In defence of BusinessSpeak

I took an action to reach out to all of you and let you know about this plague infesting our workplaces

That’s all of the lampooning I’ll do here; Dilbert does a much better job of satirising the workplace. Instead, I want to go the other way and defend (some parts) of the increasingly reviled BusinessSpeak.

I was at dinner with some friends, one of whom is about to enter the corporate world proper (Congrats again Kelsby), and she asked me if I speak “All that business bollocks” and had to honestly admit that I do. I then felt a bit sheepish and tried to justify it, but struggled, so in the style of “thinking of my comeback in the shower” I have instead gone for “justifying my BusinessSpeak in my blog”.

What’s BusinessSpeak?

For those not party to the world of professional services, it has its own language. Much like the medical, legal, and programming professions talk about DNAs, Habeus Corpus, and code commits, so too the world of consultants and their ilk have actions, bridges, leads, 800 pound gorillas, and all other manner of expressions.

Why bother with it?

One of the biggest reasons BusinessSpeak is so widely used is a kind of peer pressure – when I joined the workforce I was absolutely bewildered by the language being used and had to study up to communicate “properly” with my managers and clients. In that way it’s self-perpetuating, handed down from manager to new recruit.

A reason I keep with it is because it can be genuinely useful. A shared vocabulary reduces potential for misunderstanding where if the boss says “Can I give you an action…” on a conference call it really means “I am writing your name and a date next to this task and it will be done on pain of death.”

On the other hand, sometimes BusinessSpeak can be deliberately ambiguous, confusing and exclusionary. As already mentioned I felt bewildered when first introduced to this concept, and it certainly works in the consultant’s favour to keep a certain air of mystique about their inner workings and processes. Another area of useful vagueness is talking about redundancy. I’ve heard so many euphemisms for firing someone that I’ve forgotten most of them, but management have decided that vaguely referring to perceived positive outcomes is better than simply “reducing headcount”.

What

Use it only when useful/necessary. Be more authentic when communicating and remember that other people are also human beings.