The Tyranny of Buzzwords

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Abstract

th similes and metaphors, poetic in their praise. He looks for your impressed eyes to widen, jaw to drop, and wonderstruck nods.Disappoint him with any doubt, and he gets miffed and does reruns as if you are a child. He implies or blubbers, “Don’t you get it? Come on, in which world are you living, you imbecile?” But if you show yourself to be an even bigger mountebank than him with jargon in return, you get his reluctant respect and a welcome to the club.The problem is that buzzwords create will-o’-the-wisps, obscuring more than they reveal. They hide everything vital, like the proverbial bikini.Practical people who deliver working solutions know the reality beneath blithe blurbs, the limitations, the boring yet essential details. They know there are nuances, with much to learn and understand, and what the hype promises is not usually life-altering. The reach of new-fangled fads is a lot less than the buzz suggests. And they’re often old wine in a new bottle.Top managers love these fads. So do their marketing and sales chiefs. They see big dollar signs in them and easy ways to impress. Visions appear of killer new business, double-digit growth, zooming profit and market share.And they try to sell the hype without anyone needing whatever it means. It takes a while for the cruel reality to sink in. Then the golden goose turns into a ratty pigeon. They cannot understand it. It was the greatest thing since we went to the moon, right? Aww. Oh well, on to the next Billion Dollar Baby.Alas, that’s not all, for the collateral damage can be huge in wasted inves

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tment and years, especially for the grungy but genuine experts. These sceptical, cynical, wry realists are expected to push shallow ideas doomed to failure. If some big and foolish customer signs up, it is the worst-case scenario as she has to work out some solution. Often it is misfitting, complicated, just plain wrong, expensive, and slow. If she resists, she gets branded as unsupportive of company strategy. She feels she’s digging her own grave when she tries to explain.So she often goes with the flow, “bye-bye integrity”, and spends a slow eighteen to twenty-four precious months of her life crunched between the customer and her organization.There have been attempts to tackle this problem—for example, the Gartner Hype Curve. But guess what, the Hype Curve itself has become a fad. If your company’s current blue-eyed product or service is on it anywhere, then it’s good, for you’re in the game. You first admit to clients that you are on its upward slope with fake humility, then try to sell your stuff anyway. Talk about having your brazen head in the sand.Please swear you won’t use buzzwords, starting now. You’ll do humankind an excellent service.There you are, that’s my grouse for the day. Better off my chest.Cheerio.Shashi Sastry <a href="http://quality-thinking.com">quality-thinking.com</a>To clap, comment, highlight, and enjoy my stories and those of other excellent Medium writers, please consider subscribing for $5 a month from this referral <a href="https://medium.com/@ssastry1111/membership">link</a>.</article></body>

Hype and jargon can do real damage

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Everyone is an expert nowadays, almost a guru. There is an excellent inducement in buzzwords for the casual charlatan, for it puts wind into his mainsail. Of course, he knows what Cloud is, or Big Data, Data Mining, Neobank, RegTech, Blockchain, Industry 4.0, A/B Testing, Digital, Platform, etc. Confident of his keen insight and wisdom, he expounds on his original discernment of these ‘leaps’ of humankind. He gets lyrical with similes and metaphors, poetic in their praise. He looks for your impressed eyes to widen, jaw to drop, and wonderstruck nods.

Disappoint him with any doubt, and he gets miffed and does reruns as if you are a child. He implies or blubbers, “Don’t you get it? Come on, in which world are you living, you imbecile?” But if you show yourself to be an even bigger mountebank than him with jargon in return, you get his reluctant respect and a welcome to the club.

The problem is that buzzwords create will-o’-the-wisps, obscuring more than they reveal. They hide everything vital, like the proverbial bikini.

Practical people who deliver working solutions know the reality beneath blithe blurbs, the limitations, the boring yet essential details. They know there are nuances, with much to learn and understand, and what the hype promises is not usually life-altering. The reach of new-fangled fads is a lot less than the buzz suggests. And they’re often old wine in a new bottle.

Top managers love these fads. So do their marketing and sales chiefs. They see big dollar signs in them and easy ways to impress. Visions appear of killer new business, double-digit growth, zooming profit and market share.

And they try to sell the hype without anyone needing whatever it means. It takes a while for the cruel reality to sink in. Then the golden goose turns into a ratty pigeon. They cannot understand it. It was the greatest thing since we went to the moon, right? Aww. Oh well, on to the next Billion Dollar Baby.

Alas, that’s not all, for the collateral damage can be huge in wasted investment and years, especially for the grungy but genuine experts. These sceptical, cynical, wry realists are expected to push shallow ideas doomed to failure. If some big and foolish customer signs up, it is the worst-case scenario as she has to work out some solution. Often it is misfitting, complicated, just plain wrong, expensive, and slow. If she resists, she gets branded as unsupportive of company strategy. She feels she’s digging her own grave when she tries to explain.

So she often goes with the flow, “bye-bye integrity”, and spends a slow eighteen to twenty-four precious months of her life crunched between the customer and her organization.

There have been attempts to tackle this problem—for example, the Gartner Hype Curve. But guess what, the Hype Curve itself has become a fad. If your company’s current blue-eyed product or service is on it anywhere, then it’s good, for you’re in the game. You first admit to clients that you are on its upward slope with fake humility, then try to sell your stuff anyway. Talk about having your brazen head in the sand.

Please swear you won’t use buzzwords, starting now. You’ll do humankind an excellent service.

There you are, that’s my grouse for the day. Better off my chest.

Cheerio.

To clap, comment, highlight, and enjoy my stories and those of other excellent Medium writers, please consider subscribing for $5 a month from this referral link.