Office Speak

So, I am no polyglot. In Spanish, I can only ask for directions to the bathroom, and "Where is my donkey?"  (¿dónde mi burro?).

My high school German enabled me to hitchhike and make friends across united Germany. My vocabulary in conversational Polish was honed by late nights in underground bars-- making for an animated oral defense of my master's thesis at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow.

I can interview my elders for tips on insurance, the pros and cons of a second mortgage and martial advice. I've hung out with young slavic orphans, East Tennessee hillbillies, sports fans and budding hip hop artists. And for the most part, except for golf fanatics, I've pretty much understood most of what my new friends have said.

However, there is one language in which I was sorely unprepared to make friends and influence people: Officespeak.

Lord, I wish I'd had this handy primer by David Martin when I took my first temp job building PowerPoint slides for a medical consulting firm. I remember turning to Neal, the resident Goth and master in Photoshop, and lamenting: "Neal!? What kind of crazy gooblety-goop is this crap?"

By that time, Neal had reached an acceptance of the lexicon--as well as a mastery of the consultants' spidery scrawl that passed as editorial input on the acres of bulletpoints--and he consuled me: "Man you don't have to understand it; just translate it into text." So I learned to do what every graphics-type person in the corporate world soon learns to do: disreguard the language, focus on the intent, and find joy in color choices, kearning, whitespace and designing a kick-ass logo for the project.

As life and career evolved, I stumbled into the field of facilitated workshops and the task of translating blanket euphymisms, metaphors and vague platitudes into something tangibles, physical, visual.

Of course, Officespeak has it's perinial phrases (ex. "out of the box", "being a real team player", "on the same page", etc.). But some arose during the ninties and faded after 9/11 ("open the kimono", "Napsterized", "idea incubator").

Then, there are people like my friend J.T., who must have skipped every single English Lit course. His normal discourse is peppered with bizarre and bloated phrases such as:

"I guess adding more complexity into this particular strategic initiative would put too much pressure on the various points of leverage, and our goals would be unattainable in an accelerated time horizon."

This was his response when I told him I was too busy to meet the project deadline.

Martin's handy reference-style book delivers a simple ontology for the varieties of corporate lexicon:

• The best (and worst) answers to the question, "What's your biggest weakness?"
  
• Sprucing up your job title and personalizing your business cards
  
• Being "swamped" and other key phrases for diverting responsibility
  
• Making up verbs to convey power, decisiveness, and initiative in the boardroom
  
• Mastering the fine art of interrupting with such foolproof expressions as "good point" and "borrriiinnnggg"

So, if you need to get all the team players on the same page and accelerate your strategic milestones, to leverage the baked in accountability metrics, you may need Officespeak, or the DVD collection of the English version of The Office!

Comments

[Brandy]

I like to say I've got a B.S. in Consultantese. :)