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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories for this weekly newsletter.
At this time of year many of us look back on the past 12 months, berate ourselves for not achieving more and resolve to be more productive. I am beginning to wonder, however, if people are the biggest obstacle to our performance. It feels like a lot of time is messed with things that are beyond our control: compliance, “computer says no” processes, and the power of sound.
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that technological advances would make it possible for his grandchildren to work 15 hours a week. Instead, we seem busier than ever. Keynes didn't think of the call center menus that tell us at length how our data will be handled, and urge us to try the website, of course we have, otherwise we would have to pick up the phone to get into the sixth circle. in hell?
What he did not foresee was the proliferation of words and jargon that seem to be the hallmark of the 21st century. In the UK, the average FTSE 100 annual report now has more pages than a Charles Dickens novel. In the US, ESG reports from the S & P 500, grew five times for the longest time in three years. The board packs have also expanded: one volume is 226 pages long. Most board directors in the US and UK told the survey that the packages had little impact or proved a barrier to understanding the business.
In contrast, I suggest reading Watson and Crick's 1953 paper describing the molecular structure of DNA. It has only a few pages. Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which shook the nation, was 10 sentences. Both are shorter than the entries in most reports on my desk. Here's a line from one I recently picked up: “lack of absorptive capacity can easily be a significant barrier to continuous innovation”. The report was made by a consulting firm about – er – production.
Sitting in a cafe in Massachusetts a few months ago I tried not to listen to a woman on a long phone call about whether her presentation should say “primary learning objectives” or “stakeholder outcomes”. Last week in London, I saw a friend who had been asked to give advice to a Whitehall department, only to find that a two-page paper he had sent in advance had been translated by officials into what he described as a “word salad” that took many a meeting to decipher.
How did we create a category of people who write gobbledegook? How will we cope when AI models are trained on it, producing more gibberish? Management consultants are to blame. When I started my career at McKinsey many years ago, we were taught epithets that explained: “Success quickly” was one. These days, many advisors' reports are drowning in prolixity, either to hide a space for thought – or to justify a high fee. Yet those who charge by the hour don't really want to read this. A surprising survey by American lawyer, Joseph Kimble, found that lawyers don't like complexity as much as everyone else. When Kimble sent two versions of the court's ruling to 700 lawyers, they overwhelmingly preferred the more understandable version.
“The more you write, the less people understand”. Those are the words of wisdom in a UK government draft manual urging officials to write short sentences, in plain English. Unfortunately, the message was lost. Some parts of the public sector are models of good practice – I recently reported the death of an elderly relative “Tell Us Once” service spreading news of bereavement throughout the process – but some are jargon basics. The framework agreement for architects who wish to bid for construction contracts with the three London councils asks potential applicants, among other otiose questions, how they will “think about the value of social cooperation, and what strategies (they) will implement to support clients in increasing the return of social value cooperation with stakeholders” .
Presumably, another purpose of this document is to encourage small businesses to call for construction work. However they will be the most difficult in trying to produce responses of sufficient verbosity to meet the criteria.
I am reminded Bullshit Jobs: TheoryNaturalist David Graeber, who said that about a third of today's work is purposeless, and does the work of other people. These include “Taskmasters”: middle managers who do unnecessary work; and “goons” – lobbyists and salespeople who try to sell things that no one needs or wants. Graeber's thesis had a great response – many wrote to admit that they themselves had a cow job, and they were sad.
Verbosity – or what Chief Justice Igor Jaji called “an anxious parade of information” – makes us sad. No one wants to be invited to a “brainstorming session”.
From the novel by Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyThe bullshit job problem was solved, on the planet Golgafrincham, by sending all the marketing consultants to colonize the new planet. On Planet Earth, maybe organizations can start moving all the people who do pointless weight into useful roles. It can lower our blood pressure, save time and also solve the labor shortage. As for me, I will make the Little English Campaign one of my charities in 2025.