David Michael Miller
Every year has its fashionable words. Like a good pop song, I might like the sound of them at first, but then as they get into heavy rotation I start to like them less. Finally, I reach the breaking point where the next utterance of the phrase has me coming around to the idea of concealed carry. Not that I’d actually shoot anyone. I would just pull out my firearm to underscore my point. “Silence!”
The fashionable phrases that bother me the most are the ones that are used to evade their real meaning or, worse, to try to make something mundane and simple sound interesting and complicated. Here is my short list of words and phrases that I would be very happy to never, ever hear again.
Robust, as in “the conversation was really robust.” This means either that you were in a meeting where several people just droned on forever or it means that people were screaming obscenities at one another. Anyway, it never means that the talk was actually interesting or substantive. If it were it would have been described as “interesting” or “substantive.”
On the ground, as in “we tested that idea on the ground.” As used by people from either coast it means they actually touched down in a place they normally just fly over and were surprised that it actually is in the United States. Of America. Wow. So this is what the ground looks like? Huh. It can also be used by anyone from anywhere to imply that they are slumming it, descending from the world of high theory and good jazz to see how things actually work among people who buy stuff at Walmart.
In that space, as in “they dominate things in that space.” You could have just said, “in that market” or “in that category” but no, “in that space” sounds sophisticated and almost academic. Sprinkle around “in that space” enough, and before you know it you’re getting invited to present at the Harvard Business School.
Disruptive, as in “that is a disruptive technology.” When this phrase began it meant something interesting and even exciting. It had a certain radical connotation to it. Big, bulky industries were being disrupted by little startups. Then it started getting overused to the point where I expect to soon hear that General Motors intends to disrupt the auto industry with their huge new internal combustion engine pickup truck! It’s time for people who really disrupt things to admit that their word has been taken from them by those who don’t.
Return on investment, as in “the ROI on that preschool for Maddy is pretty good.” A perfectly fine term for the business world, return on investment has been mutilated to apply to all kinds of things that aren’t investments in the same cold, bottom-line-obsessed kind of way as a real estate deal. Let’s return ROI to the land of pure numbers where it belongs and remind ourselves that not everything has a payback or one that can be counted.
So, look, in order for us to get a good ROI on words and phrases we need to have a robust conversation about what’s happening on the ground in that space that’s totally disruptive. And if you think you understand what that means I don’t want to know you.
