Jargon ... take me away

I received an email the other day from someone in IT seeking to schedule a meeting to discuss how the marketing department and the IT department can work better together. However, the email was cloaked with far too much jargon. I swear, the email went as follows:

"Let's coordinate schedules to discuss the process for engaging IT, from a 'potential' solution's inception (to conceptualize how a product or solution may be designed to meet the business requirements of Marketing) through implementation and support."

Naturally, I had to fight jargon with jargon. I replied with this,

"Great. Looking forward to proactively engaging IT with our intra-departmental team in order to dimensionalize the available leveragable opportunities to create synergy that is solutions-focused and customer-centric. I’ll bring the low-hanging fruit, who can bring the metrics?"

Speaking of low-hanging fruit ... back in the day, Fast Company used to print a Consulting Debunking Unit column that would examine a commonly used consultant-speak phrase like "low-hanging fruit" and debunk its meaning. Check out how they debunked the "low-hanging fruit" term.

While we are on this topic of business jargon, Darwin magazine ran a great article by David Weinberger in their Aug/Sep 2000 edition on "getting real with marketing language." Its a fine read.