Kanika Datta: Long live the cliche

SWOT

Successful business strategy, we are told, is all about thinking differently, of learning continuously, and attaining new standards of achievement.

Now here's how the sentence would read in modern executive patois: successful business strategy is all about "thinking out-of-the box", of "moving up the learning curve" and "setting new benchmarks" (alternative: "raising the bar on performance").

As an addendum, the strategist might earnestly inform you that "success is a journey, not a destination".

I have always been fascinated by this basic contradiction between business-think and business-speak. Even as businessmen continually search for novel ways to stay ahead of the competition, they appear to draw enormous comfort from the hackneyed expressions that constitute the accepted business language of the day.

Abetted by business publications, many grow irritated if the familiar phrases go AWOL from their staple reading regimen.

Each era has its pet business phrases, some endure, many fade, and others get updated depending on the compulsions of the times""and, occasionally, the management consultant in vogue.

But once they gain currency, businessmen tend to stick by them with grim fidelity. For instance, in the sixties and seventies, thanks to Robert McNamara and the Whiz Kids at Ford, business was all about the art of "hire and fire".

By the time the eighties came around and Americans' businesses were being out-done by the Japanese, it was Tom Peters who made everyone look feverishly "in search of excellence", or develop a "passion for excellence" in order to ward off "the chill of competition".

Conscientious managers who read Peters assiduously loved to talk about the virtues of "management by walking around" (Peters was actually considerate enough to abbreviate this to MBWA).

Ever since, "passion" and "excitement" have become durable mottos in the business lexicon, duly invoked by motivational gurus and routinely pressed into service to describe business icons from Dhirubhai Ambani to Jack Welch.

Then came Edward De Bono with this famous "thinking hats" and all of a sudden "lateral thinking" became an exercise every exec worth his performance pay needed to do.

In India in particular, this created many dilemmas in decision-making. As the licence raj started loosening its grip on industry and business, industrialists were torn between "sticking to the knitting" or making a "paradigm shift" (i.e. plunging into a new business altogether) by thinking laterally.

These days the "knitting" metaphor has been replaced by the all-time Prahalad-ian catchphrase "core competence", with some variance in nuance, of course.

But it is the nineties that can easily claim a monopoly, to indulge in bowdlerizing a stale Maoist phrase, on letting a thousand cliches bloom.

It is the nineties that saw several terms gain currency like never before. Thus, you have "shareholder value", sometimes alternating with "stakeholder value", a nebulous term that refers to that sometimes hapless, sometimes tyrannical group in whose name all manner of business atrocities are perpetuated (mega-M&As, lay-offs et al.).

"Restructuring" and "business process re-engineering" have become staples too""and they usually mean mass lay-offs, among other things.

Then there is this business of "listening to the customer", the favourite past-time of all marketers desperate to eke out share in increasingly crowded markets.

Also in vogue is "wealth creation," which almost became a euphemism for the vast capital gains USA Inc employees creamed from stock options""though the popularity of this one receded a bit after the dotcom bust.

Top of the pops right now, particularly given the scandals erupting from blue-chip boardrooms, is Corporate Governance, an elusive ideal that all businesses purport to attain.

Multinationals surging into emerging economies where policies are not wholeheartedly FDI-friendly are wont to combine Corporate Governance with "Sustainable Development", a catch-all term that covers everything from token involvement in social work to elaborate rehabilitation projects.

Surprisingly, the cliche that is all the rage right now comes not from the world of business or management, but from sport. This is the one about success being a journey, etc.

I have, no kidding, seen it used by three different execs in the space of one week. It comes from the 1975 Wimbledon tennis champion, Arthur Ashe, remembered best for that riveting final against Jimmy Connors, the champion in 1974.

Most people tend to omit the second part of the quote, which reads, "The doing is often more important than the outcome."

Given that language is an expression of thought and, therefore, action, a "de-clicheing" of the business lexicon would be a great starting point on this journey.

The views expressed here are personal