Addicted To Buzz

So, there's not much I like about corporate culture. In my admittedly limited experience with suit-n-tie types, I've found a disconcerting lack of substance made up for with an overabundance of cliches, worthless aphorisms and buzzwords. Corporate stupidity is a target that's as big as the broad side of a barn, and yet these types of folks still seem to permeate the highest levels of management (and bubble up from the ranks of we in the underclass) despite the obvious ridiculousness of their world view.

Tonight, I overheard two young execs speaking in a tongue that can only be mastered after sitting through endless meetings and watching far too many Power Point presentations. It was as if, after seeing their hundred thousandth consecutive slide, their brains melted into an utterly useless goo unable to string together a sentence that wasn't lifted from the spiral bound materials they foist upon the attendees of management training seminars. I was embarrassed for them... even though they probably have a lot more money than I do. It's just such nonsense, and it bothers me that they are either unable or unwilling to see that. It makes me hate them oh so much.

In the effort of restoring some semblance of respect to the men and women who run our nation's great corporations, I'd like to propose a moritorium on the following phrases that make them seem like mindless idiot lemming drones ambling for the nearest cliff. To wit:

1.) "Throw him (or her) under the bus."

I actually think reality television is to blame for the proliferation of this phrase's usage, but it's been adopted, now, by the suits and they use it ad freaking nauseum. Scapegoating is one of the most widespread of corporate hobbies, and it seems like hardly an hour goes by without somebody throwing somebody under the bus. And it's always described that way. Always. No one is ever cast to the wolves or crucified by their coworkers... nope. They are invariably thrown under the bus. It doesn't take much of an offense to be thrown under said bus, nor does being thrown under the bus always bear out some great consequence. "Dale took the last cup of coffee," one suit might say to another. "Way to throw Dale under the bus," the other suit might respond. And then a hearty laugh will no doubt be shared. It takes on an even more annoying cast when a suit will declare their own integrity by refusing to throw somebody under the bus. It takes guts to not blame somebody for your own failures... it's less impressive to not hurl them under a large machine.

2.) "Drink the Kool-Ade."

This started out correctly, a reference to the Jonestown massacre and a sly warning not to get suckered into buying into a bad idea just 'cause everybody else is doing it. Somewhere along the way, though, its connotation morphed, and suits decided (unaware of the irony) that drinking the Kool-Ade was, in fact, a fantastic thing to do. There's no shortage of stupid ideas in corporate culture, and the execution of those stupid ideas requires people with some semblance of critical thought to throw their hands up in disgust and obey the poorly designed policies, even knowing the outcome will be bad. These poor workaday schlubs are forced to drink company Kool-Ade on a regular basis... and since their compliance validates the ill conceived ideas of the suits, they obviously think that drinking the Kool-Ade is beneficial. It's sad and funny how appropriate the phrase is, but it's maddening to know that the people using it incorrectly (and all too often) will never understand the joke.

3.) "Low hanging fruit"

Yes, yes, I get it. This can, I will begrudgingly admit, be sort of a useful phrase. There are legitimate instances of companies being festooned with easy-to-correct problems that should be tackled prior to investing a lot of time into more involved and costly programs. But in the hands of a clueless suit, EVERYTHING becomes "low hanging fruit," regardless of whether it's low hanging, or even fruit at all. By tossing around the term like so much confetti, corporates muddy the meaning of it. "We need to start with the low hanging fruit," one of them might offer up, uselessly, when pitching a project. He doesn't know, in this case, what that low hanging fruit might be, but he's fairly certain starting with it is a good idea. When the project begins, one of his bumbling supervisors is sure to ask, "Did you get the low hanging fruit?". And God forbid the project leader can't answer in the affirmative! "Of course we did! We started with the low hanging fruit." "Ah," the superior suit thinks. "That's a good place to start." I guarantee that no low hanging fruit was harmed in this exchange.

4.) "80/20 Rule"

I don't know if this is as egregiously misused in every workplace as it is in mine, but I hope there's a special circle in Hell reserved for people who throw this phrase into their speech like they'd throw croutons onto a delicious chef salad. The real 80/20 Rule is sometimes called the "law of the vital few," (or something similar). The premise is that, for a lot of things, 80% of the outcomes are determined by only 20% of the causes. In business, it's often true that about 80% of a company's profits come from about 20% of customers... not always, but often. The gist is, of course, to focus on that "vital few," because that's your real bread and butter. What I have heard, time and time again, however is the "80/20 Rule" being used as a replacement for the idea of something just happening about 80% of the time... like, if a suit wants to know if something you're doing is common, they'll say, "How often does this occur? 80/20 Rule?" Or, say, in the course of a dialog on a recurring problem, somebody brings up a rare or unique set of circumstances... a corporate type might chime in with, "Let's stay on track here... we want to focus on what's happening the majority of the time. Keep the 80/20 Rule in mind." It's another case of interpreting the phrase absolutely incorrectly. They're not focusing on the vital few, they're focusing on the majority of cases... wouldn't it be easier to substitute the esoteric "80/20 Rule" with the more commonly used (and harder to muck up) phrase: "most of the time"?!

5.) "Value added"

Sweet merciful buttercrackers, if I never hear this phrase again, I'll be thrilled. It crops up daily, as suits with no practical experience try to determine which parts of an underling's job are and are not "value added." Determining how something adds value, or why it might not, is usually beyond the scope of their inquiries, but figuring out whether or not things are value added is a crack-addictive pasttime to the folks high-up on the ladder. What constitutes value added, exactly? That's easy... any action that adds value is value added! If an action doesn't add value, then of course, it's not value added. It doesn't matter that knowing the value an action is adding is generally not feasible for execs who have as little understanding of the jobs they oversee as possible, and it's unimportant that they are in no posistion to correct any action that isn't value added. The money's apparently in making long lists of the steps required to do a job and then assigning them to the appropriate value added or not value added category. If only another suit could step in and point out that ignorant dudes and dudettes compiling lists of meaningless assertions on whether or not things are value added is distinctly not value added. But that would blow their minds.

So please, let's stop all this making fun of corporates behind their back and get them the help they need to ween themselves of the buzzword habit!

Wouldn't that be thinking outside the box?!