“Two nations divided by a common language.”
Winston’s Churchill’s pithy summary of Anglo-US linguistic relations is as valid today as ever.
The following isn’t a criticism of Americans (I like them so much I married one). But I think management-speak – all too common at all conferences – goes to a whole new level in the US.
The examples are endless. A perfectly good word can have been around for hundreds of years, minding its own business, having a universally understood definition.
Then wham. Somebody starts using it - or even worse mangling it and using it – and before we know it everybody is (mis)using it. Poor old “leverage” for instance. For decades, centuries, it was a noun which meant – well, we all know what it meant (still means).
But now everybody is “leveraging this” and “leveraging that”. Why does this happen, I wonder? It doesn’t help clarity, or precision. Perhaps the user feels good about their new pet neologism.
Recently “granules” joined the party, or was press-ganged into it. No longer little lumps of coffee, but anything requiring analysis has to have “granularity”. Aside from being an ugly sounding word, where did it come from?
The latest appears to be “incent” which, I suspect isn’t a real word at all. It is being used in place of “provide an incentive” or “incentivise”, the latter of which isn’t much better. I heard incent about 20 times in presentations yesterday at the ISM annual conference here in Orlando.
How long before it joins the harrowed ranks of over-used terms in the UK too?
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I’ve noticed that during the NATO action over Libya, politicians and strategists universally talk about the US, UK and allies having “assets”, rather than just fighter jets, aircraft carriers, etc. I suppose it serves to remind everyone that these assets require procurement, management and maintenance and that they depreciate, just like everyone else’s assets. Let’s hope the assets provide the necessary incent to bring matters to a conclusion, sooner rather than later.
I think it’s good of Steve (is there more than a passing resemblance there to Churchill?) to drill down to this level of granularity so that we can all eyeball the facts as he sees them going forward in real time.
As for Andy’s comments, the Jason Bourne films bring a whole new meaning to the term ‘asset’.
We can’t blame Americans for all of this, but a lot of the recent examples appear to come from the US. We have created our own confusion by having 2 words for lots of things eg “scare” & “frighten”, “purchasing” & “procurement” etc. Who added words like “sourcing” apart from CPOs trying to raise the profile of purchasing/procurement etc?
What about triangulation! I recently heard this term in a Market intelligence podcast and i was taken back to GCSE Maths and algebra….only to then continue to hear that its term that means to substantiate an opinion with other research from independent bodies who have different motives. Quite interesting, as triangulation as an image has made a footprint in my mind and as a concept is self descriptive.
So granular and triangulation are creative images to portray a view.