Gobbled Up by Gobbledygook
Craig Chappelow
Leveraging core competencies in synergy with the agendas of targeted customers builds enterprise value for all parties.
Huh? Although this statement is lifted directly from a national marketing firm's description of its work, I have no idea what it means. Even if I did understand it, eight buzzwords in a seventeen-word sentence (a buzzword saturation factor of 47 percent) completely turns me off to whatever this company claims to do. I have to believe that when organizations communicate in such an arcane way, they lose business as a result. Who wants to work so hard just to figure out what a company does?
The use of jargon, buzzwords, and fuzzy leaderspeak is out of control in the business world. At first I thought it was mildly humorous. Self-important managers throwing around the latest buzzwords just provided more fodder for Dilbert cartoons, I figured. Some of the terms are funny in and of themselves. Enterprise-wide sounds like the punch line to a Rodney Dangerfield joke. The preponderance of buzzwords has even spun off an office game called Buzzword Bingo, in which meeting participants discreetly check off buzzwords on their bingo cards as the speaker drones on.
It would be one thing if jargon were limited to interoffice memos and staff meetings. The problem is that the epidemic has spread to far-reaching documents, such as press releases and mission statements, that present a company's image to the public and in which companies invest a great deal of time and money. Do you really want people—especially potential customers and investors—to read your company's profile or latest press release and say, “But what do they do?”
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, staff reporter Mylene Mangalindan described how some companies try to get a higher profile on Internet search engines by using “search engine optimization,” designed to place them at or near the top of search results. Although some optimization involves hidden coding and other trickery that is frowned on by search engine operators, Mangalindan noted that there are some basic and legitimate content changes that can improve companies' search engine rankings. One easy change for companies to make, she suggested, is to describe their products in simple terms and phrases, which are more likely to be used in searches than is industry jargon.
Take a look at a typical mission statement. For that matter, go to your corporate Web site and take a look at your organization's mission statement. Does it contain the word solutions? How about paradigm, or leverage? If it does, your company is not alone. I did an Internet search on this three-word combination and got more than 50,000 hits—many of them press releases and “About Us” company descriptions crammed with bizarre, fuzzy doublespeak.