"Calling a spade a spade: the case of business jargon
After Artificial Intelligence, I set out to write about another trendy topic: our increasing permeability to bullshit. Apparently we live in the age of fake news and "post-truth" (is this bullshit about bullshit?). Social networks, with their well-known megaphone effect and additive functioning, seem to have influenced the activation of new strategic models aimed at capturing audiences or, ultimately, the attention of readers/users. Not being the only one, this seems to be one of the factors that has regressed our capacity to ascertain the truth, both on an individual and social level. Among other aspects are, for example, the ease of access and the amount of information available, both from credible sources and others. Our attention has been commoditised and, as we all have a limited capacity to be attentive, by adopting a passive attitude we risk reaching saturation without realising it.
Returning to bullshit, one must know how to distinguish it from lying. As the philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt writes in his seminal book On bullshit1, producing bullshit is not the same as lying. In lying the truth is deliberately manipulated and subverted. Bullshit results from the combination of two factors: those who produce it don't care about its sustenance nor do they care about the "truth"; they are driven by other intentions (to impress, to have more audience, to have protagonism, etc.). Those who receive and accept them do not want, do not know or cannot (?) take the trouble to deepen their fundamentals; they let themselves be enchanted away from the truth, like a mouse dancing in Hamelin.
In the business world, with special attention to the Universal Church of the Kingdom of Entrepreneurship - expression coined by Ricardo Araújo Pereira (RAP)2 brilliantly, as usual - the jargon used tends to get dangerously close and confused with bullshit. There seems to be a particular appetite for using a type of language that results from the mechanisms that lead to the creation of bullshit and that has the same basic effect: the distancing from the truth (and from reality). In these media there even seems to be a predilection for "pseudo-deep bullshit". This subtype of bullshit, or "little depths" as contemporary philosopher Daniel Dennett called them3, apart from its lack of care for truth, common to generic bullshit, is distinguished by a preoccupation with verisimilitude. They seem true and profound and often come from recognised sources (management, leadership and entrepreneurship gurus, business schools, etc.) but they have all the characteristics of bullshit, their main intention being to excite and impress rather than to inform and instruct.
In Portugal, and other countries where English is not the main language, business bullshit is often adorned in the form of Anglicisms, the official language of business talk. Perhaps also because he is not on the social networks, RAP's attention and insight remain at a high level, allowing him to point this subject out in one of his mixórdias, where he explores the "inputs on mindsets "4. Languages aside, the lack of care with words, not to mention truth and depth, leads to the trivialisation of aspects that are anything but trivial. Even if we are those who are not so permeable to bullshit, through insistence and, worse, its normalisation, we end up getting tired of it and inevitably lower our guard. On the other hand, corporate bullshit is meant to reveal the supposed importance, experience and expertise of its producer. The misfortune is that many succeed in achieving their purpose. I think the reader will easily recall a meeting they have attended or a lunch with work colleagues where English words are thrown around and picked up that are only understood by those who know that tune5.
I remember a psychotherapist friend, to whom I had referred a person from the business world, telling me that his client had told him that he wanted to develop his soft skills. My friend, who is not familiar with this kind of language, would have asked, with circumstantial and technically deliberate naivety: "what is that? This story serves as a pretext to analyse one of the popular expressions of corporate bullshit and its dangerous effects: soft and hard skills. For those who are not familiar with these expressions - I believe that if you are reading this text it probably won't be you - soft skills are also called "behavioural". They include, for example, the ability to listen (or to perform active listening), to make and seek criticism (offer and receive feedback) or to promote the evolution of others(coaching, on the job training...). Hard skills are technical skills: those which enable workers to operate tools, machines or to have the specificknow-how needed to perform their duties. Today it seems to be common sense in the business world, and all the "studies" and forecasts (made by the same gurus, business schools and economic forums) point in that direction, that the workers of the future must develop their soft skills, because they will be the ones that will distinguish them from the intelligent machines. Although this seems to be a plausible argument, it seems too convenient. In a mechanistic model, still present in the current paradigm of people in companies since the industrial revolution, it makes sense that technical skills are privileged: knowing how to work with a machine does not mean speaking well to it. One can respect it and handle it sensibly, above all with fear of the consequences (paying for the repair or getting hurt, for example). When it comes to leading a team and working with other people the situation is different. It has taken a long time to adopt a less mechanical and more organic metaphor for the world of work. In a living organism, for example a human being, soft tissues, such as muscles, are of no use if there are no bones to support them. On the other hand, it is no use having very solid bones if the muscles do not have enough strength and elasticity to move them. Therefore, by moving from a mechanistic metaphor, in which people are resources, to an organic one, in which people and their subjectivity are part of the system, the distinction between soft and hard skills no longer makes sense. One does not make sense without the other.
In my activity it is very common to hear reports or diagnoses(briefings) such as: "you are an excellent professional but a beast in dealing with people. You need to improve your leadership, namely your soft skills and thus create a feedback culture." Business jargon, which has the same historical origin and shares the style of new age language, seems to hide or even replace Portuguese words that besides being beautiful are loaded with meaning and serve perfectly to illustrate situations, however complex they may be. The use of business jargon contains the risk of obscurantism, ambiguity and vagueness, which often come in handy. It also serves to avoid "calling a spade a spade" or adopting political correctness, which are, in fact, other ways of not facing the truth.
I confess to being so saturated with corporate bullshit, especially that which is said in English, that every time I hear that someone needs help to develop their soft skills what I hear is that it will probably be someone who resorts to rudeness, lack of respect and lack of common sense as means to achieve their results. The worst thing is that, looking at both media cases and others that do not reach the public, the results and objectives in companies have been and continue to be too often achieved in this way.
To combat bullshit in general and corporate bullshit in particular we have to stop and think; we have to question what we are told and what we say, when that language only serves to adhere to a prevailing form and style; we have to restore the importance of words because "it is still necessary for words to have meaning, it is necessary to have a capacity for dialogue that cannot exist while we are immersed in an era of great perversion of language" (Anne Dufourmantelle). In fact, those are exactly the recommendations of those who dedicate themselves to seriously investigate bullshit6: stop, think and develop the capacity to understand and use language.
What would the world of work be like without so much bullshit? It will remain for a future reflection.
Written for Link to Leaders on 21 December 2017; published 4 January 2018
Meanwhile, on the subject, we discovered this brilliant campaign created by the famous Pentagram design studio.
1. Frankfurt, Harry G. (2005). On Bullshit, Princeton University Press.
2. Vision Magazine: The Universal Church of the Kingdom of Entrepreneurship.
3. 'YouTube: The Evolution of Confusion' by Dan Dennett.
4. Rádio Comercial - Mixórdia de Temáticas: "Inputs on mindsets".
5. YouTube: Zeinal Bava's Portuguesing.
6. Pennycook, G., Cheyne, J.A., Barr, N.,Koehler, D.J. and Fugelsang, J.A. (2015). On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit. Judgment and Decision Making.
