Management Speak

Doc Searls and others have been having a field day with what Doc calls the TechnoLatin on the KnowNow site. It's the kind of management babble-speak that made Buzzword Bingo so popular for a while.

I think the answer to why would anyone bother to put up such garbage-nonsense is simple: The web site was put up to satisfy KnowNow management, not their customers. I'd suspect that their intranet (if they have one) is even more useless.

Someone (was it Jakob Nielsen?) once said: "If the CEO likes your web site, it is not doing its job."

To me, any species that ever would dare to utter "synergies" with a straight face is a part of the problem, not the solution. Management have their own agenda (to make themselves rich at the expense of the bodies that they climb) and have their own vocabulary. The #1 rule for the vocabulary is that there be nothing concrete in it -- one must always leave weasel room.

The only time that management ever wants to deal in specifics is when they are negotiating their employment contracts and golden parachutes.