The root of all business-speak

But maybe this easy slippage of words from one part of speech to another is actually laying the groundwork for the future merger of English and Chinese?

I use terse straightforward language in emails and such at work, and I pepper them with lighthearted humour as well - and people are often completely disarmed by this. However my boss likes it, so I don't care. I don't need to make people think I'm some kind of cleverpants by mangling english to do so.

"Creative" is interesting because you can actually trace the way it changed parts of speech: first you assemble a creative team, and then you start talking about the output from "creative," and then pretty soon you just call the output itself "creative," in noun form. (E.g., "we need wireframes and creative by tomorrow morning.") I think a lot of it works that way for fairly sensible reasons, having to do with the heirarchies and bureaucracies of a big business team. That doesn't make it not weird in print, though.

Milkmaid, I was actually thinking about the number of words that probably had to undergo these sorts of changes for us to have a language at all -- kind of funny to imagine a bunch of people standing around a very long time ago and bitching about this horrible livery jargon where they use "harness" as a verb.

This process is less business-speak per se than a regular source of nouns in English, isn't it ("representative", "homosexual")? In effect, an adjective by itself carries a nominal force, and therefore easily crosses the line to become a bona fide noun. This goes back at least to Latin; where especially participles (which in themselves are adjectives which are forms of verbs haha) are used as nouns, e.g. "candidatus"; most English nouns in "-ent"/"-ant" etc (student, president) are also taken directly from Latin participles.

And obv "creative" is an adjective, I'm half asleep.

FOR HOW LONG??? "We must effort to further creative our business advertise, in order to captivity a larger assemble of customers!"

(previously known as "boarding")

So they've seen the concept, but we got you involved so we can make sure they have the ability to do what we've ... concepted.

I just hope they don't learn this new term. Ever since I told them I would run a session on weed (identification of exotic plants) I have been at risk of cruel laughter.

"We got you involved so we can make sure they have the ability to do what ... we've conceived."

"Oh wow, congratulations, I didn't even know you were seeing anyone!"

??

Not as exciting as it sounded at first - she was just agreeing to arrange a meeting.

Thomas Nashe, the English minor poet and satirist, thrown out of Cambridge University in the 16th century for an unknown reason, felt the need — as a modern Merriam-Webster lexicographer put it — “to remedy the surplus of monosyllabic words.” To meet this need for longer locutions, he claimed credit for inventing the suffix -ize, but in 1591, Nashe found himself criticized (as he would put it) for starting the polysyllabic parade.

The -ize still have it. Whenever a new verb is launched using Nashe’s little trick, traditionalists are shocked. Only a generation ago, some academic jargonaut coined prioritize, meaning “give priority to” or “rank in order of importance,” and stiffs like me ran to the ramparts to denounce it as ugly, bureaucratic and unnecessary. Before that, we language mavens gnashed our teeth at the replacement of the simple finish with the pompous finalize, to no avail; both those -izes, and dozens of others, usaged their way into dictionaries.

Now we are faced with the rise of operationalize. Implement was bureaucratic enough as a substitute tool for “carry out,” but the vogue to Nashe-ize the phrase “to make operational” has seized the realm of academe and politics with a rush of just over a million Google citations. “That’s a good goal,” said Senator Hillary Clinton recently about the Bush doctrine to rid the world of tyranny, “now how do you operationalize that in a sensible way.”

My job is to hoot at this Nashe-ization for a few years, supported by the dwindling legion of those determined to stay the course, and then to cut and run with the usage antelopes. But wait: an exception. I am a happy resident of Nashe-ville about the usage — already at the quarter-million mark— of anonymize. Eric Schmidt, C.E.O. of Google, was quoted last month deploring a leak of subscribers’ private data by AOL with “The data as released was obviously not anonymized enough.”

What’s the matter with privatize? Here’s what: that verb was used by some politicians to torpedo what other politicians called “personal accounts” in Social Security. With privatize scaring people away, we privacy nuts needed a new Nasher. It is now provided by anonymize, soon to be followed by anonymization-resistant, the coiner of which prefers to masquerade as a sock puppet.

