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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