Corporatese

As I enter the corporate world, I wonder whether I'll learn something, or will there be value addition going forward. In other words, will I resort to Corporate Speak?

I am a fan of Lucy Kellaway for some time now, and her recent Twaddle Awards were particularly hilarious. She is a columnist for FT and reads her columns out loud for the podcast audience as well (that's where I caught her). She is a crusader for sanity in corporate culture and using English instead of Jargonese.

In blogs and in forums, in conversations and mails, we are all aware of people saying things like 'going forward we should drill down, go back to the drawing board and aggressively leverage our deliverables to maximize value addition'. So it was with some relief that I read this post by Maybe MBA, who is from Chicago Booth. In a hilarious comment, Deadhedge said 'I was in a class where the professor said, "We are going to get beyond the cliches here. We are really going to drill down, peel back the onion, and kick the tires here."'

Can we start a new trend, making it uncool to use excessive and unnecessary jargon? I hate to think of myself using such language as a corporate man even though I probably will.