Nicholas Bate

InstantBusinessSpeak: Number 37

Cutting costs. Organisations love cutting costs. The only problem is they cut easy costs. Your job. Her job. Your budget. Your travel. They don't cut hard costs. Incompetency. Bureaucracy. Politics. Ego. That'll need a revolution.

InstantBusinessSpeak: Number 36

Values are something which organisations love to identify, slide-deck and cascade. Considerable money can be spent upon this exercise which is a shame as-almost by definition-most organisations end up with the same list starting with integrity...

The exercise is then generally forgotten until review time upon which there is some attempt to assess behaviours against the defined values. Where does it all go wrong? Perhaps when we forget there is a deep craving amongst most of us to feel involved in something which is likely to fundamentally define how we are meant to run our working life. 'Rolled out' values will probably never work. It's maybe breaking a core value in all of us.

InstantBusinessSpeak: ThirtyFive: HotDesking

Organisations love hot-desking. It's what cool and virtual and edgey organisations do. 'People should be out selling' snaps the sales director. 'Avoid stress and work from home' adds the nice lady in HR. These are good points. But ask anyone who has hot-desked and is hot-desking what it has done to their stress levels and to their ability to sell effectively.

In the end, get data not hearsay.

Instant Business Speak 34: The Cloud

The new Starbucks drink directory explains that its mocha is completed with a 'cloud of whipped cream'. Meetings defer problems 'to the cloud'.  The cloud does exist and much of your work (probably) is backed up in the cloud. But in the coming months note how the cloud becomes more nebulous. Just make sure everything is fully transparent.

Instant Business Speak 33: Cool

Organisations will spend an awful lot of time making sure they come across as cool. Cool reception areas with former models as receptionists. Cool meeting rooms disguised as beach-side resorts. Cool mission statements that read like something re-cycled from the Apollo programme. But like a Men's Mag which asks what is the ultimate cool?.... the ultimate cool in fact is substance. A product, concept or service which will help the customer make money. Now that's cool.

Instant Business Speak 32: Disaster Recovery Plan

We are sorry. We are really sorry. We really are really sorry. This situation is not right; in fact this scenario is wrong. When we are in the business of communication we must communicate. When we are in the business of support, we must support. When we know our vulnerabilities ŵe must strive to be less vulnerable. As Deepak Chopra said "believe the doctor's diagnosis, but not his prognosis". We are sorry. Thank you.

Instant Business Speak 31: Substance

When an idea, a product, perhaps a methodology has substance or merit or data behind it then it is easy to describe it with clarity, to avoid TLAs and words such as 'transition' rather than change. Why do so many people in so many organisations make things so complicated? So many slide-decks, project acronyms and distracted employees? It's the modern day equivalent of smoke and mirrors; without the modern days tools we would realise that there is nothing of substance.

Instant Business Speak 30: Rationalisation

If your colleagues in organisations aren't suffering from PVB, despairing at e-mail over-load or deciding grande vs. venti they'll be rationalising why business isn't good. 'it's a short week they'll say', 'lot of people still on holiday they'll add', 'new products not through the pipeline yet is another'. Thing is you know the truth: break it to them. Leadership is lacking.

Instant Business Speak 29: Games

As you walk out the building at 630pm having done a great day's work, your team-lead yells over to you: 'knocking off early, eh?' In the marketing meeting there's an awful lot of talk of the need 'for a re-boot' but nobody actually defines what it is. Many of us have experienced poorly defined training and conference exercises such as that captured here. One of the many problems in organisations is that there is an awful lot of game-playing. Keeping knowledge to oneself, avoiding clear and unambiguous briefs and directives and simply hiding behind weasel words.

Try a day without games.

Instant Business Speak 28: PVB

Pressures in organisations are now so high that the vacation for many is the large carrot on the horizon that keeps them alive in a wilderness of confusion strewn with ever deeper slide-decks, abandoned coffee-cups and constant re-orgs.

Unfortunately the return to work is worse than re-entry through the Earth's atmosphere following a successful moon landing. Gentle evenings sipping Chianti on Tuscan hillsides and totally forgetting to checks one's SmartFone recede rapidly into distant history.

It's the onset of PVB: post-vacation blues.