Erik Moeller wrote: > On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 3:16 AM, Tom Morris <[email protected]> wrote: >> Mostly though, thanks to the Internet and multinational corporations, >> godawful business jargon crosses all national borders. Words and >> phrases like 'onboarding', 'stakeholders', 'mission statements', >> 'platforms', 'proactive', 'sectors' and pretty much anything >> 'strategic', for instance. > > Terms like "strategy", "mission statement" and "stakeholder" have > concrete organizational meaning. Yes, they are also often used as part > of marketing copy or organizational copy in ways that are unhelpful, > because people who aren't good writers feel the need to plug holes by > picking from the shared vocabulary of organization-speak. That doesn't > make them meaningless, anymore than the fact that every idiot has an > opinion on quantum physics makes quantum physics meaningless.
That's just your guilt talking. You've been as big an offender in this area as anyone. I can't be the only person who remembers that there's an entire "Strategic Planning" wiki. Anyone interested in a broad sampling of bullshit language need look no further. :-) > However, organizational development and management are serious human > endeavors that merit open-mindedness and willingness to discover and > learn on the reader's part just as much as they merit clarity and > brevity on the writer's or speaker's part. Being simplistic about the > "corporate world" is no more charming or noble than is ignorance about > any other field. Applying corporate jargon to a non-profit, or worse, to the wiki model, has expectedly poor results. MZMcBride _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
