Communicating in the modern world. Can we stop it please?

Every company must have an “About us” or “Who we are” section. And in there they have to put empty words from the HBR. The easiest way to do this is list values. Deutsche Bank set a good example by having 31 dense pages describing their code of conduct. The Deutsche Bank who in 2017 was fined for assisting Russian money laundering, who in 2017 agreed a settlement for their key involvement in selling mortgage back securities, who in 2015 were fined for involvement in the Libor rate scam. I’m not anti-capitalism, its the open lies that are so irritating.

Deutsche Bank are extreme, but the values or mission or vision or purpose for most companies are ridiculous. Essentially, they force a reasonable business idea to become a saintly mission. How about we just aim to make good quality food easily available? That’s a fine aim. We all like good food. Instead we say that we’re battling climate change by reducing food waste. Its a little over the top. A fake purpose is worse than the pursuit of a sensible one. It feels silly. We aren’t up to building electric spaceships, we’re in these ordinairy jobs because we weren’t up to it. We know that. We know you are the same. Why lie?

On easyjet flights they call the rattling metal food trolley that contains packaged snacks that could survive a nuclear winter “our boutique bistro service”. I’ve never heard anyone turn to their neighbour and say ‘They’re coming through the cabin with What??’ ‘I think she said boutique bistro service babe’. No one laughs, no one notices. We should notice. Its crazy.

Cleaners need passion for cleaning. You’re paying the minimum wage. The job itself objectively sucks. How about you drop the passion requirement you crazy bastards? And the same for the other end. You’re paying 150k. Let’s not pretend people are applying because they’re passionate about high quality enterprise customer relations! More space for honesty would improve how we understand one another. It would improve how we feel and would improve the outcomes. I’m going to trade my best effort to do what you need doing, I will try to improve at that overtime, and you give me a fair amount of money. With no charades of practiced answers we’d be communicating more.

This does require effort. To say something useful in a job ad you need to reallyl think. Every company is looking for “independent” people who are “great team players” that can “thrive in a fast paced environment”. It may as well not be said.

We’ve let companies desensitise us to communication insanity. We keep getting worse. Its hard to tell if many of the posts from individuals on LinkedIn come from people or caricatures. And I would never post this on LinkedIn.