I've been working in Silicon Valley for 30 years now. I've
worked at three start ups, two major corporations, consulted, and been on the
board of a couple start ups. For the most
part, I’m a worker bee. Over the years,
I've noticed a prolific use of corporate speak cliche terms used by people in the industry.
Mostly by mid-level managers and drones. Drones being the members of any company that nobody
can figure out what their real use is to the company or hive. You know them,
the people that drone on in meetings spewing lots of corporate speak cliche terms
trying hide the fact they don’t have the slightest idea how to make the
companies honey. Sometimes they drone on so much our mind wanders and we soon
aren’t paying attention. You need to pay attention though, drones seem to hold
a special place in the hive, which interests the queen quite a bit. For some
reason, the queen will always put drones in charge of stuff, while we wait for
the next big inception. While the worker bees often find drones annoying as they
interfere with honey production more than they contribute, these seeming
useless individuals are actually communicating in a language of hidden
meanings. After 30 years of study I have figured out the real meaning of what
they are saying. The following is a
worker bee’s guide to corporate drone speak.
Methodology –A
ridiculous term coined by non-technical people who like to add letters and adjectives
to everyday terms so they sound smart or important. “Ology” being the study of
a subject. (Biology – from the Latin “Bios” meaning life,
Biology the study of life.) Use “Methodology”
whenever “Method” will do in a sentence. It makes it sound like you studied various
methods or the method being discussed when you have not.
Agile Development
Methods –Let’s face it, nobody likes to document what there are doing, what
they want or really plan out logistics, so let’s name the cyclical ignore everything
to the last minute method of getting shit done, and call it a methodology.
SOX – (a.k.a Sarbanes-Oxley)
- Mindless button clicking to continuously re-approve access to systems inside
my company my employees need to do their most basic duties. Thank you Paul Sarbanes for your jobs program.
In my humble opinion. -- I am not humble in any way. In fact I figure I'm like six times smarter than you, I am just letting you off easy. You should just do what I'm about to say, in my not so humble opinion.
Break Glass – I haven’t
got the slightest idea, what I am doing or what you do, or what we collectively
might have to do to meet our goals. - And I have little or no intention of
bothering to figure it out. I expect you to do that, and I will take credit for
my innovation.
We can’t do business
as usual – you seem to want to bother me with details. This would require
me to develop a deep understanding and actually do work myself. I basically
delegated those tasks to other people.
See Break Glass for greater detail on you part. I’m done discussing this
subject.
Divide and Conquer
–You keep trying to get me to solve or just pay attention to legitimate
project issues, which I would like to ignore, if you can’t handle them, I’ll
get someone else to do your job.
Bifurcated – To divide
in half, split. See Methodology for why you would use such a term. My first
experience hearing this term in conversation was when a friend of mine Bill
Schafer, “VP of Marketing” for Quokka one of the more spectacular San Francisco
dot.com failures of the 90s. He used the term to describe a picture in a coffee
table book he once owned dedicated to the subject of tattoos and piercings. It
contained the picture of a tattooed man who had surgically split his penis and
pierce the two halves. The penis had attached chains through Prince Albert’s on
each half running to nipple rings. Bill
just referred to the publication as “The book with the bifurcated penis.” Get a little high end Napa Valley wine in him
and he relished talking about the book.
It had been consumed in the Oakland Hill firestorm of 1992 with the rest
of his sentiments. A lost possession
dedicated to excesses in life he loved to revel about it. It was his way of
remembering. Being connected to the
movers and shakers of the tech world like he was, I can’t help but think Bill’s
main contribution to tech lingo was the introduction of the “bifurcated” term
to the tech vernacular. Right around the time of the dot.com boom the term started popping up in my company. Soon after I heard it at
conferences and is sales presentations. The
term was most exclusively used by individuals who have difficulty actually
doing much of substance. Bifurcated in
modern technical terms has come to mean: split and conduct non-value added activities
mostly for the purpose of adornment thus hiding the lack of functionality
created by the bifurcation. “The best way to solve this problem is to bifurcate
the activity.” Now doesn’t that sound
smarter than “Divide and Conquer?”
Partner with me –
regardless of my own personal incompetence, which by definition I don’t
recognize, you are not doing what I want. I have discounted your concerns. If you don’t do it my way, when blame
determination for failure comes, you will be on my list of assignees. Actually,
I have preloaded all blame to you, and this is notice I have started to figure
out how to remove you from the project in advance of its failure. This is your
only warning.
Our partners – the
guys I’m going to try and replace you with cause you question me. How dare you.
Parallel Pipelines
– An abstract concept I like to bring up to divert attention from the reality
that there is insufficient time to accomplish hard dependent tasks in the
project. I don’t really care if a hole needs to be dug first to lay a concrete
foundation. Dig the hole, while at the same time pouring the foundation
off site, and transport the new foundation to the hole when you are finished and
lower it into the hole. Do I have solve everything for you? I suppose you want
me to figure out where to get over sized hauling truck, cranes, and an alternate
sites for you too? Partner with me on this and stay on budget. I've given you
the methodology to do this: parallel pipelines. Now get to it.
Business as usual
(a.k.a BAU) – Oh good, I don’t have to do much. But I am going to take credit for
doing a lot.
Your jobs are on the
line – Ah, I have run out of ways to motivate you, so I've resorted to idle
threats, I can neither carry out nor justify. I am taking the weekend off to go
wine tasting in Napa CA. I expect you and your team to work 24x7 while I’m
intoxicated on wine and power.
That person is well
respected by their peers –That person is an asshole. Nobody wants to deal
with their asinine behavior. We have
absolutely no idea why they are still employed by us, but their asshole
behavior is a given of this project. Stop complaining about it in an attempt to
gain the respect of your peers. I long since gave up on dealing with them.
Let’s look for
Synergies – We are looking for common tasks between the two groups. Once
discovered, regardless of whether we are correct, you all will be replaced by a
cheap outsource company from India. A year later we will replace them with a
cheaper company from China, then from a company in….
I need a pros and
cons on this –I don’t like what I see. Probably for personal political reasons, and
have already determined I’m going with another option, but I want you to feel
like you had input before I reveal my pre-determined solution. Don’t expect me
to contribute, I’ll leave the evaluation to you technical experts. Just make
sure you can defend the conclusion I want.
Office Hoteling –
You should work from home. We have long since realized, through spreadsheet studies,
attempts to re-stack employees in individual offices, cubes, pools of low walled
high collaboration cubes, and drop in offices, that they are all equally
unproductive or productive depending on which side of the half full – half
empty philosophy you identify with. All
office configurations have one common trait: they cost the company money for space, power,
air conditioning, and equipment. Designing employee office hoteling systems
which remind you of coach airline seating, minimizes company expenditures and
while encouraging employees, at their own expense, to choose and provide their
own class of work space accommodations. You think you deserve a C-Level office?
Be our guest at our hotel, otherwise feel free to be enabled in your private
residence.
C-Levels –Chief of
something. Chief Financial Officer, Chief Information Officer, Chief of
Security. A construct of HR departments
who have long since run out of combinations of senior an executive to describe
individuals task with managing large organizations. (i.e Senior Executive Vice
President of…). Ambitious start up’s, in
an effort to make themselves credible, often appoint C-Levels, CFO, CIO’s etc.
prior to receiving funding, to fill up white space in their venture capital
business case.
Thank you for your
input –Go fuck yourself! –While you are at it, get the crap done like I
asked, while I try and find a better partner in this endeavor.
Fail Quickly –Comes
from the concept of Agile development methods, basically we screw everything up
most of the time when lots of people get involved, so the let’s get on with the
screwing up, so I can get promoted.
Fail Smart –Nobody
has the slightest idea what this means, but it sounds good. It’s like “Work
Smart, not hard.” So why not use it to sound like you care?
Proof of Concept –We've
figured out what we want to do. This is the first phase of the project we are
going to ram down everyone’s throat. It
may not be the best solution, but once I've spent money on it, we aren't
stopping because we have investment of time and effort we don’t want to go to
waste.
Teaming Event –Any
champion team coach will tell you the best way to build a good team is to have
talented individuals, goals to work towards, and most of all, play/work
together. In the play/work the real teaming comes with time as individuals get
to know each other and solve common problems usually with a little stress involved. I haven’t got the slightest idea of how to
coach, organize a team, or push a project through outside of jabbering about
random cliche concepts in meetings. As a
result, we are all going to the rock climbing gym Thursday afternoon. I’m really into it, you should be too. We’ll
get down to the elemental points of trust as I belay you. Because of this
afternoon of chalk dust and me showing I’m such a great rock climber in a
closed gym situation, the team will be able to easily scale any challenge I put
before them.
Needs of the business
–The excuse catch phrase I’m going to use to defend my latest seemingly uncaring decision or the answer I’m going to give if I don’t really want answer
a question.
Examples:
Question: “These new jobs you just talked about in the company
sound pretty cool. What is the mechanism to get considered for one of these
assignments?”
Answer: “It will be dictated by needs of the business.”
Question: “John Saxon, interviewed for a job in another division,
and I’m prepared to release him. It’s a good opportunity for him. Do you concur?”
Thought process inside person being asked the question: “On Christ, he’s one of our star people. I
won’t be able to replace him. He pulls me out of most my jams I get into
because of my basic technical weaknesses. Plus, I’d have to fill out tons of
paperwork and interview people to replace him.
Answer: “No, I can’t support that. Needs of the business.”
Coaching –In my
eyes you screwed up, and I’m going to explain why. I will call it coaching so it doesn’t sound
like I am being completely petty. Note:
most coaching occurs by the actual individual who screwed up in an
attempt to transfer blame.
Transfer of Blame
–The fine art of making sure any issues/screwups don’t stick to your Teflon skin
and are successfully nailed to another individual. The most effective manner to
accomplish this task is frequent and blatant fabrication of facts. In politics
the fabrication around Barack Obamas birthplace and religion are illustration.
