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Comment by CGMthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

>a sieve to keep the hordes of fools at bay

Corporate speak as a signalling mechanism is only effective among the "clueless" in the Gervais model. If any CEO tried to talk 1:1 to a competent board member that way, they would lose all credibility. Once you've operated at a certain level you get it

>a system for turning bullshit into parse errors.

This is the (cynical version of) the framing I tend to hold about corporate speak. It's deliberately vague as a way to navigate uncertainty while still projecting authority and avoiding accountability in settings like a town hall, large meeting etc. Which is not to be read as a necessarily "bad" thing. No one wants a micromanaging CEO. They have to set vision and direction while leaving space for it top be executed by all the layers under them

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> They have to set vision and direction

A prime example of corporate speak that is, as you rightly said, 'only effective among the "clueless"'

No. It means things

Corporate speak as a signalling mechanism is only effective among the "clueless" in the Gervais model. If any CEO tried to talk 1:1 to a competent board member that way, they would lose all credibility. Once you've operated at a certain level you get it

This also holds true for competent non-board members. I have interacted with C-level executives at fortune 100 companies, as well as smaller businesses. It is almost impressive how quickly they can switch in and out of corporate bullshit mode. I think it's what the kids call code-switching.

In general, once they trust you a bit, and they know someone isn't listening they talk like a normal person. Then you ask a difficult question about the business and the corporate-speak kicks in like a security sub routine trying to prevent them from saying the wrong thing.

I have also met some that seemingly calculate their tone and cadence to try to manipulate the person(s)/people(s) they're talking to. It's fascinating when you catch them doing it, and it's different than simply matching like a chameleon. For example, they may use an authoritative tone with younger people, a kind but subtly threatening tone with anxious people, and a buddybuddy tone with a plumber or someone they know isn't going to put up with any bullshit.

I'm really curious how much of it is formally taught in MBA programs and stuff, how much is them copying each other, and if any of it is just a natural defense mechanism to the pressures of being in power.

Ultimately I think all of what you describe there falls into a bucket of personality traits and social skills that contribute to success in many areas of life.

It's some combination of what they call "self monitoring" in social psychology, plus general EQ and Machiavellian personality traits that allow people to read the room and adjust their tone, speaking style, word choice (including picking up in-group lingo quickly), posture etc to be most effective given the setting. This applies to basically any social environment, and is often a frustrating reality to many people who may be extremely competent but see others around them who are obviously less competent "getting ahead" through social acumen, office politics etc.

This has been studied among MBA graduates, Do Chameleons Get Ahead, The Effects of Self-Monitoring on Managerial Careers (pdf): https://web.mit.edu/curhan/www/docs/Articles/15341_Readings/...

The higher up you are in a company the more of “yourself” you have to give as realistically many more people are relying on your job results than they are on your personal wellbeing.

It definitely takes a certain kind of person to be a good fit in that role

what you view as subtly manipulative is just having good social skills

It’s both.

> I have also met some that seemingly calculate their tone and cadence to try to manipulate the person(s)/people(s) they're talking to.

This is a trait of a psychopath. Not surprisingly, one finds a lot of them in the executive ranks.

The polite term these days is "sociopath", which takes out the whole "psycho-killer" weightedness (because a sociopath can be very likeable and friendly) - and they fill the ranks of leadership in all professions...

Haven't there also been many studies that show high-level executives also have a high number of "sociopaths" in their ranks?

Sociopaths can code-switch instantly - I wonder how much of this is training, versus emulating others, versus a fundamental difference in brain operations...

The Gervais model is predicated on sociopathy as the driving force of social cohesion. This is the kind of model a sociopath would construct. There are other models available to us.

Social organizations require some sort of glue to bind them together. They need ways to maintain cohesion despite vagueness and to obscure (small) errors. There is a cap put upon max individual output, but aggregate output is much higher than whatever a collection of individuals could attain. This is a very basic dynamic that is lost amidst a cult of individualism that refuses to admit to any good greater than themselves.

Yes - the CEO talking to the board in this way would lose credibility. But a CEO failing to deploy this jargon correctly would also lose credibility with the board : it's obvious he doesn't know how to lead.

What I would like to see is a study of the ratio's between corporate speak and technical speak - and the inflection points at which too much of either causes organization ruin.

Hate to ask, but since it came up again and a quick search couldn’t find it - what’s that Gervais model? Links / explanations welcome!

Edit: seems that searching for „Gervais principle“ turned up what was talked about…

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-... is a good explanation. The diagram of the "MacLeod Cycle" utterly convinced me, having been around that loop a few times.

The Gervais model! I haven't heard that in a while.

> Which is not to be read as a necessarily "bad" thing

I (and many others) read it as "dishonesty"

Is there a historical example or does anyone have an anecdote of some crunch time where the CEO blowing hot air was the best thing for morale? Compared to what I might think a lot of us would prefer in many cases, which might be an honest assessment & making us part of the journey to overcome whatever adversity.

"an honest assessment & making us part of the journey to overcome whatever adversity"

I suspect that most people just aren't wired up that way - we have a natural tendency to want to follow leaders and what we seem to want most from leaders is certainty and confidence. Does it matter what leaders are certain and confident about - not really.

It is hard to argue with a vague statement like "most people" without a proper scientific study. But I disagree: following the scientific principle, and being willing to change opinion in the face of new evidence increases my trust in someone. Someone who is certain and confident without showing their work / sources make me suspicious. And critical thinking is (pardon the pun) a critical skill.

If you actually think and act that way, so much the better. I don't even particularly disbelieve you. But can you really look at the mass of humanity around you and believe they think the same way? Even if they claim to value critical thinking, watch what they do, what they buy, how they vote.

You've most likely trained yourself to value critical thinking in your leaders, most likely from an early enough age that you don't remember what it was like without it. Lots of people don't get this training or don't apply it in a fully general way.

Hm, having a journalist and an academic (with a heavy focus on applied rigorous statistics) as parents probably helped there, you are right. But school is supposed to teach this, at least here in Sweden it is a part of the curriculum. But indeed, that doesn't seem to help, and the US it is especially bad (not saying the situation is good here either though).

There are other things I do remember having to train myself to do though, such as not make value judgments based on the language skill level of others. Rationally I have never cared where someone is from and if they are a native speaker or not, but emotionally that required some effort.

I'm not convinced it's actually possible to teach critical thinking to someone who doesn't care, but I'm glad your schools are trying harder.

But even when people are trained in critical thinking, the part at the end of my comment about applying it in full generality is also critical. You have to be emotionally ready to apply it in cases where it produces unpleasant conclusions, not just for your job or when it helps dunk on your political opponents. Also difficult to impossible to teach at scale.

Not exactly?

Let's say there are a thousand people there at the town hall. You don't want any of them to leave upset, or even concerned. But they each have different things that will make them concerned and upset. So there are maybe 10,000 tripwires out there, and you don't want to trip any of them.

So you're not being dishonest, exactly. You're being nonspecific. You don't want to get down in the weeds and nail down the answer too tightly, because you may trip someone's tripwire. (And also because it would take to long.) So you say something true but not very specific.

(I mean, there can be dishonesty, too, but that's a different thing. Smooth vagueness can still be honest, just unsatisfyingly vague.)

"Smooth vagueness" to me comes off as tautologies. If you cannot say anything specific it means either you don't know, or don't want others to know. So it is a lie about ones' competency, or a lie by omission.

It's all dishonesty at the end of the day.

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