The Devil S Dictionary of Business Strategy, Vol. II

The Devil’s Dictionary of Business Strategy, Vol. II

By Patrick Marren

The Devil’s Dictionary of Business Strategy, Vol. II

Absolutelyadv. Not a chance in hell.

Accountabilityn. An open acceptance of responsibility for one’s actions that is greatly to be admired in others.

Agilityn. An indefinable capacity, yet to be isolated in the wild, that would allow a ball-bearing manufacturer to also engage in interior decorating or space exploration; universally assumed to be achievable and necessary for business survival.

Architecturen. The putative structure of computer programs, now that no actual physical structures are ever going to be constructed in America again.

Best-of-breedadj. Number one in a category carefully constructed to exclude all actually threatening and/or relevant competitors.

Best practicen. A way of doing something that has been identified and documented as the optimal approach by business academics, and which therefore almost certainly ceased to actually be the best way of doing that thing several years ago.

Black Swann. An improbable event of large impact that can only be identified in retrospect by the evil cackling of Nasim Nicholas Taleb.

Brandn. A commodity that has, through the magic of relentless pounding advertising, achieved a level of cosmic and irresistible global inauthenticity.

Challengen. A major pain in the nether region, probably career-ending, best foisted upon others as soon as possible.

Complexityn. The quality of anything that is unable to be understood before a second cup of coffee.

Customer-centricadj. Not charging enough.

Databasen. A magnetic encoding of zeroes and ones representing past accomplishments or mistakes that will either never be consulted, or else will be fatally mistaken to be relevant to changing future conditions.

Distributedadj. Disorganized, unmanageable, and potentially metastasizing.

Diversityn. The white man’s perennial burden to explain why he is really a nice, sensitive guy, even though in the last fiscal year he once again has hired or promoted only near-perfect replicas of himself.

Downsizingn. A consultant-driven process by which pernicious livelihood is stripped from the books of American companies and stampeded across the Pacific Ocean, freeing the American middle class to pursue other interests, such as finally opening that little meth lab they’ve always dreamed of.

Dysfunctional adj. A Greek prefix jammed onto a Latin stem, self-referentially denoting irreconcilability and unworkability.

Enterprisen. The level, always just above one’s own, at which everything is supposed to finally make sense.

Excellence n.An alleged attribute of organizations briefly in vogue in the early 1980s until business academics proved that it cannot exist above the subatomic level for more than a few nanoseconds.

Eyeballsn. Lenses uncomprehendingly, fleetingly passed over flitting images on computer screens, to no measurable benefit; the ultimate goal of all advertising in the twenty-first century.

Facilitatev.t. 1. To ease. 2. To stand in front of a bunch of text-messaging executives and force-march them towards a premature or superficial consensus prior to golf. 3. To bribe.

Flexibilityn. An Olympian suppleness and adaptability that allows a company to shift seamlessly from making one size of tampons or beer to another size of tampons or beer.

Fulfillmentn. The actual delivery of goods or services to the customer, which presumably is supposed to bring them to some sort of rapture.

Goaln. An objective of a human resource that is at a level of modesty that makes it achievable by the end of the reporting period pretty much by simply remaining alive.

Idea n. A potentially brilliant but risky and disruptive notion that could either destroy or benefit the company; in the former case being blamed on the originator, in the latter case being credited to the originator’s boss’s boss.

Information n. Data that has been massaged precisely up to the level where it has received specificity, but still remains just below the level at which it might be relevant.

Initiative n. 1. A quality of freshness and fecundity of mind and bias towards action that renders its possessor an almost certain success in business. 2. A tired course of action slogging its way toward execution through a gauntlet of editors and naysayers who will remove all its original freshness, shine, and usefulness and render it mortally harmful to the organization.

Intellectual capital n. On a good day, New York, but usually I’d say Paris or maybe London.

Issuen. 1. A serious disagreement among people who must pretend cordiality. 2. ~s Mental illness, e.g. He has serious issues.

Knowledge managementn. 1. Brain surgery. 2. Putting old floppy disk archives onto iPods.

Leadershipn. A quality of personal magnetism and charisma that, if left unchecked, will undoubtedly lead to expensive legal action against the organization.

Low-Hanging Fruitn. Achievements that appear easily within reach to people who forget the Greek fable of Tantalus with which the metaphor originates.

Managementn. 1. (from the perspective of management) A group of hard-working, well-meaning, nice, intelligent people who are trying to bring people together to achieve difficult tasks. 2. (from the perspective of everyone else) A bunch of feckless morons who stumbled hindquarters first into a pile of money probably because they are someone’s brother-in-law or because they freshened the right people’s drinks on the way up.

Matrixn. The crude juxtaposition of a series of things against another series of things, ordinarily used by consultants as a substitute for actual thought when that would be either too expensive or too painful.

Methodologyn. A method, marked up 40% by a consultant.

Mindsharen. The phenomenon of a human resource who has burrowed so deeply up his/her superior’s nether regions that the brains of each now occupy the exact same space.

Mission-criticaladj. Having read just one too many mission statements.

Mission statementn. A stupendously banal credo describing the sale of tampons and beer in terms that previous generations reserved for organized mass slaughter of rival tribes or nations or the forced conversion of aboriginal peoples to the True Faith.

Multitaskingn. 1. (for a woman) Making a million-dollar sale by phone while breast-feeding a baby and cooking dinner for a family of four. 2. (for a man) Talking on the phone to a colleague about the game while playing on-line poker with some kid in Estonia.

Operations n.That portion of the company devoted to merely pleasing the customer and cashing his/her checks, and which therefore is of no real interest.

Process n. 1. (to humans) A specified way of getting something done. 2. (to consultants) The meaning of life and the Fountain of Youth.

Risk management n.The systematic analysis of the likelihood of an action causing harm, e.g.I need to risk manage this lunch order to make sure the boss won’t fire me.

Sarbanes Oxley n.A ritual, not unlike the Potlach of the Northwest Native Americans, in which an unconscionable amount of resources are torched in order to expiate the long-past sins of people we never knew.

Scalableadj. Able to be expanded to any arbitrary size without a discernable loss of pernicious effect upon the organization.

Stock optionsn. The main form of compensation of executives today; originally meant as a way of keeping them interested in the long-term fortunes of the organization, now mainly meant to encourage middle management to reach the level at which they will be compensated thusly, at which point their value goes to zero.

Sustainablen. Likely to bankrupt the organization if adopted as policy.

Three-Sixty n. An egalitarian evaluation system designed to have everyone’s work mis-evaluated by underlings, overlings and side-lings, each of whom have reasons not to tell the exact truth, and to maximize the destruction of confidence of good managers while encouraging managers who strike fear into their fellow workers.

Touch basev.i. Contact someone else unexpectedly to ensure that they share the blame for whatever you are working on in the great game of “it” that is middle management.

Value addedn. A tax in Europe that has been carefully designed to discourage the adding of value by commercial entities.

Visibilityn. Something to be avoided at all costs up to a certain magic level in middle management, when it suddenly becomes something to be craved at all costs until a certain magic level in upper management, when it very suddenly once again becomes something to be shunned.

Win-winn. Not just a win for you, but also a loss for someone else.

Wrong rockn. An offering to a superior that is roundly rejected by that superior as inadequate in some unspecified way that the underling must figure out for him- or herself without any hints or direction from said superior; an apt metaphor for the wonderful fabric of work life in many parts of the United States.

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Originally published in Journal of Business Strategy, Volume 33,Issue 6 (2012).

Patrick Marren is an FSG principal.