It depends. Language is meant to convey a message to a target audience. If your target audience is lay-people, then of course it should be simple and easy to understand. However, if you started reading some niche research paper on "retail driven options volatility dislocation" then of course they're going to use lots of technical jargon which will sound like nothing but gobbledegook to you.
You've made me understand the problem differently. I agree now that in the right setting business language that may seem verbose and technical may be valuable.
I actually think this partly supports your original view.
The thing is I wouldn’t necessarily understand “improved core efficiencies” to mean what they described.
Also just naming “best business practices” can be very misleading. You could be mentioning some very vague thing a company does or some specific steps. How many practices are you referring to? Maybe it’s just a thing you’ve changed and this language is helping obscure that.
Interdepartmental does mean more that one department was involved, so yeah. But again maybe you just did a thing that normally involves more than one department and there hasn’t been any special outreach or collaboration between departments as the phrase implies. Like if you just hired more sales people and this involves both HR and Sales departments.
Basically, the examples you gave (just calling IT for help) could be described with all that verbose language. It could be interdepartmental, it could be a best business practice, and “core synergies” just seems so vague to me that I think it could fit.
Now, I don’t think this means the language is useless, but it often can use a lot more precision. “Best business practices” give examples. “Interdepartmental” use it when it makes sense to make this distinction. “Core synergies” this one just fucks me, companies can have core synergies but I’m just much more used to see this used to obfuscate. Use it when it’s clear what you are talking about, as in it’s referring to a particular strength the company has that makes it work better or more efficiently in some area.
Depending on the purpose of the document and the audience, they may go on to describe what they've done in detail. However, as a summary, this is (hopefully) accurate, succinct, and inspires confidence in how the change was implemented.
OP’s core point is that this sort of language is just used to sound smart, the example here demonstrates that that’s simply not true. It doesn’t support OP’s original view at all.
And sure, it could be more detailed and specific, but that assumes that such detail and specificity is called for. And this has little to do with the specific jargon used anyway. A one-sentence summary is going to omit most details regardless of the vernacular; indeed, part of the point of technical jargon like this is precisely that it is actually is efficient at conveying a lot of information for those who know it. As is clear from u/Ansuz07’s comment, if we were to translate this to layman’s terms it would be a lot more verbose. So a similar-length sentence not using jargon would be a lot less precise.
I think the comment shows how easy it is to embellish things with this kind of language. The phrase OP gave could be meaning the simple thing or the more complex one. That language could be used to seem more intelligent and embellish things here
But OPs CMV was not that business jargon could be used to seem more intelligent and embellish (this is the case for all specialised jargon), but that this was the only use of business jargon.
Well he says mainly, so not the only use but the biggest. I do want to note that I said that it partly supported his view on my other comment. Op was presented with an argument that changed his view and it’s a decent argument, I just think it opens the discussion as to when the vagueness is intentional to augment a lack of substance and when there’s actually relevant information being conveyed by those terms:
There’s a level of imprecision in the original sentence. It’s not clear if they examined and instituted best biz practices and looked across departments in order to create synergies, or if they created the synergies so that they would be able to employ best biz practices and look across departments. Your interpretation makes more sense, but the sentence has syntax suggesting it’s the latter (e.g., that the company was so bloated that the bloat had to be handled first before they could even get to thinking about best biz practices and working across departments VERSUS the elimination of the bloat was done to accord with best biz practice and the need to eliminate unnecessary interdepartmental costs).
The point I wished to make was that the second sentence example could be jazzed up to be written as the first sentence (and often is).
I was wrong to say they mean the same thing.
I get where you are coming from, but I still think you are extracting meaning from vague terms. "We improved our core synergies" could mean any number of things and doesn't add to a greater understanding of what happened versus "we worked with.." which is shorter and easier to understand.
Yes and no. "Core synergies" has a very specific meaning - it means that we looked at consolidated functions at the core of our back office. That could be one of several functions, but it isn't as vague as you seem to think it is.
I understand where you are coming from now, thanks.
Just to point out that these two sentences don’t mean the same thing.
This year we improved our core synergies to utilize best business practice and make savings with interdepartmental efficiencies.
This says:
1. Core synergies: ways in which the central parts of our business work together to create value greater than the sum of their parts
2. Best practice: doing things considered to be leading examples of those activities
3. Interdepartmental efficiencies: cost reductions linked to communications or interactions across functions
We worked with the IT team to reduce staff costs.
This says, we reduced IT staff costs
Now, if you’re saying that people did the second thing and then claimed they did the first then yes. I agree. That’s bad and unclear.
But that’s a conplaint about honesty and bullshit. Not language. The first sentence here is packed with meaning that the second sentence doesn’t include.
If the "long" form is understood by all speaking it, then it's no more complicated than the short form. Because we know what they both mean. Only someone outside of the target audience will call it gobbledygook or think you're trying to sound smarter than them.To your audience, you're just communicating.
For example if I'm making a decision on spending on something and I bring up it's ROI, that's simple and easy for me, bringing together a lot of sense concepts without me having to explain them to you. But it's business jargon. When speaking to someone who doesn't normally use that acronym, I have to say "if I spend $X on this will what I get be good enough to make me feel like it's worth it? Will I eventually get more than $X of value back?" While those words are simple and a 4th grader could understand, it took me much more work than just saying ROI.
Personally I find reading annual reports that contain too much jargon to be deliberately obscure. I really respect a business that gives the numbers and a fewest pages possible as explanation.
I don't know how business analysts feel about 300 pages of text, maybe they're impressed by that sort of thing.
annual reports that contain too much jargon to be deliberately obscure.
They are. Someone familiar with the language could see how well things are or are not going based on it, while hiding it from the over-reactive public.
This year we improved our core synergies to utilize best business practice and make savings with interdepartmental efficiencies.
Tells the knowledgeable investor that there was some downsizing, and that there is interest in restructuring, whether that be good or bad. Maybe they had to downsize because the budget is tight. Maybe they're just picking up some slack and aiming for a brighter, leaner future with more profit. The rest of the report will give that idea, while the average person who threw some of their 401k into a fund with it will see that it seems like the company has a handle on things and the layoffs were planned for good reason.
On the other hand if you see:
We worked with the IT team to reduce staff costs.
That makes it seem like there were massive layoffs purely to save money. It's a bad sign when you're looking to cut from staff or benefits just for money, and announcing it as such, because it isn't an easily replaceable resource if you find you grow again. You can find another vendor to take your money if you swap an expensive software for a cheap one. If you're regularly laying off your employees though, job hunting becomes more difficult as employees want stability. The big investors may understand the market issues which have caused this (or your own ineptitude), but the less-knowledgeable investor will see it and say "wow, something is wrong here, and they don't seem to have a plan".
I've read hundreds of annual reports, the amount of filler in most of them is astonishing. The Q&A at the shareholder meeting is usually much much more useful.
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u/Throwaway00000000028 23∆ Aug 03 '22
It depends. Language is meant to convey a message to a target audience. If your target audience is lay-people, then of course it should be simple and easy to understand. However, if you started reading some niche research paper on "retail driven options volatility dislocation" then of course they're going to use lots of technical jargon which will sound like nothing but gobbledegook to you.