3 pieces of corporate bullshit that get my goat
Summary
When pointy-haired bosses run out of real arguments for a “return to office”, they turn to disingenuous corporate speak. There are many examples out there, but three of them annoy me the most.
“The feeling of collective or family”
“The magic of watercooler conversations”
“Brewing the company’s oh-so-awesome secret sauce”
The Dilbertesque corporation is alive and kicking and will probably outlive my career. And do you know what Dilbertesque corporations produce wholesale? Corporate bullshit! To their credit, these corporations; no, not the one you lead - the other ones; “refresh” the bullshit they spew. Recently, I’ve heard a few bullshit phrases to justify returning to the office.
1. Let’s build our community
Variations:
“The feeling of a collective”
“Do things together.”
“We are family.”
I call bullshit to this call to action. After months of layoffs and treating employees poorly, I don’t think many corporations retain the moral right to invoke any sense of collective. Your real communities and families exist around you in your personal life. Some of those friends may be from work but don’t confuse your friendly colleagues with your company.
Most times, the employer is a cynical corporation that could lay off you and your friends whenever it likes. “Community,” “family,” “togetherness,” and “collective” are all words that mean to exact one-way loyalty from you towards the company and not vice versa.
If companies want to build community and family, I challenge them to be as loyal to their employees as an actual family would be. Since a corporation will unlikely show that loyalty, I sure won’t fall for such language.
2. The serendipity of corridor conversations
Variations:
“Cafeteria talk”
“Coffee break chats”
“Chatting at the watercooler”
“Networking with each other”
The idea, of course, is that being in an office is like magic because, you know, all you do all day is bump into people, chit-chat with them, share knowledge, spread wisdom and all that jazz. All this is while pigs fly and unicorns crap rainbows.
I struggle to comprehend how leaders who earn a fat paycheck are betting on the right people being thirsty at the same time, so they’ll come to the water cooler and coincidentally talk about the incredible things they’re doing at work. What they call “serendipity” is what I call “leaving things to chance”.
Most companies are distributed. Most teams are distributed. Any company serious about knowledge sharing will recognise that you can’t bet on the lunchroom or the coffee machine as your fountainhead of knowledge. Those companies invest in proper knowledge platforms for their employees. As for the companies that bank on “breakroom banter”, I suggest not taking the bullshit seriously.
3. “Experience our X-factor”
Variations:
“Discover our secret sauce.”
“Capture our je ne sais quoi”
“Be part of our winning formula.”
Oh, boy! Where do I even start with this? The notion of a “secret sauce” is ridiculous for any company that wants to grow. Unless you’re Coca-Cola, you have little incentive to keep any of your work secret from your employees. To train, develop and onboard people and to expand your business and scale, you need explicit, well-understood processes, not secrets. You need systems that help people make their tacit knowledge explicit for their colleagues.
A service company unwilling to explain its work will struggle to win clients. What do you say to clients? Do you say, “Sorry, our process is our secret sauce”? That’s the fastest way to erode a prospective client’s trust.
A product company that doesn’t document its processes will reinvent the wheel across different teams. You can’t leave product teams reliant on a “je ne sais quoi”. Over time, it’ll become more challenging to execute consistently and efficiently.
I urge employers to nix their bullshit idea of a “winning formula” for their own benefit. Secrets don’t scale. Knowledge does.
It's high time companies ditch these superficial platitudes and be honest with us. The unending stream of layoffs has left many workers with a sense of realism. From "community-building" nonsense to the "serendipitous corridor conversations" fairy tale and the mythical "X-factor," we know how bogus these phrases are.
I hope that instead of filling our ears with sweet-sounding BS, companies invest in systems that will achieve their stated goals. And if they genuinely care, maybe they’ll first rebuild the trust they’ve eroded in recent years. They may hustle people back to an office by dangling the temptation of lousy coffee and kitchen chats or by pitching the idea of magic ingredients and secret recipes. Still, they won’t build stronger teams, retain top talent or do better work this way. Seeing minions toil in front of them may fuel a middle manager’s ego, but corporations better have more ambitious goals! Don’t you think?