Much to gain if we get rid of corporate jargon
By Andrew Boughton and Julia Bowen | smh.com.au | 05 November
What a salutary friend is culture, bent on seeing things as they are, and fixing standards of perfection that are real." – Matthew Arnold, Culture & Anarchy, 1869
Don Watson has published another book assaulting "corporate" language and its ill effects on everything from clarity of thought to verbal ugliness, blaming it on managerial culture.
And corporate language has apparently spilled out of the corporation into our wider culture.
Yet Watson, Paul Keating's former speechwriter, has unexpected supporters – corporate employees from entry-level staff to chief executives, all of whom seem to loathe the language of corporate culture.
In a survey, a group of people from diverse backgrounds was asked what they thought of corporate culture and language. The results were unequivocal.
An overwhelming majority suggested corporate language be removed, with its jargon, cliches and "newspeak", and replaced with more forceful, direct and plainer language.
A common theme was the need to engage employees more compellingly, reinforcing the implicit suggestion throughout the research that an air of inauthenticity pervaded corporate culture.
Three quarters said corporate culture was fake. Asked for the words they would associate with corporate culture, the respondents said fake, sterile, formal, inflexible, stifling, disengaged, boring, unethical, faceless, bureaucratic, controlling, groupthink and greed.
Stiff and inflexible were frequently repeated. In the meantime, the descriptors for non-corporate culture were largely antonyms for corporate – such as creative, supportive, collaborative, flexible, relaxed, enjoyable, free, happy and fun.
Where there is perceived inauthenticity in any social environment – and the language of corporate culture seems to reinforce this perception – problems are inevitably bottled up, tensions build and personal politicking thrives.
And whether an organisation is perceived as a good or bad place to work is almost perfectly correlated to the perceived level of corporate politicking.
The "worst" organisations for which respondents had worked were "extremely political". Moreover, in a political environment, innovation and imagination are stifled, according to the survey, as is candid upward feedback and the sharing of problems, which is critical to their resolution.
Not only Watson's work, but countless assaults on corporate culture by authors and filmmakers in popular and serious culture over many decades reinforce the findings.
From Mark Bentik's succinct tutorial on How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, made into a hit Broadway musical and feature film, to the excruciating humour of Ricky Gervaise in The Office and the ferocious politicking of Disclosure.
There is also Atlas Shrugged, Executive Suite, The Corporation, Mon Oncle, The Desk Set, or corporate types in sitcoms such as The Drew Carey Show or Seinfeld.
The list is almost endless. The common theme of these endeavours is that corporations are rife with nasty personal agendas, and for this reason alone are awful places to work. And that underlying the politicking, the culture and its language are inauthentic and insincere.
Corporate employees are the ones who most avidly consume these cultural critiques because they tell some home truths about work life that otherwise remain unspoken.
Bentik's scathing satire on corporate culture, for instance, struck a chord in the golden age of American corporate wealth and was grounded in material reality, since he rose like the character in his novel, from a mailroom clerk in real life to become vice-president of the advertising company Benton & Bowles.
An inevitable ambivalence plagues employees, who are all aware of the ironies of corporate life. Deeply earnest in their work on one hand, they are cynical on the other about corporate culture, with its careerism and inauthenticity.
What we value in true culture above all else is simple candour. While this quality is often lamented for its absence, we also value it deeply.
We will accept almost anything from those who are straightforward, however outrageous. At least we know what they're thinking.
More than half the population are wedded to larger business and government organisations, and they really want to make these partnerships work.
While the company is not a person, it is perceived as such by the people who work in it.
But it is seen as a false person, with a fake language, imposed and overlain on the real people throughout the organisation, from top to bottom.
Its personality interferes with the authentic relations between people and even begins to draw a curtain between the individual and their true self.
We need to consider this personality which we call corporate culture and why our innate values – and our wider social culture – are so deeply and profoundly at odds with it.
There is no proper language for corporate culture. The language of plain, purposeful English would be a good start.
Once the language problem is solved, other problems can be better addressed, because staff will now be listening.
We can begin to address the systemic problem of "corporate personality disorder".
Now, that would not only make Watson happy but relieve corporate employees of some of the many real stresses they face.
Andrew Boughton and Julia Bowen are directors of the consultancy group capitalC.
First published by Smh.com.au on November 05 2009
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