It’s a bit like…
Posted by Richard on | March 7, 2006
What do we have to do to stop the rampant proliferation of ridiculous business analogies?
I have recently had the misfortune of sitting through a meeting of nine extrememely intelligent people where, on being questioned about the progression of the temporary site, the account service person responded with all sincerity ‘we have been spinning the wheels for a couple of weeks now but we really feel like we gained some traction this week’. To which the entire room nodded in satisfaction. I was prepared to forgive this minor indescretion however the same line was regurgitated 3 times in ten minutes in response to any questions about the status of the site. Was I the only one in the room who interpreted this as ‘actually we hadn’t even started it until last Thursday but we did manage to cobble together a really crappy first draft which we will have the work experience placement rework in the coming days and pretend we have gone through an intensive development phase’
Interestingly the (abbreviated) dictionary definition of traction is:
1. the state of being drawn or pulled.
2. The adhesive friction between two surfaces
I think that sums it up perfectly
Comments
2 Responses to “It’s a bit like…”
March 7th, 2006 @ 10:32 pm
whatever happened to plain english?
what are they talking about? building a website or a tractor pull?
March 8th, 2006 @ 3:41 pm
Proliferation of management-speak and weasel words is a plague. Not only
because of the obfuscation, but because it actually dulls the mind. And it
gets worse when coupled with the group-think that occurs in meetings.
I think that’s called synergy.