How erasing words from corporate vernacular could be a success indicator

Back in the day I worked at a company where social media was talked about a lot. It came up in conversations, arguments and email chains. It was the subject of meetings, from board meetings with senior stakeholders to "catch-ups" colleagues. Then, after a while, an efficient and productive social media manager was recruited and suddenly "social media" was hardly ever mentioned.

It was talked about a lot because it was a problem.

There are many words that reoccur in the corporate vernacular until they disappear because they were solved out of existence. And yet... barely anybody notices that disappearance. Perhaps we should. Perhaps words disappearing from use is something we should measure, something we should record.

A tool is transparent to consciousness for as long as it is functioning properly

In 1927 the philosopher Martin Heidegger published Being and Time. The subject of that book was reality itself. Ontology is the branch of philosophy that deals with reality. It was neglected by mainstream philosophy until Being and Time, where Heidegger sought to layout what is and what isn't. One of the key proofs in the book is the difference between being (i.e. real stuff) that is "ready-to-hand" ("Zuhandenheit") and being that is "present-to-hand" ("Vorhandenheit"). By making this distinction, Heidegger drew attention to the way reality was ensconced in our consciousness until it made itself rudely apparent. A tool, Heidegger points out, is transparent to consciousness for as long as it is functioning properly, it is "ready-to-hand". When it is not functioning properly, it is "present-to-hand": we encounter the realness of the broken thing. We are suddenly conscious of it as "stuff". We start to analyse it.

There are many things that are invisible to us because of their habituated use: the lungs we use to breathe, door handles, a laptop screen. When we suddenly have a problem with these taken for granted things, we notice them in their bare existence and we think about them, we worry about them, we analyse them.

The consciousness of a corporation is conversation

This phenomenon manifests itself in the corporate world in slightly different way. When a tool (broadly speaking: a means to a desirable ends) becomes (or is from the outset) dysfunctional, it gets talked or written about. The consciousness of a corporation is conversation.

"Agility" may be a meaningless buzzword these days, but it is the topic of conversation and emails in businesses everywhere, that's because these businesses are not agile enough. And I bet that the more the word is used, the less agile the company is.

"Digital" is another word that does the rounds. It gets talked about a lot. But the aim of any conversation about digital should be to have that word disappear from use. Digital needs to go the way of "new media" in the 1990s. If the aim of that conversation is not to remove the oft-used word from the corporate vernacular, then that conversation may be pointless.

When we recognise that a tricky "thing" that gets discussed a lot should be a means to an ends, we should also recognise that it shouldn't be talked about at all.