are embedded.
For instance, I've seen the phrase "core competency" come up in this discussion a couple of times. I've actually adopted that one in all seriousness, though, because it is a valuable concept, especially in this time of outsourcing. (And remember, outsourcing doesn't just mean "to India"... a six-person company can't hardly afford not to outsource HR nowadays, and that is largely a good thing all the way around.) If you are in a company and you can't identify your core competencies, you're in trouble. If you try to outsource your core competencies, you might as well just pack up shop. And you ought to be wary about taking on things that don't play to your core competencies, and you ought to be careful about expanding them if you don't have the resources.
But I use the term very specifically, and because there is no better replacement. The problem isn't that word specifically, it's when it gets buried in passive voice and slapped together with other "buzzwords" and ultimately stripped of all referents. "Core competency" is meaningless if you don't really know what it is, or it has no effect on the rest of the sentence/paragraph it is embedded in (i.e., the paragraph makes sense equally if your "core competency" is spinning cotton into thread or performing top-secret assassination missions). Generally, a "mission statement" ought to say outright what it is supposed to be.
There are other similar buzzwords that if you dig into where they came from, there are valuable ideas there and there are a few others I use in all seriousness, even though I'm more an engineer than a manager. It's really more how they are used, abused, misunderstood, and (perhaps most importantly, as shown above) underspecified that really hurts.
(Here, I'm talking about the traditional "buzzwords". This is a separate class from "words I use to say something without invoking the negative connotations", like "issue" for "problem". Those are basically indefensible.)
He seems to be making a living selling books and doing comedy routines, but really it's all based on whining about change IMHO.
Yes, all the "corporate speak", slick political speeches and what-not get pretty annoying at times. But look at the bigger picture of what's happening. The english language (and communications in general over the ages) have continually evolved. Words are added to the dictionary every year as new things are invented that require descriptions, and language has to be expanded to describe more things. Essentially the english language is a huge community project, where every english speaking person in the world is a potential contributor. New words or phrases become accepted as they become widely used. In a free speach environment, it's an evolution that nobody can control...only contribute to and observe.
here's a good one from the British government let's introduce a packet of measures and a range of initiatives
The "I'm good" in response to "how are you?" is just the fact that people don't realize there is a difference between good and well. "I'm well" means that I am in good health and doing ok. "I'm good" means that I behave properly.
There were several other in that category. With all due respect, I'm thinking that the people who consider them "weasel words" have more of a problem, than the people who use them incorrectly.
Just like 1334-speak is the tongue-stud and baggy pants of the English language, management buzz-words are the after-market spinner hubs on the engine of productivity. They convey movement and complexity where there is little or none, and distract the intellectually modest from having to think about what an organization actually does. Because, in a large organization, what it does is pretty complicated, and takes some actual depth of thought and a multi-minute attention span to comprehend and discuss.
Give it a decade. We'll see PowerPoint presentation with charts showing, in detail, how "OMG, we totally h@xx0r3d the competition last quarter. Kewl! But this quarter is teh sucks. WTF???" Next slide, please, dude.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Empowerment - We're cutting staff so we're enpowering those of you who are left to do their work and yours for the same pay.
Right size - We're sending your jobs to Pakistan. If you're lucky we'll empower you to stay long enough to train your replacements.
Disconnect - Any time you can't read the customer's mind and anticipate every boot-licking, petty request they might have. Enough disconnects and we'll right size your position and empower you to pursue a career in fast food.
Paradygm - A made up word consultants use to make you feel stupid and justify their massive salaries. A new paradygm usually leads to empowering people to do two jobs for one salary.
My all time hall of fame winner comes from Dell:
Award winning service - We've shipped our call center overseas, if you really want any help you might want to learn Hindi.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I think all organizations ought to have a mission or vision statement. However, for many organizations, the role of these statements seems to have degraded into nothing more that PR/propoganda.
The proper role of a mission statement is to assist in the decision-making process. It should serve as a set of criteria for evaluating options. By writing out your organization's goals in a concrete form, you hope to keep the organization focused on its original goals and values even though the leadership figures might change. Theoretically speaking, of course.
The problem with buzzword-ridden corporate mission statements, such as "We conveniently fashion professional methods of empowerment so that we may endeavor to continually initiate innovative solutions", is that they're too ambiguous to provide any proper guidance in the decision-making process. That, and the fact many mission statements are ignored when making big decisions, or just rewritten to fit the goals of new leadership.
take a look!
underground grammarian
Watson brings a valuable contribution to the table and with proper utilization his proposed linguistic paradigm shift can be leveraged to provide a significant value-add to the interpersonal communication process...
I like the corporate weasel culture. Because when I learn that some biz person is basing their "worldview" on some "business scientology" book, I just "write them off".
--
make install -not war
Any church that has to have a "mission statement" about their "core values" is in deep trouble. Their mission statement and core values should be readily apparent in their Bibles. Same for Synagogues and Mosques.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The problem, usually, is that everyone wants to keep these things generic, bland, and inoffensive. They shouldn't be. For an example of a good mission statement, consider this one I wrote for a computer store I'm a partner in:
No weasel words, no paradigms--shifting or otherwise--and no nonsense. What we mean by these terms is spelled out in our values statement (which I won't reproduce here.) Because I have this statement, I can hold my employees accountable to it.A mission or vision that nobody understands is worthless. But a good one is priceless.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
I had a friend who was working in the automotive industry, and who had to have weekly meetings with the American team (he is a Brit in the UK) to report on the project's progress.
They had so many buzz-phrases that my friend decided to invent one and see how long it took before it became part of the everyday corporate-speak of the American team.
So, at the next meeting he was like "Yeah, we really have to get our *noses against the windshield on this one*!!!
Three days later.......he receives an email from the (American) project head saying "good idea etc etc modifications etc etc - let's all get our noses against the windshield and make it happen"!!!
How we laughed!!!!
"Life is pain Highness. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something"
Westly, The Princess Bride
Pauly Shore is now a vicious member of management!?!
(Ya know... That DOES explain alot...)
Obligatory Homer quote:
... except the weasel."
Homer (to Bart): "Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals
Seriously, though, why are we here? We're here partly 'cause everybody needs to do somethin', and all most people can do is cloak their incompetency in buzzwords and huge piles of paper (and Post-Its) on their desk.
My corporation doesn't do this sort of thing much any more. We're too busy trying to avoid getting our assets kicked by foreign competitors to waste time with 90's corporatespeak.
