Every time we have a meeting in my company I hear about a dozen terms that I only ever hear in a company context. The general themes of these words are efficiency and growth. My friend, Mary, at NoTitles.com and I thought we would each take a look at corporate language, a little competition really: most comments win (I just made that last part up on the fly). Here are just a few bits of corporate language that come up for me all the time.
- Take-Away – As in…”What lesson did you take away from your conversation with the janitor?” My company seems to feel like they must take-away some life lesson with every corporate exchange. Often times, people will pause to list off their various take-aways, and others will follow with their own in an exercise akin to the moral of the story on Full House. Lessons are great, and picking something specific to walk away from is a positive turn against low retention, but the compulsion to label and share your learning can quickly degrade into homework, and nobody learns from homework. Oh, and always saying you have and asking for a “take-away” makes you sound like an idiot who likes pretty picture books of Jesus stories.
- INFP or Myers-Briggs – Myers-Briggs is this personality test invented in the forties. It’s mandatory at my company that new hires go through an orientation which features a two day Myers Briggs. At the end of the test, you get a label based on possible personality traits such as do you like being around lots of people and are you a copious note-taker. It’s a neat little afternoon of making jokes about how Betty sure is a ‘J’ because of the watch she wears or how Steve is definitely a ‘F’ because he cried when he got a divorce last year. But it should stop there. Now, three years after my own orientation, people are still calling me a ‘T,’ managers are still referring to their problems considering the feelings of all those introverted ‘I’ folks, and the on-staff psychologist is still asking for a show of hands at how many capital ‘T’ thinkers there are in the room who (she smugly giggles when she asks this) can’t stand her drawn out explanations. Enough already. I’m not a bloody INFP. I’m a goddam Aries, and we don’t believe in psych tests!
- Metrics – Remember when we used to call facts and figures, “facts and figures?” ”Metrics” is a term that people made up because ‘data’ has come to mean something your hard-drive holds. If you want to know the number of cheese-eaters in the Placement department, you have to gather the metrics, or develop the metrics, or whatever. I don’t have a problem with the action, it’s the popularity of the word. Why do we need a new word for ‘data?’ Why can’t we just say, ‘measure?’
- Coordinator – I think this one might just be in my industry, but I’m curious. Everyone. Let me repeat. EVERYONE in my company is a coordinator. There are literally seven different positions in my company whose title includes the term coordinator. You wouldn’t believe the confusion this causes when we get to the hospital. The nurse says, “Hello, are you the coordinator on this case?” I say, yes, and then five minutes later a colleague walks in an introduces themselves as the coordinator.
- Acronyms & Initials – Every position in my company has corresponding initials. I’m an SC for example, I work directly with the PC and the TC, who are led by the RC and the APC. We often work with the onsite DSL who is trying to get ahold of the FRC who is busy with the MOC regarding the TSC’s issues with SCVMC in SJ.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
You ought to write for SNL or 30 Rock. This post had me laughing too hard. You’re right about “coordinator” and “Metrics.” You can be very funny sometimes.
Be careful with your compliments, friend. “You can be funny sometimes,” is the boy equivalent of “you look good tonight.”
As in…”Excuse me? What’s that supposed to mean? Uh uh, you mean I look good EVERY night, bitch!”
This is all very true! I was just thinking about this yesterday, in fact. I had to transcribe some phone conversations between a business consultant and some financial firms that want him to conduct workshops for his employees. I literally had to look up two-thirds of the conversation. Too many acronyms and abbreviations (P&L, ERP, CLO, etc) and yes, I think “metrics” got a shout-out about 80 times. It made me think back to my own brief stints in corporations, where each of my management teams had their own jargon that they would forcefully throw down on us. For instance, I don’t think I ever heard the expression “touch base” before entering into a business setting. And now I hear it all the time! Why does it have to be like this? Why do businesses and corporations get to dictate what becomes standard acronyms and phrases that then gets filtered into common, every day language?
The quick answer would be because they are the bastions of serious thought. I think “work” is where most people have to put on their serious faces and use their serious intellects. Perhaps people who tend to use their intellects outside of the work place more often are the sort who objectively consider the retardation of their word smithing.
Ah! That stupid personality test. I hate that nonsense. I don’t need a personality test to tell me how my brain works, and in fact, I think all this labeling gets in the way of actual understanding. Aside from that, I am a Capricorn, which I think suits me better than a jumble of letters I can never remember.
I must restate how much I enjoyed doing this. Thanks so much for the suggestion. We should do it again sometime, or even try to *coordinate* a mass posting with fellow TNB bloggers.
I think something could be arranged.