There are so many ropey corporate straplines, missions and visions around, that I decided to establish some criteria for judging the worst ones.
I feel that to be the worst of the worst, a strapline must pass three basic tests:
- It doesn’t say what the organisation does.
- When translated into normal English, it is either meaningless, or too trite to repeat.
- It is constructed entirely from lame management buzzwords.
So I was delighted recently to walk past the local offices of a large firm who describe themselves as the Outcome Delivery Partner.
This seems to fit the bill on all counts. There is no way anyone can work out what they do, though it does suggest midwifery, maybe? An attempted translation might be ‘we do things for you’ – which of course describes the purpose of every business in existence, without exception, so offers no differentiation whatsoever. And the third test speaks for itself. Yet it’s even embossed on their windows, can you believe?
I must say this is no reflection on the business in all other respects, as from their website they seem to be fairly successful at their work, whatever it is. Though anyone who’s keen on clichés will revel in a visit to the company’s corporate values page, with its “Passion for what we do” and “Going the extra mile to deliver” and “DNA that drive (sic) our behaviour”.
I do worry, though. Is there an entire world out there that talks this guff day in, day out, and thinks that’s how they have to communicate with each other? Do they talk like that over a coffee or down the pub? Will everyone in business talk like this one day, leaving me as ‘the only soldier in the army marching in step’, as the proud mother described her son? Or will everyone somehow come to their senses?
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