What's the Deliverable Here?

Bureaucratese, the language of bureaucrats and corporats, is alive and well despite the current economic woes. The lingo is insidious in the way it works itself into our minds and becomes resident without our conscious awareness. If we aren’t careful we all slip into using the telltale words that mark us as having been assimilated. But, contrary to what the Borg collective says, resistance is not futile.

Last week I was sitting in on a conference call and listening comfortably when I experienced a sudden “paradigm shift” - an out-of-bureaucrat-experience that allowed me to listen in as if I were a normal, pre-assimilated, plain-spoken human. Words like “deliverables”, “take-aways”, and “readout” were being bandied about as if they were English. As in “I’m not sure what the deliverables were supposed to be but my take-away from the meeting was that Hector was to be the POC. What was your readout?” (translation: I don't know what that meeting was supposed to be about but the way I heard it, Hector wants to call the shots. What did you think?)

Most disconcertingly, I understood what they were talking about. That’s ok, as long as I don’t start talking that way. If I ever do, please organize an intervention.

For the time being we can all amuse ourselves with this website and online dictionary of bureaucratese at: http://home.earthlink.net/~skilton/dictionary.html One of my favorite words from this dictionary is:

adometer;
n., An instrument designed to measure just how much ado is being made over a particular nothing.
(engl.: ado + meter)

I’m going to rig one of these up and bring it to the next conference call I’m on.