Stripping clichés down to their naked truth

It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then, like most clichés, that cliché is untrue.  —Stephen Fry

The world of commerce is besieged with management clichés that are utterly worn-out, and unashamedly fallacious. They are intended to communicate a platitude or condense a complex idea into a straightforward statement people can understand.

So, what’s wrong with using a cliché that everyone understands? In his book Corporate Punishment, author and employee engagement expert James Adonis takes aim at 38 well-known but overused business expressions.

“Clichés are far more irritating than inspiring, more insipid than inviting,” he says. â€œIn their earnest attempts to look good and sound professional, businesspeople end up showcasing their lazy vocabulary and unimaginative minds.” 

We’ve probably heard these clichés many times, and are shrinking even as we read them now. Here’s a sampling of how the author tries to bury clichés rather than praise them.

• There’s no “I” in “team.” Maybe in our own careers we remember being trapped in group assignments, where there definitely was an “I” in the team, because that “I” did most of the work while others shirked their responsibilities. “Effort in a team is never equally spread among the doers — and when we profess there is no ‘I’ in team, we’re less likely to notice those who are genuinely carrying the team to glory,” Adonis declares. “The result is that rewards and incentives aren’t discriminated toward those that deserve them.” There isn’t just one “I” in “team,” but many. The best teams are those built around all of those “I”s, where each “I” understands the others’ communication styles, work preferences, strengths and weaknesses.

• Every mistake is a learning experience. Even the most ardent believer of this cliché would acknowledge that as much as people would love to learn from their mistakes, it frequently doesn’t happen. For some reason, we foolishly keep repeating them. Despite vowing to never look fat during summer, many of us continue to eat like pigs. Despite having our tongues burnt on more than one occasion, we continue to sip from a hot cup of coffee before it’s cooled down. And despite swearing to never again humiliate ourselves when intoxicated, we continue to make drunken phone calls to our former partners, confessing to what we’d never say when we’re sober. Don’t we all wish we we’d learn from our blunders?

• Time is money and money is time. People who passionately follow this cliché live hectic lives. They’re fast talkers and stormy walkers. They’re abrupt and they’ll disrupt any sign of bare flimflam. Every conversation has a purpose and every meeting has an outcome and heaven help us if we get in the way of their efficiency. They race up escalators like there’s a bag of money waiting for them as they alight. They frantically press the button in elevators in the panicked hope it’ll get them to their destination a few seconds sooner. They rush from one place to another, frightened that they’ll waste a single minute of their time, conscious of maximizing every hour of productivity, without realizing that by thinking of their time as money they’re wasting the very time they’re trying to preserve.

• Do what we love and the money will follow. It’s impractical to create dream jobs. The way to strengthen job satisfaction is to incorporate the company’s natural talents into their work. That’s when they’ll grow to love their jobs. It’s a bit like marrying someone for money but then realizing afterwards his heart is even deeper than his wallet, or her mind is even more open than her purse. For many people, love is stronger when their financial needs are met up front, whether it’s in their personal lives or at work.

• Employees are our greatest assets.  With characteristic cheek Adonis quips, “It misses the fact that many workers are probably liabilities. Some hold us back while others attack just because we give them feedback.” They can make us, as managers, look good, or look bad. The real asset, he suggests, is the relationship between our people and ourselves. It’s reinforced when we treat each other with mutual respect. That isn’t enhanced when we declare that employees are our greatest assets, but then choose cost-cutting, such as letting go of these all-important assets, over low morale and shredded manager-employee relationships.

• Success is a destination. That’s where real joy comes from. Treating success as a destination offers employees needed direction and allows employers to give them support towards it. Employees also need to be held accountable, and he feels that the cliché about success being a journey is a cop-out that allows failure to appear more palatable.

• Under-promise and over-deliver. Adonis offers the example of how we wouldn’t feel comfortable if our mechanic said we need a new carburetor, only to finish in an hour and joyfully telling us that he loves exceeding his customer’s expectations. McDonald’s has achieved success by making sure that every outlet in the world offers customers the same, consistent product. “Here’s an idea. Let’s just deliver what we promise. The world’s most successful brands do exactly that with huge success,” he says.

• Treat people how we’d like to be treated. It’s a wonderful lesson to teach kids, since this simplistic cliché can teach them about empathy and reciprocity. But once kids become teenagers, where as adolescents they start to learn about influence and persuasiveness, it becomes like a trick-or-treat activity where to treat others how they’d like to be treated is the only way to avoid being tricked.

• Work smarter, not harder. Working harder doesn’t need to involve working longer hours. Working harder merely means that we make the mental capacity available to accommodate it in our lives. It’s about what we’re doing during the hours we’ve worked rather than the duration of time, that we’re laboriously laboring. The two main areas that hamper hard work are procrastination and distraction. “When many people say they put in 110 percent at work, I think they mean over the space of a week. Hard work doesn’t need to be such a bad thing,” Adonis claims.

• Failure is not an option. Ronald Reagan memorably advised, “We can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by the way he eats jelly beans.” While that may be true, we can also tell a lot about people by the way they respond to failure. Sometimes it’s more essential for people to recover from failure than to experience success. The way they react when circumstances don’t go their way is an invaluable way of identifying their true nature. To remove failure as an option is to be without this test of their temperament when they’re bombarded with pressure or disappointment. To say failure is not an option is in itself an utter failure.

• Moving forward and going forward. The two expressions are equally known. The “Forwards” are the most over-invited guests at corporate events and meetings. One thing’s for certain — no matter where they go, they’re on everyone’s lips. No one’s quite sure precisely what value they add to a conversation, but nonetheless, they’ll gatecrash every discussion, every long lunch and every big boardroom. As Adonis states, “They’re dismissed as much as they’re embraced, and they’re disliked as much as they’re liked, yet nothing stops them from popping up when you least expect them, drinking from the cups of language and snacking on the canapés of words until there’s nothing left but droplets and morsels of bland corporate speak.” Truth be told, if the “Forwards” were to die tomorrow, nobody would really miss them. They’re like the workmates we promise to stay in touch with after we resign or retire, but of course, never do.

• Let’s take it offline. It’s a way of getting vocal team members to stop talking. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this cliché. Some conversations need to be wound up and others are totally irrelevant. Somewhere among the vast treasure of syllables in the Oxford Dictionary, surely we can find something to replace “Let’s take it offline.” If we’re not really wordsmiths, use sign language. Place our finger on our lips as if to say, “Shhhh.” Anything is better than the contagiously insipid disease of talking like everyone else. The phrase might have been a catchy saying the first few times it was used, but now it’s worn out. It’s time to take “Let’s take it offline” offline.

Corporate Punishment is a remonstration, a pressure group, a changing of the management guard. “It’s the breath of fresh air every modern business needs and a long overdue break from the hot air that most are focused to endure,” Adonis asserts.

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E-mail bongosorio@yhoo.com or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating.