Phrases You Learn To Hate At Business School
Or: I’d rather gargle nails than hear the word “utilize” again
It’s good to take a break from writing serious, long-form posts. I’ve been doing a lot of book and paper reviews recently and feel the urge to do something a little more light-hearted.
A bit about my background first: I started off in an undergraduate philosophy program at the University of Waterloo before moving on to the HBA program at the Ivey School of Business. Many of the students in the HBA program were AEO — advanced entry students who knew they were going to Ivey —whereas I came in with virtually no knowledge of business. As a result, there was a very strong culture shock I experienced when I started hearing the conversations these business students had with each other.
At first, the phrases these students used were weird and unfamiliar. Over time, they grew to be annoying to the extreme. I’d like to give a few examples of the worst phrases you’ll hear when studying full time at a business school.
“Utilize”
I’d like to first list the redeeming qualities of Utilize before I critique it:
.
.
Notice how I didn’t list anything? There is no instance in which you should say “utilize” instead of “use”.
A survey was utilized to gauge public opinion? No. A survey was used to gauge public opinion.
We should utilize our existing strengths to [do X]? No. We should use our existing strengths to [do X].
The only reason I can imagine anyone ever using this word is in an attempt to make their sentences appear more sophisticated than they actually are. Use is so mundane, utilize in reminiscent of big, 4–5 syllable words without actually being one.
Please do yourself a favour and Ctrl-F your way through every document you’ve ever written and replace every instance of utilize with use.
“Sustainability”
I have less qualms with the motivations of people using the word sustainability. My issue is simply with how people use it as some vague catch-all term for “doing good things”
“Our business should be more sustainable”
What do you mean? Should the packaging be more environmentally friendly? Should we have a more diverse management team? Should we invest more in upcycling or recycling existing resources?
Sustainability could mean all of these — and sometimes people who advocate for sustainability want it all! Other times, sustainability is used as a sort of critique-mitigation strategy. If I say my company would use more environmentally friendly packaging, you may rightly criticize me for also needing a more diverse management team. If I say my company will be more sustainable in the future, you’d never quite know what I’m actually doing.
Sustainability is a term that does meaningfully capture an important facet of business — but way it seems to be used by our future business leaders is as a vague, nice-sounding statement of “we’re gonna do [whatever good thing is in your head right at this moment]”.
“I’d like to [springboard off/echo/build on] [someone]’s point”
Tell me one time this has been said that wasn’t immediately followed by a simple paraphrasing of a point someone else made.
Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I’ve seen it happen a few times and treasure those memories. The remainder of these instances, however, tend to add near-zero value to any conversation. At best, they’re a way for someone to reinforce an important point, and at worst are a method of stealing credit for good ideas.
It’s great to give credit for the ideas you take from others, but if you’re going to “springboard off” someone’s idea, you need to actually do that, not just restate.
“We should leverage our human capital”
Translation: I don’t know who, but surely someone can do [thing].
Double negative points if you say “utilize” human capital. But seriously, leveraging human capital is such an incredibly meaningless statement it could only be used by business students.
To clarify: human capital is a thing. Expertise, experience, and capacity to do more are all meaningful concepts and can be condensed into the term “human capital”. That being said, it is too often used as a hand-waving statement that implicitly says “I don’t know, let’s talk about something else.”
If you have a software developer who can build what you’re talking about, say so. They may technically be “human capital”, but if you only said “we should leverage our human capital to build [app]”, I’d have no clue what you actually meant.
Takeaway
Most of my complaints with these words — “utilize” excepted as a particularly pernicious phrase — are that they have real meaning, but are too often used to handwave away actual planning. I have no objection with these words in the abstract (but “utilize” should die an ignoble death), but can’t help but associate them now with their worst users.
There’s a concept coined by Steven Pinker known as the “euphemism treadmill”. The euphemism treadmill is moving when we replace a bad word with a more politically-correct one, only for that new term to soon be considered bad — The “R word” for describing people with cognitive disabilities is a good example of that, originally created as a kinder way of referring to the developmentally challenged. The point being that social condemnation of those with cognitive impairments causes terms used to describe them to become derogatory — not that the terms are derogatory in and of themselves.
I fear my objection to these words and phrases is just another step on the business-speak treadmill. Perhaps “we should leverage our human capital” will go out of style, only to be replaced by another phrase that serves the same function.
