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August 31, 2008

"Thought Leaders": Lose the Newspeak and Doublespeak

I don't know where it's coming from.  Could be business schools, BPOs, corporate self-improvement books, or IT drones lacking in basic communication skills, for all I know.  In any case, it seems to be spreading over some parts of the legal outsourcing industry like margarine on toast.  Unlike butter substitutes, however, it's not healthy.  I'm talking about the kind of corporate, Orwellian, newspeak or doublespeak that allows spokespersons and their companies to sound vaguely like they are saying something intelligent, while either saying nothing, or saying multiple things, each contradictory to the other, and usually accompanied by useless powerpoint graphics to distract attention from the fact that nothing of any actual value is being communicated.  Here's an example, from my admittedly shaky memory of a speech at a conference, by an exemplar of "thought leadership" (another of those unnecessary and mystifying terms that I really wish would disappear):

The drivers in our space, regardless of their verticals, are seeking end-to-end delivery capability, and in particular, what [blah-blah-blah company] provides, namely, seamless integration of LPO domain deliverables in real time.  Through a combination of experiential interoperability on all platforms, multi-tiered process architecture, requirements traceability, process-mandated artifacts, context-dependent repositories, robust process-orientation, issue escalation, and clear project ownership, we are able to deliver best-of-breed, seamless knowledge management across geographical, time and project boundaries, and throughout the document lifecycle, to help our clients derive value from internal knowledge assets previously encapsulated in unstructured data trapped in islands unreachable by process execution.  Our domain expertise and skill sets satisfy not only the need for convergence of quadrant quality across processes, interfaces, and outputs, but also the increasing market fragmentation, in which clients otherwise seek to leverage application and legal process lifecycle activities through identification, prioritization and execution by multiple vendors, each using their own indigenous tools and benchmarked process performance.

I have just one question.  At what point in a "document lifecycle" does life begin?  Or in other words, is there some point where if you delete a document or toss it in the trash, you are having an abortion, or is it murder?  Just wondering.

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