The meeting was being held in the company’s largest conference
room, which seated over sixty people. A representative from each department was
there: there was an HR guy, the CTO, the CRM, the CMA, the CFM, the CMO, the
CISA, you name it. At the front, standing next to the CEO was the new face we
had been called on to meet. The CCO gave his standard upbeat assessment of the
company’s current “transition period,” before energetically introducing our new
COO. We gave our new leader a polite round of applause.
“Thank you.”
He began by humbly praising our skills and character, and expressing his emphatic belief that the future of the company was bright. And then he got down to business. Because everybody knows the first meeting under new management can only mean one thing: new acronyms.
“So, we are all familiar with the Customer Satisfaction Matrix, or CSM. Well, we believe the people we do business with should be viewed as clients, and that it is not merely their satisfaction that should be considered but their input, be it praise or constructive criticism. So, here we see an example of a Client Feedback Template; these CFTs are what you will be working with from now on.”
When I first started the CSMs were Purchaser Approval Ratings (or PAR—which lent itself to cutesy PowerPoint slide titles like: “PAR for the course” and “PARticulars”), and then Purchaser Approval Rankings (because they enjoyed the acronym so much).
“Now, the ‘indicators’—or what used to be called ‘indicators’ and shall now be considered ‘markers’—have changed. In this first square we see the marker states: ‘Client received prompt connection to representative.’ You’ll remember that it used to say something like, ‘Customer received immediate connection to sales agent.’ In the second square, the ‘marker’ states…”
These “buzz word meetings,” as they are known, have become an established rite of passage for any respectable upper management hire. It is their opportunity to lay claim to a new era, to plant their flag.
“I think we all agree that the Peer Orientation Observation and Practice, the so-called POOP sessions with the newly hired employees—the NHEs—had to be renamed. Here we have their new name: Monitor, Input, Listen, and Follow-up.”
The directives are clear. The old acronyms must never be used again. They have been forever banished by the new tsar. We must act as though they had never existed, as though we had always used the new acronyms. How else to avoid confusion? Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
“Now, there are also a few confusions about WPTs...you know, work position titles. We are ready to assign new WPTs, but let me be perfectly clear, these are simply changes in the titles and not in the responsibilities that accompany those titles. Your current job description and responsibilities remain unchanged unless we talk to you separately. Lets start with the Financial Administration and Accounting Representative...”
WPTs is a mistake on his part. He should have said WRD (Work Responsibility Designation). WPTs got banished years ago, when an old regime attempted to get rid of the concept of “titles.” But it’s a typical mistake. Most of us have trouble keeping up with the changes, and simply pick and choose our favorites and stick to them. This is to the eternal consternation of our boss, who is constantly reminding, warning, and lecturing us to use the “new format.”
“…As for the CSP, his title will remain unchanged.”
The
poor CSP. He’d been called that since getting hired, the letters slowly growing
independent of the words they represented, until one day he could no longer say
with certainty what they were. Custodial Services Provider was his best guess,
but he conceded that Cleaning Services Personnel couldn’t be ruled out. He
thought he remembered an e-mail about his title getting changed but the acronym
stayed the same. Anyway, he didn’t really know what any of the acronyms really
stood for, technically, so it didn’t bother him too much that that list also
included his own WRD.
“…Folks, lets remember
to keep it light, but to also keep it positive…”
A slide flashed behind him, showing a middle aged man on the phone
in his office giving the camera a thumbs up; beside him an acrostic:
Teamwork/Harmony/Understanding/Motivation/Belief = Upbeat/People. It was well
known, even up at the executive level, that rogue employees had begun using
vanished acronyms as derogatory terms or placeholders for profanity. CAO (Chief
Accounting Officer) became synonymous with cheapskate or tightwad (as in “What
a CAO…”), while CTD (Closing the deal) inevitably meant sex (as in “I CTDed
your mother last night”). Some acronyms, if said to the wrong person in the
wrong context, could get you fired, as former colleagues of mine can attest.
Before ending the meeting, two interns came around handing each department rep a three-ringed binder. Sandwiched between their plastics covers was a rain-forest worth of warm printer pressed papers: this years glossary of acronyms.
“We
have no doubt that the new format will help simplify and clarify much of our
reporting. Thank you. And lets GTW!”
(Get To Work)
