Don't be a Victim of the Buzzword Bingo movement

 

"We are determined to promote constant attention on current procedures of transacting business focusing emphasis on innovative ways to better, if not supercede, the expectations of quality!"

- Actual closing paragraph of a nationally circulated memo by Lucent Technologies

"The clichés of a culture sometimes tell the deepest truths."

- Faith Popcorn

Do your employees seem to be paying more attention lately to what you are saying in meetings? Are announcements from top management getting more careful scrutiny than they used to?

You may have, overnight, become a more dynamic speaker and your employees may have awakened to your greatness. The more likely reason for their new found enthusiasm in your monologuing abilities is that they are probably just playing "buzzword bingo". The good news is that you can use this latest business game to your advantage.

The game is played like regular bingo except that instead of numbers in the squares there are random business buzzwords: paradigm; bottom line; optimization; Total Quality Management; reengineering; out of the box; etc.

Before the speech is made or the announcement is published, the employees discreetly print up buzzword bingo cards (they are available online at numerous sites) and hand them out. As each buzzword is used in the speech (or meeting) they check off that square. Up, down or diagonal wins, just as in regular bingo. And since it would be too obvious to shout "BINGO", the winner coughs discretely or gives some other innocuous sign to signal his or her victory.

So how do you take this reborn game fad and turn it to your advantage? How can buzzword bingo make you a better manager? By helping you communicate better with your employees, that's how.

Don't hide your message behind the ambiguity of buzzwords. (I defy anyone to define "paradigm" without looking it up.) Say what you want to say in plain, direct English (or in whatever language your company conducts business).  I've always considered using whatever prevailing buzzword is de rigeur at the moment as a symptom of mental laziness, or, in some cases, a symptom of unoriginal thinking.  Their use is therefore an expedient method to hide behind.

Take your next speech, email, or policy statement. Generate a buzzword bingo card yourself from one of the sites. Review your message against the buzzword list. How quickly would someone have "won"?

Now go back and edit that speech, etc. and take out the buzzwords. Replace them with direct messages. You’ll be surprized at how quickly your people do start paying attention to what you are saying - for the sake of the message and not for the sake of winning at "bingo".

If you have any suggestions or topics you'd like to see covered, or if you'd like help with an issue you're currently experiencing, please drop me a line at gbossinakis@live.com. 
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