"gift" is not a verb

says the guy who obviously hates "Night Shift" by the Commodores

It might sound like "gifted us," but it's actually an arcane and clever pronunciation of "gave it to us."

gave it to us
geff itta us
gefftta us
giftad us
gifted us

Also I do not allow for poetic license or rhyme scheme cheating in the legal fine print on a brochure

let's table this discussion and take it off-line.

when/why did this stuff start? i mean, i can't imagine businessmen in the 19th century talked like this.

let us acquisitione that spende

actually I think Disraeli has several industrialist characters in his novels that talk like the 19th-century version of this

'It's a booked place though,' said the stranger, 'and no mistake. We have
all of us a very great respect for Manchester, of course; look upon her as
a sort of mother, and all that sort of thing. But she is behind the times,
sir, and that won't do in this age. The long and short of it is,
Manchester is gone by.'

'I thought her only fault might be she was too much in advance of the rest
of the country,' said Coningsby, innocently.

'If you want to see life,' said the stranger, 'go to Staleybridge or
Bolton. There's high pressure.'

'But the population of Manchester is increasing,' said Coningsby.

'Why, yes; not a doubt. You see we have all of us a great respect for the
town. It is a sort of metropolis of this district, and there is a good
deal of capital in the place. And it has some firstrate institutions.
There's the Manchester Bank. That's a noble institution, full of
commercial enterprise; understands the age, sir; high-pressure to the
backbone. I came up to town to see the manager to-day. I am building a new
mill now myself at Staleybridge, and mean to open it by January, and when
I do, I'll give you leave to pay another visit to Mr. Birley's weaving-
room, with my compliments.'

and is it wrong of me to also think of the the efforts that go into the decoding of dealer-speak by the cops in The Wire?

watch me superman dat hoe

^^^ is no noun sacred??

nsfw, obv

like, any trade is full of coded chatter and jargon; is managerial/MBA-jargon really so different from the way colleagues in various other professions talk to one another? Isn't the problem rooted in the fact that managers have to communicate with other workers outside of their typical sphere more often, so us non-managers have to listen to what sounds like insane babble?

that is if you separate management/public affairs/general counsel ass-covering neutralized bullshit speak from the conversation. that type of "business-speak" is a whole beast unto itself and has been covered in depth elsewhere

I was trying to get at this above -- I actually like word-repurposing when it's interesting or convenient or fun, but a lot of managerial stuff gets to the point where it's making up words to fill in for words that already exist (e.g., the bit about "orientate" upthread). Using "spend" as a noun that means "spending" is just weird.

I'm trying to think of verbs and nouns that get repurposed or abused in my area of work in a similar fashion

"Coming down the pike" is bad enough, but when they say "Coming down the pipe" I want to mini-gun the conference room.

toe the line
tow the line
tuff row to hoe

Or when they repeat words like "incent" because they don't want to use the actual word "incite" because it has negative connotations - it would be interesting if they made it up, but they didn't and they just sound like idiots for repeating a word that doesn't exist.

drop the lime

"Deliverables"?

I don't think there's a general rule about the goodness or badness of business speak, I have to say. During a big upheaval at the care facility where I worked until '03, we had a lot of meetings where we talked about the "culture" of the organization. I was pretty put off by this at first, but I came to see it as useful shorthand for "the various habits the whole team develops in going about their work, and the assumptions that like behind them, and the prevailing mood that those assumptions and habits help to build."

I am now defending some of the stuff that used to make my daily life completely insufferable, but what the hell.

when did "in silo" become a thing? can fuck right off again imo.

'in silo' comes from some sort of company structure diagram, right?

that would indeed be the context in which it appeared. repeatedly.

Had not heard before, was investigating, looked at this wiki page (which may help explain - it looks like it comes from that world of ISO-numbered management structures) and read that 'systems thinking promotes a foaminess of collaboration'.

that'll get rolled out in the next sprint

i love the word "monetize"

something so creepy and sinister about it

"in silo" sounds like an awesome horror movie I haven't seen yet

"in silo" was the finnish release name for 'Witness' iirc.

