The mystique of Managementspeak

IT ALL BEGAN with Sathya’s e-mail.

“In our company,” Sathya mailed Deb, “when someone seeks a superior’s help with a problem, they call it escalate”.

Sathya’d quoted a sentence:
’In the event the Senior Support Executive is unable to resolve the problem, the issue is escalated to the Support, QA, Product Managers---in that order.’
“It doesn't sound right,” Sathya’d written, “but my manager says the term’s used in our organization.”

“And what did you tell her?” Chhanda asked.

“I told her”, said Deb: “ ‘If your manager sucks his foot into his mouth and insists on keeping it there, don’t suggest he quit eating toes---he'll only victimize you’. . . Spirited little Tamil girl; training to be a technical writer; mails queries now and then.”

“You should’ve told her most Indian males talk patent NONSENSE,” Anjum said. “They rant automatic expressions. In the highly unlikely event you can get ’em to understand it’s rant, they’ll still say ‘But it is used’.

Deb agreed: “I guess his mug-and-vomit education makes the Indian a zombie. He gets no soft skill training in school---speaking or writing. Gets so used NEVER to using his head that he refuses to weigh what he blurts. He utters---or mutters it---only because ‘it’s used’.

“Why ‘Indians’?” Chhanda sounded cross. “Indians don’t have monopoly over inflated language, surely?”

“No,” said Deb. “I guess Yanks take the cake.”

“Hey, let’s not generalise,” said Anjum. “The Yanks’re always for plain language. It’s their politicians and their masters---those who oil America’s war machine---that cook up Pentagon’s doublespeak and Weapons of Mass Obfuscation.”

Deb mused aloud: “And who’s behind American MBAspeak?”

“The latest fad,” snorted Anjum. “On the Net I saw how a corporate training director described his function:
“ ‘My job,’ he said, “ ‘is to ensure proper process deployment activities take place to support process institutionalization and sustainment. Business process management is the core deliverable of my role, which requires that I identify process competency gaps and fill those gaps’.”

“Sounds hideous,” Chhanda wrinkled her little nose. “What’s it mean?”

“ ‘I'm the training director’,” said Anjum. “That’s all.”

“The MBA pestilence has spread, y’know,” Deb said. “It’s screwed sales talk, ad talk too. How about this:
‘Performance metrics consistently indicate an exceptional consumer-measured response to the proliferation of our creative deliverables.’

“Is that meant to mean something?” Chhanda pouted in disgust.

“That’s sales management lingo,” said Deb. “For: 'Sales are up since we started the new ads.' Get it?”

“No, I don’t get it at all,” Chhanda said sharply.

Deb explained with his Virgo clarity: “It’s a jackass’s con game: take a familiar word like product; and stretch it to an abstraction. A product is delivered to the consumer. So the jackass uses deliverable instead. When you don’t understand his rant, the jackass plays egghead, and tells you condescendingly that’s managementspeak. To bray louder than another, each jackass strings abstract nouns to muddle sense: nouns ending with ~ation, ~ment ~sion, ~tion. Some of their staple: utilization, realization, upgradation, implementation, procurement, engagement, incentivize, facilitate, synergistic, and so on. If the jackass is American, he’ll go for noun strings; if an Indian, he’ll go for abstract nouns and participles.

“Many of them’ll go for terms such as competency---in the belief that’s more high-sounding than competence. A favourite among them is the ‘~able’ tag. NGOs did the same with their adjectives: sustainable development, and what have you shit. Maybe we should coin a word for these consters: asscons, perhaps?

Here Kanchan tweaked the focus: “Chhanda, Anjum didn’t say just ‘Indians’; he said ‘Indian males’.”

“Hey, I know where that’ll lead,” said Deb. “Let’s not start a battle of the sexes.”

“You don’t like the truth how males spew crap, eh?” Kanchan jabbed.

“Testosterone at work,” Anjum muttered mysteriously.

That flabbergasted Chhanda: “Is that Anjumspeak? What’s with the male hormone and gobbledygook?”

Kanchan took over: “The male hormone spurs gobbledygook. Testosterone gives the cock its comb, the peacock its strut, and the vainglorious male his blather . . . y’see Chhanda, Anjum got the bull by the horns. Ever heard a woman spew crap? It’s always men. Men never grow up; they only grow senile. The braggart schoolboy becomes the buncombe, the windbag, the loudmouth . . .”

“Whoa!” Deb stopped her. “I knew this’d lead nowhere. Yes, MBAs spew stupid jargon. They’ve spewed so much of it they’ve achieved a communication black-out. Their business letters, brochures and client presentations are polysyllabic hogwash, spattered with abstract-noun strings. Their mountebank instructors stuff trainees with bullshit way too much for the space inside their skulls, and it spills over as blather. But the shit’s in their brains, not between their legs.”

“You scratch only the surface, man,” Anjum cut in. “Dig deeper, and you’ll see a whole culture of fanfaronnade. The Indian male always jettisons meaning and jumps to drivel--- prefers form to substance; mumbo-jumbo to clarity; buzzwords to specifics. Just read our English-language newspaper editorials.

“Dig deeper yet, and you’ll see how chanting meaningless mantra has screwed our culture.

“Spew a fad mantra, and watch it froth. Take driven. The management-wallahs tell us of market forces being impact-driven; tie-ups relationship-driven; business initiatives mission-driven.

“Their pep talk asks salesmen to become target-driven; communicators content-driven; accountants data-driven, women secretaries engagement-driven, and all executives vision-driven. And for variety, values-driven.

“They’ll advise managers to promote data-driven interaction; introduce data-driven metrics, ensure data-driven deliverables.

