The sadly disturbing aspect to me about the following article is it's
apparent accuracy in describing the commoditisation of all aspects of our
culture.
Barry
The decline of public language
By MARGARET WENTE
Saturday, August 13, 2005 Updated at 1:29 AM EDT
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
After they settled the hockey lockout, I heard one of the players on the
radio. He was saying that he welcomed the new rules that are supposed to make
the action on the ice more exciting. "These changes will improve our product,"
he said.
Silly me. Sure, the NHL is a commercial enterprise with a bottom line in
a competitive marketplace. But it was depressing to hear a superb athlete call
his game a product. Who's going to get emotionally invested in a product? If
hockey is a product, then what are fans? Do parents take their kids off to
hockey practice at 6 a.m. so that the little tykes can sharpen their product
skills? Maybe so. These days, it's not whether you win or lose. It's how you
improve the product to capture greater market share.
No area of public life is safe from the language of the marketplace.
Politics succumbed long ago. We no longer have political parties. We have
brands, which have images to be either polished or tarnished, and policy
platforms that, like toothpaste, are carefully tested beforehand on focus
groups. Citizens are treated as consumers who either do or don't like the
flavour of the candidate, also known as product. Stephen Harper is said to be
lousy at retail, which is why the poor man is being made to spend his summer
hawking his wares at every small-town barbecue and Dairy Queen. Joan Rivers
shilling cubic zirconium on the Home Shopping Network has more dignity.
You might not expect better from politics. But what about good works? The
charitable world also has a terminal case of management-speak. The new global
CEO of Foster Parents Plan (now known as Plan, for marketing simplicity) likes
to talk about the importance of "brand awareness" in the voluntary sector.
He's got ideas for better ways to "leverage dollars" and "compete for market
share." As someone whose market share has been successfully captured by this
group, I was relieved to learn that the little girls I sponsor in far-off
lands are not simply passive recipients of aid. They are "development actors."
Every civic institution, arts organization and charity is obliged to use
management-speak nowadays. That's because they need to reassure their multiple
stakeholders that they operate on a businesslike model. They must demonstrate
that they are effective and efficient, as well as accountable and transparent.
It's not enough to help kids who live in poor countries, or treat sick people,
or teach students. Every homeless shelter and hospital, every museum and
university and branch of the civil service must have a vision, a mission, and
a strategic plan. Their managers are made to go on long retreats with
professional facilitators in order to come up with these things, which are
then enshrined on plaques, highlighted in the annual report, and hung
prominently in the main entrance of the institution for everyone to see.
Since everybody's vision and mission statement winds up sounding pretty
much the same, this exercise may strike you as a phenomenal waste of time. But
there's more. Everyone must also come up with tangible deliverables that have
measurable outcomes. They must commit themselves to partner with their donors.
They commit themselves to empower their clients, customers and, presumably,
development actors. Above all, their institutions must be leaders, preferably
world-class ones.
The decline of public language into sludge is the subject of a passionate
polemic called Death Sentences, by Australian writer Don Watson. Anyone who
cares for words should read it. Mr. Watson thinks words ought to matter. He
argues that the narrow, cliché-ridden vocabulary of managerialism has robbed
the public language of elegance and gravity. "We use language to deal with
moral and political dilemmas, but not this language," he fumes. "This language
is not capable of serious deliberation. It could no more carry a complex
argument than it could describe the sound of a nightingale. Listen to it in
the political and corporate landscape, and you hear noises that our recent
ancestors might have taken for Gaelic or Swahili, and that we ourselves often
do not understand."
The language of management-speak has created a dark and impenetrable
thicket. And once it gets into a place, it spreads like duckweed. "All kinds
of institutions now cannot tell us about their services, including the most
piddling change in them, without also telling us that they are contemporary,
innovative and forward-looking, and committed to continuous improvement," he
points out. Much of this abuse originates with management consultants, who,
far from being jailed or sued for it, are richly rewarded. By far the worst
offenders are HR practitioners, followed by those people who concoct
recruitment ads.
"As President and CEO, you will provide vision, direction and
inspiration," says an ad I saw the other day. They were looking for someone
who could build market share for either soup or starving children; I can't
remember. "A consummate communicator, strategist and leader, you have
galvanized support for whatever corporate or charitable cause you've
undertaken. Now you can leverage that presence and energy."
Like mission statements, all job ads sound the same. Everybody wants a
"leader" who is "strategic," and preferably "visionary."
"You are highly strategic, analytical and collaborative in approach,"
reads another ad. "You are a visionary who is forward-looking with an
innovative flair and a proven ability to move ideas from paper to practice.
With well-honed leadership skills, [you will] execute a team-driven plan that
will position this key functional area as one of excellence." What's the job?
Well, it's CFO for a university. But it could be anything, really.
Anyone who cares about language, about meaning, about clarity, should
revolt. Citizens are not customers, and democracy is not a product. If Barbra
Streisand had sung "Customers . . . customers who need customers," would
anyone have cared? If Martin Luther King had said, "I have a vision
statement," would anyone have listened? Words matter more than we think. We
need them to express our deepest values. As a wise man once said, what does it
profit you if you gain market share but lose your soul? Or something like
that.
