“You Can’t Boil the Ocean”
Corporate suits love to talk. Filling the airspace with an endless stream of dialogue makes it seem like they’re workaholics, and since many corporate positions reward those with a strong work ethic and good reputation, why wouldn’t you try to throw in a few important-sounding phrases. That will make any suit-wearing, corporate fool jitter with excitement. However, many corporate terms, like “blue-sky thinking” or “open the kimono,” are often vague, noncommittal, and abstract. Their already obscure meanings have evolved through word of mouth, sometimes getting lost in total insignificance.
Corporate counselor and entrepreneur Alison Carter says that canned phrases, manager-speak, and industry lingos are not only cliché but they water-down your message. Carter says, “Corporate jargon, when it comes down to it, is just a bunch of buzzwords that don’t really mean anything.” Because of the inherent meaninglessness of corporate phrases, peppering work emails and conference calls with catchy buzzwords and marketable fluff renders communication utterly ineffective. Tossing in garbage phrases like “take it offline,” “you can’t boil the ocean,” and “run it up the flagpole” don’t add any value to an idea. If anything, these repeatable lines are convoluted and rather empty. What does it really mean?
Yet, the corporate world loves to brag about exemplary communication. Worker drones deliver hundreds of jargon-filled emails between clients, investors, executives, vendors, and partners, hoping that their bursting inboxes will indicate some kind of progress. The higher-ups are under the impression that their employees are working diligently, but in reality, nothing is really being said and, therefore, nothing is being done. According to Michael Travis, executive search consultant with Forbes, “If you can’t express your idea without buzzwords, there may not be an idea there at all.”
Oftentimes, CEOs and upper management teams will be so deeply entrenched in their linguistic futility after decades of working in the corporate sphere, the catchphrases and buzzwords multiply unnoticed. But quarter after quarter, as work pipelines erupt, value gets added, and shareholders are placated, corporate jargon gets overused to excess. iIndecipherable corporate speech lures the workforce into unknowingly managing themselves and creating their own actionable ideas. Upper management can then pass off their workload onto their individual, smaller teams while hiding behind nebulous pitches, unclear schemes, and their beloved corporate buzzphrases.
Orianna Rosa Royle, a journalist with Fortune Magazine, says, “Corporate jargon isn’t just annoying, for some young workers, it’s the difference between understanding what their manager is asking from them and not.” However, not every corporate leader is intentionally convoluted. Raphael Rozenson, the founder of Vieve Protein Water, said in a recent interview with Telegraph, “The danger of business-speak is that it becomes a substitute for meaningful dialogue and something to fall back on when people don’t know the answer. Instead we need to focus on language that’s clear and actionable.”
Luckily, there are a few upper management folks aware of the slippery nature of corporate dialect, Millennials being some of the first to acknowledge its ridiculousness through memes. Now, the corporate lexicon is being forced to evolve as even younger generations enter the workforce. As much as older generations detest the sudden changes to their communication hierarchies, Gen Z is far too blunt to perpetuate traditional corporate lingo, shifting the entire culture of the corporate world, one e-mail at a time.
It’s Giving Corpo
When CEOs tell their teams that their door is always open to their ideas, Gen Z will, of course, take it literally. While the rest of the seasoned workforce knows that, regardless of their insistence in the company-wide meeting, a CEO’s door is not actually always open. However, Gen Z’s blunt nature maintains that their C-level bosses said otherwise. Gen Z has made it clear that they value authenticity above anything else, and standardized, unspoken rules paired with corporate speech don’t meet that criteria.
According to Kate Morgan from BBC, Gen Z is the first generation of true digital natives entering the workforce. That means that workplace communication is undergoing a major shift. Since so much more work communication is done online, the generation that’s spent most of their life being digitally competent is modifying the landscape, particularly by infusing their inherently straightforward communication style. Due to the recent increase in work-from-home environments, hybrid schedules, and age-blended teams, Gen Z is altering “business speak” to be more casual and direct, avoiding typical corporate fluff phrases and embracing clarity. “Gen Z, used to informal, near-constant contact, spurns the prim email in favour of a quick Slack message,” says Morgan. “But that can be a tough pill to swallow for older generations, who are accustomed to dictating the professional rules of communication.”
Perhaps it’s time for employees to drop the muddled, cookie-cutter, corporate salespitches, in lieu of language that will actually convey meaning between team members. That’s what communication is actually all about, after all.
Via u/phloofie via WallStreetOasis
Communication is a critical component of any functional business, so as corporate landscapes continue to evolve, so much the way each department, employee, and management team. Adaptation in the workplace, from workers both young and old, is key. Nuanced language is understandable in the corporate environment, but canned phrases and corporate parrots on repeat have overstayed their welcome on Slack channels, email threads, and in company-wide meetings. It’s about time employees really open the kimono, saying what they mean instead of hiding behind gibberish statements and empty, copy/paste buzzwords.