Where's nabisco been lately, anyway?

people like you find it easy,
naked to see
walking on air

don't walk away
in silo
don't walk away

transmission me that asap

Nabisco was so OTM on this thread, even using ("utilizing") the very orientate/conversate analogy I always rely upon myself. Dunno what people have against the word "orient" - maybe it's considered non-PC in some convoluted way.

xpost - First place I ever encountered the word "monetize" was on ILM, courtesy of a poster then calling himself "Monetizing Eyeballs". "Monetize" suggested some portmanteau of "vandalize" and "Monet" - blurring up a completed painting after the fashion of an Impressionist, and "Eyeballs" reinforced the visual aspect, so I got a fully unique (and completely wrong) interpretation of what the name meant. Wasn't until some months afterward that I began to encounter the word "monetize" in its usual context.

I've certainly heard of "silo structure" or "silo mentality" in a workplace - the idea that every deparment is a world unto itself and wont cross-communicate with the rest of the company, to its supposed detriment. These days its all about generalisation instead of specialisation, grumble.

Was listening today to an interview with the two guys who run the agency that created the new Old Spice ads. When asked how they work on ideas, one of them replied, "Well, we concept everything together . . ." That one just drives me insane. We already HAVE a perfectly good word for what you're doing: conceive. Most disgusting savages, etc.

TS: Business-vapo-speak VS Masters-Degree-in-Educationese

just heard the phrase "drink from the hose"

'conceive' is too sexy for orfice use

I would like to issue a prohibition against the use of the word "churn", when not within a butter-related context, and "champion" as a verb, when not related to "danny the, of the world".

This office, yesterday:

me: Do you want bullet points or numbers in this list?

editor: Numbers. It's part of the customer journey.

How do y'all feel about the tribune company CEO and his memo? The overwhelming reaction seems to be that he is "micromanaging", but I certainly appreciate his intent.

http://chicagoist.com/2010/03/10/the_119_words_you_cant_say_on_wgn.php

you know what business word my department uses a lot that i love? "flapping". as in "this problem has been flapping since 07:05 this morning" - it's perfect

flapping is like anti-business speak! pretty great imo.

this is rife in sports commentary nowadays. "the take away from this, going forward, for the canucks has to be getting value-addeds from luongo and allowing the sedins to leverage blah blah blah."

flapping is awesome!

i feel like it has some kind of nautical origin

Getting into a flap = Britishes old-lady speak for feeling slightly exercised about an event or topic. Flap also appears to be Anglo-Saxon for 'contrétemps'.

From an email today asking us not to put food in the recycling bin:-

"The consequence of incorrect usage of bins has been an upsurge in fruit flies."

"The consequence of incorrect usage of bins has been an upsurge in fruit flies."

New Fall lyrics sounding good, MES on strong form.

suzy it's not used in that at my work - there's no implied bad feelings - it's more of a physical thing i.e. this problem should have been TIED DOWN but now it's flapping and causing problems

that's how I read it. It leads me to believe that your workplace is the 21st century equivalent of a light manufacturing firm in the west midlands populated with men in brown lab coats and neat ties.

Get the flaps out.

i think I shall add that into my work vocabulary today but add in a south Yorkshire 'while'

The Today program should have a list like the WGN one. Top of it should be a prohibition on correspondents putting "le" in front of and english word or phrase to make a french one; as in "Le Binge Drinking" this morning.

I work in IT and our monitoring software sometimes emails to tell us that a service is "flapping". I have no idea what this means but everyone seems to ignore them

the problem, my friend, is flapping in the wind...

saw "ahead" used in place of "go ahead" recently. as in, "this looks good, ahead."

this problem has been flapping since 07:05 this morning

Dont know what context it was in there, but "flapping" is a network engineer term for a circuit that drops and comes back online repeatedly (it's been "flapping since 3pm" etc).

I need to provide "relevant evidence on effort and achievement in operationalizing constructive alignment" for my self-evaluation

...

good luck -- monetizing one's personal brand can be difficult

p.s. http://bajillionhits.biz/

(not my site, btw)

is that like social network runoff or smthng

Nabisco really OTMed it in his OP. Business speak is all about verbing nouns.

is that like social network runoff or smthng

― tumlbrah (dayo), Monday, September 27, 2010 12:42 AM

I have seen someone make that comparison! seems like that's at least part of the site's deal

http://i56.tinypic.com/110gopf.jpg

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/04/29/the-tragedy-of-cooper-union/