Aside from some expected sloganeering on annual reports and such, do any corporations still waste time and serious money on crap like this ? I was under the impression it was a side effect of the 80's and 90's MBA-centric culture.
Oh, and check out the MBA's 'hire rate' these days- it's around 40% right out of school.. heh heh heh.
The purpose is to present an image to the casual observer. Words are selected for their appearance--"pro active", "standards compliant", "reorganization", etc. sound like action, consistency, and controlled change.
But they mean nothing. That's intentional. The corporation does not want to offer its detractors any ammunition for future attacks. "You said that..." Well, actually, we didn't say anything of the sort. Did we?
Do you seriously expect some organization to give you a clear commitment to anything without there being some significant benefit to them for doing so?
It's inconsistent with the corporation's fiduciary responsibility (look that one up, it's a real thing) to act in that manner. That is to say, if a corporate leader does things because "it's the right thing to do for the world/the customers/the industry", rather than "it makes more money for the stockholders and exposes the corporation to less risk", then they violate that responsibility.
At best, that violation is unethical. At worst, it's criminal.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
I didn't realize it needed analysis. These people want to throw an intelligent sounding variation to the volcabulary commonly used. Some might say it's to make dumb people sound smarter. It might also be true, but dumb people don't come up with words on their own -- someone out there with a thesaurus is just trying to relieve the tedium.
What really gets to me is when it's not even based upon the actual words, but upon the "fear someone might mishear." I'm sure everyone's heard about the politician who got lambasted for using the word niggardly. Then, in a play I was in last year, someone objected to an actor who had the line, "Don't get your knickers in a knot," because she was afraid someone would mishear the word, "knickers." *sigh* And it gets to you after a while. I actually find my self balking for a second before using "black" as a personal descriptor, so many people taking offense, seeing it as labelling.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Given that I have to say a lot of fairly boring things I would rather put some effort into giving what I say the qualities you describe than just blurt it out. It makes my day slightly more interesting and it reduces the chance of people getting pissed off, which makes me tired (I am old).
So, while you're making a point of being 'candid, frank and direct' I'll be taking the extra five seconds to be polite, diplomatic and cautious. We'll see which strategy turns out to be more stressful.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
OUR MISSION STATEMENT
Missions were used by the Spanish to colonize Mexican California in the 18th century. Their establishment was instrumental in the genocide of California's native peoples.
We oppose them.
(from Eat the State)
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
One phrase that I hear a lot is "action item". I guess hearing it for over 5 years has desensitized me to it, but it's still a pretty dumb turn of phrase.
The guy says nothing of substance. Jargon is just one of the ways language evolves. Language is not static however much semantic nazis want to force certain modes of speech on everyone else.
I agree that some statements laden with jargon fail to communicate a precise idea, and to that extent fail in their primary functions: to communicate ideas precisely so that other people can understand what was being stated.
But taking specific words to task is sort of bullshit. If I say: "I implemented a new code routine" how is that somehow far worse than saying "I created a new code routine"? That's just silly, the word implemented is fine. In fact, it might be even better because it might suggest both creation and placement within an existing programmatic context. Follow-up statements might go towards explaining where the code was implemented, development or production, etc. The word has a meaning that conveys information usefully. Pointing out the failings if certain words is really just whining about the imprecision of all languages and all words. So what else is new?
And you know, if certain word choices really bother someone that much - maybe the problem is with him! Maybe that person is an idler with an obsessive compulsion to try to control the world around him even to the point of trying to dictate how other people choose to express themselves. Could be, huh? Just maybe...
My most hated new phrase which I'm hearing more and more is "on a go-forward basis", said in place of, "from now on".
But not all new Corporate-Speak is bad. My favorite new phrase: "blamestorming", to describe a meeting where managers sit around trying to assess blame for some mistake. Of course, unlike the first phrase, this one wasn't invented by the PHB's.
Proverbs 21:19
Sounds to me like somebody has a stick up their butt. Let's look at the dictionary definition, shall we? Oh look, it's a noun, and the second definition is a 'message'. Fancy that. Welcome to the 21st century oldtimer.
At least one of the examples on his web site consists of the insufficiently metaphoric submitter not understanding what the term means. A "killer applicataion" is not "a winning application that will supposedly kill the opposition", but an application that is so great (slang "killer") that it makes the platform it runs on successful. e.g. Lotus 123 (for the IBM PC), PageMaker (for the Mac, Windows).
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
In 1996 Sokal wrote what was essentially a parody of a scientific journal article, filled with meaningless technical and philosophical jargon. His goal was to demonstrate that academic publishing had fallen victim to the emperor's new clothes syndrome. Sokal was able to get his paper past the peer review of Social Text, a serious academic journal, who published the paper and subsequently suffered great embarrassment when Sokal revealed what he had done. Sokal followed up by writing Transgressing the Boundaries: An Afterword, which explained why he had done it.
The Social Text Affair caused great controversy in the scientific publishing world.
Another mumbo-jump king, who, this time, appears to be serious is Francis Fukuyama , who wrote The End of History. Disturbingly, he is an advisor to the American president.
In the business world, no one's that interested in exposing the hoax of buzzword-speak. I suspect the reason is because impressive sounding, but meaningless, text generally helps you get ahead in business. Hence we end up with mission statements and Dilbert, all of which ultimately, aims to profit from all this silly-ness.
---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
I have figured out several years too late that any organization that has to prattle on about it's "Core Values" in fact has none. At the very least, those values cannot be called "core."
Midair Passenger Exchange
Grim air-traffic-controller-speak for a head-on collision. Midair passenger exchanges are quickly followed by aluminum rain.
A website and plug-in for Word and PowerPoint that measures the overall readability of your documents. It highlights overused consulting jargon, offering witty comments along the way.
http://www.fightthebull.com/bullfighter.asp
Also, for sharing images:
http://depicto.com/
Space and Computers.
Same contributor, similarly stupid nitpicking. Again, looking at the dictionary definition we can see that there is a second definition which is "at the present time" or "now". The definition given also adds some detail that the second definition is sometimes disputed, but (to quote the explanation) "this sense has been in continuous use since the 15th century, it is not clear why it is objectionable". So goddamn, this guy is a word quibbler.
Side-note: I believe it's "lazy thinking" to take such a condescending tone. Ha!
