Weasel words

Noody likes weasel words. Well, except for politicians, academics, salesmen, admen, planners, lawyers, MBAs, members of the American military and bureaucrats everywhere . . . apart from all of them, no one likes weasel words.

But you still catch yourself occasionally don't you. A "multi-tasking" here, a "going forward" there, a "delivering quality outcomes" everywhere . . . it's like an addiction, isn't it. Here's Barry, he's a weaselwordholic. See:

Hello, my name is Barry Carter and I’m a weaselwordholic.

I guess it all started when I was a manager in the public service. At first it was only the soft stuff, like the odd restructure or client service charter. There just didn’t seem to be any harm in it and everyone was doing it anyway. Before I knew it I had moved on to transparent processes, key drivers and then the hard stuff like balanced scorecards. By the end of the year I was dropping 4 or 5 caps of focus groups and corporate memory every day.

My staff began to shun me as my coherence diminished and I took to shuffling through the corridors of power, prostituting myself to get my next fix. This came at a terrible price. I was introduced to crack complexity resolution and was soon freebasing change management and process re-engineering. I was on a highway to hell without a key performance indicator to guide me.

A frightening addiction, isn't it. Visit Barry's Weasel Words site to leverage treatment of your own addiction.