Unbeknownst to us, our Chief Operating Officer Yvette Roland-Smith hired an AI consultant to “optimize the performance of every team.”
There’s nothing worse than having some consultant skulk around your office. They always wear overly formal clothes, and it seems like their go-to move is to ask an executive a question that requires a focused attention purely for the opportunity to scan the room for malfeasance or ineptitude by some unwary employee during the answer.
And we’re totally paranoid someone will witness our various teams’ malfeasance and ineptitude. Especially the chemical engineers. It’s like they’re from the same frat or at a high school party with no adults around.
Besides, we don’t even know what “optimize” actually means. Which is why it’s on our official company scroll of banned words that lives in our break room on a marble pedestal (complete with a scroll holder we got on Etsy). This lovely, ancient document holds all those evil words that people nod along to, but if pressed, can’t define, or prevent from being ironic.
The document reads as follows, and is handwritten in the lovely English Roundhand calligraphic style of our founding fathers, thanks to the guy who runs the mini mart across the street who is totally randomly good at that kind of thing. We’re publishing it as a public service…no wait…Panama says we’re publishing it to fulfill our court-ordered community service for that time we parked a competing CEO’s Big Dumb SUV in front of a fire hydrant so it would get towed. It never did, but obviously we had to slim Jim some locks and crack a steering column to move it, which this municipality apparently frowns upon.
Scroll Of Doom: Commit These Words To Papyrus/The Air and/or Electronic Documentation And Ye Shall Be Removed From The Bonus Pool
Plus, we explain why!
Synergy – Originally meant complementary parts working together, now often used to justify mergers or collaborations that make no sense whatsoever, or have no stated goal
Disruptive – Once described genuinely revolutionary business models, now applied to any series of impotent feature releases framed as “improvements”
Paradigm shift – Originally meant fundamental changes in thinking, now used for any change in approach, including vegan options in the cafeteria
Leverage – Transformed from a specific financial term to a fancy way of saying “use,” e.g. “I need to leverage the handle on the toilet to flush this offal masquerading as a business plan down the toilet”
Optimize – Originally meant to make something as effective or functional as possible by finding the mathematically optimal solution to a specific problem, this slur evolved into a vague term used to suggest improvement with absolutely no objective evidence that the improvement exists Bonus: “mathematically optimal solution” means making tradeoffs, which is what all professionals who live in reality are forced to do. More’s the pity.
Circle back – Corporate-speak for “let’s discuss this later” without any intention to do so but rather an intention to permanently erase “this” from all minds in the room
Low-hanging fruit – Easy wins that are often neither easy nor particularly valuable and in fact generate massive lawsuits from the people we stole the idea from…not borrowed, stole…we can’t do that peopleEcosystem – Extended from natural systems to any loosely connected group of services or products…thus, this office is an ecosystem…the dinette is an ecosystem…the industrial art in the foyer is an ecosystem…our therapist is an ecosystem that we now need to call constantly thank you very much
Thought leadership – Originally meant innovative thinking, now just refers to marketing content distributed anytime, anywhere, by anyone
Best practices – Suggests final universal solutions that don’t exist so why is this even a thing gah when we know that infinite context-specific approaches are the only way to solve problems
Alignment – Managerial assurance of both their leadership prowess and agreement across all the teams and departments they manage without specific detail other than a bunch of problems that show there’s no alignment
Deep dive – “Looking at something for more than five minutes”
Scalable – Used to describe anything that theoretically could grow, regardless of realistic potential, of which there’s definitely zero
Touch base – Non-committal way to suggest communication would be beneficial at some point in the next 1,000 years but still without defining purpose
Value-add – Anything that supposedly brings value, often without measurable benefit, particularly for customers/clients/users/people who pay us money, which is, of course, valuable…at least to us up here paying the light bill
Actionable insights – Definitely not actionable, typically providing the same insight as one gains from staring at a small rock on the front lawn
Moving the needle – Suggesting significant impact when minimal change occurs…think disappointingly motionless needle on a metal detector
End-to-end solution – Comprehensive offering that frequently has gaps or requires additional service…not to mention this implies that customers/clients et al. would be satisfied with an end-to-middle, end-to-three-quarters, or some other partial solution
We highly recommend you copy this list and hang it from every light fixture in your office, or if remote, email it to your staff five times a day forever.
Have fun removing people from the bonus pool. The good news is, once they break the habit, your culture will revolve around being generally inspired, creative, courageous human beings rather than soulless automatons, and you can let them back in.
Want more help understanding organizational psychology and leadership principles to boost revenue? Call McKinsey, they’ll set you up with some skewed survey and nine month consultancy that will only set you back a cool $20 million.
Or, if you just want to make work life better for your teams, start by learning everyone’s name. You really can’t go wrong with that. Oh! And then tell them you’ll fire them if they don’t share this story with their friends. That works well too, we hear.