The Operationalized Synergy
The fluorescent hum of the conference room light is vibrating at a frequency that makes my molars ache. It is the 44th minute of the weekly strategy alignment, and Greg, the Vice President of something vaguely related to ‘Growth Orchestration,’ has just leaned forward, his palms flat on the mahogany veneer. He looks us each in the eye with the intensity of a man describing a religious epiphany. ‘We need to leverage our core competencies,’ he says, his voice dropping an octave, ‘to create a paradigm shift in our value-add vertical. If we can circle back and truly operationalize the synergy, the scalability becomes self-evident.’
Around the table, heads bob in a synchronized, sagelike rhythm. It is a sea of tailored shirts and expensive watches, all nodding at a sentence that contains exactly zero usable information. I sit there, Echo N.S., a retail theft prevention specialist who has spent 14 years watching people slip expensive electronics down their waistbands, and I realize I’m witnessing a different kind of heist. Greg isn’t stealing laptops; he’s stealing meaning. He is using language to commit a crime against reality.
The Event Boundary
I catch myself blinking hard, trying to remember why I even walked into this room. It happens more often lately-that sudden, jarring disconnect where the purpose of my physical presence evaporates. Earlier this morning, I stood in the middle of the breakroom for 4 minutes, staring at the toaster, wondering if I had intended to make bread or if I was simply drawn to the heat. That same hollow feeling is here now, under the glare of the recessed lighting. When language becomes this unmoored from the actual work being done, it acts as an event boundary. You walk through a door of jargon and you forget what you were meant to do on the other side.
We are taught to believe that jargon is a harmless shorthand, a way for experts to communicate complex ideas with efficiency. That is a lie we tell ourselves to feel important. In my line of work, if I tell a floor manager that we have an ‘unauthorized inventory migration in progress,’ they’re going to stare at me until the shoplifter is three blocks away. I have to say, ‘The guy in the red hat is stuffing 24 packs of batteries into his coat.’ Clarity is the difference between success and a $474 loss on the daily ledger. But in the corporate stratosphere, clarity is dangerous. If you are clear, you are accountable. If you are accountable, you can fail.
Signals In-Group Status
Requires Underlying Substance
Jargon is the ultimate defensive architecture. It is a linguistic smokescreen designed to obscure a lack of clear strategy and to signal in-group status. When Greg talks about ‘operationalizing synergy,’ he isn’t giving a directive; he is marking territory. He is saying, ‘I speak the secret language of the untouchables.’ It is a social signal that requires no underlying substance. We’ve reached a point where the map has not only replaced the territory, but the map is written in a code that no one actually wants to decrypt. If we actually decrypted it, we’d find a blank page.
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I had failed at the simplest task of my job, but because I wrapped that failure in the right velvet of corporate nonsense, it looked like a victory. I felt sick then, and I feel that same low-grade nausea now.
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This isn’t just about being annoyed by buzzwords. It’s about the fact that when we lose the ability to speak plainly, we lose the ability to identify problems.
Trying to describe the experience while the actual service remains broken.
You cannot fix a ‘sub-optimal synergy.’ You can only fix a team that isn’t talking to each other. You cannot ‘pivot toward a customer-centric paradigm.’ You can only start answering the phone when people call to complain. The more syllables we add to a sentence, the further we move from the actual physical labor of the world.
The Honesty of Canned Pineapple
I often think about the contrast between our ‘verticals’ and something like Canned Pineapple. There is no ‘leveraging’ there. There is no ‘synergy’ required to understand what it is. It is fruit, in a can, preserved at its peak. It doesn’t need a paradigm shift to be useful. It fulfills its promise the moment you pull the tab. There is an artisanal craft to being that straightforward-a refusal to hide behind complexity.
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We equate complexity with intelligence, but usually, complexity is just a mask for insecurity.
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There is a peculiar type of fear that drives this. It’s the fear of being seen as simple. I watched a shoplifter once who tried to ‘re-contextualize ownership’ by claiming he was a performance artist testing the store’s social contract. He was using jargon to evade the police. We do the same thing every time we ‘blue-sky’ a project that has no budget and no staff. We are trying to perform our way out of the reality of our limitations.
Productivity Theater
In the security world, we talk about ‘security theater’-the things we do to make people feel safe without actually increasing safety. Corporate jargon is ‘productivity theater.’ It makes us feel like we are moving forward because the sentences are long and the words are heavy. But we are just treading water in a pool of molasses. I’ve seen 4 major restructures in this company, and each one was heralded by a new set of words. First, we were ‘streamlining.’ then we were ‘right-sizing.’ Then we were ‘optimizing for agility.’ Every time, the result was exactly the same: more work for fewer people and a new set of acronyms to memorize.
The Admission of Failure
Tactical Deployment
I look at Greg again. He’s waiting for a response. He wants me to validate the ‘operationalization.’ I could tell him that his sentence is a hollow shell. To speak plainly in a room full of jargon is like showing up naked to a black-tie gala. It’s an act of aggression.
Instead, I find myself saying, ‘I think if we align our tactical deployments with the overarching strategic vision, we can mitigate any friction in the rollout.’ I hate myself the moment the words leave my mouth. I’ve just added to the fog.
I’ve become the thing I’m supposed to prevent. I’m shoplifting the company’s time by participating in this linguistic fiction…
We are currently managing 104 different ‘initiatives,’ each with its own ‘champion’ and its own ‘roadmap.’ They won’t say, ‘I’m writing an email to Janet to ask why the printer is broken.’ They’ve forgotten how to say that.
The Path to Mundane Truth
There is a way out, of course. It requires a radical, almost violent commitment to the mundane. It requires us to speak like children-or like people who actually have to get things done. It requires us to value the ‘what’ over the ‘how it sounds.’ But that would mean admitting that most of our 4-hour meetings could be replaced by a 14-word text message.
Milk
Not “Bovine-Sourced”
Canned Fruit
Fulfills its promise instantly.
Truth
The radical commitment.
I walk out of the room and immediately forget where my desk is. I stand in the hallway, surrounded by the echoes of ‘synergy’ and ‘scalability,’ a specialist in prevention who can’t even prevent the erosion of his own mind. I take a breath, count to 4, and try to remember the last time I said something that was actually true. It’s been a long time. Too long.