Recently, my company, the wonderful corporate entity it has become, held a meeting previewing its revamped website. The new format is supposed to give us more of an edge, and give our customers more ease of use. They couldn’t just say that, though. They had to use corporatespeak, a rhetoric-laden language employed to make everything sound more important. I wrote down as many examples of this speech as I could throughout the hour and a half meeting. Afterward, I collected these phrases. Next to them, I have written what they were really saying, in layman’s terms. Enjoy."Next Generation"—new
"workflow-oriented"—easier to use
"search-oriented"—you can search for documents by typing in words or phrases
"value-added content"—has more stuff that customers will like
"smart charts"—graphs and charts
"intuitive, modern interface"—easier to use, new
"major functionality"—important features
"critical path items"—important features
"customer segments"—demographics, people who will use the website
"sub-projects"—projects within this project
"cross-organizational effort"—a few departments are working together on this
"Project Align"—the process of outsourcing the company’s production jobs to Malaysia
"Customer Advisory Board"—customers who will test the new website
"critical feedback"—customers tell us what they think
"non-standard migration"—the new website is not liked as much as the old one
"postive migration experience"—opposite of "non-standard migration" (customers like the new website)
"iteration 6, 7, 8"—versions 6, 7, and 8 of the website (each successive number is a more complete and ready-to-launch version)
"clean interface"—looks like Google.
"practice areas"—the kind of documents the customers want (i.e. Tax Regulations, Bank Laws, etc.)
"wow factor"—features that are impressive
"split-screen functionality"—uses tabs to do more than one search at the same time
"document tray"—folder for saving documents
"automated migration tool"—a generator that converts documents
"platform intellegence"—how well the website works
"This is not just a project, this is our future."—the slogan of this new website
2 comments:
This is hilarious.
But you know, every field has its "language." Corporate culture, college culture, and dare I say it...church culture?
Maybe I should do a post like this for "church" and one for "theology." It could be a big hit and hopefully useful, considering yours actually was kinda useful for someone like me who has no clue where to start in such a foreign "language." I wonder if anyone has ever done a sociological "field-study" of a giant corporation? That would be sweet...a best seller I bet.
Oh, most definitely everything has its own code language. And churches aren't immune to that phenomenon.
I would be interested to see if the language used in the church you work at translates to the one I work at.
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