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Thursday, October 9, 2014

Do you Speak "Corporate"?

True or False?:  Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.

SO False!  Words can hurt feelings, start wars, motivate and inspire - words can actually heal.  And, in the corporate world, words can either win or lose you business.

In many writing and communication classes in the academic world, we're told to write the way we would speak – to use simple words to clearly convey our message.  In the real business world, if we don’t use the expected jargon and buzz phrases, we may not win the bid or be awarded the project.  Words matter here on a financial level.

Here’s another one: If you can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance…baffle ‘em with bullshit.  This one is true.  Welcome to Bullshit 101.

Over 25 years as a supplier to major corporations has shown me that corporate clients insist on being baffled, and also spend a fair amount of energy baffling each other. The cynical side of me believes that if they can immediately decipher your message, they may feel that you don't grasp the scope of the project, or may not have the level of experience they require. 

For instance: The key to global growth is to efficiently operationalize client-centric solutions and monetize our assets.  Our brand trajectory is based on proven methodology holistically developed with a strong commitment to quality and world-class customer service.  When we're aligned with our core values we are positioned for exponential gains which will advance our market share and grow our business infrastructure.  By visualizing experiential opportunities for our customer base, we create initiatives that achieve synergy with the next generation of cross-platform innovations.  When management philosophy addresses mission-critical deliverables, we're able to diversify and capitalize our reputation.  The metrics will show that we can gain traction by incentivizing our sales organization to achieve viability and realize the seamless integration that will make our day-to-day operations robust and scalable.  Networking, crafting a clear brand identity and bringing a strong corporate culture to the table will take us to the next level, incorporating the necessary paradigm shift.  The bottom line is that, at the end of the day, we need to leverage our core competencies to think outside the box and reimagine our value proposition.

All of the sentences in the above paragraph were taken from actual company websites or presentations. If you are impressed by the paragraph above and require this kind of language from your suppliers, you might not be getting the best of the best.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt (or help) me? I call bullshit. 

Words matter:  use yours responsibly!

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