Have you ever been in a meeting or conference call and afterwards you ask yourself "What the fuck was that all about?" I have. I've worked in several large and very large organizations where we had a lot of meetings and conference calls. Sometimes there were so many that they started before 8AM and were scheduled one after another until the end of the day. We might get a few minutes along the way for a bio break, but that's about it for the day's non-meeting time. At the end of the day I would look back and realize that the only time when I didn't have to be "on my game' was when I was standing at a urinal. And that wasn't even guaranteed. About half the time someone else from the same meeting would be standing at the next urinal wanting to discuss something that happened at the meeting that just ended. On those days I relished the 20 minute commute home in complete solitude. Unless my cell phone rang. You get the picture.
In my first very large organization I began to notice that the higher ranking managers and directors used a terminology that I had never heard before. I started to call it "corporate speak" and I learned quickly that if I was going to be successful in that organization I had better become fluent in it immediately. So I did.
The first term I encountered was "push back," which means to offer resistance or voice disagreement with something another person had said or something that they had done. I immediately started using that term and right away it caused me to be respected and sometimes feared in meetings. I became good at pushing back, even if there was no real reason to do so. So far, so good.
The next term I learned was "circle back," which means to check up on something later or follow up on the subject currently being discussed. It made others think that, if they agreed to do something, I would be checking later to make sure they actually did it and there would be dire consequences if they decided not to. They (rightfully) decided that I would probably forget about it. Once you say you're going to "circle back" on something you have to make sure you actually do it. I started to circle back on everything. In retrospect, it probably made me a better manager and greatly increased my effectiveness for the most part.
The next one was "reach out." This one means that you are going to contact someone. During a meeting or call you would say "I'll reach out to him." There were many ways to "reach out." You could call the person, send them an email, send a text message, or simply walk into their office and speak with them face-to-face. A couple of times when the subject was important enough I even reached out by getting on a plane, flying to their location, and storming into their office to have the necessary discussion. After such a trip I would "circle back" to make sure they had completed the instructions I had mercilessly imparted to them.
Another great one was "that is like herding cats." This was used to describe a task that would be very difficult due to it's complexity or the fact that it would require work from a large number of resources. Resources, by the way, are people. You assign resources to a project. You don't assign people to a project. Resources, not people. If you've ever had a cat, you know that it's next to impossible to get cats to do anything they don't want to do. If you have several cats then you might as well just give up. It isn't going to happen. Sometimes during project meeting a manager or director would ask a project manager for the reason their project was behind schedule. Their response was usually "This project has so many moving parts it's like herding cats." This usually resulted in the project sponsor assigning one or two directors to join the project and apply a "scorched earth" policy to get it back on track. That usually meant that people were going to be fired and whole careers were going to be irreparably damaged.
Another good one was "Let's eat that elephant one bite at a time." This one is used to describe a very large project that seems overwhelming due to the large amount of work needed to complete it successfully. Essentially it means "Let's break up all that work into smaller, more manageable chunks and address them one at a time."
One of the really good ones was "I'll get my team together for a team building exercise." This one was usually heard when a manager or director was being chastised publicly for his team's poor performance on something. You would think that a team building exercise would involve getting the team together and conducting activities that help them appreciate each other's work and to develop a consensus on how the team is going to work together more effectively. In some companies it means that management would take the team out for dinner and drinks at a nice restaurant and let them have some casual time together. In others it means putting the team up at a local hotel and having a series of uplifting meetings to help everyone bond with each other and encourage the team's cohesiveness and mutual support. But where I worked it meant "I'll schedule a mandatory team meeting where I will get everyone in the same room and kick their asses like never before to get them to work harder."
Another one is "I'm building a high performance team and it takes time." This one actually means "I'm having a hell of a hard time finding employees who are qualified to do the job and actually want to work. Be patient and it will eventually happen." Managers could usually get away with this only once or twice before being fired or demoted.
The next one is one I'm currently experiencing on my job. About a year ago my Team Lead started added the word "right" to almost every sentence. "We're going to look into this, right? When we find a solution we'll implement it, right? The first step is assessing what we already have, right? Then we'll be in a position to move ahead, right? Afterwards we'll be in a position to circle back and verify everything, right?" Incidentally, the sentences in quotes are actually real sentences recorded during a meeting. I'm not kidding. Drives me absolutely nuts, right?
The absolute crown jewel that I've encountered is something called Model-Netics. The organization where I worked decided that we could be more effective if we were better communicators. This is not an unreasonable statement. One part of communicating effectively is to convey a concept to others using a common lexicon. The English we've learned since birth is apparently not good enough. They contracted with a company who designed a library of over 150 small stick figures, each representing a concept that we might want to communicate to others within our organization during our day-to-day work. As an example, one of them was a stick figure doing something and this figure was the symbol for "information hoarder." An information hoarder is someone who only shares a very small part of what they know about something, feeling that they were more valuable to the company if they are the only one who knows certain information. Just about every organization has one or two of these.
My company bought this program for the entire IT Department of over 300 employees. It wasn't cheap. I looked up the current price per employee and it currently starts at $995 and goes up depending on how the system is delivered and probably a host of other factors. My company designated a dozen or so SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) to train the rest of us. We had about 6 hours per week of training time scheduled for classroom instruction. They were very serious about it. There were quizzes. There were tests we had to pass and not completing the training or not passing the tests were going to be reflected in the annual "calibration" meetings where raises and employee longevity were determined.
After a short time, I started to hear Model-Netics phrases being used in meetings almost on a daily basis. People had learned all the models, but no one really understood how to use them to communicate more effectively with each other. The Vice President who signed the purchase order declared the program a resounding success, but all it really succeeded in doing was to reinforce his grip on the organization and thoroughly convince the employees that they were being gaslighted by their employer. By the time I left the organization shortly after Model-Netics, only a few people were using the new Model-Netics terms and the majority of us still had no idea what they were actually trying to say.
So, after years of listening to corporate speak I can confidently say that if you use it, then it may help your career advance to a point, but you're probably not going to endear yourself to your fellow employees. Most people can only listen to it for so long before tuning it out entirely. I tuned it out about almost 15 years ago and I haven't looked back. You might go a long way in your organization if you "reach out" and "circle back" often and you demonstrate an above average success rate at "herding cats," but you still have to look at yourself in the mirror every day and ask "Am I really that superficial and is this who I really want to be?" Whatever your decision, best of luck to you.
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