Buying in to Biz Speak

By Todd Barrett, MBA '95

In a recent article in Forbes, the writer praised the eminent management thinker Peter Drucker for eschewing jargon. Drucker, we were told, studiously avoids popular argot such as "maximizing shareholder value," opting instead for the supposed higher ground of comparing "strategic corporate alliances with the matrimonial alliances described in Jane Austen's novels." Far be it from me to disagree with the éminence grise, but I beg to differ. It may not be pretty and it may set grammarians' teeth gnashing, but business jargon does have its own peculiar sense and sensibility.
When I first arrived at the GSB, I would have wholeheartedly agreed with Drucker. Before business school, I had been a journalist, and although journalism may not exactly be the last bastion of proper usage, I felt at least a little protective of the finer points of the language. The first day of class proved ominous. I hadn't even cracked my books, and I counted six "slam dunks," three "win-wins," and a couple of "core competencies" thrown in for good measure. I cringed at each as if the professor had given the chalkboard a vigorous scratch. Barely two months before, had I so much as dangled a participle the magazine's copy editors---the Four Horsemen of the Accusative---would have ridden me down. Now the English language was being reinvented all around me.
"Learning curves?" "Reengineering?" Were my classmates just winging the language as they went along? Don't get me wrong---it's not as if I spake the King's English. But all the fast-flying jargon was making me dizzy. I was "talking" when I should have been "touching base," "firing" when "downsizing" was more appropriate, and generally zigging while everyone else verbally zagged. Adjectives became adverbs, adverbs morphed into nouns, and the magical suffix "ize" effortlessly turned everything into a verb. The actor Steve Martin once talked of how much fun it would be to teach his children to speak "wrong." Off they'd go for that fateful first day of school, where they'd raise their hands and confidently ask the teacher, "Can I mambo dogface in the banana patch?" As far as I was concerned, my classmates were mambo-dogfacing with abandon.
But slowly, like a paradigm shift, the power of jargon began to dawn on me. Deep in a case discussion, classmates would talk of "prioritizing" or "leveraging skill sets." Study groups would be loaded with "bangs for the buck" and "no-brainers." Meanwhile, I'd struggle to make my point. "Now, what if you put two companies together and the combination creates more energy than just the two of them separately had but instead makes an even more powerful combination than just adding the two together?" I'd flail at an explanation before classmates would mercifully throw me a jargon-ring. "Synergy," they'd say. It all seemed so easy. Amid all the clichés, none scratched their heads or asked for clarification. Japanese, Mexicans, Russians, Americans---all would nod knowingly at the artificial language. Esperanto may never have caught on but jargon has.
That's jargon's power: as verbal shorthand. Quick communication is vital in the world of the bullet point, a culture so time-crazed and frantic that it doesn't even have time for a complete sentence. With the toss of a cliché the speaker tidily conveys the capsule of an idea. As Fortune recently noted, "As the pace of work becomes lightning quick, people condense complex historical events into flashy insights." Talk of "empowerment" implies a broad-based approach to management. "Leading-edge" carries the connotation of risk-taking, of investing in being the best in the business. The specifics can come later, but the jargon at least flags the listener to a direction of thought---and allows the speaker some room to maneuver later. Does a "globalization strategy" mean expanding into Belgium and Burkina Faso? Maybe, maybe not, but the phrase at least signals an intent to look beyond those three outlets in Poughkeepsie.
Tossing a little jargon can serve as something of a badge, too. A glib flip of a "value-added" or a "downside risk" shows at least a passing familiarity with business concepts. Once the mutual slinging of jargon has established a common understanding, more substantive---indeed impactful---discussions can take place. Industries and companies alike have lingo to go with their cultures. At Gap, when colleagues report that the jeans are "flying off the shelves," rather than heading for cover everyone rejoices at the news of brisk sales. McKinsey partners and associates alike know to sum up a presentation with the "so-whats" ---the most important points. When word comes at Merrill Lynch that a client wants to "lift a leg," traders know they had better close one side of a hedged position.
Though business speak is widely reviled, is it that different from professional sports where stars talk of being "in the zone," or from academe where professors debate the merits of "post-modern deconstructionism"? The peculiar phrases help create a bond, a sense of community. Of course, the phrases can also be used to exclude. Pity the person who looks puzzled while colleagues banter about "exogenous variables" or "being left out of the loop." But let's face it, club membership can't be that difficult---after all, there's clearly no English requirement.
Jargon can, however, easily run amok. Certain words and phrases are silly even by jargon's meager standards. There's nothing wrong with "incent" or its bastard cousin "incentivize" that a good "motivate" can't fix. And anyone who asks others to "think outside of the box" should know that using a cliché to exhort creativity is oddly self-defeating. Corporate mission statements are probably the worst offenders, more often than not merely a jumble of jargon, as a World Wide Web site illustrates. The "Mission Statement Generator" at www.vivanet.com/~ bierrek allows users to enter a company name and with a simple mouse click produce a statement laden with heavy argot ("Microsoft has the mission of providing quality standard compliant services to our users through the use of data warehousing, using prioritized, functionalized methods and leveraged processes").
Is jargon as elegant as communication should be? Certainly not. In the best of all possible worlds we'd all gather by the water cooler speaking like Rex Harrison. But I doubt the high style would make the business world run any better. Referring to Austen's work might be instructive ("We seek a profit much as Darcy yearned for Elizabeth"), but if half the meeting walks out of the room to refer to their Lit 101 anthologies, that's hardly productive. What jargon loses in erudition it makes up for in a concision of communication and, for better or worse, our understanding of the concepts at which it hints. And, net-net, that may not be such a bad trade.

ILLUSTRATION BY JAMES YANG

Slowly, like a paradigm shift, the power of jargon began to dawn on me.