>[...]some companies rely on obfuscation and meaningless text to confuse their customers into thinking they're getting one thing when the proposal says another. Or to lock people into contracts that they didn't understand
>[...]But those aren't honest. And they don't encourage repeat business, referrals, or customer satisfaction. So in my mind, they don't promote success.
The problem is that when all the suckers have been duped, the objective has been met.
Remember, companies using deceptive practices like this may only be shooting for ONE profitable quarter.
The company can then fold, re-organize or simply start a NEW campaign with different wording that will lead suckers to believe that THIS NEW DEAL is totally different from the LAST DEAL that suckered them so badly.
With shell games like Gator becoming Claria and then changing their name again to Microsoft, it becomes very difficult for the typical sucker to follow the ball.
By the time suckers (I mean consumers) have it figured out, the shit has changed colour or smell or consistency, but most suckers won't figure it out until it's (once again) too late.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
It's not a 'problem' or 'fix', it's an 'issue' and 'solution'. It's not 'Coke', 'Cold, refreshing cola beverage'. Just like it's not 'rape', it's 'assisted, consensual sex' (as in 'I engaged in assisted, consensual sex with the willing female, even though she was bound and gagged.').
Ok bad joke. Hope my wife isn't reading my messages today...
I used to be a mid-level manager. I hate listening to people talking about "forces" (did you mean soldiers?) and "resources" (did you mean employees? workers?). I agree with Watson that this kind of talk is deeply dehumanizing.
So at a monthly meeting, when my boss asked me if I needed more resources to complete a project, I said, "I don't think I need any more coal or lumber for this project. I could use some more people though." I think I nearly got fired that day.
The CIA has been failing to meet its own goals for the past few years.
Following TFL from the original post reveals it's a construction firm that specializes in church construction and renovation, rather than a church.
Bottom line is, when the name of the game is ecclesiastical space management, mission/vision statements are no-brainers.
I think this has more to do with Max Weber's ideas around the rationalization of everything in modernity. The idea that anything is stated, refined, and routinized into a bureaucratic function. At that point, because it's bureaucratic, it also is measurable - and hence incredibly rational.
The problem, if it really is a problem, goes deeper than "business", I'd argue.
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
I interned at a dot com last summer, and didn't really get much of the buzzword bingo going on.
s ivel integration
This summer, I'm interning at IBM, and have decided to make my IBM specific "buzzword bingo" list. Happy playing with this!
best of breed
bleeding edge
(business) process
buy in
cell
customer facing
emerging business opportunity / ebo
executive
face time
grid
incentivize
interface [non technical]
key
leverage
matrix [organization]
middleware
meta [whatever that isn't technical]
on-demand
painpoint
paradigm
perva
resources (when they mean people)
services oriented architecture
silo
SMB/Small Medium Business
solution [as a verb]
synergy
thought leadership
time-to-value
time value of money
total cost of ownership
utilize
value-add
vertical/horizonta
web application
"work smarter not harder"
xml
A couple of my favourites:
"Could you join me for a brief scuba in my thinktank?"
"Can we pool our brainspaces in a centre of excellence?"
More here
It has been shown in psychology studies that people judge speakers who use longer sentences and who are difficult to understand as more intelligent than people who speak concisely. Especially in the case of authority figures, we tend to assume that the fault lays within our selves for not understanding their novel phrases or convoluted sentence structure. Like the parable of the "Emperor's New Clothes" people are afraid to admit they understand what the authority figure is talking about lest they be mocked by others.
This phenomenon creates an incentive to create "management speak." People will be less likely to question you if you confuse them. People won't complain about being confused because they fear being called stupid.
"Everything cancelled out. He said absolutely nothing." after lengthy analysis of what was said by Emporium representative during his visit to Terminus.
I was once on the ruling body of a church with lots of corporate managers. We had a mission statement, with measureable goals and objectives, and did annual performance appraisals of all the staff. I thought it was silly (largely because I think it's silly at work too). But people do these things because they think (rightly or wrongly) that it is helpful. If it's helpful at work, why wouldn't it be helpful at church? While much of the time it's bureacracy, there's actually something to be said for now and then asking what you're really trying to do. Otherwise you're likely to drift along doing the same thing you did for the last 20 years. This is just as much an issue in churches as in companies. Mission statements and the rest are part of a structure to get people to look at what they are really trying to accomplish and reexamine what they're doing. Unfortunately like any other management tool, if you put them in the hands of bureacrats they become just more bureacray. But it doesn't have to be that way.
Why Business People Speak Like Idiots : A Bullfighter's Guide
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
The word bomber refers to someone who kills with explosives - eg "The Omagh Bomber Faces Charges"
The phrase suicide bomber refers to someone who kills with explosives but also dies in the same explosion either to evade capture or to make sure the bomb goes off.
So what are homicide bombers?
Oh and while we're on the subject, since when did the Department of Defense also do attacks?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I think we need to ramp up our knowledge capital until we achieve critical mass in this area before moving forward.
I am surprised no one has discussed the more insidious cover words... Particularly words that hide layoffs or firings. My company just went through layoffs two weeks back and instead of calling it layoffs they used a new word (new to me at least) 'right sizing'. Apparently 'down sizing' was too negative, but right sizing made everything ok.
I don't get where management types think if you change the word that this some how changes peoples responses. I wonder if this is how management people think...
scenerio 1
Manager: Jim, you have been laid off.
Jim from Accounts Receivable: Arg, Hulk smash!!!
scenerio 2
Manager: Jim, you have been oranged (code word for laid off).
Jim from Accounts Receivable: Oh... wheew... I don't feel angry or hurt that my family's future is now in jeopardy after twenty years of loyal service to the company! Thanks boss!
The way to stop this nonsense is cleary to make wildass fun of it in a beer commercial. Remember all those idiots that used to say "what's up" in passing in the hallway? That all stopped after the WWHhhaazzzuuuuup beer commercials. If you make them feel like a jackass on a BEER commercial, they'll stop in short order. Or should I say: If you apply a poor quality rating to the suppliers deliverables in a widely accepted public forum, the resultant reconfiguration of the parameters is likely to change toward a positive outcome.
Working for an aerospace company in Winnipeg once, and a co-worker told me about a performance evalutation-type interview he had with the team leader(s). One of them asked him what he wanted to do within the team, why he wanted to work for the company, or something to that effect. He rolled over his employee ID and recited the mission statement back to the stone-faced interviewers.
Neither of us stayed long with that company.
I tend to think about the British Navy's stated goal for... well, most of the history of the British Navy.