Make up facts, then use them to explain why someone is ineffective, or should
be associated to failure, thus hiding any contribution you could be held
accountable for.
Worker Bee –
Mildly derogatory term applied by the power point people to group and
nominalize the contributions of the individuals actually doing most of the work
in the organization. The men and woman
actually building things to be sold.
Foster Creativity
–In short, your ideas stink, original or not, because my buddies and I didn’t
think of them. The other possibility is that one of my well respected peers
needs you to partner with us. What we
really need you to do is think like us. Actually just do what we told you too.
We are taking credit anyway. This creative thinking you've been doing seems
like it would be work for us. First we’d have to figure out what you are
talking about, and then actually learn how to use the idea. We basically like
ours, get creative and learn our methods.
Out of the box
thinking – The fact that this cliche term is overused in the corporate
world, shows how difficult it is to accomplish. The concept being that if you
want to skin a cat, there is more than one way. To use another cliche. Though often the
task, “skin the cat” is the box. The
best way to accomplish proverbial out of the box cat de-hide, may be
to change the problem, go fishing. This action removes the obvious bounds of
cat skinning and get us back to likely original problem. We’re hungry, which may
have slipped our mind when we realized we didn’t have a knife handy to skin
Sylvester who we decided might make a convenient meal, when the noticed the
cupboard was bare. Individuals employing
the term “out of the box thinking” could rarely skin a cat, nor fish if their
life depended on it. Most of their energy is spent being boxed in by corporate cliche
which they readily copy from their peers. In an effort to cloud their basic
incompetence and lack of creativity.
Not a Team Player
– Every team has its star player. On this team, I’m it. You need to do
everything to support my efforts and goals. We all become successful with my
success. You can bask in my glory. Typical uses in a conversation: Boss to subordinate, “I need you to be a team
player here, set the example. Start supporting my ideas.” Subordinate to Boss, “Steve’s not a team
player he brings up roadblocks to every idea we present.”
Build Consensus – I’ve
already figured out the path forward, your ideas, input etc. are counterproductive
to my plan. You need to get on board. It’s your job to come to consensus with
me. Typical uses in a conversation: “You have not built consensus for your
position.”
Outsourcing --We have decided to fire you. But to make
the process more miserable, we are going to force you to train your
replacements. After all, compared to them you are overpaid, it’s the least you
can do. While we realize your
replacements will not have your skills and experience, at one fifth the price,
we have plenty of time to train them on the job. At least my mismanagement won’t be so expensive
now.
Right Sourcing
--The previous round of outsourcing was not fully successful. The replacements
while cheaper failed to meet performance expectations. We will replace them
randomly with a mix of other vendors and contractors until such a time as we
happen on the same level of performance we had before we considered
outsourcing. As a proof to how well this
model works, we noticed some of the vendors under consideration have forwarded
resumes of potential candidates who were former employees of ours, but are who
are now willing to work for reduced rates.
They're not technical - That person really doesn't know what they are doing. Somehow he/she was put in charge a complicated project open an intergalatic worm hole. He/she is better suited to organizing office parties.
They're so technical - That person is fairly incomprehensible. We are pretty sure they are great experts in their area, and could create an intergalatic worm hole with broomsticks, an Iphone, and a pound or two of gallium, but we don't understand what they are talking about. However, we have placed the success of the project on their shoulders, in hopes that us non-technical types can get a big bonus and stock options at project delivery.
PowerPoint People –Individuals who sole occupation seems to be the assemblage of really good looking PowerPoint presentations. These individuals rarely understand the content of the PowerPoint presentation but will revise it 50-60 times introducing lots of art, animation, and graphics while going to great length to ignore the technical aspects being presented. Example follows in excerpts of e-mail between a worker bee and a power point person. I would like to say I made this up. Unfortunately it’s a real life example at a company, I worked with for a bit.
PP 6/5/2014 10:55: “Hey got your video demo for the deck. The
SVP wants it to be less than five minutes, can you tell me if it is? Its key
the success of the presentation.”
WB 6/5/2014 10:56: “Did you watch it?”
PP 6/5/2014 11:38: “Haven’t
had a chance to, been in too many meetings about the project.”
PP 6/5/2014 13:45: “Following up on my request for length of
time on the video, needs to be less than five minutes. When can I get the video
time?”
WB: 6/5/2014 13:46: “If you watch it, you will know how long
it is.”
PP: 6/6/2014 07:38: “Still looking for answer on video
length. What is delay, do I need to escalate?”
WB: 6/6/2014 7:39: “See
below:
PP: 6/6/2014 10:15: “Coming up on my deadline, so how long
is the video?”
WB: 6/6/2014 10:15:08: sighing as he types , “1 Minute, 52 seconds.”
PP: 6/6/2015 10:50: “Good you were able to get it trimmed it
to less and 5 minutes, thanks.”
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