Business Speak

Often, I have writing ideas that aren’t suitable for a long ramble. They are small takes on situations I find interesting or amusing. I’ve decided to share them under the title of “Bits and Pieces”.

My first entry is about “Business Speak”.

Here goes:

Despite being a research scientist, Ron’s former job required him to be around a lot of profit-driven business people. With the advent of Covid, and the switch-over to Zoom meetings, I got to overhear A LOT of meetings. Usually, I’d be working on college stuff while this was going on. Still, I would pick up on snatches of conversations.

I have a few observations.

Business speak is strange. There are these phrases, which I think are meant to sound sleek and sexy, and Just. Are. Not.

“Circle back”, “reaching out”, “wants to be”….I heard these so often, I seriously considered ear plugs!

I get it. They sound cool. They’re quick and catchy. You wanna sit at the cool kid’s table.

And, maybe you only say them once or twice a day. You think you aren’t overdoing it. You as an individual probably aren’t. The problem is EVERYONE is saying them. If an employee has 10 business calls per day, and all of those participants are using the same phrases, it adds up!

For me, it’s so much easier to hear a nice normal, “We’ll get back to that later” than a “We’ll circle back”. My brain goes through an extra layer of processing to decide “circle back” = “get back to that”.

The same thing applies to “reaching out” and “wants to be”. Plus, with “wants to be”, you are ascribing sentient actions to non-living ideas. I don’t enjoy the mental gymnastics.

A work schedule for getting a project finished doesn’t “want to be” an Excel spreadsheet. It might “need” to be, or, more likely, “should” be. It can’t “want”. It’s not alive. Immediately my brain is shouting “NO!” and I have to work my way back to what is actually being said.

As for Ron, he particularly hates “reaching out”.

Folks, seriously! You have no idea how much he dislikes that phrase. He’s such a nice easygoing fellow but when he hears (or reads) that phrase, I immediately have to talk him down from the highest levels of pure snarky-ness. I’ve legitimately known him to consider fire-able actions (in the form of salty replies) when confronted by the phrase “reach out”.

He has a valid point.

Reaching out implies (or used to imply) caring and compassion during a difficult situation. Instead of adding an emotional element, I’d suggest simply stating what you’re going to do. “I’ll call you”, “I’ll email you”, or “I’ll text you”. Plus, being clear and concise helps avoid confusion. If you say you’re going to “reach out” to me, I don’t know if I should expect a phone call, an email, a text, a carrier pigeon….what are you gonna do?!!!!

Or, if you say “can you ballpark a timeframe when you’ll have the bandwidth”…..yeah, I’m gonna need a few minutes to decipher before I get back to you.

The point being...business is business. Say what you mean. We’ve all got plenty to do, no need to add extra work.