"Make the world English."
Now that's a mission statement!
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Hollywood has already done its own version on this: Crazy People. Great movie for truth in words and advertising.
I'm not prejudiced. I hate everyone equally.
The day Cray died is the day the slogan changed from:
The Worlds fastest Supercomputers
to:
Creating solutions for world-class challenges.
(Or something like that.)
The entire company was built on "Worlds fastest". We used it daily to make development decisions. "Will this make it faster? No. Then don't do it."
After the change, what could we ask? "Will this improve the potential customer solution? Uh, I guess. Then DO IT!!!" just doesn't cut the mustard.
If a word or phrase "Resonates" and "Gains Traction " with the masses it will force a "Paradigm Shift" and become normal. In the end, it matters not if the Language Elite "reject" these terms, "With all due respect" if some of these folks "Moved on" with their "vision" we would be speaking Latin. I just find it a real "Disconnect".
How'd I guess?
Oh, just a little magic trick I know.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
I initially ignored it as the ravings of a lunatic, but when later asked "were are we on this?" I pointed out that it was gibberish...
Whatever.
I was biking around and I stopped for a cafeine refuel... decided to drink my cup inside thanks to the nice air-conditioning...
There was a couple sitting at the table next to mine, the man was elaborating at length on some kind of organisational scheme, using the latest buzzwords. And his female companion seemed impressed!
Having finished my drink, I stood up and asked the man: "You must work in HR, right?"
He looked bemused, and said: "Yes. How did you know?"
I just smiled and left.
"To drill down" is a well-established idiom.
... in the oil exploration industry.
... as well as in the adult entertainment industry!
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
While I agree that the corporate jargon is excessive, imo, the vision statement is a bad example of such. Everyone needs a vision. Without one, you go nowhere.
I just think sometimes they overdo it and lose sight of the simple goals or visions. They make it so complicated that you can't understand it. But you still need vision...
Other than the word "utilize," the thing I hate the most is the phrase "to beg the question" used incorrectly. To beg the question is a logical fallacy. It occurs when the conclusion of an argument is assumed by the premise. It does not mean "forces me to ask" or "makes me want to ask."
I have two eyes, I have two feet.
If you say you have a specific list of mission goals, you can avoid actually practising the same goals in actual behavior.
Just more of the downsizing of morality in today's Soviet Amerika.
Pay attention to what they DO - not what they SAY.
.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"Actually, the correct term is not "weasel words". It's "mustelid lexicography"."
You don't even know enough English to properly criticize other writers.
"Strunk and White's _Elements of Style_ is another great guide to writing. It lives its message: the book says to be short and to the point, and so the book is actually short and to the point.It goes from the basics like joining sentences to the principles of composition and clear writing. Anyone who wants to be a writer, whether as a journalist, novelist, or academic, needs to pick up a copy."
I discovered Strunk & Write, and I'm embarassed that my colleagues haven't.
"I can't believe that almost got through senior year of college without ever having read this book, which is ridiculous- there's this idea in America that you don't need to learn the rules and basics of your craft anymore, whether its art or writing or whatever- well, that idea is bullshit. I'm all for breaking loose and breaking all the rules, but it helps to know the rules in the first place. And for every one Jack Kerouac who can write brilliant drug-fuelled free-form prose, there are a dozen people who really need to pick up Strunk and White, and Orwell's _Politics and the English Language_ Essay and learn to string two words together (I'm firmly in the second camp)."
The 60's were a mistake.
"Does it bother you that churches have a Mission Statement touting their Core Values?"
Christians have been sending msiionaries to set up missions long before the industrial revolution.
Vote for Pedro
On IFilm, a very amusing three-minute infomercial for the new Bullshit Bingo game!
http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/1317509
You shall see a cow on the roof of a cotton house.
A couple of years ago, I was working on a corporate meeting, and the company had banners with their mission statement hanging on the walls.
You couldn't read them.
I mean, the words were there and all, but you could only get about halfway down the paragraph before you lost the whole train of thought. Ths worried me, so I got some other folks to try and read it. Nobody could actually finish reading the damned thing.
The language used was so inane that it was impossible to hold in your head...
Corporate buzzword speech reminds me of Treknobabble:
"Captain! A Romulan warbird just decloaked in front of us!"
"Let's reconfigure the dilithium crystals into a transition matrix so we can force a sub-gamma tachyon anti-matter stream into the reactor core. That should disrupt the space-time fabric, creating a vortex and opening a temporal anomaly. Then we can take the ship through the anomoly to the 20th Century and kill Rick Berman, whose utilization of the value-add paradigm Gene Roddenberry oversighted helped him up-sell the product into a quality-driven deliverable and monetize the vertical market of television scifi."
"Someone get the doctor! I think the Captain's having some kind of seizure!"
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
Translation: "This is the way we would do this if we had the time."
If you like that, try this.
Breakfast served all day!
Elephant Dildo seems to annoy epileptics, too.
Even "mission" statements can be OK if they are clear and consise.
I work for a small company that once came out with a mission statement a page long all about leveraging stuff, and enhancing customers other stuff, and so forth. Layoffs followed shortly thereafter. Though we don't use it officially anymore, we've now returned to the spirit of our very first mission statement, which guided us to great successes: "Make shit happen."
Hey all right! Someone beat me to posting it. I am... so touched!
... yeah, over the years I have gotten literally thousands of e-mails about it, from addresses all over the place, including countless big-name corporations whom I won't name to protect the guilty. You know who really loves it, though? The government. I've gotten more e-mails from the military, government agencies, and big government contractors like Boeing than I can even count. My all-time favorite is still the guy from NIMA (which I believe is now called the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency ... think spy satellites).
... they learned English as a second language and they're already familiar with this kind of speech. Now that's just ... sad.
Anyway, yeah, it is a little ancient, but judging from the response I still get to it, it's definitely still relevant.
This strip was once printed in the Industry Standard magazine and in PC World New Zealand, of all places. Not to mention that Xerox once used it as a print sample for some of their color printers. But it's mostly known for having "escaped the lab" and been e-mailed to people all over the world.
And, fear not! I know for a fact that it's pasted on all kinds of cubicles all over the planet. In fact, my boss claims that one of the reasons I was hired at my current job is because of that comic strip.
(In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm the guy what drew it.)
Anyway
Even stranger, though, are the e-mails I get from people in countries where English isn't even the native language. Get your head around that one
Breakfast served all day!