I recently obtained a highly-unofficial transcript of the September 2012 board meeting*, where Bharucha was far from despondent or apologetic about the fact that Cooper’s board felt as though it was being forced to choose between charging tuition and closing down entirely. “Turning adversity into opportunity is really an opportunity that very few institutions have,” he said, before talking about something called “a vision process”. Later, he comes out with this:

I resonate very much to future-oriented thinking about higher education. I assure you that I will be guiding the institution to embrace these technologies and we’re not going to be trapped in the past. I think if we get over this hump there will be so much opportunity… I think we can lead… We don’t have a global brand. We’ve got to build that global brand.

don't feel, resonate

As inane as it all seems, such bafflegab is always deployed for a purpose. In this case its purpose is to throw a cloud of nebulous verbage over a situation no one wants to look at very closely, because it is too ugly and depressing. His positive emotional tone was the whole of the communication he intended, whereas he only pretended to say something about the shithole everyone knew they were in.

http://www.fastcompany.com/multisite_files/fastcompany/imagecache/inline-large/inline/2013/04/3008346-inline-inline-1-prototype-doritos-loco-taco.jpg

DEEP INSIDE TACO BELL'S DORITOS LOCOS TACO
From handshake deals to experiments at Home Depot, the history of Taco Bell's disruptive faux cheese-dusted taco.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3008346/deep-inside-taco-bells-doritos-locos-taco?partner=newsletter

In the facilities, we couldn't have all that stuff in the air. It would've been too much seasoning and flavor for our workers

"It's really one of those breathtakingly simple but huge ideas," Creed says. "I remember trying to sell guacamole in the Midwest and people were like, 'What's all this green stuff in my burrito?' But this was a fastball, down the middle. It's what you'd expect from Taco Bell, but supercharged."

this quote appears in the article twice

It's not just a product; it's now a platform.

"I remember trying to sell guacamole in the Midwest and people were like, 'What's all this green stuff in my burrito?"

I live in the Midwest and people here know what guacamole is, for God's sake. I admit that we might not recognize the green stuff in a Taco Bell burrito as such.

i just love the idea that this guy is 'trying to sell guacamole' like some roadside vendor

Re: giacamole in the midwest. Maybe the person quoted is over 55.

Familiarity with and acceptance of 'ethnic' foods has steadily increased in the US since I was born, most especially in the hinterlands. When I was young, yoghurt was exotic, salsa or hummus were unheard of; grocery stores carried only the most basic and familiar of vegetables such as potatos, carrots and onions, but chard, kale, bok choy, jicama and the like were unobtainable. Etc. And I grew up in a largish west coast city: Portland.

when i graduated from college at the turn of the millennium we ate out at an italian restaurant. my midwestern grandmother remarked that she didn't think she'd ever eaten italian food before.

argh, can I also point out the meaningless usage of the word "disruptive?" That word is fucking everywhere now, it's bad enough in startup culture, but for a Taco Bell taco? Do people just think it means "game changer" or something?

(which is not to say that a Doritos Locos Taco is really a "game changer" obv)

JFC this whole thing is like something out of idiocracy. We're talking about a fucking hard taco shell made out of taco chips, i.e., a hard taco shell.

OTM, that word is horrible. There is a whole lexicon of startup words and phrases that send me over the edge.

also, the Disrupt conference is beyond horrible.

In the realm of business, that hard taco shell is translated into mounds of cash. Because mounds of cash are the Most Important Thing in Business Life, it means that a stupid hard taco shell made to mimic flavored tortilla chips must be discussed in terms that bespeak its Ultimate Importance.

A spirited defense of business-speak (at least some of it):

http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2013/04/in-praise-of-jargon.html

Upstart Taco Bell is really disrupting the taco competition with its innovative powdered taco.

more offensive than the entire lexicon of disruptology:

"thought leader"

Hoos that article is an amazing find btw

yes, magnificent taco article.

"We knew this was a breakthrough idea, so we put on our relentless hats

"

the thing I love is the open animosity they have towards "the burger boys"

tbf I think the dorito loco taco would likely be rather disruptive to my digestion, perhaps that's what was meant

argh, can I also point out the meaningless usage of the word "disruptive?" That word is fucking everywhere now, it's bad enough in startup culture, but for a Taco Bell taco? Do people just think it means "game changer" or something?

― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Wednesday, May 1, 2013 7:04 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha 'disrupt' is what made me realize it belonged itt

Hoos that article is an amazing find btw

― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Wednesday, May 1, 2013 9:06 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my secret shame is that i subscribe to 3 different fast company newsletters and they're almost always 1/4 useful stuff 1/2 useless fluff ('this disruptive solar powered toilet is making this african 4 year old a millionaire') and 1/4 incredible gems like this piece

Like, iirc "disruption" has a pretty specific meaning in econ -- it's an interesting concept, but it's really annoying when it just gets used to mean "thing that is marginally different that what is on the market right now"

otm, stuff like this

Airbnb, Coursera and Uber: The rise of the disruption economy

that site has a massively creepy privacy policy/TOS setup, not reading the article

btw can a spanish-speaker confirm for me that it is (or isn't?) grammatically weird to call it the Doritos Locos Taco? Doesn't that imply that it's the Doritos themselves that are crazy, rather than the taco? Like I thought the point was "Oh shit, a taco made out of doritos, that's crazy!" not "Those crazy doritos have gone and formed a taco!"

btw can a spanish-speaker confirm for me that it is (or isn't?) grammatically weird to call it the Doritos Locos Taco? Doesn't that imply that it's the Doritos themselves that are crazy, rather than the taco? Like I thought the point was "Oh shit, a taco made out of doritos, that's crazy!" not "Those crazy doritos have gone and formed a taco!"
--huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2)

That is accurate and part of what makes the name so lol IMO

Boy Wonder weighs in

Stop “Disrupting” Everything: How a once-useful concept turned into a meaningless buzzword.
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/05/disrupting_disruption_a_once_useful_concept_has_become_a_lame_catchphrase.html

that fuckin guy

secretly reads ILX?

Wasn't sure if this belonged here, in the college/debt thread or what, but:

http://www.fastcompany.com/3007541/mfa-new-mba

this graf is almost worthy of Friedman:

Artists know the world of adaptability and resourcefulness very well. In fact, according to an annual survey tracking the career trajectories of more than 65,000 artists from hundreds of arts schools, the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), close to 60 percent of arts graduates hold more than two jobs at once, and approximately 20 percent have more than three.

Arts students may not have all the traditional skills, but they have the most important one: desperation creativity.

I have a particular fondness for articles with the format "HEADLINE POSITING OUTRAGEOUS SUGGESTION"/"Body text quietly suggesting that the answer is 'probably not' at the end of the seventh paragraph, but otherwise arguing an enthusiastic 'YES'"

GRAAAAAAAA just received an HR "onboarding" packet & immediately thought to come here to share the horror, but I see it's been covered.

Only one thing more patronising than "onboarding". "offboarding".

when i was leaving a job a couple months ago, the board wanted to have a "debriefing" with me. I did not work for the military or for an intelligence agency. This was an arts non-profit.

I was not fired from my last job; I was "separated" -- is this a thing?

"I would expect"

what is a corporate workstream and how do i align to it

Do what you are told and don't cause problems.

speed

don't drown

h8 'workflow'

i wish work was a flow

'solutioning'!!!!#

'here's how we're going to solution it'

argh

i never saw eye-to-eye with my old manager, a nice South African lady who nevertheless used to ask me (w/r/t sales strategy) if I was 'building a pipeline'. I literally had no clue what she was talking about, having never encountered this expression and especially with an accent that sounded like she was saying 'bi-plane' :-/

wow sterl that is a prize specimen

Building a pipeline = meh. otoh, building a biplane = A+! Then you can fly it instead of attending meetings.

i've got one more thing i want to cover off

i am tired of hearing "triage"

Just saw the verb "to feedback", as in

"I'd like to feedback on the excellent level of service..."

In January 2014 the Government published its response to the Transforming Youth Custody consultation outlining its plans to introduce Secure Colleges, a new form of youth detention accommodation with innovative education provision at its core which will equip young offenders with the skills, qualifications and self-discipline they need to turn away from crime.

The consultation response confirmed that a purpose-built Secure College Pathfinder would be opened in the East Midlands in 2017. If the Pathfinder proves successful it will inform our vision for the future of the youth custodial estate in England and Wales.