The Affliction of “Corporate Speak” – by Michael Laskin

If we speak to each other this way, can you imagine how we are speaking to consumers?
“What? Did you understand that?” “Huh?”
Is this a conversation that occurs in your office? Do you find that “corporate-speak” has become an indecipherable and endless well of sorrow? We at Syzygy Branding have created a Twelve Step Program for those afflicted with “corporate-speak.” Remember: it is a progressive disease, and the first step is to admit you have a problem. It might be too late for some of you, but if we can save one person from this astonishing lack of clarity, we feel we have succeeded.

The Twelve Steps

1. Attain consensus that we lack the key resources to successfully combat
“corporate-speak”, that our lives have reached stasis, and are in dire need of a holistic restructuring.

2. Believe that a key-enabler, greater than ourselves, could bring added value to our lives, and deliver an integrated proactive solution that will stabilize our lives.

3. Fast-track our resources, and seek a new paradigm with the
key-enabler who will function as a change-agent for our lives.

4. Conduct an in-depth moral inventory of ourselves and our deliverables.

5. Schedule a pre-meeting with our key enabler, and admit to ourselves (and to our team members) the true nature and depth of the “spoken clarity” issue.

6. Focus on having the key-enabler help us to identify an integrated solution that effectively deletes all “corporate-speak” from our nomenclature.

7. Humbly ask the key enabler to think outside-the-box and seek buy-in to create a breakthrough situation for all parties that can be spun as a win/win.

8. Create a database of all persons, team members, and strategic partners we have negatively impacted with “corporate-speak.” The directive is: expedite the making of amends to them all, while possibly creating an up-selling opportunity.

9. Seamlessly integrate these amends directly wherever possible, avoiding, emails, IM’s, and text messages.

10. Continue to perform due diligence regarding the “corporate speak” eradication initiative, and admit any culpability regarding the negative results of previous “corporate-speak” incidences on colleagues and co-workers.

11. Once all low hanging fruit has been picked on this initiative, seek through prayer and meditation to leverage our conscious contact with the key enabler, as we understand Him. At the end of the day, we seek validation and knowledge of His will for us (and our team), and the resources and timetable to carry that out.

12. Having had a valid and actionable spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we reach out to others, carrying this message of “spoken clarity” to those afflicted with “corporate-speak.” Make this a daily action item in our Palms, Blackberrys, and laptops.