Donating experienced personnel to the local job market.
Merriam-Webster....help us!
So if "e-mail" is "electronic mail" then saying "I sent you an email" is entirely acceptable. Anyone saying "I sent you a mail letter" would sound rather silly -- so let's not beat this dead emu any longer.
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
- us vs. them (developing a subculture)
- control (doctors sell the idea of control through their discourse)
- power (sounding like an "expert")
- dominance (intimidating through fine use of the jargon)
The entire way a doctor approaches a patient is designed to give the patient the idea the doctor is in control of the situation. Not being in the medical profession, I've always wondered how they teach doctor patient interaction and if they actually touch on these control issues? Anyway, it's the same in any group, even slashdot has its own discourse, (e.g. troll, trolling, flamebait, karma) and demonstrating control of the language of slashdot can be perceived as intelligent or desirable among the slashdot crowd.Scott
Every organization should have a reason to exist.
That doesn't mean they have to put it in writing and plaster it on the walls.
One more thing - missions can change over time even day to day. As long as the people who need to know what the mission-de-jour is, that's enough.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I teach at a public high school. Anything we get from the school board is infested with this dreck- stakeholders, ownership, etc. It's like GW's speechwriter is writing this crap!
You don't use the word "fix" because there is no such a thing as a problem. It is a challenge.
Breakfast served all day!
I think my company's mission statement is:
"To preserve inefficiency in the face of great innovation, such that nothing ever needs to change."
I've been studying this phenomena and find it more applicable in so-called "law enforcement" employees and related agents of a corporate STATE. Examples are;
id - sometimes pronounce incorrectly as eye-dee, is defined as the unconcious impulses that seek satisfaction with the pleasure principle, or simply defined as declaring the cause of actions. Anyone asking for "id" is actually asking for self-incrimination.
I-dentification - pronounced with a strong EYE, phonetically in this way it assembles the elements of facial imagery, yet the bias for the purposes of such assembly is construed from statute to statute.
I-dentify - pronounced with a strong EYE, dimorphically opposed to Identication, as to compel or command the assembly of the elements of facial imagery (action with the suffixed "y").
identification - phonetically pronounced with a short and near-silent EYE, but id, prefixed or interjected with other words, to express or satisfy an request for unknown action, and set it apart or in duplicate. In the Uniform Commercial Code, is references that such "identification" is for purposes of curing a form or Title unto goods to sell those goods. Similar, but dimorphic to identify, where this declaration is free-form and eminent (domain?) unto a subjected property; not voluntary, but coerced; varies from statute to statute for purposes of incrimation as well.
resident - defined as a thing(res) known(id) out of(ent) a claim or dispute etc.. On court casefile headers, it tends to be those things in dispute, such as GUN vs SWORD, et al. It appears that a "resident" supposes that people in a dispute are things subject to jurisdiction of superiors; that is a misconception, because a matter of intellect, whereas the names are fixtures in the dispute to be settled as prize or endorsement to whomever prevails from the action. Consider such disputes where seizure of property by United States is the action being tried; those such cases exist in admiralty proceedings from a district court. I distinctly remember one or two cases on the face of a court docket as UNITED STATES vs. ONE 1954 PICKUP TRUCK (or this, and this), and UNITED STATES vs. 4 BARRELS OF LIQUID PURPOTING TO BE WHISKY, or UNITED STATES vs. FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY DOLLARS -- "UNITED STATES" is a thing disputing other things. In this regard, for fraud it seems, because it is misprison to challeng a property (organized theft) instead of whomever owns that property, but the world never seems to operate the way it was thought or intended...
Many more words I have found to be misplaced or misapplied. Arrest is one of them, notice is another; all abused to commit fraud on others.
without prejudice
I'm a writer and editor who appreciates these sorts of books. On Writing Well, Sin and Syntax, the list goes on. Each one gets a note card and the salient points of each book jotted down (which usually fit on one side of the note card). So far, I have nothing jotted down for DS. What he says that is true is said better elsewhere; what he says that is new is...well, I haven't read that yet. The first 1/3 of the book is quite energetic; I enjoy ranting with him about verb-less rhetoric. But then his rather extreme anti-capitalism and anti-Bush views get tiring. For instance, at the 1/3 point in the book, he asserts that the reason public language suffers is the decline in socialism/government management of business. To him, privatization is the Great Language Satan. I see.... Read E.B. White instead. Read the King James Bible. Awash in simple, profound language, you'll find hope of speaking well and less anger at conservatives.
Similar topic, interested readers may care to read Frank Furedi's book of the same title. See entry on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/082 6467695/102-9129781-7584100).
The writing is occasionally rough because it was culled from a series of essays he wrote, but has an interesting rallying call, neverthess.
I was considering creating a well balanced and thoughtout analysis of the article but couldn't be bothered to read it.
so instead i will babble incoherently about a case for something based upon some other things:
1)people don't like bad things.
2)people do like good things.
3)life is too complicated to get things right.
4)people are lazy.
The development of weasle words and managment speek has evolved from the fact that managers may face a number of bad situations in bussiness:
1)they maybe unable to understand the the complexitys of a problem.
2)they may have bad news to give
3)They may have to justify an action
In order to conquer these situations they have to use language as a weapon. By making statements that are ambiguous, complicated, and hard to understand they hope to reduce any loss of face, interogation of the facts, etc...
Most people don't have the time/intelligence/need to decrypt the language and it won't make any difference anyways.
Unfortunatly capitalism (in fact any heirarchy) is all about the top level making decisions for the lower levels. The top have it good but if your at the top you cannot be seen to be fallible or you loose your position in the heirarchy and that means you must hide your errors and never promise anything you can't produce, whilst at the same time appearing to promise good thing for everyone.
I really don't care if those at the top are ripping me off, so long as i'm reasonably well off, which most people are in the first world(slashdot) are, so stop whining.
There has always been technical jargon that people use to protect their positions and profesions.
It's just that modern information exchange and education makes it a little more noticable and easier to decrypt.
I listened to the The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. Whilst developing a transadjunctive superset of newspeak and esperanto, but where did it get me?.
embedded linux
Hey--that's 97% less flamebaity than I was intending!
Deja Vu
n. 1. The sensation that you've read this very article before.
If you're truly committed, I urge you to really go back to basics. Google for Harvard's Loeb Classical Library imprint. You want to learn how to write? Try Aristotle, "The Art of Rhetoric," and Demetrius, "On Style." You can probably get both via the internet as well, but the print translations are better.
with him - it has gotten out of hand.
