Recent Bizspeak Aggravations

I am getting really cranky in my old age, especially about bizspeak atrocities.

I recently read an "impact report" that the Almost Underlord put together for the Supreme Overlord. It was about the recent Training Summit that we held, wherein we invited training managers from our customers to participate in a call about how we can help them and what we have to offer. Before the call, we conducted a survey (which we called a "needs assessment" to make it sound classier and more training-esque -- but it was really a survey).

In the report, the Almost Underlord stated that we "socialized the needs assessment with the training managers". Really? Did we give the survey a cocktail and have it mingle? Or am I missing something? Back in my day, we simply sent out a survey. We didn't bother to socialize it.

When did "decision" and "solution" become verbs? I seem to have missed the memo. The Overlord and other people high up in the management ranks here seem to love to decision a course of action and solution their challenges.

Then, just this morning, the Almost Underlord sent out a big memo. She had applied her Lean Six Sigma knowledge to propose a review process complete with timeline. I think that's a good thing -- it sets expectations and defines roles and responsibilities and puts some time constraints on the whole review rigamarole.

Unfortunately, she lost me in the first paragraph when she described the instructional designers' first task: to nurture the content.

Seriously? We nurture content? Are we breastfeeding it and rocking it to sleep? I always thought that I developed content, or wrote drafts, or designed courses.

But I am old and cranky. I suppose I must try harder to leverage my synergies, socialize my documents, and nurture my content as I decision my next career move.