Meaning what?

This phrase is attributed to General George S. Patton: 

Say what you mean and mean what you say.

I was chatting with a friend of mine.  OK, “chatting” isn’t what I meant.  He met with me to ask, “What would Gary do?”  So, I should have actually started this piece saying; I was providing professional sales coaching for a friend of mine. 

That happens a lot, true?  I mean – someone says (or writes) one thing but they really mean something else.  In the case with my friend, he recently had a meeting with his sales manager to discuss “Territory Re-Alignment”.  Indeed…  in the sales profession this is a common, annual ritual companies put their salespeople through. 

It goes by many names. Territory Re-Alignment; Territory Equalization; Territory Re-Assignment.  What it actually means is Mr. or Ms. Sales Rep, we are going to shrink your territory. (BTW – raising quota and changing compensation plans often go with “Territory Re-Alignment”.  Thankfully, those extras were not part of my friend’s conversation with his sales manager.) 

There are other business oriented wordsmithing scenarios we are frequently impacted by.  Take price increases.  This century, subscription pricing is all the rage.  I mean – how many emails to you get every day asking you to “sign up” for some product or service that comes with a subscription payment component. 

Here’s one example.  According to Google: 

Today Amazon currently has 200 million Amazon Prime members around the world. If Prime subscribers were a country, it would be the 8th biggest country in the world by population! 

Speaking of our subscriptions and those emails, how did you feel when that notification comes through saying your subscription was now going to include ads?  Of course, for a “Nominal Fee” you could continue your subscription ad free.  Ah yes, “Nominal Fee”.   I use that phrase myself.  What it means is your money gets transferred to the person or entity who used “Nominal Fee”. 

The best phrase I heard around the context of a price increase was used by ADP (the payroll service company) way back in the 1980s.  (I know, Dark Ages!)  ADP was one of the original subscription-priced services.  Similar to all subscription pricing models, it was easy to offer a discount to attract new customers. (Today, that sounds like this, “The NFL Package for FREE!  *First year only”). 

Every year ADP would analyze each customer account; their level of discount; and then calculate a price increase for the upcoming year.  But ADP didn’t call it a “Price Increase”.  Instead, they coined the term “Price Realization”.  What on earth does that mean?  Well it meant the reduction or elimination of the promotional discount and raising the subscription price back to the then-current list price.  And that meant the customer was going to pay more. 

This mis-meaning situation is common in other aspects of our daily life.  Take the medical profession.  This is a piece from comedian Brian Regan and his perspective about what doctors mean with the word  “Pressure” . 

Even our household budgeting can get fouled up with something as seemingly straight forward as math symbols: 

Addendum to Murphy's Law: 

In precise mathematical terms, 1+1 = 2, where "=" is a symbol meaning seldom if ever. 

                                  Unknown Sage 

I guess we have to be careful to clarify what people actually mean these days.  And who knows what to expect when the “machines” (aka “AI” aka “Artificial Intelligence”) take over.  What does “Artificial Intelligence” mean, anyway? 

                                                            GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.

Techno-speaking…

OMG! What do you get when you combine Artificial Intelligence (AI) with artificial English (AKA made-up, social media-driven, acronyms)?  Is today’s techno-speak creating communications confusion?  I mean the English language is complicated enough.  Add in BAM, BOOM, and God knows what else, and at the EOD are we SOL? 

IRL I can’t tell if it’s FOMO or the machines that are driving us towards some new language.  Perhaps it’s just the IOT that we, our children, and our door bells are acclimating to.  It’s not new:

Maybe we’re saving our thumb muscles while operating those tiny little keyboards on our phones that’s behind the emergence of a short-hand slang.  I mean banging on our devices throughout the day (especially while driving our cars) can be strenuous, yes?  Maybe we’re witnessing (i.e. creating) a new “Modern English” for Google: 

Modern English is widely considered to be the lingua franca of the world and is the standard language in a wide variety of fields, including computer coding, international business, and higher education. 

“Lingua franca”, indeed.  Should I say, “LF”?  I see a whole lot of creativity these days with our technology-driven approach to communication.  BTW - who exactly is (or are) the SoMeIn that’s coming up with this stuff?  I wonder if such creativity is essentially costing clarity?  The Digital Transformation Playbook © by David L. Rogers written way back in 2016 offered: 

As technology journalist Alexis Madrigal has observed, “It turns out that our creativity is good but our judgement is lousy.” 

Lousy judgement – that’s not new.  David S. Pottruck told us even longer ago; 

E-mail and voice-mail have, of course, exacerbated the problem in the last ten years.  Unfortunately, for all their convenience, these innovations have made it much easier to believe we are communicating when we are merely informing; if I have e-mailed you, you know it. This presumption frequently escalates from knowledge to understanding, then to consent, and finally to the delusion of wisdom. 

Ah yes, “… if I have e-mailed you… you consent ...”  How many times have we had that delusion of wisdom? 

IMHO, electronic, one-directional, techno-speak-based messaging frequently leads to erroneous assumptions.  For instance, I assumed BAM was a word.  You know like, “I was driving to work and bam I realized today is our wedding anniversary and I haven’t bought a card or a present for my wife yet.”  But nooo; as it turns out, BAM stands for Business Activity Management. 

Then there’s BOOM, which again, I thought was a word.  As in, “When my wife realized I bought her anniversary gift at the 7-11 on my way home from work that night, boom, there went any chance for a romantic evening.”  LOL!  Silly me; BOOM stands for Business Opportunity Optimization Management. (Who knew?) 

Call me kooky, but BAM sounds a lot like what my manager wanted to talk to me about during those sales forecast reviews (which seemed to be the only time he actually wanted to talk to me).  And I think I witnessed BOOM the other day when I was ordering a pizza and being up-sold extra toppings and side dishes by the restaurant’s AI chat-bot! 

I guess we all have to adapt to the evolution of today’s “New English Language”.  We’ll need to pay attention though… what we assume was written by the writer may not actually be what the writer assumed we would understand he wrote. 

Wait… WHAT??? 

GAP (oops – my bad!  I meant GAP) 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.