All you do to me is talk talk

And as the song says, ‘I’m tired of listening to you talking in rhymes’

Picture the scene.
You’re at work in the canteen having a pre-meeting coffee (and a cheeky muffin) with colleagues. The conversation is easy, natural and flowing. You head off to the meeting feeling positive and relaxed. But it doesn’t last.
They’ve started to talk another language. At first it’s mildly amusing. They’re discussing your event horizon. Isn’t that something to do with black holes? Maybe you’re company is doing something with Virgin Galactic that you didn’t know about. Someone mentions ‘enterprise impact’. Yes, it’s definitely something to do with space travel. In fact, ‘need to make improvements in that space’ is mentioned a lot. You start to panic a bit. How come you didn’t know? And what’s it all got to do with today’s meeting?
The talking heads in the room continue to open and close their mouths but you’re just not making sense of what they’re saying. Now they’re running something up a flagpole, lining their ducks up, putting stuff in a sausage machine. Your heart starts beating a bit faster as you start to feel more left out and in the dark. You’ve no idea where this meeting is going and you’re terrified of being asked a question. Someone says ‘Yes, that’s been baked into the 6:6’. What?? Baking? Who mentioned baking? You haven’t baked anything since school and you weren’t that good at it and you’ve never quite forgiven that nasty kid for stabbing your soufflé. You look at the talking heads through blinking, bewildered eyes. Are these really the same people who, not 15 minutes ago, were having the has she/hasn’t she debate with you about Amanda Holden’s lips?
But wait…oh no! NO! Please no! The talking heads have stopped. They’re all looking at you. THEY’VE ASKED YOU A QUESTION!!!!! Your mouth’s dry, palms damp, head’s starting to spin.
‘Sorry?’ you squeak.
‘We were saying, we really need to prioritise by enterprise impact and consolidate our engagement efforts in the transformation. What do you think?’
There’s only one thing for it. You pretend to pass out.

OK so I made it all up. But I’ll bet that a meeting just like that is going on in businesses all over the world right now. Thinking about - and listening to - all the gobble-de-gook (is that how you spell it?) that is spouted gave me the idea of the NMB club, Never Mind the Bollocks. Well, if it’s good enough for the Sex Pistols it’s good enough for us!
Wouldn’t it be much better to say what you mean, mean what you say and cut out all of this nonsense? Why do we put up with it? And, horror of horrors, join in??
I think people do it to make themselves sound really clever and important. Do you think it works? Me neither. I think it alienates people and hinders progress. I mean, who has time to sit and decipher what was being discussed in a meeting? I also think it’s soulless. I’d much prefer if we always talked to each other naturally and with a bit of feeling as opposed to reciting the annual report.
You know, we talk a lot about making our workplace a great place to work don’t we? The only reason people love working somewhere is because of the people they work with. No-one loves working somewhere because they have a nice desk or because they do a lovely toad-in-the-hole in the canteen, although these things help. So, how can we create a place where people love to work if we talk to each other in made up words? Spoilation anyone? No, I’m not kidding. And no, I’ve no idea what it means either. And listen to this, overheard at the coffee machine recently, ‘Well point to point’s point to point and if you aggregate it’s net net.’ Eh?
So my message is this; join NMB, let’s stop this rot from taking the soul out of our daily toil, let’s be ourselves and speak to each other from the heart and not from the…well, some other part of our anatomy. For work without love is busy-ness, drudgery, sacrifice, a death-camp…
Ahem, sorry I got a bit carried away there. But you see, I am passionate about this!
So start today. Will you join my NMB crusade and challenge the gobble-de-gook? You can report any NMB crimes on Twitter using the #peewiinmb tag.

TTFN (is that allowed?