Here's a letter I wrote to the editor of the page:
Hi -
On your web page at http://www.weaselwords.com.au/words.htm you list the use of "presently" as a "weasel word":
This is nonsense. The word "presently" has been in widespread use as a synonym for "currently" since at least the 15th century, while the archaic "soon" sense is much less common now. Who is William Bezanson to say it is "improper" and "lazy"? Does anyone look this stuff up in a dictionary at least?
Seems to me your site ought to be mainly about phrases and word-usages where people are "weaselling out" of saying something truthful or meaningful. Or, that they use fancy, complicated, or made-up words or uncommon usages, for the sole purpose of trying to sound smart. An example might be the use of the word "spin" instead of... well, what I just said.
There are quite a number of things on your page that are simply alleged by grammar pedants to be poor english, like the example above, or saying "I'm good" instead of "I'm well", "I sent you an e-mail" instead of "I sent you an e-mail message", and so on. The phrase "anytime soon" wouldn't make sense as "it will happen anytime soon", but it's never used in that sense, only in the negative "it will not happen anytime soon" or interrogative "will it happen anytime soon?"; in both cases a completely rational sentence.
Also, using "fresh" instead of "new, unused, etc." - this is simply a popular use that has come recently from urban african-american culture (or should I just say "ghetto"?), where there are so many unique phrases and usages that the majority of english-speakers might have difficulty following a conversation. But this does not make them "weasel words" or double-speak.
Similarly, new sayings that come from business or technology culture are not necessarily weasel words. They may be used to name and talk about things that simply did not exist before. Or, like in other sub-cultures, unique expressions may be a form of solidarity among peers. I believe it only crosses the line when obfuscating language is purposely designed by marketing, management, or "motivation" people in order to manipulate, mislead, or "spin" the plain truth, for the purposes of advertising, sales, employee thought-control, or "corporate image". Unfortunately it seems this is all too common in the world of business, where a "culture of bullshit" seems to prevail.
I would like to suggest that in choosing words for your page, you might focus on the criterion that "weasel words" should have the particular characteristic of being essentially dishonest, double-speak.
Otherwise, if you allow listings for general word and grammar misuse, annoying but innocuous phrases - "I'll diary that" - pointless clichés, and just plain stupidity, you'll have a very large web site indeed.
Actually, management speak relates to L337 very well.
I doubt that L337 will make it to the board room because most hackers don't enjoy the environment and wannabees usually match up to their title.
There: Something at a specific location.
Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.
From TFA: Sexy '. I'm fine with it in the right context. But since when could a mobile phone be described as sexy? Their appearance never sends my mind into a high-value sexual arousal state. Unless part of their functionality is to impact on sexual arousal state I cannot see how phones can be called sexy.'
Apparently, this guy doesn't know that most cellphones can be set to vibrate!
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Of course, some examples are not the best of the best, and some others don't hold up at all.
Still, I hate the extended (ab)use of 'sexy' with a passion. It devaluates the concept of sexyness, and does so in what I consider is an unnecesary way. There are plenty of other words to say that electronic devices are neat.
That, and it contributes to the survival of the geek-who-has-no-sex-life image in the real world. You know, the place where a sexy electronic device has to be a vibrator to make sense at all. Not that there's anything wrong with them...
O make me a mask
Among the words he says are weasel words are: Ovenable, Email, Killer application, Opinionnaire, Ramp up, With all due respect. While some of these are obviously not words, their meaning is clear. Anyhow, people can invent words if they feal like it. I was particularly surprised that he insists that you say sending an email message instead of sending an email. As for "with all due respect", that is usually said prior to telling something to someone with all the respect he deserves :-). Although I would agree that obfuscating speach for any reason, including not offending people, is never justified.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
There are some reports
of non-combatants in the targeted areas.
We can't mention any specifics.
---k--
</stupid>
...The counter argument was that it's the jargon of management. Just as programmers talk about arrays in a different sense than a layman, or maybe 'threading' for another example. Buzzwords isn't a problem, it's just the language of management.
I think that's EXACTLY the problem. Managers don't talk to themselves. They lead with ideas, and understand the problems of others to help organize solutions. If nobody understands what the fuck they are saying, it's not management!
I think you are on the right track, my problem is that when I use the term "array" as a programmer it's built on a broad base of established behavior and meaning from smaller parts. It's a coalesing of different terms to make a new one.
When a manager uses a term like "synergy" it is instead of a diffusing of language, creating a new term that means less than the sum of its parts so to speak. The classic management terms seem to all have in common properties that they can mean what the listener likes, instead of something specific - so it's a way of talking where everyone can come to an agreement (because they are all using the same words) without having to actually agree on anything.
The devil's not in the details, he's in the lack of them - and management terms having no details are inherantly bedeviled. The more upper managemnet refuses to speak plainly the less real vision and thus leadership they are exhibiting.
A side note is that I think the spread of managemnt speak has come from many middle managers being laid off and going into other professions where they continue the bad habit of using these non-words.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit."
How true it is.
I can't even begin to imagine today's equivalent.
I'm pretty sure it's: "The Iraqi insurgency is in its last throes."
I can see where they're coming from: very few people realize that at normal crusing altitude (average 33,000 feet), when the cabin depressurises, you have about 20 seconds to get that oxigen mask set up for you to breathe through.
Ever wondered why you should help yourself first, and then any "children accompanying you"? Because if you help them first, you'll be unconscious before you can effectivly help them.
I don't agree hiding these facts from the passagengers is a good idea, but corporate communications is rather concerned with "making people feel good"...
For a company, the act of creation of a vision statement comes at the start when they are forming.
Now yes it's true that organizaions are built to make money. But to distill down a companies goals to that is not realistic as that is not why MOST people start businesses.
A mission or vision statement should be really short, like a word or two at most. But it should describe what the company is about OTHER than making money, as that is merely a prerequsite for the company to even exist. Usually people starting a business see a need they wish to address, and money is just a byproduct of filling that need. If it were not so we'd all just be bank robbers.
