Crap 'Buzzwords'

At a work conference a few weeks ago, we had a speaker telling us that the real secret of leadership is "building followship" ... which somehow sounds more like a cult brainwashing activity than a way for leaders to persuade their staff.

I don't know why being described as a "follower" rankles more than the speaker describing themselves as a "leader", but it really does.

“Circulate an artefact” = send a document

I don't know why being described as a "follower" rankles more than the speaker describing themselves as a "leader", but it really does.

Because they're explicitly relegating you to a lower status. It hits your ego and lessens your agency.

Depending how they structured the rest of the talk it's either a good take (but only if you're talking to other "leaders" about those not in the room), or fucking stupid for the reason you've outlined.

These new hot takes on an old topic always make me think of reverse funnel system.

It was Alex Gorsky, ex-CEO of Johnson & Johnson, and he was absolutely addressing the management, because they'd paid him to show up.

Unfortunately the rest of us were also in the room.

I mean I'm not going to pretend that I know more than him, but imo it's tone deaf.

It reminds me of a mate who back in the day worked for one of the Philip Green fashion companies. Their annual townhall or whatever they were called BITD coincided with the world cup, which was on shortly after the meeting.

The company was understaffed and no one ever seemed to finish work before 7pm. Instead of taking the easy motivational win and saying everyone could have the half an hour or whatever off and go watch the football, he said that as long as they'd done all their work and checked with their manager they could. It just ended up being a slap in the face.

I've been using SME for Subject Matter Expert since the late 1990s. I'm not going to go to the garage and see if I've still got my HR textbooks from that period, but personally I don't get "Small-medium enterprises" as a concept or an acronym - the whole thing is a buzzword that is meaningless, and then to co-opt a well established, very specific, acronym for it is just bollocks.

I was also an Small Medium Enterprise in major crime, missing person and counter terrorist search from the late 90s.

I don't get "Small-medium enterprises" as a concept or an acronym - the whole thing is a buzzword that is meaningless

It is fair from meaningless. It's most commonly applied in relation to state benefits (e.g. various forms of tax reliefs or incentives). As you'd expect they make up the majority of business and are critical to growth and employment. In a sense, for the most part you are defining them in opposition to fuck-off massive companies who can easily obtain debt, investment, and have economies of scale to avoid tax so don't need specific relief.

Maybe NFOMC instead?

My beef with it is as often pointed out, it can be shortened to expert. Particularly as you almost always say something like; "stevep is the SME for 1990s HR text books" or "who is our SME on buzzwords?". So there is almost never a time when person or expert couldn't be used.

Plus Small Medium sized Enterprises is a term used across the largest institutions in the world - eg from wiki "World Bank, the OECD, European Union, the United Nations, and the World Trade Organization".

There's an actual legal definition of small-medium enterprises. You can't get much more specific.

Lots of options for support, or lighter regulatory requirements, depend on being an SME.

That one annoys me. "Subject matter expert" and "expert" mean the same thing. There is literally never an occasion in normal conversation where adding "subject matter" to the front of "expert" is more clear or specific

Small/medium enterprise on the other hand is a useful acronym.

Edit: oh we had this discussion on the last page.

Small-medium enterprises (SMEs) is used extensively in large government contracts, in that you have to utilise them in order to win any such contracts.

Have we done “ship”? My company has hired a tranche of US techbros and suddenly we “ship” everything. Software updates, marketing materials, internal messages.

It’s so pervasive that I have felt compelled to start using it lest I be replaced by some shiny automaton from the Bay Area.

"Tranche" is surprised it still has a job in the corner.

Your company sounds like it’s 20 years behind the times. ‘Ship’ isn’t a buzzword these days.

Yeah. "Ship" has long meant "Stop tinkering with it and just get it out of the door."

20 years ago we had a sign up in the office which said:

"
IF IT COMPILES IT MUST BE RIGHT
IF IT RUNS, SHIP IT.
"

Unless people are talking about "shipping documents" (translation: "sending a document") in which case I have a large industrial bag of stab ready for them.

You guys are old. Shipping is what gen Z weirdos call it when they fantasize about some TV/film characters getting into a relationship together. Why they do this so much, to the extent they need a word for it, I don't know.

Parasocial to the max

Yeah this is pre-dot.com/Microserfs/Encarta on CD-ROM/hardback paper manuals/hardware anti-piracy dongles on a serial port/sweaty Ballmer stuff.

sweaty Ballmer stuff

I'm going to use this to refer to all 365 output.

It's strongly intertwined with ao3/fanfic culture. I guess a natural follow on from so much media being interactive. It's only relatively recently I realised it's etymology was from 'relationship'

Touch the Clients in the right way

'single source of truth' is spreading like wildfire here.

I think things really got out of hand when PowerPoint Presentations started being called slide decks.

More context? I like single source of truth, as in the philosophy of documenting a thing in a single place rather than several. That way when things inevitably change, it's as simple as it can be to update the documentation.

That is the one. Used to be a specification

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