Flickr.com, CCL, Dunechaser

Last week, I sat down to dinner with Erik Dirven, co-founder of boutique consulting outfit Kianga. Having dinner with Erik is always an enlightening experience – words like “authenticty” and “passion” are never far off.

Kianga is distinctly different in their approach to change management: where most mainstream consultancies will work on the “what”, they spend most of their time working on the “how” of change.

According to their website, they “specialize in unblocking situations that appear to be completely blocked through practical and hands-on sessions with the real stakeholders”.

It got me to thinking: how many times do we truly focus on what is important rather than tackle seemingly important but superficial tasks in order to appear collaborative and avoid conflict ?

I would argue that a great deal of time in organisations is spent on what George Orwell appropriately termed “doublespeak”: “language constructed to disguise or distort its actual meaning, often resulting in a communication bypass. Doublespeak may take the form of bald euphemisms (e.g., “downsizing” for layoffs) or deliberate ambiguity.” (Source: Wikipedia).

I sometimes wonder what causes this situation, but perhaps the more important question is: what are its long-term effects ?

In my experience, sustained levels of “organisational doublespeak” in any environment may lead to the following vicious circle:

According to a well-known statistic, over 70 % of all organisational change initiatives fail.

I would argue corporate doublespeak has something to do with this. Organisations that want to succeed in implementing their strategy and have it adopted through all levels of the company need to communicate clearly.

To quote Sam Walton, founder of Walmart: “The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say. It’s terribly important for everyone to get involved. Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys.”