As the poster said, the goal is to write a statement to make a company do the same general thing regardless of who is in charge. So really at the heart of things writing a mission statement is like programming where the processor to run the instructions is other humans. Since it's impossible to logically describe to other humans without further refinement what to do, your best bet is to describe a direction as shortly as possible and then lead by example in the direction you want a company to be led even after you're gone. Googles "Do No Evil" is an example of this, it describes areas of behaviour the founders do not want the company to go in and even though it sounds meaningless is probably a better and more effective mission statement than 99% of mission statemnets out there.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think of this as "cargo-cult management". (Check wikipedia if you're not familiar with cargo cults.) People notice that many successful companies have a coherent core values and missions and whatnot, and certain kinds of documentation and processes, and decide that those things cause success, when in many cases it's much more likely that some third quality is causing both success and the observable "cargo" of mission statements.
It's inconsistent with the corporation's fiduciary responsibility (look that one up, it's a real thing) to act in that manner. That is to say, if a corporate leader does things because "it's the right thing to do for the world/the customers/the industry", rather than "it makes more money for the stockholders and exposes the corporation to less risk", then they violate that responsibility.
At best, that violation is unethical. At worst, it's criminal.
You're arguing from ethics for deliberate intellectual dishonesty. That ridiculous contradiction in terms can be applied to any sociopathic business practice from dishonest accounting to doctored safety reports.
There's more to ethics than what's good for me and mine. According to your notion of "fiduciary responsibility," slavery is ethical. I will not stand for doubletalk whereby "right thing to do" is "criminal" and "makes more money" becomes unqualified good.
I remember the recent story of Equifax whining that consumers are entitled by law to a free credit report provided perhaps by some other agency. They reason that this utterly sensible right treads on their "fiduciary responsibility" to sell the same information to the same consumers. So apparently anything short of a monopoly on the market becomes criminally unethical, as a competitor with better prices is invariably taking food out of their children's mouths.
Set your "fiduciary responsibility" on fire and cram it up your ass. That you do otherwise violates my responsibility, as CEO of Jargon & Lighters Inc., to deliver profit to my shareholders.
I, uh...wasn't really using that karma.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/games/career /bin/ms.cgi
This tweak at it, from off the 'net, of course, is a good example:
Little Red Riding Hood
At a previous but undetermined timeframe, a single-family domestic domicile was inhabited by a young girl, known as Little Red Riding Hood (LRRH), and her Maternal Parent (MP). The Maternal Parent (MP) had once provided for the fabrication of an article of clothing, a cloak in nature (including a "hood" or protective covering for the head of the wearer), that was RGB code [255,0,0] in hue (aka, "red"). As a result of this action, and the resultant repeated usage of the "hood", the young girl was always known as LRRH in substitution for the name identified on her birth certificate and other identifying documentation.
During one 24-hour interval, a request was issued by the MP for LRRH to deliver a package to the MP's Maternal Parent (MPMP) (genealogically identified as the Grandmaternal Unit (GU) with respects to LRRH). This package was to include:
> Mission: We will serve our customers with (1)
> top-quality service, (2) good advice and (3) fair
> business practices.
Here's a problem, what does "top quality service" mean? If the customer wants a mouse, does it mean that you will hand-deliver the mouse, go into the customer's home, plug it in, and install drivers (if necessary)? That's top quality service, but it would also cost a fortune....or you'll have to go out of business.
The key problem with your mission statement is that it's one sided. We all want to be saints and serve the customer, but remember that even Mother Teresa had to eat. Deep down we know this, so we tend to be wishy-washy about what "top quality" means, and give lip service to a mission statement that we don't *really* follow.
Here's how I would adjust it.
Mission:
"We will serve our customers with (1) high-quality service, (2) good basic advice and (3) fair business practices. If the customer is willing to compensate the effort or if the customer is good enough, we will provide them with (1) top-quality service, (2) high quality advice"
It's more humble and less inspirational, but it's something that you can actually use to make decisions and achieve. As a consequence, it's more believable to you or your customers.
Corpspeak and cellphones on belt loops. These people are so easy to identify. Why are any of them still alive?
Goddamned kids! Get off my lawn!
http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/O/ OrwellGeorge/essay/politicaandenglish.html
"It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."
"This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed"
...is that not one of them will say "we're pro gay rights" or "we believe homosexuality is a sin" or "90% of our congregation is Republican" or "We are 90% Democrats". Instead, you have to read between the lines to figure out stuff like that. Sometimes you can do it based on stuff you know about their denomination. Obviously, MCC is pro-gay and anything in the Grace Network that exists in my native Virginia is Conservative Evangelical.
But virtually *none* of their websites will make an explicit stand on any of the issues that are relevant to modern Christians. Why would that be? The cynic in me recalls that bit in the Simpsons where they pan to the preacher counting the money. They want you to come in at least once and find out. They want you to sample their wares. They are totally corporate (most of them) in that regard, and worst of all, they are afraid to offend.
That's totally not what authentic Christianity is all about.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I agree there are many companies today that are pretty much valueless and rudderless. But part of that is because they accept mission statements so bland they could be involved in anything from running a fishery to making stands for Hummel figures.
I think for most of those businesses, there was probably a person or two at the very start that had a clear idea of what the business was to do. But because they never figured out how to tell anyone direction after some time was lost.
I agree with you that having "honesty" in a mission statement is a bad sign, as it's something to strive for... saying honesty is part of the vision implies it's something they need to work on. So perhaps in the end it is really honest to have it in there as a warning sign!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Energetic Deconstruction -- Explosion (especially of a mechanical device)
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I'm actually about half-way through Death Sentence at the moment.
The book is a crack-up from start to finish. There are no chapters, and it reads like one long rant. You should read this book if only for its historical importance: this book will help bring the art of the rant to serious non-fiction books where it belongs, instead of being confined to Usenet posts and blog entries.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
we've all got to just co-operatively compete in deciding on a I think is the word you are looking for! :P
© Darryl Waltrip
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week :)
(can i get a second?)
I agree, except I must have missed the good years. Every time I saw that thing, I reread it to make sure I wasn't missing the point. No, it was as stupid and pointless as I thought.
But then, I think all newspaper comics are utter crap, except for Dilbert. They all leave me wondering how someone with at least one neuron firing bothered to create something so inane.
Email: 'The word 'email' or its variants such as 'e-mail' properly describes a system of communication electronically. It does not denote a message. So "I sent you an email" should more properly be "I sent you an email message." One sees this misuse very frequently in business correspondence and informal discussions. Its use reveals lazy thinking on the part of its users.
What, I'm suposed to call it an email message? An electronic mail message? say "I sent you a message using electronic mail? ".
