The Language of Business

I'm employed as an engineer for a large tech company. This tech company recently had some changes in management, but they haven't affected me at all since I work on a contract for the Fed. Government contracts are a different breed.

I'm going to quote an email I just received about the on-going merging of the two companies.

The thing to notice is the language. Everything about business management is centered around language. It's really not about ideas, or good stewardship of a business. All that matters is the language. People get MBA's to fluff out their resumes, and learn how to use words. The words are irrelevant and meaningless, but it is what these people invest themselves in.. and then they wonder how they've helped run the economy into the ground.

To be sure.. real results don't matter very much. The objective of the effective manager is to get a very large bonus, and speak the correct language. Only when speaking the correct language can the manager relate to other managers and seem to be "cutting edge".

One simply cannot use the language of the past and expect to get ahead. The effective manager must appear to be ahead of the curve by using new words and phrases that sound a lot like the old phrases, so as to not scare anyone by appearing to be too new.

Two people collaborated to write the below notice that was just sent to 10's of thousands of people. All that mattered to them was the language, style, and phrasing of the words. I'm going to X out the company names, but it's really not that difficult to suss it out.

More than two months past the Close of XXXX's acquisition of XXXX, impressive progress is being made in bringing both companies together.

The first four leadership levels for XXXX, an XXXX company, have been selected and announced, with the next level due in the weeks ahead. Leaders are bringing together their combined groups. New business is being generated, thanks to collaboration between sales organizations. And more than 260 specific integration projects -- covering issues ranging from account management to IT data centers to alliance partnerships -- are moving forward.

And now we've passed Nov. 1st. This date, the start of the new fiscal year, marks XXXX's increasing ability to go to market as a larger, more unified organization. It follows a number of organizational shifts, the consolidation of financial accounting and the naming of leads for our top 200 enterprise accounts. It is when we truly begin to bring forth the strength of our combined companies.

To help keep you informed and involved in the process, we are launching the Integration Inquirer, a newsletter that will initially run monthly and keep you abreast of developments across the integration effort. It includes features that drill into issues such as what's changed on Nov. 1st and how employee selection works, news updates from the regions, and a flavor for what's going on in some of the key work areas involved in the integration process.

The newsletter is being sent to those in the XXXX business group, as well as managers in XXX and horizontal functions, who should cascade this to their staff, where appropriate.

For all the activity that's going on, it's important to remember that the integration process is a long, complex undertaking, as we work to achieve XXXX's objective of becoming the world's leading technology company.

We're hoping that initiatives like this newsletter will keep you current on integration successes and changes to our business operations. More detailed information specific to your business, function and the overall integration is available on the Integration Portal. Recent updates include more than 170 Q&As around changes on Nov. 1st and recent letters from each of our geographic regions.

If you want to impress people at your place of work, simply take all the words that I've bolded in that statement, and use them in your communication.

I guarantee somebody will ask you where you got your MBA.