Why Buzzwords Matter

I recently had a conversation with a friend about the hype and buzz of certain keywords (aka Buzzwords). I described a situation where a leadership team was challenging me about “agile” organization models. They asked me to keep explanations short, all the while not using buzzwords. This is a paradox like flying without taking off from the ground (a first example which came to my mind).

Then I thought to myself, “Buzz” words have meaning. While my interlocutors believed buzzwords were empty shells, I believe they have an essence.

A scientifically correct history of words

At least we can argue that after more than 200 thousand years of human history and socialization, words and language are an essential construct for our success as a species.

Just imagine every new generation had to reinvent words and language. Most probably, we still would fight over some rare food with our stone tools.

Words do one great thing, they reduce the complexity of concepts by creating collectively accepted expressions for ideas, things, concepts, which then are represented by a symbol (the word itself) so I can communicate somethings to someones effectively.

This single function of words is doing one other great thing: it helps us to preserve this information. One can die, but the collectively accepted definition for our ideas, things, concepts will survive within the collective and over generations. New generations will take those words and create new words.

Why are words so important?

As long we do stuff alone, words are not so crucial for us. If I want to craft a table, I know how to do it, and I craft it for myself, I do not need words. It is all in my head. I know what I have to do. But the moment I need help, exchange ideas, or get insight into someone else’s wishes, words become relevant — and effective. Effective because I don’t have to explain every element of a table. The word itself does this for me. I just have to say, “table.”

The emergence of “Knowledge Work”

You may now ask: “Why are you telling us this?!?”

Quite easy. The situation described above is symptomatic of a phenomenon I’ve observed. I feel the urgency to tell the world about a foundational problem associated with this phenomenon. Something I encounter every time I open LinkedIn, visit a business conference, or see someone giving a keynote speech.

I feel that within this self-promotion bubble, people tend to act as pseudo-intellectuals.

What do I mean with this?

Within our economic and social context, the service industry has bypassed the manufacturing industry by far. As a result, the demand for so-called “knowledge work” has increased, which made the “knowledge worker” a very desirable profession.

The duty of a knowledge worker is to take the information assets a company owns (or privileged access to information) and to create something that makes the company more competitive.

Being a knowledge worker brings a unique feature: the most valuable asset of a knowledge worker is their brain (or their cognitive ability). Since slavery is defined as socially not acceptable (at least within our social context), no company can own the brain of a knowledge worker but can “rent” (or employ) and have access to their cognitive ability.

One of the biggest winners of the increased demand for knowledge work are consulting companies that have professionalized the matching of company information and knowledge workers.

Digitization — Always good to have in a headline

Through the proliferation of the internet, knowledge workers gain increasingly simplified access to information and experience low market-entry-barrier to become self-employed. As a consequence, more and more knowledge workers have started to work as contractual freelancers (basically getting all the profits from their cognitive ability without having an intermediary such as a consulting firm).

In short, the competition between knowledge workers who function as advisors to other companies is quite high. And advisors (be they consulting companies, freelancers or in-house consultants) have a unique ability: they can create demand out of nothing with no additional development or production costs as the creation is a construct of thought (except, of course, with more cognition more calorie intake is required).

One hot topic which is fueled by advisors is everything about “Digital,” combined with matching words like “Revolution” ”Innovation,” ”Transformation” or “Disruption.”

New words emerge around these topics, like “Agile,” “New Work,” “Accelerator,” “Design Thinking,” and much more alike.

Buzzwords have Meaning

Some might call them “Buzzwords.”

And I get it! Some people are taking these words and proclaim that they are experts and come up with some “Theory” or “Evidence” to prove that you should buy, buy, buy their services, because it is an absolute necessity for your company to be using those words, too.

However, some of those people do not invest time and passion into digging deep enough to understand the underlying meaning of those words. And it is this group of people that I define as “pseudo-intellectuals.”

They throw words around in the companies without giving them any meaning. Ever wondered what those senior leadership meetings look like when some are presenting a concept of an “Agile Organization” or building a “Startup Accelerator” without anyone taking the time to reflect on the essence of those words? Depending on your stake in the outcome, they range from cringe-worthy at best, to disastrous at worst.

No wonder leaders don’t feel comfortable with making decisions on meaningless words.

The fact, however, is that these words are empty in their meaning only for some people. As an effect, the other people — those who take those words and the concepts behind them seriously — feel guilty when using the words. So they start to write a long article about the foundational meaning of stuff.

If you find yourself in a situation when someone is using a word, challenge the person. Don’t just go and contribute to the hype and then try to limit a conversation because we don’t know what the fuck we are talking about — but actually need to talk about those concepts to be able to achieve something. To change something. We don’t need more shells; we need meaning. And most important, we need to listen to those people who are keen to create meaning.

The problem we face today is that saying you are an expert in building organization models for the future is easy. Titling yourself as an “agile” coach is easy. Being a “new work” consultant is easy. Putting “Innovation” & “Startup” specialists on a business card is easy.

But doing that stuff successfully requires passion and time to master these fields.

The Conclusion

If you’re not one for words and taking the time to understand properly, here’s a synthesis of what I tried to convey:

• Words have meaning.
• Some people dedicate time and passion for grasping that meaning.
• Some people use those words for personal branding (a topic that requires its article. I mean personal branding?!? Two thousand years of people thinking about the meaning of us as human beings, and today we tell others to create a persona of yourself? A facade? Oh, man…)
• Leaders should understand that the words they use will have an impact on their businesses, and giving meaning to such words will be a competitive advantage.

Hi, my name is Human. I am a Partner at 1789. A strategic consultancy that guides companies to define the meaning of their most important words and design organizational structures that match those words. If you find yourself surrounded by empty shells and are keen to explore, we should meet for a coffee.