Doublespeak: the lexicon of managerial confusion

Doublespeak, the lexicon of managerial confusion continues to thrive in the workplace. I have long cited my love/hate (mostly hate/hate) relationship with the jargon-fuelled world of the 'manager', whose main (and sometimes only) purpose in life seems to be to sanitise unwelcome news, minimise horror and disguise the outrageous, pointless and otherwise sickening through a stream of banal verbiage.

To this end I had, until the start of February, avoided all forms of contact with the world of the managerial meeting. Yesterday, however, I felt I should dip my toe into the sea of insanity, if only to test the temperature. It couldn't be quite as bad as I remembered could it? 

No, it wasn't.....it was far, far worse.

Here are some new gems of management doublespeak heard in yesterday's meeting to add to my ever expanding file (oh yes, it's all being recorded):

Apparently certain current university programmes are 'baselining' with the result that they could be 'impacting deliverable frameworks'. As I understand it, we must all now look at the 'common academic structure' for, if it is to work, the  'process model' will have to reconsider the existing 'enterprise architecture'. By common consent, the only way this can realistically be achieved is to boost 'staff / student industry networking', something that can be promoted through the application of a 'more efficient career hub' otherwise we are all simply just 'pushing at a closed door'.

Simple really....can't see why I didn't think of it before.

I have a New Year's resolution (although it's now nearly midway through the second month of the year) which is to "Not Waste My Time Going To Infrastructure Meetings". Meetings involving student progress, student welfare and academic research I will attend as these all relate to real, tangible 'things', are chaired by real people who use real words and get real things done. The only purpose of Infrastructure / Management / Board (Bored) Meetings that I can see is to effortlessly remove 3 hours of your life with no appreciable gain, other than to justify the existence of those who really ought to be a) doing some proper work or b) being made redundant (preferably the latter).

There's no doubt about it; management euphemisms are becoming toxic and not just at universities, their corrosive influence eating away at common sense and sanity at all levels of modern society.

When I got home I flicked on the evening news to be confronted with an article assessing the current conflict (it's not a 'war' apparently) in North Africa. Evidently to reassure the public that this was more 'surgical strike' than industrial slaughter in which both civilians and soldiers are being endlessly killed, maimed or simply eviscerated, a Ministry of Defence (once known as the Ministry of War before someone thought that sounded a wee bit too aggressive) spokesman said that in Mali, Britain was merely 'providing logistical support' to the French as part of a 'wider initiative to increase soft power influence' across Africa.

A spokesman for the Con/Dem UK government added (helpfully) that UK 'military involvement' was a vital part of 'reconsidering upstream support' which helped 'buttress vulnerable polities'. This was all being carefully monitored, he said, so there was no worry about 'mission creep'.

So that's all right then.