Q1 2007 All Hands Meeting

My company hosts a quarterly all hands meeting. It's the executives' attempt to better communicate with employees. Its purpose is ironic, since they tell us nothing of consequence, in fact, they usually try to avoid telling us anything of importance (our best source of such information is the mainstream press).

These meetings are chock full of business speak. For the first few meetings I was in awe. OK, not in awe, rather I was entirely confused. What they were talking about sounded so complicated, I couldn't imagine how they could keep talking so coherently, never mind drive the strategic goals they were synergizing in real time. Then I realized it was all an act. It was their way of showing us how sophisticated they are, thus proving they are leadership material. They sound like they're talking with their mouths full of marbles.

It's rather a social obligation to attend these meetings, even though they're useless. To pass the time, I collect stats on business speak used. For each executive I tally up how many times they use each term. Below is a chart, showing the totals for everyone:


Until next time, valued partners. Going forward I urge you to leverage your core competencies to add value to your solutions, thus growing market share and establishing yourself as a leading player in the space.