A cynic’s guide to business jargon

Houston Chronicle business blogger Loren Steffy has compiled his personal list of the 20 most annoying business expressions. Examples:

paradigm shift: The most overblown euphemism for “change” since “sea change.”

leaving for personal reasons/to spend more time with his family: Yeah, right.

merger of equals: The business version of jumbo shrimp.

forward-looking statements: Lawyers must get paid by the word. For the rest of us, “forecast” or “prediction” works just fine.

pre-owned: A mangling of the English language to avoid the truth: used.

the customer experience: I don’t want to have an experience. I just want to buy stuff and leave.

Reminds me of a somewhat-old book I keep around: “Business Babble: A Cynic’s Dictionary of Corporate Jargon,” by David Olive (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1991). Some choice (cynical) definitions:

corporate culture: The defining ethic of a company expressed in speech, dress and behavior deemed proper at the firm, which are carefully designed to ward off the incursion of dangerous new ideas.

guru: A prominent economist or management consultant whose credentials have been established on the corporate lecture circuit and in the bookstores, and whose savantry is all the more remarkable given that he has never piloted a national economy or a corporation.

meeting: Man’s most effective tool for preventing outbreaks of decisive action.

opportunity cost: The time or money that could have been better spent doing something else.

reality check: A way of curbing blue-sky conceptualizing that threatens to get serious. In meetings of planners, the accounting-minded participant eventually will feel compelled to raise his hands in the time-out signal, and say that while these grandiose schemes are all fine and good, “who’s going to pay for them?” 

Education > innovation > productivity > higher living standards

Reading the economic news can be confusing. Is the economy in good shape or bad? One way to cut through the clutter is to focus on productivity — the goods and services Americans produce for each hour of work. Productivity growth is the key to improving the standard of living (e.g., higher wages for workers). But Wall Street Journal columnist David Wessel sees troubling signs. He cites evidence that productivity grew at a disappointing 1.5% annual rate in the past three years.

These small differences add up over time: At 1.5%, average living standards double in 47 years, nearly two generations; at 2.5%, they double in 28 years, closer to one generation.

Is this just a lull, or is it the end of the technology-fueled productivity boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s? The pessimistic view is that productivity growth is unlikely to exceed 2% in the next few years. Wessel concludes:

But the outlook for productivity ultimately depends on whether the U.S. keeps innovating, whether it keeps applying those innovations in new ways and in industries (think health care and education) that have yet to fully exploit technology, whether less-productive organizations catch up or are shoved aside by more-productive ones, and whether American politicians and the public understand the importance of repairing the education system to better equip workers.

In that light, the future looks a bit brighter than the recent numbers imply.

Looking at this analysis in a different way, we could say that: Education begets innovation which begets productivity growth which begets a higher standard of living.

The future of college athletics

What changes will occur in college sports departments in the next five to 10 years? The Chronicle of Higher Education asked three dozen experts and concluded:

More athletics departments will follow the lead of the University of Georgia and fine or suspend players for skipping classes. And they’ll crack down harder on unethical off-court behavior.

Programs will hire “learning specialists” to work one-on-one with at-risk athletes, allowing coaches to recruit increasingly marginal students. Colleges will create “safe” jock majors, with lots of electives, for impact players. And more athletes will need to go to summer school to graduate.

Programs will create narrow, specialized jobs, like director of football communications. “Some teams will have nearly as many coaches as players.”

College arenas will add amenities found in professional-sports facilities, such as high-quality food services and flat-screen TVs.

Presidents and athletics directors will insist on hiring more female and minority candidates for administrative and coaching positions.

As financial pressures mount, more athletics departments will eliminate particular sports from their lineup. Exception: They may add flag football for women because it’s becoming so popular.

Co-ed teams: “The NCAA will have its first mixed-doubles tennis championship.”

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Source: “The Athletics Department of the Future,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (20 July 2007)

We’re good at complying with the Law of Unintended Consequences

Four examples of how good intentions can produce unexpected results:

Worldwide demand for ethanol biofuel is causing massive deforestation in Brazil to to grow sugarcane, the raw material for Brazilian ethanol. Brazil’s Cerrado region is being deforested at 7.4 million acres per year, a higher rate of clearing than in the Amazon. All of the remaining vegetation in Cerrado could be lost by 2030. — “Losing Forests to Fuel Cars,” The Washington Post (31 July 2007, registration required)

Clinical information technology systems — especially those known in the health care industry as computerized provider order entry (CPOE) systems — promise to improve health outcomes, reduce medical errors and increase cost efficiency. But a study found that hospitals adopting them must plan for “immense” workflow issues and a host of other unanticipated consequences. Doctors, for example, spent much more time at the computer inputting prescriptions and other orders. And system over-dependence created havoc during system failures. — Oregon Health & Science University / Science Daily (2 Aug. 2007)

Credit-card disclosure information intended to discourage consumers from overspending may have the opposite effect. The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 requires credit-card companies to provide scary details about high interest rates and long pay-off periods. But a study found that, for many shoppers, knowledge of mounting debt can be so depressing that it spurs them to binge shopping to alleviate the gloom. — The Wall Street Journal (18 July 2007, subscription required)

The new Massachusetts health care reform, which aims to rescue 550,000 residents from the ranks of the uninsured, has run into a snag: a shortage of doctors willing to take on new patients. — The Wall Street Journal (25 July 2007, subscription required)

Poll: Americans are gloomy about the future

More than two-thirds of Americans believe the U.S. economy is either in a recession now or will be in the next year, according to a new Wall Street Journal / NBC News poll. Despite some positive macroeconomic signs, many Americans are nevertheless pessimistic about the future, for three major reasons: the Iraq war (which has depressed the nation’s mood across the board); fear of terrorism attacks; and the health-care system. Health-care costs and outsourced jobs are big domestic worries.

Which one or two elements of the economy concerns you most?

1. Cost of health care (44%)
2. Jobs going overseas (34%)
3. Gap between rich and poor (22%)
4. Cost of higher education (17%)
5. Federal budget deficit (16%)
6. Lack of good-paying jobs (15%)
7. Cost of housing (14%)

Bright spots: Americans expressed high confidence in the military and in small businesses.

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Source: WSJ/NBC telephone poll of 1,005 adults conducted July 27-30, 2007; margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points. Article: “America’s Economic Mood: Gloomy,” The Wall Street Journal (2 August 2007, subscription required)

Related: Policies needed to soften the blows of globalization