Corporate lingo: a new meaning.

Corporate America's love affair with "program du jour" has spawned an outbreak of language abuse of the most heinous nature. Management behaviors could be likened to that of an adult who tempts a child with a treat, then never allows the child the pleasure of actually having the treat. I'm talking about increased sensitivity to corporate lingo and resultant behaviors.

Recent observations of post-merger, post-quality, post-re-engineering, and post-profitability corporate culture changes have reinforced my understanding of how language drives behaviors and behaviors affect language. Organizations adopt or create a lexicon which reflects the formal culture and leadership philosophy. The words and phrases which make up this corporate language usually connote meaning on two levels. At management's level, language is meant as a descriptor of how customers, executive boards, and shareholders should perceive the organization. At the worker level, language takes a new twist. Employees compare the realities of management behaviors with the language spoken. All too often, there is a huge gap between the words and phrases spoken and the way workers perceive the "real" meaning of the language. Because behaviors differ from the originally expressed definitions of corporate lingo, there often are gaps between what was intended and what is real. The results...corporate confusion.

Consistent language application with correspondent behaviors create a cynical redefinition of words and phrases that pervade daily work routines and cause a great deal of cognitive dissonance for employees trying to manage in an increasingly hostile environment. This redefinition of workplace lingo will take years to overcome and will influence the evolution of corporate growth for generations to come. For example:

Corporate Term Redefinition

Quality Process       the most successful of all innocuous,
                      corporate-wide programs requiring huge
                      budgets, new departments and endless
                      hours of training classes and meetings

Process               that which requires countless hours of
                      data gathering and analyses to create
                      process flow charts which are filed as
                      evidence that work is being accom-
                      plished; unrelated to results or outcomes
                      of any kind

Quality Action Team   a committee
(QAT)

Quality Improvement   another committee
Team (QIT)

Quality Improvement   reason to have QIT's and QAT's
Process (QIP)

Systems Approach      label used to intimidate workers into ac-
                      cepting the rationale (or lack of rationale)
                      for management decisions

Business Decision     decision "they" made that "they" know
                      workers will not like

Downsizing            a business decision

Rightsizing           systematic closing of business units or
                      deletion of jobs by warning workers
                      ahead of time so they might quit before
                      they are fired (rightsized; downsized)

Rightsized Employee   worker who has been warned to look for
                      work and is seeking an intracompany
                      transfer; this worker has priority in the
                      selection process regardless of qualifica-
                      tions

Re-engineering        proper name for the business decision to
                      change department names, move people
                      into newly created job functions and re-
                      duce operating budgets

Re-organization       firing workers who did not change job
                      functions and/or lost their budgets dur-
                      ing re-engineering

Re-structuring        rearranging workers who were not fired
                      during the reorganization and redistrib-
                      uting reduced budgets again

Re-deployment         shifting workers to jobs vacated by work-
                      ers who got tired of being re-engineered,
                      re-organized, and re-structured

Strategic Plan        a secret document drafted by a select,
                      elite QAT or QIT which calls for re-
                      engineering

Strategic Planning    period of 60 days to 2 years in which the
                      select committee creates a document out-
                      lining the future of the organization;
                      usually consists of 50-1000 pages with
                      colored charts and graphs; highly touted
                      to be a market breakthrough

Market Breakthrough   classified; available on a need to know
                      basis only

Outsourcing           hiring of consultants and suppliers to
                      run the business while employees plan,
                      re-engineer, re-organize, restructure and
                      re-deploy

Cost Containment      slashing budgets to meet profit commit-
                      ments; usually aided by an organization-
                      al development consultant and led by
                      the accounting department to justify
                      their jobs

Resource Planning     detailing how more work will be accom-
                      plished by fewer employees with no
                      budgets; process to figure out who else
                      can be fired to reduce expenses

Job Elimination       legally safe reason to fire workers

Developmental         job opening filled by a worker who is not
Position              required to compete for the open posi-
                      tion; formerly labeled "promotion"

Appointment           also formerly labeled a "promotion," but
                      no longer due to an effort to protect the
                      esteem of workers who are "demoted"

Decision Making at    "they" will make the decision unless
the Lowest Level      "they" decide it isn't important, then
                      "you" can make the decision

Empowerment           word used to describe why management
                      is unhappy that workers did not do
                      something, i.e. "We don't understand
                      why you didn't cut your operating bud-
                      get another 25%, you're empowered to
                      do that!"; this word strikes fear into the
                      hearts of workers, because they never
                      know when and where they may be em-
                      powered by management

Performance           human resource initiative to train super-
Management            visors in techniques to eliminate under-
                      empowered workers without increasing
                      legal actions against the company

Diversity             human resource accounting of total num-
                      ber of women, blacks, Hispanics, native
                      Americans and all other minorities cur-
                      rently on payroll

Managing Diversity    double-edged human resource function
                      to recruit and retain adequate supply of
                      all minority workers while taking care to
                      not inadvertently re-organize, eliminate,
                      fire or otherwise free minority workers

Respect for Others    management practice of inviting non-
                      managers to meetings, receptions, din-
                      ners and assigning them to serve on
                      QAT's and QIT's

Openness and Trust    management practice of encouraging dis-
                      cussion of "real" problems, unless the dis-
                      cussion is critical of business decisions;
                      management may criticize unempow-
                      ered workers but empowered employees
                      may not criticize management

Teamwork              what workers claim they are doing be-
                      cause they do not have a label for "other
                      people in the building"

This glossary is an unfortunate and cynical reflection of what many, many corporate workers face daily in their work environments. Worklife has taken a brutal beating in recent years and the corporate trust has been broken in many ways. There are critical elements which must be worked through. The intentions were always good, there is no malice. Corporate leaders are struggling to adapt to a dynamic global economy and do a good job. One place they can start and make huge gains, is to understand the potency of language and then, simply..."walk the talk."

Richard D. Haymes, who spent 18 years in the corporate environment, is a principal of Haymes Hager and Parro, Consultants in Human Development and Performance (Bedminster, NJ).