This week's weasel words

Aspirational non-committment
'... we appreciate that all the stakeholders in Australia Inc eventually need to see a dividend as the reward for their hard work ... I stress that Medicare funded dentistry is an aspiration not a commitment.' Tony Abbott's address to the National Press Club of Australia, Canberra, 31 January 2012.

Untimed committment
'I will have to check on the date, but Caroline Springs obviously there are commitments there, and the timing of that I would have to double check on that.' Ted Ballieu, Premier of Victoria. 'When questioned late yesterday, the Baillieu government revealed there was no date for the construction of the station.' The Age, 1 February 2012.

Reverting back
'Could someone please revert back to the undersigned as to the duration of the above meeting as the claim forms need to be processed.' An email from an HR Administrator in the 'Medical Workforce Unit' at a Melbourne hospital. Thanks to Mark.

The full scope of work required is to prepare and, once approved, implement a Planning Strategy that:
· efficiently leverages past planning processes and related decisions
· integrates the contributions and services of the technical specialists
· utilises the BCRG as an important link between the GCWSC and the broader stakeholder community and a forum for discussing information and community views throughout the development of the Masterplan
· provides a clear plan for partnering with the C&SE consultant, as well as the PMT (including other technical consultancies) and the GCWSC (including working groups)
· provides flexibility during the Masterplan preparation to incorporate stakeholder feedback and BCRG recommendations
· promotes the GCWSC's role in overseeing the Masterplan and the shared management of the Broadwater
· creates an accessible point of truth for issues and opportunities facing the Broadwater, economically, ecologically and socially
· delivers a Masterplan that is accepted as the definitive guide for effective and sustainable management, planning and development of the Broadwater and utilises approaches that make it robust and enduring .
Strategically, success may be best served by a segmented approach designed to initially establish broad support for one alternative or direction, and subsequently employ other processes to explore options.
The Successful Offeror is to prepare, implement and deliver a methodology that coordinates the contributions of the BCRG, the C&SE consultant and technical specialists towards the production of a Masterplan that provides a definitive guide for waterway and land use management and development in the project area, provides confidence to the community about the future, supports investment by both government and the private sector, and adopts approaches that make it robust and enduring. Broadwater Master Plan (Qld)- Department of Transport and Main Roads. Thanks to anonymous.

We're not alone ...

Jargon Madness Game
'The next time you feel the need to reach out, touch base, shift a paradigm, leverage a best practice or join a tiger team, by all means do it. Just don't say you're doing it. Because--and please believe us--all that meaningless business jargon makes you sound like a complete moron ... Each day, for 32 days, readers will get to vote, via Twitter ... The goal: to identify the single most annoying example of business jargon and thoroughly embarrass all who employ it and any of these other ridiculous expressions.' Forbes, 25 January, 2012.

10 Management Terms You Can Use To Sound Smarter Than Everyone Else
'Following our critical view of what we saw as the worst management terms of 2011, we were delighted by the general response and to find such common concern over the diabolical increase in management jargon. But why, if we know it is so dreadful, do we let it persist? We have decided that it's most definitely a power game — an arms race. The holders of the newest and most convoluted terms are deemed to be the more superior.' Macro Man, Business Insider, 14 January 2012.

The Spokesman-Review, Condon team big on ideas – and jargon
'Best practices for delivery of policing services. No one ever used a phrase like that unless it was destined for a PowerPoint presentation, the world's No. 1 sleep aid. The transition team, in presentations to the mayor at City Hall, invoked every sweaty old warhorse from the stable of word-like bureaucratic communication, from “stakeholders” to “benchmarks,” from “best practices” to “strategic alignment,” from leveraging opportunities to mitigating costs, from “Don't reinvent the wheel” to “Challenge the status quo.” ... this language has an agenda. It is employed for various purposes that are additional – and sometimes contradictory – to letting people know what's going on. The ubiquity of these phrases, from higher ed to boardrooms to government panels to staff meetings, is an argument against them: As soon as every single administrator in America has said the same things a gazillion times, the words become utterly empty. Shawn Vestal, 13 January 2012.

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Who are we?

This site is for people who have silently wept into a crumpled copy of their company's mission statement, for teachers who want to work in classrooms and not customer service points, and for all those who have been underpinned by an innovative, value adding, creative, sustainable, diverse and optimised framework.

Why Weasel Words?

'In 1916 Theodore Roosevelt declared that the 'tendency to use what have been called weasel words was "one of the defects of our nation".' 'You can have universal training or you can have voluntary training, but when you use the word "voluntary" to qualify the word "universal", you are using a weasel word,' he said: 'it has sucked all the meaning out of "universal".'

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Page last updated Friday, 03-Feb-2012