Carlin had a perspective of humanity driven by the counter-culture zeitgeist of his era and probably assisted by the mind-altering effects of hallucinogens. His early material centered on nonsensical language–what words mean and don’t mean, which words are arbitrarily acceptable and which are not–how we use language to obfuscate, to appear erudite and smart.
Nowhere is such language more opaque, while at the same time impressive to the ear, than the jargon of business. Here is something I read this morning on my LinkedIn feed, related to artificial intelligence and its development as a tool for productivity in a business:
“It takes work to reimagine workflows, upskill and build capability, establish governance, and build a stable, scalable tech platform to see tangible outcomes and value creation gains. This cannot be done in sequential steps but rather constant parallel pathing, and this work is real, tangible and frankly hard.”
Imagining something is to create an image in one’s mind, a scenario that is not represented in reality. What does “reimagine” mean? Make something up twice? What if I hadn’t yet imagined anything? How could I then reimagine it?
What does it mean to “upskill”? Learn new things? A skill is a repeatable behavior that takes time to acquire and to demonstrate proficiency. Is learning something new always “up”, implying better? This term is similar to another new word that has jumped from the world of Dungeons and Dragons to business: “level up”. This means to gain power and treasure, as a character in a fantasy world game. Applied to business, it infers that elevation, however it is defined, is how you “win the game” of your professional career. Rising in stature appeals to the ego, which wants to be better and higher than other people. Satisfaction comes from being above others, so happiness is only relative.
“Stable, scalable tech platform” sounds important and good. But when is the last time we had a stable tech platform of any type? The pace of change in technology is only accelerating. Just when you learn the new operating system, interface or application, things change. The word “scalable” means that whatever tool or process you are using can be effective as the parameters of its application increase: more people, more transactions, more processes, more products, etc. Ironically, manual systems sometimes outperform technology-based methods, because employing the technology takes a long time to learn, continually changes and can overcomplicate simple actions. Sometimes technology-based solutions are not scalable.
And what about “value creation gains”? Seems redundant. If value is created, isn’t that automatically a gain? Is there ever a “value creation loss”? That wouldn’t be creating value. That would value destruction.
I have been, like Carlin, bemused at the use of language to obscure understanding intentionally. I’ve observed the phenomenon for as long as I’ve been in the world of business, which is one of the arenas where it is used heavily to distance people from understanding what is being said. Politics is another. But there is a simple way to engage with people who are throwing a bunch of high-sounding words out, in order to uncover what they are really saying, what they really know, and what they don’t.
You ask them, “What do you mean by ‘upskill’? What would be your definition of a ‘stable’ tech platform? Is that even possible?” Whenever I’ve probed deeper with someone who uses trendy, vague jargon, I usually get one of two reactions. One response type is that they pause, think about how to answer and then actually illuminate their thought in more direct, simpler language. That person knows what they are talking about. The other response is that they get irritated, dismissive or critical of the question. That response indicates you just unmasked a fraud.