Sounds like something he would complain about. The word email as a verb and a noun is quite acceptable, and has no correlation to what the speaker is thinking, but because he says so we are supposed to stop using it? Please. This guy needs a reality check, or at least stop being such a hippocrite. He is a nitpicker and nothing more. What makes the word Currently more valid than Presently? English is a language with many synonyms that have very subtle differences, but most of the time can be substituted, if for no other reason to make the language more interesting, and I see nothing overtly wrong with that.
Sorry, but this guy just pisses me off.
I would invite people who think that Bush is stupid to read that carefully and then listen carefully when he speaks
About those Moolahs in Iran (who have all the money?)
About those new-killer weapons in Iran, N. Korea, etc.
Almost any time W mispronounces a word, he does so in a way which brings it close to another word which brings in the connotations he wants.
This is usually done subtly enough that most people assume that it is just a different dialect of English or a stupid mistake but it is being done deliberately in ways to specifically control people.
Now....
My business doesn't have a mission statement. We have a vision, (all businesses must) but any articulation of that vision takes more than a few sentences. We have a strategy. This could probably be summarized in a paragraph. In other words we know what we want to do and what effect we want to have on the world around us, but we don't want to articulate it in a meaningless and/or limiting way.
BTW, my religious practices often require that I formulate complex ideas into short formueic statements. I have no problem doing this. I just won't let my business be identified by one.
Also, when we look at formuleic languages of ancient religious traditions (BTW, a good "introductory" book on the subject is "How to Kill a Dragon" by Calvert Watkins), it is not at all like modern marketingspeak. Modern marketingspeak relies on the ability of language to sound impressive while saying very little. The elder traditions were the opposite-- saying a lot in a few words in ways that were often seemingly unremarkable otherwise (with some allowances for meter and alitteration). In their case, the formulas were merely indexical references to a much larger body of work. The closest thing we have to such ancient language today is legalese (disclaimer: IANAL).
In contrast weasle words are all smoke and mirrors. Businesses can't survive on smoke and mirrors, and lies told to oneself are the most damaging of all.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Thanks - that was interesting. However, you seem to imply that a successful company can't have any non-obvious values. I will argue that Microsoft has at least one: "eat your own dogfood". By taking the short-term pain of using their own horrible products, they've enjoyed long-term gain, as feedback inside the company will be better informed and better heard than outsider feedback.
Your summary I think provides a good guideline between useful speech and buzzwordeze - does it define something more precisely than other words? If so then it's OK, otherwise it's just fluff. Certainly even though acronyms like the one you mentioned can sound really funny when you rattle off a string of them (I work in the telco industry which has them all over) but in the end it really is a quicker and more exact use of words.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Watson, once a speechwriter for former Australian prime minister Paul Keating..." - need I say any more?
Paul Keating used to be a master at NEVER ANSWERING A DAMN THING when asked straight questions, and has been emulated by both sides of the Australian political spectrum ever since.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Personally I've been waiting for this ever since I first heard "time frame" back in 1979.
cutting edge leading and advancing top qualityyyy, there's no quality like our quality, qua qua qua qualityyy
It strikes me that people use non-words as a way of hinting a direction to those who want change, and providing a form of plausible deniability to those forces that are against change.
This isn't restricted to business either; arguably government (civil service or military) is worse! Power politics exist in all human organizations and the basic dynamics have not changed in centuries. Even democratic systems don't change this base level of politics. Perhaps all that's changed are the value systems that drive courtship: from gaining favour with the sovereign to gaining favour with your boss and worshipping a narrow view of economic theory...
-Stu
"Doonesbury" and "Dilbert" both suck in comparison.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
There are several things to remember here. First, it is safe to say that accountability and actual responsibility in the sense of having created the mess, don't actually share an office a lot of the time. Second, you know there's a cover-up going on when there is talk of increased accountability and no one is getting any blame. That means that they are trying to spread it widely enough that no one (important) gets hurt.
The (mis)use of language to conceal or to change what one is saying in order to make something less unpleasant, more palatable, or to out-and-out decieve is something that has been going on since Caesar was watching gladiators in the Colliseum. Let's consider some fairly recent examples.
- The military's reference to a lost nuclear weapon as a broken arrow
- Referring to casualties of war due to your own side shooting your people as friendly fire
- The Reagan Administration wanted to define 'ketchup' as a vegetable in an attempt to reduce how much is spent on school lunches
- Their attempt to refer to a tax increase as revenue enhancement
- Bill Clinton claiming that a woman performing felatio on him was not having sex with her
- The statement by the proposed head of the CIA that he would not politicize intelligence gathering, then after he's approved he sends a memo out to CIA staff ordering them not to make pronouncements that are different from White House policy.
Lots of times people use words to obscure the truth. Nothing new here and hasn't been new in 2500 years. As my tagline below indicates.The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
I too cringe at the overuse of jargon, jibberish and lifeless babble. There is only one problem. The examples used are not "weasel words."
As explained in a Manila Times article, "weasel words"...are "words that suck the life out of the words next to them, just as a weasel sucks the egg and leaves the shell."
"Weasel words are those terms or phrases we deliberately slip into the language to create the illusion of truth. They do no great harm when they simply take the form of "may," "might," "could," and "should," which are polite hedges for commitments we really don't intend to keep ("I should be there if plans don't miscarry.")...
Weasel words likewise come in handy in the face of uncertainty or inadequate information. We rescue our faltering or floundering arguments in formal writing or discourse with such artful modifiers as "it may seem likely that," "but the possibility also exists," and "to a certain degree," as in this statement: "It may seem likely that, as claimed by my usually reliable sources, that the information presented by my political opponent is possibly misleading to a certain degree."
Lawyers are particularly fond of weasel words. A well placed "substantially" or "material" or "may" or "should" may give your client the opening needed to win an argument.
When asked "What are the "weasel words" you dislike most?" the author of the book being promoted, responds:
"Implemented." You'll see implemented everywhere. In this language, you "implement" rather than speak or do. And then there is enhanced. Everything is being enhanced. That word is being used in place of other more precise and descriptive words. You can enhance your marriage or your job. You can even implement your enhancements. And "input" is another good one. Companies talk about "input into our people." This reflects technology and accounting [ideas]. It all has to do with input and outcomes.
It may all have to do with input and outcomes, but it has nothing to do with "weasel words."
For a more complete response see my post at http://bizzbangbuzz.blogspot.com/2005/07/attack-o