Die buzzword die
Tim Dyson, CEO of my company's holding group recently poured oil on the buzzword fire with the following blog post. It got me thinking about buzzwords and our culpability for creating them - and now decoupling them. See his original post here - Is your client ‘world leading’? – 10 other words/phrases brands should avoid.
Here's my response:
Nice post Tim. I’m thinking SEO might be the answer to this tragic abuse of the English language. Perhaps simply demonstrating that no-one ever powers up Google looking for a “reliable, scalable, open, end-to-end solutions” will encourage more people to use real language in their communications.
This, of course, assumes that these sorts of missives are designed to actually be found, read and acted upon. I fear they are largely created to keep line of product managers happy and box-checking PR folks employed.
Perhaps I was being too idealistic - and some of the comments reflect this. But the recent Wikileaks noise has also strengthened my resolve for clarity in communications. Without wanting to push the issue of irresponsible disclosure too far off the table, I am very interested in the massive gap between the behind closed doors discussions and the public faces presented by our leaders. While I sincerely hope none of the disclosed documents put people at risk, I am at least glad that we are hearing what our leaders really think.
I'm no diplomat (my wife will attest to this!) but I am looking forward to a day when language at all levels is used less to mask or hide but more to enable genuine (versus in-genuine) communication.
-Jeremy
Here's my response:
Nice post Tim. I’m thinking SEO might be the answer to this tragic abuse of the English language. Perhaps simply demonstrating that no-one ever powers up Google looking for a “reliable, scalable, open, end-to-end solutions” will encourage more people to use real language in their communications.
This, of course, assumes that these sorts of missives are designed to actually be found, read and acted upon. I fear they are largely created to keep line of product managers happy and box-checking PR folks employed.
Perhaps I was being too idealistic - and some of the comments reflect this. But the recent Wikileaks noise has also strengthened my resolve for clarity in communications. Without wanting to push the issue of irresponsible disclosure too far off the table, I am very interested in the massive gap between the behind closed doors discussions and the public faces presented by our leaders. While I sincerely hope none of the disclosed documents put people at risk, I am at least glad that we are hearing what our leaders really think.
I'm no diplomat (my wife will attest to this!) but I am looking forward to a day when language at all levels is used less to mask or hide but more to enable genuine (versus in-genuine) communication.
-Jeremy