When I first started researching the Elevator Pitch for publishing this week, I was amazed to find out it was a whole industry. People take this stuff seriously – there are even whole companies dedicated to help people and organizations perfect their Elevator Speech. Then I came across this one:
“We add value to our customers by maximizing the value of human capital to leverage their assets to change their paradigms in order to transform their business.”
Wow… that is just exquisite bullsh!t. If I were playing Buzzword Bingo, I would have won the grand prize with that single sentence.
I suppose a certain amount of BS jargon is inevitable in a knowledge-based economy. It not as easy to describe what we do, as when we were all making something tangible. So, as a public service to Wily Manager readers, I’d like to deconstruct this sentence. For the record, the irony of a having guy who makes a living chatting with his buddy about how managers should manage comment on this, is not lost on me.
We add value to our customers. This means you may or may not serve any useful purpose, so you have to make sure everyone thinks you “add value” by stating it explicitly. It’s quite possible that no one is more amazed than you that you’re getting paid to do whatever it is you do to “add value”.
Maximizing the Value of Human Capital. This necessarily means that most of the people you work with hate you. You’re either involved in reducing headcount, or annoying the crap out of people to get them to do more with less resources.
To Change Their Paradigms. Really? I didn’t know anyone still used the word “Paradigms” anymore. What this probably means is that you stand up in front of groups of employees and rant at them like one of those ethically-challenged Sunday morning televangelists who asks for money to refuel his personal challenger jet. You have about the same level of credibility, too.
To Transform Their Business. A transformation is when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. In the business world transformation means that you’ll recommend and initiate a corporate reorganization that will result in the good people quitting to go work somewhere else, and the poor performers promoted three levels past their threshold of competence. Then when it goes horribly wrong, you arrange to hire back the good people as consultants at three times what they were getting paid previously.
You should be able to describe what your business does in concise terms – just make sure it doesn’t set off the BS meter ever time you open your mouth.