Government Affairs Blog

Who moved my BlackBerry ™?

If you think that ‘blue-sky thinking’ is the most important phrase to enter the lexicon of business language since ‘running it up the flag-pole’, that you need to be ‘better than your best’ and that you should always have a ‘positive headset’ then Who moved my BlackBerry ™? is not the book for you. 

On the other hand if you know someone who talks like that it is highly advisable to purchase it as soon as possible.  It will reassure you of your sanity.

The book covers a year in the life of Martin Lukes –

http://www.ft.com/comment/columnists/martinlukes 

Lukes writes a regular column in the FT.  The book contains Martin’s emails to all and sundry and some of the replies.  Martin, it should be explained, is the wicked creation of a real FT journalist, Lucy Kellaway.

What Kellaway does is more than just satirise the vacuous business language of today.  She shows how the language pervades corporate culture partly because it has become so well used that people think they understand its meaning and have no choice but to include it in their vocabulary when they speak to colleagues.  Even those who are less enthralled by it find themselves resorting to it.

The deeper problem with the use of words that lack meaning is that they are used to hide.  Lukes is hopeless at his job yet manages to remain in a fairly senior role and vie for promotion.  All the senior management resort to this contorted BS to cover up the fact they are about to make a lot of people redundant.  And they all become so wrapped up in ‘corporate speak’ that they are more concerned with getting the bizarre phrases right (on their terms) than actually doing their jobs.

Part of Kellaway’s brilliance is that we never discover what the company actually does.  We do know that it is losing money but this Enron-like problem is hidden by words that make no sense.

At the beginning of the year Lukes is Marketing Director.  Brace yourself if you work in communications.  The only comfort is that Lukes’s wife Jenny Withers is in PR and while being guilty of abusing the English language at times is far better at what she does than him. 

Simon Goldie is Head of Communication at The Chartered Institute of Taxation – www.tax.org.uk - and a member of the CIPR GAG committee