Masters of the Universe in gobbledegook

Reuters, an operation which should pride itself on its clear communication of news to the world at large, has always been catastrophic in the field of internal communications. This has never been truer than under the new regime, which has taken to new heights the opaque meanderings of corporatese that bear no relation to the nearly 7,000 extant languages that humankind still uses to communicate thoughts and ideas.

As any cub journalist knows, the acid test in good journalism, especially when dealing with change and new ideas, is to give concrete examples of what is happening now and a scenario of what will happen under the proposed plan. It also involves not stating the meaninglessly obvious or tautologous, and shunning a maze of words so much more tortuous than the mythological Labyrinth that not even Theseus would make it out no matter how many balls of thread Ariadne gave him. Yet this is a lesson that editor-in-chief Stephen Adler and chief people officer Peter Warwick seem either never to have learned, to have forgotten, or to have cast aside as only for the working classes.

Just a few examples from management's recent pronunciamientos:

A) Reuters editor-in-chief sets agenda for 2013 (The Baron 24 January 2013):

Achieve editorial excellence: Continue focus on being best at speed, accuracy, exclusivity, and neutrality while providing greater insight and stronger commentary.

Great; good to know that we’re not engaged in a race to the bottom to become the world’s worst news provider. Why not give an example of where a recent story would have been improved by greater insight, stronger commentary, etc?

2) For the Finance & Risk division which includes Reuters news agency, implement buy side news strategy in alignment with business and build momentum for community initiatives.

Come again? For the hoi polloi, an example would certainly help here.

3) For Agency, continue driving Agency growth while supporting Thomson Reuters’ professional businesses through stronger branding and greater strategic integration.

What the heck does this mean in plain language?

4) Meet performance targets: Monitor performance and meet targets for achieving journalistic excellence, driving commercial value, controlling costs, generating customer satisfaction, and building communities.

Excuse me, but isn’t that the clearly implied meaning of the word target?

5) Among many other examples let’s just mention: Enhance communications: Explain the Reuters mission consistently and effectively throughout Thomson Reuters and beyond.

Well, you’ve certainly failed on that one, Steve.

B) Top Thomson executives set managers a new goal - as per Peter Warwick (The Baron 25 January 2013). 

1) Differentiate Performance: supporting overall performance distribution guidelines set by the company.

Either a tautology of what that awful phrase “people manager” means or heaven alone knows what.

2) Manage Effectively: demonstrating core management behaviors, which will be assessed using a short, confidential survey taken by your direct reports.

Again as above.

3) As an example of the above Pete mentions Encouraging employees to speak their minds.

O boy, o boy, we all know what that means - some of us more personally than others. Tell the emperor he has no clothes, that he’s so naked he doesn’t even have flesh, that he’s just a skeleton of meaninglessly shaking bones, and you are out.

4) Motivating people to go above and beyond

OK, how? With what? By dancing the fandango and clapping castanets? Give an example.

There are many, many other examples over the past two years, including that Adler memo following the Soros debacle [Stephen Adler spells it out: stick to Reuters standards] as reported by The Baron (18 October 2011), which are totally incomprehensible, pointless or a mere tautology of what a journalist’s job is for any but those fully aware of the particular issue at hand.

So any advice for the new regime’s managers, Weisenheimer? Yes! Come on, you emperors, this is not San Francisco’s Castro district. Put on some clothes now, chaps! Concrete facts, scenarios, true communication, clarity of thought and word – anything but the meaningless see-through cloaks of corporatese that reveal you as so naked. Why, even the US Transportation Security Administration is abandoning those Rapiscan full-body airport security scanners that generate naked images of passengers. ■