Take the time today to call a client and tell them you love them.
Lucy Kellaway delivers a rather delightful rant about the "brainlessly upbeat" language of business:
"For nearly a decade I wrote a fictional column in the Financial Times about a senior manager who spoke almost entirely in business cliches. Martin Lukes talked the talk. Or rather, he added value by reaching out and sharing his blue sky thinking. At the end of the day he stepped up to the plate and delivered world class jargon that really pushed the envelope. After eight years of being him I came to accept the nouns pretending to be verbs. To task and to impact. Even the new verb 'to architect' I almost took in my stride. I didn't even really mind the impenetrable sentences full of leveraging value and paradigm shifts. But what still rankled after so long were the little things: that he said myself instead of me and that he would never talk about a problem, when he could dialogue around an issue instead.
...Passion, says the dictionary, means a strong sexual desire or the suffering of Christ at the crucifixion. In other words it doesn't really have an awful lot to do with a typical day in the office - unless things have gone very wrong indeed. And yet passion is something that every employee must attest to in order to get through any selection process."
It's kind of curious really. The passion thing especially. Gone are the days when employees can take refuge in being Mr Wemmicks, and at least keep their emotional side separate from the brutality of work. Now they have to bring their emotions with them, or at least pretend to, and mask the self-interested nature of their relationships with employers, customers and associates with assertions of affection, commitment and concern. We all know how ugly and hypocritical it is, but we still fall for it. Perhaps we're a little wistful about the lost days of everyone knowing the village baker and green grocer and blacksmith, and we like to play pretend.
"For nearly a decade I wrote a fictional column in the Financial Times about a senior manager who spoke almost entirely in business cliches. Martin Lukes talked the talk. Or rather, he added value by reaching out and sharing his blue sky thinking. At the end of the day he stepped up to the plate and delivered world class jargon that really pushed the envelope. After eight years of being him I came to accept the nouns pretending to be verbs. To task and to impact. Even the new verb 'to architect' I almost took in my stride. I didn't even really mind the impenetrable sentences full of leveraging value and paradigm shifts. But what still rankled after so long were the little things: that he said myself instead of me and that he would never talk about a problem, when he could dialogue around an issue instead.
...Passion, says the dictionary, means a strong sexual desire or the suffering of Christ at the crucifixion. In other words it doesn't really have an awful lot to do with a typical day in the office - unless things have gone very wrong indeed. And yet passion is something that every employee must attest to in order to get through any selection process."
It's kind of curious really. The passion thing especially. Gone are the days when employees can take refuge in being Mr Wemmicks, and at least keep their emotional side separate from the brutality of work. Now they have to bring their emotions with them, or at least pretend to, and mask the self-interested nature of their relationships with employers, customers and associates with assertions of affection, commitment and concern. We all know how ugly and hypocritical it is, but we still fall for it. Perhaps we're a little wistful about the lost days of everyone knowing the village baker and green grocer and blacksmith, and we like to play pretend.
posted by Kat | 8/18/2008 02:47:00 pm
3 Comments:
Brehaut once nearly lost us several thousand dollars when he laughed a little too loud at someone suggesting we could generate some really good synergy. I was grumpy at the time, but in hindsight, good on him.
The whole expectation-of-caring thing is weird; I bumped into it in my last job. I think it comes from confusing cause and effect: people who care about or enjoy what they're doing tend to do better work, therefore we need to make people care about and enjoy what they find themselves doing.
(Rather than, people naturally gravitate to things they care about, given the right circumstances.)
I love that article (and you for posting it). I nearly cracked up while taking minutes in a business meeting at my old job for the same reason as Brehaut - I think it would hard to find a word that's more pretentious and fake than 'synergy'. To be fair, the person was representing a posh magazine (where they're basically required to deficient humans), but still.
There's a few suits I've known who actually think that if they use these words and concepts the underlings will respect them and think they're marvellous and intelligent and 100% competent. We don't. We laugh and think the exact opposite.
Also, I agree with what Matt said. And what you've said about the greengrocer stuff. It's a shame that in the working world people and companies fake friendliness and honesty and all that sort of thing and turn it into a horrible farce. I suspect if they/we made a genuine effort and spent time doing good work and being smart about things, they'd end up with people's respect.
Too many shortcuts that do more harm than good *sigh*
Thinking about it since yesterday, I've realised that pretty much the only people I've heard talking like this in real life are the pastors at my church. Touching base and dialoguing and moving forward and pursuing excellence and all that. Drives me crazy.
Though my old boss said 'at the end of the day' in just about every second sentence.
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