Thursday, August 6, 2009

Written in plain jibberish


There are words and phrases that have slipped into the corporate world that have no place to be there. You may know them to be called Weasel words or if you've read Don Watson's Death Sentence you'll relate to this. In recruitment advertisements, mission statements and public announcements from politicians it's like a special effect, they appear like clouds of smoke across the stage to give you an eerie sense of something but nothing. Here are some that I have attempted to decipher for you:

Thought leadership:
What does that mean? Who doesn't think? Even if it's about porn most of the time it's still thinkin'.
Talent acquisition:
Buying a performing seal
Competency based methodologies:
Oh please! Just read the manual.
Service delivery solutions and anything with the word strategic inserted before it:
This is in relation to getting your pizza delivered on time
Stakeholders
People who didn't order the chicken

And they wonder why you sleep through their speeches.

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