Mission statements are everywhere: you have to have one, whether you're a
Fortune 500 company, a hedge fund, a primary school, a church or a hockey club.
Without a mission statement, who would know what your values are, or what your
culture is? And how then, going forward, will you get buy-in on your strategy
and uptake of your brand? The language of modern management has triumphed,
transforming clear, everyday communication into meaningless sludge. To sound
professional, you must express everything in abstract nouns, and each noun in
terms of another one; you must talk about synergy and strategy, uptake and
outcomes and outputs and inputs, key performance indicators and drivers and
customer experience - even if your 'customers' are in fact patients in your
hospital. This language is deliberately obscure and falsely scientific; what is
more worrying, those who use it have lost the very ability to think clearly.
From Don Watson, the author of Death Sentence and Weasel Words, comes this new
assortment of noxious management drivel and financial market blather. Read them…
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