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Independence, MO —
“I need to see more granularity on that.”
That’s what the man said, and it made my head spin and a small part of my soul hurt.
Perhaps the citizenry at large doesn’t always appreciate the risks journalists face daily in our content-gathering – I mean, news-gathering – activities. Much of this consists of suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous jargon, which in theory we translate into English so our readers might be spared a headache or two.
But it is hard to keep up.
Let’s take a shot at dissecting that statement. We start in a scary place, where business talking heads gather on TV. Abandon ye all hope those who enter here. If you’re looking for “the price of oats went up, so the cereal company made less money,” well, good luck. What you’re likely to get is that “higher input costs eventuated in margin compression.”
No, really, your titans of industry talk and presumably think that way.
So, let’s drill down until we find granularity. If you are the chief executive officer, chief operations officer, chief financial officer or chief Play-Doh officer, your job is to take “the 10,000-foot view.” Don’t bother with widgets or widget factories or reports about widgets but rather attend to the grand plan. You must strategize, synergize and – yes – vision. (These are called the C-level jobs, even though they would be at least 10,000 above sea level and even though our parents all wanted better for us than to be C-level performers in school. It gets confusing.)
At the other end of the food chain are the drones who do the work. They might write an unread memo now and then, but mostly they spend their time gaining an intimate knowledge of the manufacture and use of the left-handed flow nozzle regulator. Someone needs to be really good at that, and that person is said to have a granular understanding of the situation. The C-people really depend on the granular people, but they don’t get too close them for fear of knowledge rubbing off on them and interfering with their vision quest.
So “granular” has become one of this year’s bizbuzzwords. When the guy on the TV – the supposed expert on the impact of some new regulations – was asked about that the other day, he simply didn’t know. He didn’t say: “I don’t know. I need to get into the details to give you an informed answer.”
No, he said, “I need to see more granularity on that,” taking the badly battered English language on the bold leap from pretentious adjective to made-up, non-word noun.
You’d like to think the folks back at the office, watching to see how their company’s representative did on TV, were mortified and howled with outraged laughter for this verbal train wreck. You’d like to think they gave him a lot of ribbing for it.
I’m guessing they gave him a lot of high-fives.
“I need to see more granularity on that.”
That’s what the man said, and it made my head spin and a small part of my soul hurt.
Perhaps the citizenry at large doesn’t always appreciate the risks journalists face daily in our content-gathering – I mean, news-gathering – activities. Much of this consists of suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous jargon, which in theory we translate into English so our readers might be spared a headache or two.
But it is hard to keep up.
Let’s take a shot at dissecting that statement. We start in a scary place, where business talking heads gather on TV. Abandon ye all hope those who enter here. If you’re looking for “the price of oats went up, so the cereal company made less money,” well, good luck. What you’re likely to get is that “higher input costs eventuated in margin compression.”
No, really, your titans of industry talk and presumably think that way.
So, let’s drill down until we find granularity. If you are the chief executive officer, chief operations officer, chief financial officer or chief Play-Doh officer, your job is to take “the 10,000-foot view.” Don’t bother with widgets or widget factories or reports about widgets but rather attend to the grand plan. You must strategize, synergize and – yes – vision. (These are called the C-level jobs, even though they would be at least 10,000 above sea level and even though our parents all wanted better for us than to be C-level performers in school. It gets confusing.)
At the other end of the food chain are the drones who do the work. They might write an unread memo now and then, but mostly they spend their time gaining an intimate knowledge of the manufacture and use of the left-handed flow nozzle regulator. Someone needs to be really good at that, and that person is said to have a granular understanding of the situation. The C-people really depend on the granular people, but they don’t get too close them for fear of knowledge rubbing off on them and interfering with their vision quest.
So “granular” has become one of this year’s bizbuzzwords. When the guy on the TV – the supposed expert on the impact of some new regulations – was asked about that the other day, he simply didn’t know. He didn’t say: “I don’t know. I need to get into the details to give you an informed answer.”
No, he said, “I need to see more granularity on that,” taking the badly battered English language on the bold leap from pretentious adjective to made-up, non-word noun.
You’d like to think the folks back at the office, watching to see how their company’s representative did on TV, were mortified and howled with outraged laughter for this verbal train wreck. You’d like to think they gave him a lot of ribbing for it.
I’m guessing they gave him a lot of high-fives.
