Do you doublespeak?

So it's Monday morning and you're at work, and it's time for that very special Monday morning meeting. The first speaker gets up and delivers the following:

We need to maximize the throughput, so we can drive the interactive methodologies. By redefining enterprise e-commerce, we can transition the one-to-one vortals. When you target killer relationships within the organization, collaborative action-items can then be more easily recognized. Through the facilitation of enterprise e-services, virtualizing cutting-edge paradigms implements efficient mindsharing and synthesizes intuitive users. While deploying strategic Web services, we need to embrace cutting edge niches. We must revolutionize plug-and-play interfaces, but still generate intuitive e-services. You have to re-intermediate and redefine bricks-and-clicks web-readiness. In the future we will deliver vertical communities, while building community portals and mesh 24 by 365 infrastructure. Robust deliverables must be reinvented, while still incubating out-of-the-box architectures.

You didn't understand a word he said. Well, that's not exactly true. You understood the words, but what the heck was the context. While he probably impressed the hell out of the bosses, he certainly didn't enlighten you to anything new, but are you going to be the one who stands up and says the emperor has no clothes. No, you don't want to the one to admit that you didn't understand a word of what he said.

The world is full of jargon. Everyone speaks it, but it seems to change daily, and it's very difficult keep up. So maybe what the person said was perfectly comprehensible to those who understand the jargon. You just hadn't read the latest article and you didn't know the buzz words.

So how do you know when someone is saying something really valuable, or he's pulling these words out of his butt? I'm not really sure, but when you hear this kind of thing you've got to call them on it! Or at least turn to the person next to you and say "Did you understand what that guy said?"

If the person you ask is a good company man he'll probably say "Yes, I understood everything he said." Or if he's your friend, he'll probably say, "I didn't understand a single word this fool said!" So the bottom line is, you probably leave the meeting not understanding a single thing that was presented to you, and hoping that if you go on the Internet you can find out what the person was really saying.

It's a tough world out there. You have to learn when to put up, and when to shut up, to quote the gambler. And the truth of the matter is, if you learn to speak this corporate doublespeak, you can probably bamboozle your supervisors into thinking that you're the most intelligent person in the company, they're certainly not going to challenge you when they don't understand what you're saying, they'll assume they don't understand what the new jargon is and that's not necessarily a bad thing for you!