“And all that mumbo-jumbo, they’ll tell you, will bring about a new data-driven drive in India’s corporate world.”

“Only,” Deb chimed in, “they’ll first need data-driven data.”

“The truth,” said Anjum, getting at Chhanda, “is that Indians are to gobbledygook born, and Indian males are gobbledygook-driven.”

... And that’s all the news for today.

His Scorpio eyes askew with cynicism, Subhas watched Kanchan scan her newspaper.

“Ferreting for news?” The sarcasm was unmistakable. “Yell when you find any.”

Kanchan, the determined Capricorn, kept reading.

Rohit, the blunt Taurean, got suspicious: “What’re you pitching at?”

“Nothing sinister,” Subhas donned a studied cool. “Just marveling we expect the paper to give us news.”

“What do you see in a paper?” the Taurean snorted.

“The Establishment’s billboard.” Subhas yawned.

“Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, wise Solomon,” Kanchan swished a grey lock aside and mimicked Subhas’s cool. “You slogged 30 years in a newspaper: let’s have the full monty.”

Subhas ignored Kanchan’s jab: “What’s there to bare? Just track the source for each bit of news: 98 per cent of it all’s either a briefing, or a handout they call a Press Note.”

“What’s that mean?” Rohit demanded.

Subhas put on mild surprise: “Simply that all of it’s what the Establishment chose to dope the Press with.”

“Are you saying all of it’s lies?” Kanchan now laid her paper aside.

Subhas chewed each word: “I’m only saying it’s what the Establishment rammed down reporters’ gullets.”

“Huh?” Rohit sounded nettled.

“I’m talking about the nature of ‘the news’.” Subhas was cucumber-cool no longer, I noticed.

“Go on”, I prodded him.

“We want our newspapers to tell us what’s happening, and what might hit us from where, right?” Subhas expanded.

“Sure”, I said.

“D’you think that concerns the reporter?” he teased us.

Rohit wanted no riddle: “What does?”

“Only CYA”, Subhas said mystifyingly.

“Huh?” Rohit was impatient. “What does that spell?”

Subhas dragged each word: “Cover Your Ass. Saving his ass from getting kicked.”

“Who by?” Rohit was sharp.

“The chief reporter”, said Subhas. “And his by the chief of bureau, and the bureau chief’s by his editor.”

“Why?” persisted Rohit.

Subhas said it casually: “It works like this: say, a paper’s got ten reporters. The chief reporter gapes at his roster in the morning. Sees one’s got the day off and a few are on leave; figures only six’ll turn up. He’s gotta ensure they scrounge enough to fill the holes for local news. It’d be risky asking a reporter to go get a story: what if he draws a blank?”

Curiosity now softened Rohit: “So what does he do?”

“So Chieffie decides he’d better not spur them to chase ANY news; only limp to press conferences and briefings---where they’ll be stuffed with non-news. Enough to dump into the allotted space.”

Kanchan smiled: “You mean they target non-news before news gathering can even begin, eh?”

“Bull’s eye!” Subhas chuckled.

“And then what happens?” Rohit couldn’t wait.

“And then,” said Subhas, “each reporter turns steno at the press conference. Scribbles scraps of official jargon in his note pad; begs for a Press Note if one’s ready.”

“And then?” Rohit was all ears.

“Then each reporter dawdles back to his paper”, Subhas drawled, “and rehashes the stuff into ‘reports’.”

“What about murders, robberies . . . and accidents?” Kanchan expected him to backtrack.

“Ditto.” Subhas sang. “Reporters on the beat buzz the police; jot down whatever they dictate over the phone.”

“Gosh!” Rohit was indignant. “Don’t they run to an accident site?”

“Only if it’s something big, and the bureau chief feels they’d better get crumbs from the spot. Or may be a ‘sensational’ murder---that’s if someone rich or well-known’s done in. If a serial killer bumps off only a pavement-dweller, they’ll go by police dictation.”

“Hey, you’re making reporters out to be redundant!” Kanchan was pissed off.

“But that’s how it works,” Subhas shrugged. “Reporters sent to the Secretariat take dictation from government officials. Those at police headquarters take it from police officers. It just so happens the paper that employs ’em pays their salaries. Papers might as well hire stenos, or just peons who’ll fetch the handouts.”

Rohit saw the light: “Hmm . . . those officials can plant what they like, and omit what they don’t.”

“Precisely. The administration ignored starvation in Orissa villages; so we didn’t get to read of baby-selling in Kalahandi. Police ignored children vanishing in Nithari. And so we never read of kebabs being made outta those kids. Tribals are dispossessed of their forest land; we get to read nothing. The Iraqis want Yanks off their soil. But the U.S. Establishment tells reporters Iraqis are the ‘insurgents’---so we never read that the Yanks are the intruders . . . Only, if the court lets off Sanjay Dutt, we don’t get to read much else . . .”

“Are you saying there’s no investigative journalism?” Kanchan interrupted him.

“The little that began here after the Emergency,” said Subhas, “fizzled out by the ’80s. Paper owners want nothing probed.”

That to Rohit was scandalous: “Gosh! Why not?”

“The big guys that give the big ads might be peeved,” Subhas served that bland. “Might vex the mafiosi . . . or rile the owners’ bum chums, y’know.”

“You can’t be serious,” said Kanchan.

Subhas shot back: “Think, woman. News is what the Establishment does NOT want printed; what somebody somewhere’d want to STOP you from publishing.”

“What’s what they dole out, then?” Rohit was calm now.

“What they WANT you to print is propaganda. Reporters get stuffed with what the Establishment decides we oughtta read. After they’ve served that, those stenos believe they’ve done their job. And we believe we’ve got the news. And the Establishment gets down to cooking the next hunk of bullshit.”