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March 24, 2004
LEVERAGING MY SYNERGIES
One of the worst things about working in Corporate America is the ridiculous, nonsensical business-jargon that gets used by every MBA and business administration major within spitting distance. Try as you might to get these guys to speak English, they become physically incapable of doing so, instead spitting out these made-up phrases that sound important but really say nothing. I'm convinced they do it simply to feel superior. It's worse still when these jokers want you to put their gibberish into a press release or a speech, and get all flustered and upset when you refuse & tell them that their language is in fact worthless. (Although it is rather fun sport to observe the different shades of purple you can get them to turn.)
There are several phrases that, if I never heard again, I would still have heard too often. The worst thing of all is that via osmosis, some of this crap actually begins to sink in, and you find yourself thinking like that, if not actually saying the words. ("Leveraging our synergies" is my personal un-favorite... if I could amend the US Constitution just once, I would make it legal for me to slap the living ... snot... out of any business or marketing major who even got two syllables of that phrase out anywhere near me -- in fact, anywhere in the US. What the (hell) does it mean to leverage someone's synergies?
Thankfully, there are some folks in the UK who've collected many of the overused modern business cliches in one list. The Plain English Campaign asked its 5000 members to vote on the most annoying trends they've observed in the last year. They released the list today - and while no synergies are leveraged anywhere near the list, it does contain many of my other un-favorites... including "value-added" (which has become so overused that it's become self-parody; unfortunately executives don't often realize that), "in terms of" (man, did I used to have an executive who abused the hell out of that one!, and "at the end of the day," which is now in fact said not at the end of each day, but in fact "24/7."
Anyone speaking this language and not doing so in a self-deferential way that conveys its parody ought to be shot.
