Backlash of the Buzzword Backlash

Maybe for humor’s sake, or maybe because it’s just easy game, several magazines and pundits lately have bashed business buzzwords. In a fit of wit, Fortune magazine issued its first Mallie award winners. Mallie…that’s short for “Most Annoying Lingo.”

Fortune put out a call to its readers for “little irritants” like “think outside the box” and “keep me in the loop.” Apparently the response was quite healthy, and the magazine ranked the votes of readers, listing the least to the most “frustrating phrases.”

Some that made the list are “bottom line,” “At the end of the day,” “touch base,” “win-win,” “core competencies,” “ping,” “radar screen” and you can imagine others.

Oh yeah, the winners? “New paradigm” and, says Fortune writer Anne Fisher, it’s evil twin “paradigm shift.” Also “bandwidth” was a winner, especially when it refers to people. In the Fortune article, Fisher quotes a reader named Lauren: "Do we have to call hiring people adding bandwidth?" She quotes another reader who says referring to humans as bandwidth is "appalling."

The final Mallie winner, says Fisher, “is richly deserved: Any phrase – uttered by any businessperson at all, at any time, for any reason – that contains the word ‘vision.’”

Strangulation or evolution?

If that’s not enough, you can find more buzzword backlash in Newsweek, which ran a story called “Attack of the Weasel Words.” The writer of this article was discussing the work of Australian speechwriter Don Watson, who wrote a book called Death Sentences: How Clichés, Weasel Words and management-Speak are strangling Public Language.

According to Newsweek, Watson particularly dislikes the words “implement” and “enhance.” And “input” is high on his list of despairing words. “It all has to do with input and outcomes,” he told Newsweek, as though such language of productivity is somehow anathema.

It sounds more to me like Watson is unhappy with the industrial world than he is with the words we use to describe it. To me the crux of the discussion is about change and communication efficiency. As the world evolves, so does language, so to despise the evolution of language is to despise progress.

I’m sure Mr. Watson is a nice guy, even a cordial gentleman, although his characterization of business buzzwords as “weasel words” is a buzzword itself. What kind of a world do we live in where a certain opportunist uses a buzzword in the title of his book about why buzzwords are bad? Or more poignantly, where are we with life and language – and business – when some people become irritated at the process of natural selection as it applies to the basic function of communication?

We wouldn’t expect a species to stay the same over time, or an organization, or the structure of the family unit. Yet somehow we long for a day when language is always simple and soothing – and pedantically descriptive – even if it means we have to take an extra five minutes to express a thought that otherwise could be expressed and understood in a matter of seconds.

Maybe Watson’s “weasel words” phrase will grip the public consciousness and become a weasel word itself. Are some weasel words better than others? If a tipping point full of people use a word or phrase, doesn’t that mean their minds have evolved together into a place of common understanding? If so, why would we then become annoyed that we’re all speaking a common language?

Truth is that progress moves in ebbs and flows, and it may be time to refine or refresh certain words or phrases. If some are stale, they need to be renewed. But we don’t need to yearn for some time when “words are just words,” and there are no “buzzwords.” That would be like traveling back in time as far as we could possibly go, and I don’t think anyone wants to do that.

I don’t know about you, but this whole idea that certain people are uncomfortable with certain words makes me uncomfortable. Calling words that have been adopted by millions of people through the process of linguistic natural selection “bad” is like calling the kettle white when it’s really black. If the words are really bad, natural selection will flush them out when they need to go away.

Remember Management by Objectives? While that phrase was once used profusely, now it’s used occasionally, because buzzwordish as it is, it still has use. You see, words are really like products: they become extinct when, and only when, people don’t have a use for them anymore. Meantime complaining about the words that so many use is like complaining about the iPod, and somehow saying it’s ruining our culture.

In fact, these words enhance and define our business culture, just as do popular clichés like “a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush.” Now do I have to explain that like you’re a third-grader, or can you just readily accept its meaning and move on?

Thank God (populist buzzword?) that we don’t extend the certain-words-are-bad logic into the medical field. Otherwise we’d have members of the surgical team scolding other members for using their nomenclature. “I’m sorry doctor,” says the nurse assisting with the operation, “but what did you really mean by that?” Meanwhile, during the explanation, the bill runs up at $2,000 per hour and the patient’s heart stops.

“Buzz” words are the energy of change

It’s easy for disgruntled people and opportunists to describe certain words and phrases as frustrating or irritating. And anytime one does this in a public forum, more than a few will chime in and say, “Yeah, I hate that word too.” Meantime, successful organizations are clicking along with their missions, core values, nomenclature, clichés, implementations, executions, balanced scorecards and value propositions.

In business, we have and use certain terms because they mean something. Otherwise they wouldn’t exist, and they wouldn’t be used by so many people. If certain words and phrases don’t mean something to the casual observer, maybe more education and experience is required. Same time, if a business person runs around using certain words awkwardly or inappropriately (having heard them before but not knowing what they mean), shame on him or her.

So while a reporter for Fortune magazine is perpetuating the idea that common business expressions “make your teeth grit,” and while she calls herself “guilty” for using such expressions from time to time, we need them. More so, we are them. There is no cause for guilt in embodying the new terms that facilitate efficient communication, and that exist synergistically with the evolving nature of our world.

At one point in her article, regarding the responses she got from calling on people to call out buzzwords, the writer Fisher says, “I confess I was surprised at the sheer volume of your answers, many of which were hilarious.” Yes it’s always funny to step back from oneself and laugh; the life of anyone or any organization has its laughable ironies.

Still, what we do and say is generally necessary, just like medical buzzwords are necessary to those in that field, or like popular buzz words and phrases (“been there done that” or “c'est la vie”) convey a shared sentiment quickly and commonly throughout society at large. Business is no different, as our language enables us to communicate efficiently and, ultimately, improve quality and lower cost for consumers in a never-ending cycle of improvement and innovation.

I suspect that the basic irritation with “buzzwords” is similar to the time when the steam engine made some feel uneasy about traveling at 28 miles per hour (or whatever it was). A word is like a thing, and when you don’t understand it, you tend to criticize it. Otherwise you tend to embrace change like a good friend because, after all, it’s inevitable.

Get with the program

Therefore, what we have here is a simple case of getting with the program. We’ll always have people who circle back on change and simply want to stay on the same page. So at the end of the day, I’d like to ping everyone with this bottom-line thought: it’s vision that clarifies the future, mission that defines how to hit the ground running and methodologies that enable us to implement a better system of value creation for ourselves and our customers.

So if we touch base with reality, and shift our paradigm, we’ll find that it’s really a no-brainer to think outside the box; by doing so we come up with innovative transform functions whereby our business inputs are more reliably related to our business outputs. And as we increase our bandwidth for doing this, even more people will be empowered to engage in this cycle of creative destruction.

Further, if we choose our words carefully going forward, we will possess a communication core competency that will establish us as thought leaders who can keep the bleeding edge of business always on our radar screens. This way, we will be more capable of cultivating win-win situations in which our value propositions are defined and enacted through the regular use of what some call buzzwords and weasel words.

One thing’s for sure: as we continue to drive the chain of progress forward, we’ll be making some new weasel words along the way.